Physics cards

[jasonx]

Hi guys I have a small question.


I'm have trouble finding some benchmarks about dedicated physics cards on pci-ex 1x, x4, x8, x16.Do you guys think there would be a difference in any of these?

 

[EXT64]

Perhaps 1x would be limiting, but I'd assume 4x and above (especially if PCI-E 2.0) would not cause issue. What sort of Physics cards are you referring to? PhysX cards, or something else? If the former, just consider it a low end GPU.

 

[jasonx]

Well I saw some comments on google where people running on high resolutions like 1920x1200 and above with all eye candy.Some said that they use 8800,9800 cards on the x16 so that they wouldn't see bottleneck on the card.So thats why I was wondering has there been a benchmarks on that topic on any resolutions.

 

[EXT64]

Well, here is a site showing a comparo of CPU PhysX, PhysX on the rendering card, and PhysX on a dedicated card from a 8400 to a 9800. From the looks of it, not much is needed. A 9600 looks like the approx 'sweet spot'. A super high end dedicated doesn't seem to add much, but I just glanced over the results, so you probably can gain more by looking more closely. However, if only a 9600 is needed, I think 4x (maybe) or 8x (or more) is probably all that is necessary.

Edit: Link: http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,673911/Mirrors-Edge-Physx-effects-benchmark-review/Reviews/?page=2

 

[jasonx]

Thx for the site.It would be cool thought if someone did a test on this just to see if physics card would operate better on pci-e 1.0 or 2.0 and also x1,x4,x8,x16.

 

[EXT64]

Well, for 1.0 vs 2.0, you can just (approximately) double the x## to go from 1 to 2 (since 2 has 2x the bandwidth). As for the 1x, 2x, 4,etc., assuming it follows the graphics card trend (which since they are graphics cards, though they may be less bandwidth limited, so this link may be the worst case) slightly older/not top of the line cards did quite well on PCI-E bandwidths below x16 and even x8

Older, so 1.0:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci-express-scaling-analysis,1572.html

Newer, so 2.0:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci-express-2.0,1915.html