A question about physics cards.

[ominous11]

Hey everyone,

I'm just sorta learning about physics card in the past hour and I have a question. I currently own a twin frozr 770 4gb card but I am upgrading too a 980 ti hybrid then going SLI a month later. I was going to sell the 770 but would I be able to use it as a dedicated physics card ?? Would it even be worth it ?? Also would my ASRock Fatal1ty Z87 Killer be able to fit all 3 cards ?

 

[ThatVietGuy]

The GTX 980ti is strong enough to do its own Physx processing.

Just sell the GTX 770, it wouldn't be worth it in your machine.

 

[ominous11]

I plan to do a triple 1440p or maybe a 4k set up. Would it still be strong enough ?

 

[doubletake]

The GTX 980ti is strong enough to do its own Physx processing.

No, that's just your opinion, not a fact. What matters is if the performance drops during heavy PhysX scenes are acceptable to the person playing. I personally ran 780 SLI with a 750Ti for PhysX, and even then there were marked improvements in minimum FPS in PhysX heavy games that made it worth it. Right now for no particular reason, I'm running a 980Ti for PhysX alongside a main Titan X and there's a noticeable lack of heavy FPS drop in games like Borderlands 2 and Batman Arkham City and Origins when using the dedicated card compared to NOT using it.

So OP, a PhysX card is nice to have, but it makes most sense if you get a low power midrange card like a 750Ti or a 960. Also, Maxwell specifically has PhysX performance improvements compared to equal tier Kepler cards, so there's that to consider on top of their lower power draw. If you don't care about the increased power draw of a hungry card like a 770, then by all means, use it, it'll probably give you about the same performance improvement as a 960, but at the tradeoff of having higher power usage and heat/noise emission.

 

[ominous11]

The GTX 980ti is strong enough to do its own Physx processing.

No, that's just your opinion, not a fact. What matters is if the performance drops during heavy PhysX scenes are acceptable to the person playing. I personally ran 780 SLI with a 750Ti for PhysX, and even then there were marked improvements in minimum FPS in PhysX heavy games that made it worth it. Right now for no particular reason, I'm running a 980Ti for PhysX alongside a main Titan X and there's a noticeable lack of heavy FPS drop in games like Borderlands 2 and Batman Arkham City and Origins when using the dedicated card compared to NOT using it.

So OP, a PhysX card is nice to have, but it makes most sense if you get a low power midrange card like a 750Ti or a 960. Also, Maxwell specifically has PhysX performance improvements compared to equal tier Kepler cards, so there's that to consider on top of their lower power draw. If you don't care about the increased power draw of a hungry card like a 770, then by all means, use it, it'll probably give you about the same performance improvement as a 960, but at the tradeoff of having higher power usage and heat/noise emission.

Thanks for the reply !!

I probably wont have the extra cash ( to many plans to get other things )to get a proper PhysX card so I'll have to take the extra power draw with the 770 I own but that's ok for now.

I'm really new and never knew about having a card just for PhysX. Do you know of any good articles to learn more ???

 

[doubletake]

There aren't many tech site articles that'll help, but there are plenty of user-made benchmark results floating around in various forums that have tested various GPU tiers looking to find an optimal PhysX card. Here are a couple I have bookmarked: 1, 2, and you should be able to find some more here on Tom's as well.

 

[17seconds]

This is one of the best sources for PhysX info, appropriately called:
http://www.physxinfo.com/