HD 5850 or wait for physX card?

[gaborbarla]

I am thinking of upgrading to 5850 from my 8800gts 320mb.
Should I not worry about physx support and wait for the next part from nvidia? Or is that not important at all?

 

[brockh]

You can upgrade to the 5850 and use the 8800GTS as a dedicated PhysX processor.

However, recently NVidia has released drivers to disable PhysX processing while ATi hardware is in the system, though a "hack" has been made available to re-enable it. So you will have to fool around with it a little, but it should work.

 

[gaborbarla]

Thanks, but I am planning to keep only 1 card in my PC I only have a single PCI-X slot, but it sounds like a cool idea.
PhysX still works with the CPU doesn't it just takes a bit of a toll.

 

[impaledmango]

Alot of a toll actually, Dont buy an ATI card and expect to run physx through your cpu, game will drop to unplayable framerates, but regardless the 5850 is a great card, but if you want to be 100% just wait a couple of months and c what Nvidia releases. I personally hate buying something and then 1 month later something better and cheaper coming out (gotta love technology).

 

[renz496]

but if you keep waiting for new and powerful stuff you will never buy anything
btw 5850 is a great choice. however since this is new generation card from both company maybe its worth waiting to see what nvidia has to offer later

 

[coozie7]

What are the rest of your specs? Also what is the monitor resolution?
Without that information we cannot give you any meaningful replies.

 

[gaborbarla]

My specs are core2duo 2.1 with 4gig ram and I run on a 22" 1650x1050 LCD all of which I will probably upgrade pretty soon probably to an I5 CPU and a 1920x1200 25.5" monitor.

More importantly how come none of the 5850 reviews I read even mentioned the importance of Physx, like as if it doesn't even exist, or in the bigger sceme of things it doesn't matter.

 

[brockh]

PhysX isn't that important unless you're playing Batman: AA exclusively. And then you would want an NVidia video card because you'd want to enable anti-aliasing.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Because in the bigger scene of things it doesn't matter.

Any game that supports physX plays without GPU-physx, and it's not worth lower graphics options to enable shiny debris physics.

 

[renz496]

to me physics effect in the game is nice feature because they make the game more realistic (regardless physics software used for the game). nvidia offers physics effect in their games using their PhysX technology but that alone is not enough for me to go after nvidia card.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Remember, the core physics is still always CPU, GPU-physics is an add on, and people need to understand that PhysX describes the engine, which has both CPU and GPU options, and you don't need an nV GPU to use the core physics, only the add-on stuff.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Unfortunately, there is no "best choice" at the moment. There are like 150 games that have some PhysX component included....there are 2 games that have DX11, with 8 more scheduled for release. But having a PhysX label or DX11 doesn't mean you are going to be "wowed".

The features described and in the video here are quite frankly rather impressive to my eyes:

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/batman_arkham_asylum_physx_performance/page2.asp

Look at the lists of PhysX games and DX11 games and see which ones you think you'll be playing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhysX
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_DirectX_11_support

However, as indicated above, not all developers have put a huge effort into PhysX features in their games as they did for this one. Same goes true for DX10 and 11.....for many, they did just enough so they could write "DX10" or "DX11" on the box cause consumers will always assume that the bigger number has some significance. DX10 was a big yawn, we don't quite know what DX11 will bring and probably won't for two years.

So what I am getting to is ..... look at the Batman demo videos and if you're impressed, witha 1 card option you have two choices:

a) Upgrade to a 295 GTX today but if you keep ya cards > 18-24 months, it may get a bit long in the tooth.
b) Hang a bit and see what nVidia comes up with in the next 2 months.

If ya wait, what's the downside ? Is there anything that you are dying to play that your existing card can't handle ? By the time nVidia's next gen cards hit the streets, ATI's cards should be past their "reference design" phase, and then we'll see just how far they can go in terms of performance. Undoubtedly....unless you move up a notch performance wise, the card you buy in 2-3 months will be faster, more stable and / or cheaper than the ones you buy today.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

More importantly how come none of the 5850 reviews I read even mentioned the importance of Physx, like as if it doesn't even exist, or in the bigger sceme of things it doesn't matter.

