Dedicated PhysX card help?

[macleody]

So I'm buying a PC on CyberPowerPC and I HAVE to choose a graphics card. I was thinking of choosing a low end (like a 630) graphics card and then buying the Gigabyte 7950 on NewEgg. Would I be able to set the 630 as a dedicated PhysX card and then use my 7950 for all the game rendering? Or do I have to use SLI/Crossfire and graphics cards from the same series? Or can I just use the two separate cards how I explained above?

Thanks!

 

[batsoy19]

you can use your GT 630 as physx when your ready to upgrade to an AMD 7950. You dont need both Nvidia cards to run physx.

 

[bigcyco1]

You'd probably want at least 640 for a dedicated PhysX. Although my son uses a GTS 450 for a physx card and it brilliant. You don't want to go too expensive. I would not bother with anything less than 112 cores.

 

[madmcgee]

Easiest way is to use 2 Nvidia cards and use Nvidia control center to setup PhysX. But you can use an AMD GPU and Nvidia GPU but you would have to use the PhysX hack which you can google but I hear its a pain to setup

 

[batsoy19]

i agree with bigyco. forgot to tell you about the bottleneck of a lowend card in regards with a high end primary card.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbww3dhzK0M&feature=relmfu

 

[macleody]

Hmmm okay. The 640 they have is 2GB. Would that be enough? And how do I dedicate PhysX to that card? I read that it's on the Nvidia control center or whatever under 3D options or something.

EDIT: Since that card would most likely bottleneck the 7950, does anyone have good recommendations for a good PhysX card? I don't want to spend more than $100 because at that point it's just not worth the little things PhysX does.

 

[bigcyco1]

Hmmm okay. The 640 they have is 2GB. Would that be enough? And how do I dedicate PhysX to that card? I read that it's on the Nvidia control center or whatever under 3D options or something.

EDIT: Since that card would most likely bottleneck the 7950, does anyone have good recommendations for a good PhysX card? I don't want to spend more than $100 because at that point it's just not worth the little things PhysX does.

I would just get an 640 for Physx. That and its 384 CUDA cores should be enough.

 

[nforce4max]

Don't get the 640 as it is one of the worst cards to enter the market in years when it comes to being bandwidth starved. I suggest almost anything but the 640, you are better off with a $50 9800gtx or a gts450 as a dedicated card. Also you won't be able to use the most modern physx drivers due to the 7950 and there is a bug that for some reason or another bricks dedicated physx of any kind.

So I suggest that you look around on the net for other forum threads and youtube guides how to set up dedicated physx with an amd card as the main card. Absolutily avoid the GT520,GT610,GT620, and GT640 due to bandwidth limitations and weak shader performance. A GT430 and GT630 are not bandwidth constrained provided they are 128bit and they will manage as I have tested them my self for dedicated physx.

 

[bigcyco1]

gts450 is what my son uses with his 7950 works great!

 

[macleody]

Best answer selected by MacLeody.