AMD/ATI + PhysX + Nvidia = Possible

[J0k3r]

Ok,

 

Now this will seem odd but while building my system Pic0o mentioned the lack of physX support on the AMD/ATI cards. I felt I could live without and roll the AMD/ATI card. I scored a MSI HD5950 and to date I have been extremely happy with the card. I am running HD5970 speeds, and it's rock solid. As some of you may know, the advantage of the AMD/ATI cards come into play during high resolution gaming. The down side, with out the support of PhysX it forces the CPU to process all of the transaction in a very ancient way. In fact it uses x87 and not SSE2 which would make a very nice improvement. So since nvidia bought physX they are making it intentionally to only run well on their cards due to lack of effort to make PhysX use the entire system. What's funny is they hurt themselves to with this approach, more to come later in this post on that. :)

 

 

Ok now you have the backdrop. So I had in my head back in the day when PhysX first came out, they offered dedicated cards to process it. Well, where have they all gone? They bundled it directly into the nvidia graphics cards. Now the crazy part is, even their flagship video card (580) can't keep up and gets bottlenecked with this solution. So I was researching the standalones and found a few good reads about the FPS increase that is able to be gained by dedicating a video card just for PhysX. IT CAN BE DONE! The best part, is that you can make a lesser Nvidia card a slave to an AMD/ATI card! Oh wow do I love irony.

 

 

Even though I have yet to play a game that I felt wasn't running insanely great with the current build, I don't like feeling that if I come across a PhysX game, it could ruin my night. So I think I may score a mild Nvidia card and make it my PhysX bizznitch. First, I am starting to hate Nvidia due to how they are dividing the PC world due to greed. So even though I spent $250 on my vid, and now I want to spend another $150 on my phsyX card which puts me @ $400 USD I still think I am getting more out of that $400 than if I ran a single $400 nvidia card.

 

 

 

So here is my breakdown

AMD/ATI Card: MSI HD6950 Clocked to HD6970 Speeds: MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II/OC Radeon HD 6950 Video Card - 2GB, GDDR5, PCI-Express 2.1 (x16), Dual DVI, HDMI, 2x Mini Display Port, DirectX 11, Dual-Slot, Overclocked

$259.99

 

Nvidia PhysX wh0re card:

MSI N550GTX-Ti Cyclone OC GeForce GTX 550 Ti Video Card - 1GB, GDDR5, PCI-Express 2.0 (x16), Mini HDMI, Dual DVI, DirectX 11, Dual-Slot, SLI Ready, Overclocked

$139.99

 

Total: $399.98

 

Single Card Nvidia Option equal or less in price:

MSI N570GTX Twin Frozr II/OC GeForce GTX 570 Video Card - 1280MB, GDDR5, PCI-Express 2.0 (x16), Dual DVI, Mini-HDMI, Overclocked, DirectX 11, Dual-Slot, SLI Ready

Rip through the latest games with the MSI Twin Frozr II/OC GeForce GTX 570 Video Card

$329.99

 

The 580GTX comes in a little over budget :)

 

MSI N580GTX Lightning GeForce GTX 580 Video Card - 1536MB, GDDR5, PCI-Express 2.0 (x16), 2x Dual-Link DVI, 1x Mini-HDMI, 1x DisplayPort, DirectX 11, Dual-Slot, SLI Ready

$524.99

 

 

 

So yea, I am about to say fuck off to nvidia until they get their shit together. They need to get back to their roots of producing highend gaming solutions at a price no one could compete with. They need to find their old school focus on drivers as well. I mean shit, Pic0o couldn't even get a new driver to load. WTF is that?

[Pic0o]

Word to this man. The whole blind resolve on the driver CP being junk to install, is indeed BS. Add the whole 'our brand onry' coding support and it's RAGE!

 

At least a slave nvidia card can be yer PhysX bitch, while the AMD Card sits there and crushes everything else. :) Idiotic choices only highlight the pros of your competitors. :lolabove:

[J0k3r]

I was all happy to see a reply to this topic!

 

OK so here is a quote from nvidia when called out about the anti-amd/ati move I found online..

 

 

"For a variety of reasons – some development expense some quality assurance and some business reasons NVIDIA will not support GPU accelerated Physx with NVIDIA GPUs while GPU rendering is happening on non- NVIDIA GPUs," Nvidia's customer service wrote to a user. "I’m sorry for any inconvenience caused but I hope you can understand."

 

Yea they are ding-bats.

 

 

Here is AMD/ATI's response;

In response to these latest events, AMD has announced a joint open physics initiative with Pixelux Entertainment. “Proprietary physics solutions divide consumers and ISVs, while stifling true innovation; our competitors even develop code that they themselves admit will not work on hardware other than theirs,” said Eric Demers, chief technology officer for graphics at AMD. “By working with Pixelux and others to enable open support of physics on OpenCL and DirectX 11 capable devices we are taking the exact opposite approach.”

 

 

Read more: http://www.ngohq.com/news/16560-patch-re-enables-physx-when-ati-card-is-present.html

 

Here is a dated article talking about a patch that was created to make it so

http://www.ngohq.com/news/16560-patch-re-enables-physx-when-ati-card-is-present.html

 

Another dated thread discussing;

http://www.overclock.net/graphics-cards-general/508305-howto-ati-nvidia-physx-guide.html

[J0k3r]

Now that I have been checking this out. It would have been sweet as hell to go the route of 3 pci-e 2.x slots.

 

2 6950's in Crossfire + 1 550ti for physX. Shit would break souls when it would run games.

[tOucan]

Word to that, my mates interested in swapping my crossfire 6870s for a 6970 and all i'm thinking is crossfire 6970s.. But Seems I will miss out on the physx as well. :icon_neutral:

[J0k3r]

I wouldn't take that trade. Roll your 6870's and if you got a 3rd PCI-E slot, put in a slave nvidia card :)

[J0k3r]

Ok, this should be fun!

 

After some digging arond through my spare parts, and a little parts trading ($0.00 USD investment), I got the follow parts for my dedicated PhysX card project.

 

Ultra X3 1600watt Powersupply

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2937371

 

BFG Tech GTX260 OC2 MAXCORE

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4151773

 

Not sure on the timeline for this project yet. I have some other boxes that require work in order to free up all the parts for this project. I will update as things become clearer