Physx and 1080p card

You answered your own question. A 580 would do just that fine. Of course it depends on the game and also what your CPU and the rest of your setup would be, but barring any other bottlenecks, a GTX 580 would be OK.

A 570 should be plenty of power, given that your PSU can handle the load.

Well while I figure that the 580 would do it, I also need to keep money down as much as possible too, which is why I inquired about the two. PSU and CPU should not be a problem either. Basically if the 570 can get away with 30+ frames in MOST games and do physx in 1080p that is all I need

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/batman-arkham-asylu...

You don't need a beast card to do PhysX. A 560 would suffice. A 460 would suffice, although in Batman, Cryostasis, and Mafia 2 you might start getting into issues. Actually Cryostasis is so demanding you might just need that 580 haha.

Seriously tho, I'd get a 560 or 570, or even SLI 460/470 depending on budget. That, or a 560 and maybe a GT 240 or something.

Keep in mind that PhysX is available in very few games...
http://physxinfo.com/ (go to "PhysX SDK / Projects Table")

It appears you and others have been misinformed in your assessment of the performance impact of PhysX. If you are willing to accept a minimum FPS of at least 35, which is playable, just about any GTX 460 and up card will do the job well (leaving out Metro 2033, of course).

Hardware Heaven includes PhysX performance charts for most of their video card reviews (unfortunately, they are in flash, so I cannot repost them here). In this review of the GTS 450, they show a minimum FPS of 25, average of 37 FPS, and maximum of 63 FPS for the Gainward GTS 450 in Mafia 2. Testing was performed at 1920x1080 with in-game anti-aliasing and 16x anisotropic filtering. Maximum in game settings were enabled and PhysX was set to High.
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1032/pg14/nvidia-...

Similarly, this review shows two different GTX 460's attaining minimum FPS of 35 and 38, with averages of 54 and 59 FPS.
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1028/pg10/point-o...

In Dark Void, performance is even better. You can even play with a GTX 275:


And good old Tom's Hardware showing that it is not entirely out of the question to play Batman: Arkham Asylum with only a single GTX 260:




So, in answer to your question, as long as you are at GTX 460 or above performance, you will be fine... except in Metro 2033, of course.

Thank you wolfram23 and matto17secs. I realized crysis and metro would likely be exempt from my calculations as they are a bit more stressing. It seems that I should handle fine with a 570. It seems when I looked up physx things on google I got some biased info that made it seem like you needed to have a super card or dedicated card, or else it would make any game a slide show.

A 560 would also be fine if your budget is limited.

If I did have to go for a 560, I am assuming from the Toms hardware article that the msi twin frozr would be the best bet?

I just want to point out that a dedicated PhysX card is not a bad idea at all, as you WILL in fact see a FPS increase. If I were you I'd go for a factory OC'd GTX 560Ti and a 9800GT. This will be similar in price to a single 570, but will perform similarly in games w/o PhysX, and blow it out of the water in games with heavy PhysX.

ASUS GTX 560Ti Direct CU II
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
PNY 9800GT 1GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

I don't know whether or not the amount of RAM on the PhysX card matters, if it doesn't, there are cheaper versions of the 9800 available.

I am running a GTX 460 and a dedicated 8800gt. You don't want any thing more than a 8800/9800gt for physx as it is the sweet spot. 15-25% avg load on the dedicated card in mafia 2 and 60% load on the gtx 460. Avg fps 60. Mind you that my system is rather low end these days.

There is another thread going where the question of fan noise on the GTX 560 was brought up. In one review, the quietest is the Gigabyte SOC at 38 Db. The loudest is the MSI Twin Frozr II at 41 Db. The Asus DirectCU, Palit Sonic, and KFA2 (Galaxy) card are in between. If you are looking at the Tom's Hardware review, I would try to find one of those Sparkle Calibre's with the Arctic Cooling heatsink:

while a dedicated card would benefit, my setup will allow only one graphics card. That is why I am putting thought into higher end ones. As far as the fan noise, is sparkle a reliable company? I see almost no reviews of their cards on newegg, and I never hear much about them.

He only wants to use one card. Yes the MSI is a really good card and is very cool.
It is a lil noisier than some others but it really depends on if you need a quiet one or not. These are both great.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... this is hard to find though.
And this one that you mentioned.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

I have a slightly unrelated question, with all this 6950 unlocking process, there is something I am confused on. Some people tout that they receive a good increase in fps, but when I try to find actual benchmarks, the unlocking only seems to give at most a 1-2 fps difference. Also would there be a performance bottleneck since it only has dual 6 pins and not a respective 6 and 8 like the 6970? It seems like the saved money does not give you any benefits.

Unlocking of the shaders has a very small performance increase. It's when you up the clock speeds to 6970 levels that you see a performance increase. I suppose you could get a nearly similar boost by just overclocking a 6950 to 6970 speeds without unlocking the shaders.
http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcar...

If you are going to use ati cards then I suggest that you avoid physx games. You won't be missing much over the next year or two as they only make up like 1-3% of the games out there and ati does well in most games any way. Why would I say that is because modern cpus are far to weak to really get the best out of physx. A few simple effects fine but only when there is headroom for it either wise it will make even high end rigs feel like lag buckets at high ress.

@nforce4max I never intended to use ati with physx, this was merely a query that came to mind.

@matto17secs Helpful article. Regardless of what the article says though, I would be worried about running the card with only dual 6 pin connectors. I am not a technical or electrical genius though, so I guess I do not know what I am talking about.