Same reason AMD CPU reviews don't talk about Intel SpeedStep technology.

Given the 500+ msg thread here, seems a lot of ATI owners are pretty excited about now having access to PhysX.

http://www.ngohq.com/graphic-cards/16223-nvidia-disables-physx-when-ati-card-is-present-50.html

The other reason you don't see PhysX much in ATI reviews is that ATI has aligned w/ Havok instead of PhysX.

http://www.gamersreports.com/news/10492/ati-announces-havok-physics-support-for-graphic-cards/

 

[renz496]

one thing in my mind. i heard that ati cards will have its own physics support using bullet engine. so if any games physics made by this engine will nvidia gpu support it?

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Yes, because unlike PhysX, everyone else wants wide adoption of their physics engine, and so Bullet, and Havok have both stated that they will offer their acceleration to everyone via Open CL and it will be available for both CPUs and GPUs.

 

[impaledmango]

I find it funny that red faction: guerrilla is one of the most physic intensive games and it solely runs on havok.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Crysis also seems to do just fine without either too, eh?

 

[gaborbarla]

Thanks guys you have been very helpful.

This topic is still very murky and I think we are in the age of physics acceleration where 3D FX was with Glide in the past.

So, after all this, I am tempted to get this card as I can get it relatevely cheap in my country, and the GeForce 285 -for example- costs almost double. And this is a faster card in most cases.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Well it's definitely worth 1/2 the price of a 285, not sure if that GTX285 price or future prices will change anytime soon, usually we talk about what is the case or will happen in the US (even if some of us aren't from the home of the WOPR ).

From the sounds of things it's a good deal for you.

As for physics, it's still evolving, remember originally nVidia was in the Havok camp along with ATi, showing Havok FX as 'SLi Phsyics', then Ageia entered the scene with alot of promise and some interesting tech demos, but didn't go far enough; nV bought them and took them a bit further, but it's still essentially debris physics (like Dynamic Paper) not the game physics everyone had hoped for half a decade ago when they talk about it in the Brook presentations.
As we go forward with a standardized platforms in OpenCL & Compute Shader standards. It's likely eventually the PhysX arm of nV will chose one of those and port the current CUDA version to one or the other, or else it will die like Glide.

Anyways, at that price, you should really worry about PhysX, and I doubt that there will be a cheap Fermi based solution coming near you anytime soon, they're going to have trouble getting them to the centre of the universe let alone the far reaching regions of our planet.

So buy the card and enjoy the improved gameplay over your aging GTS-320, which was a great value, but is starting to show its age now.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

This topic is still very murky and I think we are in the age of physics acceleration where 3D FX was with Glide in the past.

Yes things are a lot easier when everything is cut and dry .... last year, we asked .... hmmmm.... 4870x 2 of GTX 295, yep that's easy.....but this time of year is always rough on graphics choices.....I call the fall "BR season" for all the Buyer's remores purchaser's experience when they pull the trigger too early. Normally in the PC world if you buy State of the Art (SOTA) on any give day, you usually don't get dropped to "2nd fiddle" status for a 3 months or so....pre XMas when everyone comes out w/ next gen stuff, you have competing platforms dueling it out as well as manufacturer's topping themselves every 2-3 weeks.

This season w/ nVidia behind schedule, you can't even make a platform choice w/o fretting as we don't know what or when nVidia is gonna pop. Undoubtedly though, this month's 5850, will be superceded by next month's 5850 and so on till the late Winter / early Spring and things "top out".

Your situation is a bit easier as if you want PhysX, assuming you have a SLI/Xfire capable MoBo, you can just grab a 5850 (or 2) and pop that 8800 into the next slot.