My system & spare parts

[Bad Aim]

My current system: (please keep in mind that I do not OC)
Motherboard: Asus Z590-E Gaming WiFi
CPU: 11th Gen Intel Core i7-11700 @ 2.50GHz
Memory: 32GB (Corsair Vengeance DDR4 4x8GB @4000MHz)
GPU: MSi GeForce RTX 4080 Super (16GB GDDR6X)
PSU: EVGA 1000G+
Sound: Creative Sound Blaster Z
Hard Drives: (C) 1TB Western Digital NVMe, (D) 4TB WD Blue, (E) 2TB WD Black NVMe, (F) WD Black 512GB NVMe, (G) WD Black 2TB NVMe, (H) 2TB WD Black
2 LG Monitors with G-Sync
Valve Index
Asus DVD-RW
Asus Blu-Ray RW
Case: Cooler Master HAF XM Mid Tower

Spare Parts:
NVIDIA 2070 Super
WD Black 1TB Black x2

So, not that long ago you could put in two different video Nvidia video cards and use the second one for Physx and the main card doing everything else. I have not heard nor read of very many people doing this anymore. So, is having a Physx card no longer needed? Would putting the old 2070 Super to act as a Physx card give me any real performance improvements?

As for the HDD's I have installed, I use the Blue for really old games such as Zork, Baldur's Gate, Sid Meier's Pirates, and many other very old games. The Black I use for more new-ish games. Games like Star Wars: Empire at War, Most of the Fallout collection, and Alice: Madness Returns. New games go on the M.2 drives.

I have been doing some research on making a Raid drive. I am thinking of putting the two WD Black 1TB into a Raid configuration, making them a bit faster. That would allow me to place some of my newer games that are not resource heavy.

So, I am posting this to get an idea of a couple of things. Is the motherboard and CPU good for an update or am I good? Should I follow through with the Raid configuration? (I've never done a raid, so this would be a good place to play around and learn). Lastly, should I use the 2070 Super as a Physx card? Will that give me any real increase in performance?

And out of curiosity, if I do use the 2070 card, could I also use its outputs? With the video card upgrade I actually lost a DisplayPort. It would be nice to have more connections.

Thank you for your time.


Edit: I do have a LOT of external hard drives. I did not include them in this as they are being used as cloud drives.

[lsdninja]

What even uses PhysX anymore, lol?

[Omega]

PhysX is a dead technology. SLI/Crossfire are also dead technologies (for gaming).

I see no point installing another GPU unless you want to do compute workloads or need even more monitors.

[Iron Knights]

Raid is NOT Faster, it's for combination of smaller & identical drives into a bigger one, or redundancy backup of your main one. Server stuff you don't run into in most consumer cases.
Two video cards will give you a 50% increase in performance, IF IDENTICAL. Otherwise if one card is PCI-E 5.0 and the second PCI-E 3.0, guess which the PC will default to for BOTH cards ?
Sad that hardware SLI/Crossfire is no longer supported by GPU manufacturers offering physical bridging, which highly reduced MB & software work.
You could run Raid 1 on the 2 TB NVMEs for backup, the 0.5 + 1 TB you can use in COMBO mode aka not Raid where files are not split across drives but PC will see a 1.5TB drive instead of 2 separate drives. As for any HDDs you may have, I would make them external enclosures for backup purposes, again, if different sizes, combo mode. HDD functionality can never outperform USB 3.0 transfer speed at worst times, much less SATA 3.

[Bad Aim]

Omega eredeti hozzászólása:

PhysX is a dead technology. SLI/Crossfire are also dead technologies (for gaming).

I see no point installing another GPU unless you want to do compute workloads or need even more monitors.

I have two LG monitors with G-sync. I also have a Valve Index. My new MSi 4080 Super only has two DisplayPorts and two HDMI. So, to connect everything I will need to lose one of my G-sync and turn it into a HDMI.

G-Sync may be "dead", but I personally have seen improvement with the same computer running a game via HDMI (no G-sync) and the same game running via DisplayPort (with G-sync). It's not in your face noticeable, but it does make the game run a lot smoother with fewer rips and stutters.

[Bad Aim]

smallcat eredeti hozzászólása:

Regardless of the lane count 4 or 8 for the DMI link , 4 lanes will be used for the second PCI E slot . Its wired to the chipset . I doubt you d benefit from commiting rtx 2070s to physx .Also not every game uses physx . Sometimes the simple solution is better .

I'm starting to understand that. I also took a look in my case. The new MSi card actually takes up three spaces. So if I was to try to install the 2070 as a PhysX card, it would be right next to the 4080, giving zero ventilation for the 4080. That would end up killing the card and possibly my computer. So, I guess I am just going to sell the 2070 Super. It is a Founder's Card, so it will be worth a bit more than what a normal 2070 would go for.

I'm still debating if I want to run the two WD 1TB Black's in a raid. For one, setting up the raid will give me real world experience in setting up a raid drive. I think that would be valuable, probably more so than the actual raid setup itself. So I am really leaning into setting up the raid drive.

Something else I am seriously considering doing is I have a 20TB WD cloud drive. It might be a good idea to do a clean install of Windows, update Windows and all the drivers, then save that to the cloud drive as a backup. That would make doing the clean installs unnecessary.

I do thank you (and everyone else) for taking time to give me advice. I am very grateful.

[Lixire]

Thrawnald McDonald eredeti hozzászólása:

Omega eredeti hozzászólása:

PhysX is a dead technology. SLI/Crossfire are also dead technologies (for gaming).

I see no point installing another GPU unless you want to do compute workloads or need even more monitors.

I have two LG monitors with G-sync. I also have a Valve Index. My new MSi 4080 Super only has two DisplayPorts and two HDMI. So, to connect everything I will need to lose one of my G-sync and turn it into a HDMI.

G-Sync may be "dead", but I personally have seen improvement with the same computer running a game via HDMI (no G-sync) and the same game running via DisplayPort (with G-sync). It's not in your face noticeable, but it does make the game run a lot smoother with fewer rips and stutters.

G-Sync is widely supported and actively being used. It's far from being dead but rather the complete opposite.

PhysX was NVIDIA's solution to enhance physics effects in supported games by using CUDA. it was quite a big thing in the late 2000s and early 2010s but now its flat out non-existent due to more effective solutions that were open standards as well. and since cards have gotten so fast. You would actually limit the performance of your main card by plugging a much slower one to function as a PhysX card