Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hi guys,

I was wondering if you had any advice on NVIDIA cards to use for Physx along with two 7970's? Do I need to consider the power of the 7970's or is a simple Nvida card enough?

Is this setup easy to setup as I've never done a hybrid setup like this.

The reason for me considering it is to take some processing grunt away from my CPU.

Would this sort of setup benefit me really? Or would I be better off potentially getting a third 7970 down the line to provide more GPU power.

Thanks

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i7 3770k, P8Z77v Pro, 16gb Ram,2x Samsung 840 SSD RAID 0 + 4.5tb storage, 7970 Oc'd + 7950 in crossfire, 3x SP2309w monitors + 1 acer monitor, Asus D2X Xonar, Creative T40 Speakers plus satalite speakers + audio transducer

Physx on CPU? that works? Heard some Romors about... That on CPU physx only works single threaded and that the algorythms are bad programmed on purpose....

So it's a Use Nvidia card or deactivate physx!

I know that if you run 2Gtx580 and an additional GTS250 for Physx youre worse off than let Physx calculate by the two 580's!

But i have no idea how that will work with 2 AMD gpu's. It might be that you get heavy FPS drop when you activate Physx cuz the Nvidia GPU isn't fast enough in calculating the Physx, or there might be a Problem with the drivers...


But i'm sure some1 has already tried that xD try googling for HD6970 + Nvidia physx.

P.S on which Games would you need Physx?

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We gonna send it to outa space!

You may be interested in this post I made previously on this matter...
http://widescreengamingforum.com/forum/14358/tweak-nvidia-physx-ati-cards

If you have a have decent physx card, it can give a boost and thus make a difference.
Since removing my 8800gts and replacing it with another 5870 to go CFX... I have noticed that some games, mostly Batman Arkham Asylam (the 1st one) performs worse, despite having twice the rendering power, as the game used a lot of phsyx.
As such im intending on jigging ym cards about to be able to insert the 8800gts again along side the 2x 5870's.

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| Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi Skt2011 | i7 4820k @4.4GHz Watercooled (Ivy Bridge-E) | Corsair Vengence 32GB @2133MHz 11-11-11-27 2T Quad-Channel (8x4GB) | AMD R9-Fury-X 4GB @1140/505MHz + EKWB Watercooled | 256GB Crucial MX200 SSD | 8x 1TB Samsung F3 SATA-II | Corsair 850W TX PSU | 3x Dell S2209W 22"wide TFT's (5760x1080res) | Logitech Z-5400 5.1ch speakers | Win7 Ultimate x64 |

Thanks Delphium, but, does the speed of the physx card need to correlate to the speed of the ATI cards? e.g. if I had 2x 7970's running, would I need a GTX590 purely for physx? If I went for a much slower card would the 7970's go slower?

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i7 3770k, P8Z77v Pro, 16gb Ram,2x Samsung 840 SSD RAID 0 + 4.5tb storage, 7970 Oc'd + 7950 in crossfire, 3x SP2309w monitors + 1 acer monitor, Asus D2X Xonar, Creative T40 Speakers plus satalite speakers + audio transducer

Also, do you need to use special hacked drivers to get this to work? how stable are they if so?

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i7 3770k, P8Z77v Pro, 16gb Ram,2x Samsung 840 SSD RAID 0 + 4.5tb storage, 7970 Oc'd + 7950 in crossfire, 3x SP2309w monitors + 1 acer monitor, Asus D2X Xonar, Creative T40 Speakers plus satalite speakers + audio transducer

You dont need anything stupidly fast for the PhsyX card, as I say I notice a difference witha 8800GTS, which is a fairly old card now.
When I had it installed (I only removed it like 3 weeks ago) it did give me a boost in games that needed it.

So it wont slow down your 79xx cards, if anything it will take strain away from the CPU and move it onto the nvidia GPU.
As you can see from the link I posted above the difference between running physx on a cpu and gpu, the cpu would be maxed out and give a lesser score than the 8800gts.

If anythig, the nvidia card should be faster than the CPU not your AMD cards, in this case, a 8800GTS is faster than an i7 930 @ 4.2ghz when doing PhysX calculations.

Of cause the faster the better, but you will start to see notiable effects early on from a lowish powered card.
At the time of this writting, I would not recommend anything below the 8800GTS, Idealy something in the 9xxx or above range, as Nvidia vastly improved the idle power draw so you wont be chewing through so much energy.

As for drivers, yes you have to use a set of hacked nvidia drivers (also linked to in the link in my post above).
I have never experienced any issues with the hacked drivers, i keep my system online for months at a time, its rock solid!

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| Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi Skt2011 | i7 4820k @4.4GHz Watercooled (Ivy Bridge-E) | Corsair Vengence 32GB @2133MHz 11-11-11-27 2T Quad-Channel (8x4GB) | AMD R9-Fury-X 4GB @1140/505MHz + EKWB Watercooled | 256GB Crucial MX200 SSD | 8x 1TB Samsung F3 SATA-II | Corsair 850W TX PSU | 3x Dell S2209W 22"wide TFT's (5760x1080res) | Logitech Z-5400 5.1ch speakers | Win7 Ultimate x64 |

I am using a 250gts with my 5970 in eyefinity. Been doing this for 2 years. 250gts is a very good card for physx! 8800 gt and above work well.