GT240, disabling Physx - help or hurt game fps?

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PV9685

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Hey all,

I "upgraded" recently from an ATI 4650 to an Nvidia GT240 w/DDR5. The 4650 seemed to do better with stuff that needed more shader power - actually the GT 240 really sucks in some games much more than the 4650.

So, I am wondering if disabling (by uninstaling the Physx driver) Physx will help the card use more of it's shader power toward in-game stuff. What I mean is that I have plenty of CPU and not much of a GPU - I'm guessing that in Physx enabled games the GT240 will probably run the games better with Physxs turned off? Since it wont be bogging down a card that was seemingly made to bog...
 
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Removing the PhysX drivers will cause games that use a PhysX game engine to not work. You don't want to do that.

The only thing it can help is if a game uses GPU accelerated PhysX, you can turn off GPU accelerated PhysX in the Nvidia control panel or in game. This will prevent you from using the GPU for anything other than graphics.

However, if you remove the physX drivers, games that use a physX game engine, still need to run physX calculations on the CPU and the drivers enable that feature as well and will not work.

beltzy

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You shouldn't have to uninstall drivers to turn off Physx- it should be a setting individual applications. The GT 240 should be noticeably faster in most circumstances. Take a look at the Graphics Card Hierarchy from Tom's most recent "Best Graphics for the Money":

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card-radeon-hd-6990-geforce-gtx-590,2912-7.html

The GT 240 is 3 tiers higher than the 4650 (5 tiers if you were using the 4650 with DDR2). If you aren't getting better performance I'd check to make sure your drivers were cleaned out properly: uninstall drivers using the ATI utility for the 4650 (and NVidia), then run Driver Sweeper and clean anything else out. After reboot I like to run Driver Sweeper again to make sure no remaining drivers are left. Then install your new ones.
 

PV9685

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Unfortunately the hierarchy chart isn't very good with telling the truth. For example, a 4670 is a tier below the GT240 w/DDR5 and a tier above the GT240 w/DDR3. The 4670 is simply a 4650 at a higher clock speed and with much faster memory - the chip is essentially identical to the 4650. So I think the issue with the hierarchy in this case is that in terms of memory bandwidth the GT240 w/GDDR5 will win hands down - though when memory bandwidth is not an issue an overclock 4650 will be as fast or faster (if clocked the same as a 4670).

I think the issue is that with the 4650 I could tell everything was limited by memory bandwidth. Now I feel like everything is GPU limited - though the GDDR5 makes for some smooth frame rates under certain circumstances. But when it came down to the numbers, the 4650 was more capable of the higher-detail options. I'm wondering if perhaps the games are bogging the card down by throwing Physx stuff at it.

A simple game like FarCry 2 for example ran fine on the 4650 and is virtually unplayable on the GT 240. (It's weird, kinda like it gets 15-20ish fps but has like a weird bog to it that makes it unplayable)

I'll have to try disabling it and see what happens. I was fearing that I might be underbuying on the video card... lol. I didn't want to spend much though and the GT240 was like $25 after rebate. I almost bought a 5870... but couldn;'t justify the spending for occasional usage.
 
can you take the gt240 back? i suggest you do that ASAP since its not doing what you want it to do and you would have been better off with your old card. You really should have looked into the upgrade more. An ati 5770 would be a minimum upgrade to notice good performance increase. Also, physx will kill a gt240's FPS if your playing a game that uses Physx. There are very few games that use hardware physx.
 
Removing the PhysX drivers will cause games that use a PhysX game engine to not work. You don't want to do that.

The only thing it can help is if a game uses GPU accelerated PhysX, you can turn off GPU accelerated PhysX in the Nvidia control panel or in game. This will prevent you from using the GPU for anything other than graphics.

However, if you remove the physX drivers, games that use a physX game engine, still need to run physX calculations on the CPU and the drivers enable that feature as well and will not work.
 
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PV9685

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Good to know! I hadn't even realized how few games used Physx - I only have two games that even use it. Go figure. Time to look into other reasons why this thing is slow.
 

PV9685

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Well, I guess this card's performance simply doesn't live up to the benchmarks in the real world. In reality the megapixel and megatexel throughput of the GT 240 is actually lower than my old 4650. I actually downgraded. I thought that the GDDR5 would really help quite a bit - since the 4650 was crippled by low memory bandwidth. But, the 4650 chip itself is about 25% more capable than the GT 240 - so I upgraded to the amoutn of memory throughput I needed, but downgraded the GPU at the same time. Funny how they will put GDDR5 with a slow chip and DDR2/GDDR3 with a faster chip. I suppose it helps keep the prices up. Lesson learned.
 
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