ATI + nVidia

Are there any ATI Users here who are using a secondary videocard from nVidia for the sole purpose of PhysX? How is it impacting your game performance?

I'm curious because I upgraded my old 1st gen 4870 512MB to one of the Saphire 4890 Toxics and I am wondering if it would be worth it to pick up a cheapie nVidia cards for PhysX duties...

I miss physics....

http://www.overclock.net/graphics-c...fficial-ati-nvidia-dedicated-physx-guide.html


I Thought about giving it a try, but it sounds like a pain to me.

wow iv always wondered if it worked but never actually researched it thats awesome now im tempted... i wish ati would get off their *** and make something like physx

they have havok dont they? just not many games use either really.

I haven't found any game so far really worth buying a seperate PhysX card for.

Mirror's Edge and Cryostasis are the only two that come to mind which utilize PhysX decently... which is fun while it lasts, but then, they're not that long and beaten in hours.

Unreal Tournament 3 - a select few maps (labeled with PhysX) support it, and nobody plays them online.

Sacred 2 - total joke of a game, a supposed "PC" ARPG game (that's a big lie) gimped down to worthlessness to accomodate consoles. PhysX being on actually halves framerates - turning it off and letting CPU process physics is much better on my system and other similar setups.

A common misconception is that Crysis uses PhysX - No. CryEngine2 has its own physics.

There's a variety of other games/demos which also use PhysX for a few effects but nothing that really stands out right now.

Interesting. I thought crysis did use physx. Its strange how much the 'physics' changed when I went from an nvidia card to an ati card.

I've an ASUS PhysX P1E I have in a PCI-E slot that works with the ATI's, they were discontinued when NVidia picked the rights up to it. I grabbed it ATT, not even knowing they were going to do that.

Still works and even the NVidia PhysX updates work with it, if your interested in adding PhysX to your ATI's you might look around and see if you can pick one of those up instead of a NVidia card just for it.

I'm sure there are still some floating about.



Yeah not really sure if it's worth it on most games, true, but I have it and the room so still have mine in there

I've heard that physx and ati's supposedly havok will become obselete once OpenCL comes...

Diablo 3 will use Havok, hardly obsolete when a massive name like Blizzard takes it up!

i guess we will have to wait and see...

Most titles don't support hardware (GPU) physics acceleration; Havoc physics are all done on the CPU, so far I've not seen any game announced that will use GPU acceleration for Havoc. Diablo 3's will be CPU accelerated. Most of PhysX titles are also CPU accelerated with no option for GPU acceleration; except for a few.

If someone does know of any games that will have GPU accelerated Havoc physics, list them; so people with ATI cards can test the framerate difference with it enabled.

xtkxhom3r said:

wow iv always wondered if it worked but never actually researched it thats awesome now im tempted... i wish ati would get off their *** and make something like physx

Click to expand...

ATI's has their physx support on Havok I believe. Which is a very very widely used for many games, Intels Larrabee will also be using Havok. Even though we've seen no real physics support yet, its there just hasn't been taken advantage of. Nvidia got the lead on the physics thing right now, but down the road if that fat cat Intel is gonna be pushing Larrabee with Havok support alot may be coming ATI's way.

But yes I do miss Phsyx, I remember on my old laptop using the baddaboom program to convert videos quickly. Ah, *sighs...

But I love my ATI!.

vixro said:

Diablo 3 will use Havok, hardly obsolete when a massive name like Blizzard takes it up!

Click to expand...

Yeah right.. Those guys even support macs