5870 + Physx 285 GTX + Radeon 5970 ??

well, i would say that it could but you might be pushing it close... Since it is a Corsair, i would say you are on the safer side...

So if i plan to OC the 5970 i would need a new PSU?

1000W should easily be able to power that system. Over clocked or not.

However, makes sure that your motherboard doesn't do something silly with 3 x16 slots full. Some might default to x16 x16 x1 or x8 x8 x4. That MB would be x16 x16 in two way for sure.. but you might have to go x16x8x4 to really make a point to it, would strongly recommend against the 5970 in an x8 if at all possible.

Better go with two 5970, with three you don't expect much better performane of two 5970...

Your board is x16x16x4 so whatever card you put in the x4 slot (GTX 285) would be
a waste.. You need at least x16x16x8..

I have done a couple of testing on the third slot (4x), as follows:

Vantage Performance Score:
-Same Computer Specs but W/9800 GTX + on the third slot (4x) as physx
21,800 Points
-Same Computer Specs but w/285 GTX on the third slot (4x) as physx
22,900 Points

There is a small increase in the vantage points using the 285 GTX even tho only runs at 4x.

Other testing in a game called: Warmonger, i could see a 35%+ increase in performance using my 5870 + 285 vs 5870 + 9800

So you think my PSU can handle it?
Thanks

So you are asking if your PSU will handle a 5970/5870/285? If that is the case, yes.

If you want performance go with crossfire or SLI, maybe Hydra X. But don't go with third card.
When you tested third slot you tested with only one card, right?

Look some reviews.

It'll work fine I'm running crossfire 5850s at 8x/8x with a GT 240 on a 4x for PhysX. PhysX isn't all that demanding even a GT 240 is only getting to around 30% tops usage in Metro 2033, but I'm going to try Batman and Mirror's Edge asap... I'll make a thread on it whenever that happens.

You also have a bottleneck if you are running both cards @ 8x/8x, that is actually half the bandwidth compared to a board running both slots at 16x.

Using the dedicated PhysX card in the x4 slot seems to work just fine, which leaves the 5870 and 5970 to fit in the x16 slots. I've seen benchmarks for dedicated physX cards that showed good performance even at x1.

So you are saying that he would get the exact same outcome as if the physx card was running in an 16x slot?

Nvdia, evga supports physx in the 4x slot, its mentioned at evga's site. Even the most demanding title ,say for example Batman only has a small % of pixels's being rendered by the dedicated physX card. The same way the driver makes sli work, splits the rendering work for two cards, 'smartly' passes just the physX 'parts' back and forth over the system. Thats the best way I can explain it.

I didn't even think it actually rendered anything at all. I thought it just did calculations, which in tern get rended on your primary card.

Sure that might be the more correct term for whats going on there.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx_faq.html#q4

Well, technically yes. But in practice the difference is pretty much nil. Maybe 1 or 2%. Considering all the other factors involved having 8x compared to 16x is a non issue to me. However, my real point was only in regards to the PhysX card, which is to say there's pretty much no way a dedicated PhysX card will be stressed to the point that having only 4 lanes is going to compromise it.

yup, there are a few threads that talk about this topic. I thought physx needed at least 8x to operate @ 100%.

http://www.overclock.net/nvidia/722361-dedicated-physx-...

Well yes I think that's true, because FluidMark can only stress mine to about 83% with the 4x slot. Could be worth trying a different slot just for the fun of it to see if that's the case. But the thing is, in gaming it doesn't get stressed that much. I'm too busy right now to run the proper testing but I've been playing Metro 2033 and the PhysX card rarely hits as high as 30%, it's almost never even over 20% usage. Probably Batman AA will stress it higher as I've seen there's more PhysX applied to that game, however I forget who it was but they said even Batman didn't get it over 40% usage. Basically from my understanding, from 16x to 8x you only lose at most 3%, but going down to 4x can have a far more dramatic reduction. You certainly wouldn't want to CF of SLI on a 4x but for a dedicated PhysX it really won't make a difference.

3% in basically nothing, I thought the margin was more towards 7/8%

Metro 2033
9800 GTX 23% of usage "max"
285 GTX 8% of usage "max"

Mirror Edge "Ep-1"
9800 GTX 17% usage "max"
285 GTX 9% of usage "max"

FluidMark
9800 GTX 72% of usage "max"
285 GTX "OC" 83% of usage "max" http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/score.php?id=b8742f46...

On batman for some reason im not able to disable the V-Sync so is a constant 60 FPS... with about 2 - 4 % of usage on both cards

Nice! So looks like yes, the 4x holds back the cards from running full capacity (FluidMark) but in gaming they're barely put to the test at all. Based on this, IMO as a dedicated PhysX card both of those are in fact much more than needed at this point in time. My GT 240 was showing higher usage in Metro 2033 (absolute most I saw was around 30% but almost always staying under 18%), so I feel good that it's an optimal card for price vs performance in this type of application. I believe it's essentially a 9600GT... Not entirely sure how these 2xx cards compare.

I'm getting very curious about the future of dedicated PPUs as ATI is starting to push their bullet physics system which is supposedly able to run on OpenCL and Direct Compute and can utilize hardware acceleration... so will that be able to take advantage of dedicated PPUs the way PhysX can? Sure hope so!

Okay, so i guess i can add a 5970 and OC using my HX1000 on my current setup
xD

Yea should be fine  

Can I ask why you're going to do that tho? (as in, it's just a tad excessive haha  )

ya, a single 5870 OC 900MHZ is not enough to handle Metro 2033, DX11, DOF ON, TES ON, AAA, Very High, Advanced Physx on 1920x1200

So i have to add another card but adding another 5870 wouldnt increase enough FPS.

Besides im planning to hit 40k Performance on Vantage.

My system scores about 23k,
22k GPU
52k+ CPU/w physx

So adding the 5970 it should be well over 35k, add OC to the 5970 and it should hit 40 i guess

That's surprising as my 2 5850s handle it fine at around 50+fps. But I guess it kinda makes sense. Anyway, good luck.