Dedicated Physx to go with 1070 8GB

[VisciousFishes]

I have found a working but old GPU in my boxes of bits and bobs. It's a GT630 2GB and I have plopped it in as deicated Physx card. Also contained in this bits and bobs box was a GTX 560 ti 2GB.

Previous to my 1070 I was rocking a 780ti 3GB which gave up the ghost last year. As such I have spare ports on my PSU for an extra card. (I am pretty sure that the 780 was dead aas it ws about 5 years old)

Ultimately I have only tested a few games with the current set-up but I have noticed an appreciable FPS boost in the games I have tested so far. The games tested so far are Borderlands 2, Batman Arkham Knight and Watch Dogs 2.

My question is this - would the GTX560ti be a better choice for the dedicted Physx card or would I be better sticking with the 630 as it requires no extra power connections to my PSU?

My Specs that matter and haven't been mentioned:-

Intel I7 3770 stock clocks but custom cooler (not water)
16GB RAM Crucial ballistix gaming ram
AsRock z77 Extreme 4 mobo
750W 80+ modular power supply with 2 8 plug pci-e power ports free.
Dual monitor set up with a 1920x 1080 on the 1070 and a 1680 x 1050 connected to the HD4000 iGPU.

Any advice would be great, thanks. I am sure that there are configurations that I haven't considered with this hardware even.

Edit: - side question - should I plug my second monitor into the 630 or hd4000 for second screen. Currently running second screen on the HD4000. I need a secoond screen for sound and video editing.

Edit 2: I pulled out the PSU and it's an 80+ rated 750 watt with a pair of 8-pin PCI-e slots available.

Edit 3:- Spoken to my local independant PC specialist (whofitted my PSU) and they suggested that there was no marked performace gain to be had by using the 560ti over the GT630GS as a Physx card. However, further research has proven this is not the Kepler 630 which could've been comparable. Time to test the 560ti.

Edit 4:- Addition of accurate power rating on the PSU.

[Snapjak]

Don't bother with a dedicated physx card.

[Omega]

Physx is dead.

[VisciousFishes]

Originally posted by Omega:

Physx is dead.

It's one quarter of how Gameworks works as noted here[en.wikipedia.org] on the Wikipedia page. Under the Gamewroks system it [physx] is used for physics, destruction, particle and fluid simulations. I also still play the games that have Physx in it.

Originally posted by Snapjak:

Don't bother with a dedicated physx card.

I have already noticed a not inconsiderable FPS boost for the games mentioned since adding in the card as a dedicated Physx device.

[Vince ✟]

Originally posted by jakethebusker:

Originally posted by Omega:

Physx is dead.

It's one quarter of how Gameworks works as noted here[en.wikipedia.org] on the Wikipedia page. Under the Gamewroks system it [physx] is used for physics, destruction, particle and fluid simulations. I also still play the games that have Physx in it.

Originally posted by Snapjak:

Don't bother with a dedicated physx card.

I have already noticed a not inconsiderable FPS boost for the games mentioned since adding in the card as a dedicated Physx device.

Id love to see some stats on the card and some benches! I never tbought about one. Was it expensive?

[VisciousFishes]

Originally posted by Vince:

Id love to see some stats on the card and some benches! I never tbought about one. Was it expensive?

Nope, it was free. It was already sitting in the "drawer where stuff gets dumped" for about a year and a half (may even be longer) before I thought "what could possibly go wrong?". I had a friend who had a lot of old PC stuff and I took it off their hands for recycling purposes. It was around the time I thought about building a file and media server with a linux O/S.

Not sure how to go about doing the benches for you - Unigine Heaven seems to be an obvious choice. Either that or the recording (twice) of a few benchmarks inside games that I have tested with. I guestimate an improvement of around 25% at first look but I am not 100% on that figure.

Any sugggestions? Like I said in my O./p - I am still looking at the avalable options. This one seems to be the better one as it requires a smaller additional power draw on my PSU. Short of pulling it ot of my computer I can't remember what brand or wattage it is. (It was bought when I still had the 780ti and it should be 650W or a 750W, about 18 months ago. It would require a bit of disassembling to get the exact brand).

[Vince ✟]

A 25% improvement sounds outstanding for using some scrap hardware! I don't know how you'd bench it either man. It sounds great though!

[VisciousFishes]

Originally posted by Vince:

A 25% improvement sounds outstanding for using some scrap hardware! I don't know how you'd bench it either man. It sounds great though!

Anecdotally of course, and 25% is perhaps the maximum. For example Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition with full settings at 1080p was hitting minimum and average of 59 FPS and a maximum of 74 ISH. When you can't afford the best gear, you make maximum use of whatever is hanging about it dusty corners.

Not sure how great it actually is just yet. Am yet to have an intense gaming sesh since installation.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by jakethebusker:

Dedicated Physx to go with 1070 8GB. I have found a working but old GPU in my boxes of bits and bobs. It's a GT630 2GB and I have plopped it in as deicated Physx card. Also contained in this bits and bobs box was a GTX 560 ti 2GB.

GTX 750Ti minimum ot you will get worse performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9nZWEekm9c

[VisciousFishes]

Originally posted by Ralf:

Originally posted by jakethebusker:

Dedicated Physx to go with 1070 8GB. I have found a working but old GPU in my boxes of bits and bobs. It's a GT630 2GB and I have plopped it in as deicated Physx card. Also contained in this bits and bobs box was a GTX 560 ti 2GB.

GTX 750Ti minimum ot you will get worse performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9nZWEekm9c

Nice video. They seem to be sayng "only do it if you play Batman" which, to be fair, I own four of them! Thanks for sharing. It's food for thought as I do my testing. I still can't get all the Gameworks options on Arkham Knight with this extra card. Something I will talk about on the batman forum.

Btman Arkham city with DX11, full tessilation and full Physx seemed much nicer than I remember it being when I could only play it in DX9 because everyone said the DX11 was broken.

[TehSpoopyKitteh]

PhysX is built in to your video card's chipset. You do not need a dedicated PhysX card.

[Carlsberg]

Physx is not dead and is still very much in use and will probably continue for foreseeable future, what is dead/dying is gpu accelerated physx which is only done with nvidia gpu's. Physx is mostly pushed onto cpu now and with multi cores probably runs better that way but if you have a second gpu to dedicate i would do so, even a weak card will boost performance.

[xSOSxHawkens]

The only possivble down side to a dedicated physx card would be if the card in question is unable to push the game in question at the physx levels in question.

For modern gaming your 560ti is about the lowest you would want to go with a dedicated card when paired with a high end GPU.

You could go lower when paired with a lower performance GPU.

The main thing is that whatever phyx card is in use needs to be able to push the game's phyx engine @ the same or greater frame rates to the main GPU and CPU, otherwise the whole system will bottleneck on the Phyx card pushing out its caculations.


Unfortunantly, that is a very case specific scenario, but for your situation, and most modern games you will be fine, and see an acceptable performance boost by lowering the overall workload ont eh main GPU.

[Carlsberg]

Yes, i would agree with above post. Current cpu's as a physx processor are going to be better than any gpu below a 500 series.

[LoTekRabbit]

GPU based PhysX is dead. Modern Nvidia Gameworks titles do not use hardware accelerated PhysX.

For old games you'd obviously see a difference if the GPU is decent.

[Carlsberg]

Originally posted by 10JamZ:

GPU based PhysX is dead. Modern Nvidia Gameworks titles do not use hardware accelerated PhysX.

For old games you'd obviously see a difference if the GPU is decent.

we already ascertained that. And for the record gpu based physx is not dead, gpu accelerated physx is, same game, different animal. Do try to keep up.