So, im not sure what to do with my 9600. help?

So i plan on upgrading my system. Currently running amd 3500+ 4 gigs ddr 400 and geforce 9600gt with my raptor drive. ( i know ive neglected my pc)

so what im thinking of doing is going amd phenom 2 x4 940 as far as cpu. The Thing im curious about is what kind of performance gain would i get if i run sli and use my 9600 gt as a dedicated physics card and buy a 9800 series card for my main video. OR should i just not get a NONE sli board and put more $ into a higher end video card?

You cannot run two different cards in SLI. Adding another 9600gt to run in SLI would be a cheap upgrade, and you would be able to run everything at max settings.

nVidia cards will automatically run the Physx engine if it is enabled in the nvidia control panel, and it is by default.

you can run a different card in sli if they are the same series, just not on sli it would be like using one gpu as a physics card.

http://www.slizone.com/object/sli_cuda_learn.html

kingofall00 said:

you can run a different card in sli if they are the same series, just not on sli it would be like using one gpu as a physics card.

http://www.slizone.com/object/sli_cuda_learn.html

Click to expand...

Wow I didn't know that!

In any case, running a GPU as a dedicated physx card would be really under utilizing it. I'm still going to suggest getting another 9600gt and running them in classic SLI for the best performance.

According to Tomshardware, dual 9600gt perform as well as a single 9800GTX+ and a single GTX260 in 3dmark06. Considering that you can pick up a 9600gt for about 50 less than a 9800GTX+, that is the route that I would go.

thats not a horrible idea. but then in a year or so, i would be stuck with 2 9600 gts. that i would need to upgrade. as far as saving money, i feel it would be a better money saver if i get a 9800 gtx and use this card as a physics card. but what im curious about is what kind of performance gain am i gonna get with a physics card?

Just did some more research, and it looks like a dedicated physx card isn't a bad idea at all.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/mirrors_edge_physx_performance/page3.asp

shows on page 3ish the following chart:



looks like a ~40% framerate hit with physx on when playing physx enabled games. I never realized that the performance hit was so large...

I'll change my vote to having a dedicated physx GPU, and a single more powerful card for graphics.

edit: it looks like the more powerful the card is, the greter the hit is from having physx turned on. Seems counter-intuitive to me.

Here is the most important question.... What rez do you game at?