Physics Card

[PhenomWithCrossfire]

As most of you know, I was goign to downgrade from my 850 watt PS to a 700. I am reconsiderign this now and thinking I will keep the 850 and just not go any higher as there will be no need to, plenty of headroom. Part of my decision is that I would liek to add a physics card to my system. Any thoughts on phyics cards people? I personally think it is worth it.

[compygeek]

I'd say keep the PSU, but hold off on PhysX for now... there's just no real difference in performance at this point in time. There's already talk of PhysX going the way of Voodoo's 3Dfx. Even though more games are starting to support PhysX, current market GPU's have more than enuff muscle to handle whatever the games throw at them. Here's a quote from HardOCP regarding PhysX tech:


With the current titles available, PhysX delivers nothing worth the purchase price and PhysX has to be solely valued by the gaming content that it supports. Sites that are dragging the framerate wars into this are not telling the gamers what they need to know. Sadly this is exactly what I expected. PhysX is not about framerates, synthetic benchmarks, or PR catfights; PhysX is about the gaming immersion and experience it provides you.

There are many threads that discuss the pro's and con's for PhysX technology. IMHO, with your rig you won't need PhysX for now.

[PhenomWithCrossfire]

Right, I was thinking is the nearby future but I am def seeing more and games supporting this for example even my sherlock holms game supports it lol who would have thought for that kind of game . I was surprised.

[compygeek]

The other thing you should note, is that I believe current DX10 cards (including yours) have built in PPU's, so in essence your Crossfire setup is already geared for PhysX like tech.

[PhenomWithCrossfire]

yes i know that as I found out last night at a computer place but the impression i got would be I would have to essentially put in another ATI card in there to do this and it would not have to be an identical card either. I am going to be doing more research on this. Party the reason why I am thinking more of doing this. Thus keeping the 850 ...

[compygeek]

sorry not sure i follow what your last post meant...

[PhenomWithCrossfire]

Meaning in order to take advantage of physics, I would have to put a third ATI card in my system and use that for the pysics and the other 2 for crossfire. Thus is why I intened to keep my 850 power supply. Hope this is clearer.

[compygeek]

Physx cards are different from your video cards, as they will not produce any video on their own. They are strictly PPU based cards that work with games optimized for the PhysX API. Your crossfire cards already have PPU's in them (from what I understand, all DX10 cards do), so there really is no reason to add a 3rd ati card. Adding a 3rd card, will do no more but add ports for more monitors, lol!!!