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sockpirate

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So what is the perk of designating a second card for PhysX?
I do not know too much about this, but a friend said i should pull the gtx 460 SE from my old machine and designate it for physX with my gtx580SC ?
 
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Having a separate card for PhysX simply means having a dedicated processor for calculating physics in games. When PhysX first came out, it was a separate expansion card, but now most geforce cards have it built in.

Having a physics processor means offloading the calculations from the CPU or GPU so they can be used for other things.

If you have a spare card you're not using, might as well use it for physics processing...it can't hurt (aside from extra noise and power usage). You can manage which card does what in the nvidia control panel.


If that slot is right next to the 580, that would cause your system to get noisy and hot compared to not. Besides, 20 games does not constitute a lot of games, unless you have a few of those twentish games.
 

commandermuffin

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Having a separate card for PhysX simply means having a dedicated processor for calculating physics in games. When PhysX first came out, it was a separate expansion card, but now most geforce cards have it built in.

Having a physics processor means offloading the calculations from the CPU or GPU so they can be used for other things.

If you have a spare card you're not using, might as well use it for physics processing...it can't hurt (aside from extra noise and power usage). You can manage which card does what in the nvidia control panel.
 
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PhysX is an API used to do physics calculations. There are some games engines built to be able to use PhysX in the games. Some of these options can add some special effects to a game. Nvidia cards, starting with the 8600 and newer have the ability to perform these calculations on the graphics card, which can do it much faster than on the CPU.

The part that confuses most people, the ability to have physX performed on the graphics card is not often used, even on games with a PhysX graphics engines. However, games which do allow for GPU accelerated PhysX, will almost always perform a lot better with an Nvidia card when the advanced PhysX effects are enabled. In most games the 20ish games which offer GPU accelerated PhysX, the effects aren't done that well, but a few are pretty nice looking. Batman AA is one such game which adds a lot of special effects that look cool.

Mafia 2, Mass effect, Sacred 2, Metro 2033 are all such games with GPU accelerated PhysX. There are a few others. I personally own 2; Sacred 2 and Metro 2033. Sacred 2 is kind of hit an miss with it's physX effects. Some look ok, some don't. Metro 2033's physX is hard to tell it's even on and slows the system down more than it's worth.
 


Unfortunately, this may be one of the common misconceptions. I'm not sure if you just skipped part of the description or you also misunderstand it. PhysX does not handle physics in most games. A lot of people keep getting misguided into thinking it does. It is a only used if the game specifically writes code to use it.
 

commandermuffin

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Yeah, I shouldn't have left that part out. Games need to be programmed to take advantage of PhysX.
 


Hence my original comment that it is probably not worth the effort, considering how few games actually make extensive use of PhysX. Besides, the 580 is so powerful, I'm pretty sure it can handle the PhysX by itself. rather than place the additional power drain on a single system, I would sell the 460 or use it for a second computer.
 

nvidiafanboi

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You can add it if you like. the 580 as i said above will do it perfectly. my 470 runs all games with phys x, like batman arkham asylum, mafia II ect on max settings 1920x1080 with phys x on max and getting 60+ frames.

Not sure if you would need to upgrade your PSU if you were runnning both.
 
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