Zardon

Read The Article Here
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When the 9800 GTX+ launched in June the press were given an early version of the Nvidia PhysX driver, the first software to enable PhysX processing on GeForce GPUs. Initial impressions were favourable and it was easy to see the potential benefits of this technology and now just over a month on Nvidia are readying the full launch of their PhysX technology.

In this article we will be testing numerous PhysX configurations using the Zotac GeForce 9800 GTX+ AMP! Edition as our primary card and will include multi GPU configurations as well as a look back at the original Ageia PhysX performance with the newest Nvidia driver.

Alex

wow thats an impressive article. Certainly looks like a good selling point for Nvidia hardware. Hopefully Farcry 2 supports it !

Zardon

I have been reliably informed today that yes Farcry 2 will support PhysX.

temeteus82

Time to get SLI board then ...

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mike2h

great informative review guys. espically the info on being able to use a 2nd card for the phsyx on an intel chipset!
never been much of a fan of multi card setups, but this is changing my perspective! especially once the tech/drivers mature. i can get my 280, then in 3-4 months buy something cheap in the 9800 line or even the 200 series
going to be cool to see ati respond to this.... better & cheaper graphics for us!!!

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Zardon

well thats the cool thing you dont actually need an SLi board

(have another read of it, you can use any chipset motherboard as long as it has two PCI-e slots !)

humonous

great technology, have to say! nice review too.

temeteus82

Hmm... I think that I need some reading glasses

But anyway I need new mobo since the current one don't have second PCI-E x16 slot...

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LesserHellspawn

Very informative article, I've been looking for such a comparison for a long time.

I'm missing one thing though: The same test setup with a SLI pair instead of a single GTX. Maybe in an update ?

My system is setup like this: 2 9800GTX AMP! (non-plus) with an Ageia card also present. I do even have a third PCI-16x slot open (wired as 8x). Am I correct that I can expect best performance in PhysX enabled titles when letting the Ageia card do the physics processing and leaving the SLI pair dedicated to rendering what additional graphical load is created by the extra effects ?

kris23

how? i mean, can someone use a P45 chipset or X38 with PhysX then?

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Zardon

if the motherboard has two PCIe slots and you use two Nvidia graphics cards in those slots, I have been told PhysX will also work yes.

kris23

can SLI be enabled? i doubt it but its worth asking

so its only PhysX for non Nvidia chipsets?

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mike2h

sorry if this was adressed inthis or another article(sure it was).- what series of nv cards will work as physx only proc?

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Veridian3

Yes, stick with what you have, just make sure you have the latest physx drivers.

Veridian3

Yes, when you install 2 cards in a P45/X38 you can only access PhysX on the second card...not SLI.

Veridian3

Any CUDA supporting hardware which is basicaly 8000>GTX series.

mike2h

kinda what i thought. ty for confirmation

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Temp84

Hey Lesser.

According to the benchies, your best bet would technically be to swap the PPU with a GPU like the 9600gt that was used, utilizing your 8x PCI-e slot.

Incidentally I too am very curious about how SLI, not just dual GPU, handles with PhysX. Do the drivers automatically adjust loads to maximize performance?

On another note, I'm running a single GTX280 in Vista x64 SP1, with 177.41 drivers, and tried installing the 8.07 PhysX drivers last night.. UT3 failed to load any maps afterwards, however with 8.06 PhysX drivers reinstalled maps loaded just fine. I understand the Nvidia drivers used in this article were 177.71 or something (Latest beta), but I'm disinclined to go through the hassle of replacing those just yet. Does anyone know if that would make a difference? Has anyone else encountered or heard of this happening with the new drivers?

Btw, I think its worth mentioning that these latest drivers still DO NOT support Cell Factor. Warmonger runs beautifully though. If only I could find a single active server.

Mudman

This may be a stupid question so feel free to shoot me down. It was stated in the article that the PhysX cards could be utilized on any chip set. Does that also mean that you could be running an Ati card for rendering the graphics and use a nVidia card purely for the physics calculations or would they be incompatible. If it did work that way then you could get the best of both worlds

mike2h

no. mutually exclusive drivers.

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cshorter

This question may be obvious but it isn't to me :/ is it more benificial to have the lower card on PhysX or the higher end?

Also a general question since I'm rather new to this. When using hybrid corssfire, which card should be hooked to the monitor for better performance?

Thorfkin

I would like to see benchmarks on (if its even possible) running the PhysX pack with onboard GPUs. My main graphics card is an ATI card but the motherboard is an Nvidia chipset with a direct X9 compliant onboard GPU. Curious if it would be possible to run the PhysX computation on the onboard video chipset and if so would it be worth doing

Fas as I can tell nobody has actually tried this yet.

temeteus82

Well the 9600GT managed well as PPU so I would say yes to the first one.
In hybrid crossfire I thing you should use the "main" gfx card's out's .... I'm not 100% sure on that one but is sounds logical..

The onboard chips cant do PhysX at all and would need two nvidia cards.
And the PhysX won't work with ATi/AMD nVidia combo at all.

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Veridian3

Its more beneficial to have the higher end card as the games which don't have physx support will have better scores via SLI.