Do you need an SLi Mobo for a Physx card.

So do you need an Sli motherboard for a dedicated Physx card?

No you do not. Any motherboard with two PCIe slots.

You do not need to use an x16 slot for a dedicated PhysX card, and I would use whatever power connector the card has on it.

That's a good question, but I'm going to go with "no", your primary graphics card will still run at x16. It would be the same if you used a PCIe audio card in the second slot. I'm just educated guessing here, though. I think the SLI/Crossfire lane splitting is a necessary part of running two graphics cards in tandem on certain motherboards (mine for example), but not applicable for non-SLI/Crossfire setups.

so if I want something that I will experience minimum fps drop on high should I get a gtx 260 or do you need more, I know in general its overkill but if I'm going to have a dedicated physx card I want the frames to pretty much never drop below 60 with a high physx setting in a game such as batman aa and mirrors edge

To be honest a gtx 260 is serious overkill. physx is not going to see impact of aa ect unless ran on a system with only a single card or in sli/crossfire without a dedicated card. You will be amazed what a simple dirt cheap g92 can do for a high end setup. I watched a video two or three months ago that was posted over the summer with three gtx 480 in tri sli vs two gtx 480 + a 9800gt in batman. The two way with the dedicated card amazing won by a land slide. This is due to the nature of physx. It will take as much as you give it but when it is on the main card it is like dead weight. We all know that in sli that the main card is vital for over all system performance and any lag there will not be pretty. avg load on my ancient dusty 8800gt that people seam to think that is from like a billion years ago now is around 15% while I do see 25% often with 40% being the max. There is a script that I am guessing that caps physx performance on most cards and is why people seam to see gains over lessor cards. Without the cap it can wreck performance in your normal sli systems and cripple every thing else if only on the cpu. So if you are thinking that my old dinosaur 8800gt isn't quite enough then aiming for a gts 250 or a dusty old 9800gtx that can reach higher clocks will be fine. Just avoid cards like the gt 430 and gts 450 as Fermi shader architecture isn't as fast as the older on a unit to unit bases. gtx 260 is as much as you want to go any thing over that you are looking at a money waster unless dirt cheap on the second hand market.

Typing isn't as fun with a cut on ones hand
Timber bamboo is something else.

I was going with this chart, that confirms what you said nforce, the 8800 is a good choice, and as good as a 240:

thanks for all the info

Sorry but no you can only use one card. Only one pci-e 16x slot so no dedicated card unless new board.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813131626 ??????

yeah my board will default to 8x8 if two slots are populated no matter if in crossfire or not.... so no dedicated physx card for me although im considering an am3 sli board

terrible idea the gt 220 is not worth investing in as a physX card, it can barely do the job and what is your monitors resolution and the rest of your system specs? I would personally go with a higher card then a 768mb 460 to start off with or I think you will find yourself upgrading immediatley if you are playing at 1080p

yeah at 720p you should be okay I didnt realize you were using a 720p monitor, but imo if you went to 1080p the 768mb 460 would not be enough, not to mention that crysis warhead (although not as demanding as the first) is still pretty darn demanding I'm sure it will be playable with cut down settings at 30+ fps but you may find yourself wanting a bit more on a resource hog of a game like that, just my 2 cents, the 768mb 460 should do okay but if crysis is one of yoru main games I would look for something better personally

GT 240 is a great physx card and can be had for as little as $65 PLUS a rebait so only $45 after that.

From my understanding around 100 CUDA cores is the sweet spot. I know a 250 or 260 can have some gains in very heavy PhysX scenarios but with my 240 I've played Batman, Cryostasis, Mafia 2, Metro 2033, Mirror's Edge and usage was usually really low, like below 25%, and sometimes would go up to around 50 or 75%. My fps were always really good as well, with my CF 5850s.

lol!

Well... yeah it's pretty sweet. BUT! There's a lot of people on this forum with rigs twice as good as mine

Yea it does seam that a lot of people here make hundreds of thousands of dollars or euros a year or more

What next using a new Bentley for an extreme desk mod?

lol nforce!

Buy the new Bentley and chop it up, and only use the front portion as a desk. Throw the rest out...

But yeah, seriously... psycho replaced SLI 580s with CF 6990s... like what!? Oh well, if I had a ton of disposable income I guess I would too. That or soup up my car. Or both?

replacing sli 580s with the 6990s is probly the single dumbest upgrades imaginable, just waiting for him to be totally fed up and tell us hes buying two 590s next lol what a joke