Hey guys, I just want to start with a thanks for taking the time to read this.
Anyway, I'm going to be upgrading my computer (nearly 5 years old now), and the GPU I'm looking at is the ASUS Radeon HD7970 DirectCU II. The GPU I have right now is a nVidia 9600GT. While making the decision of what new GPU to choose, I came across a few threads which were detailing using a dedicated PhysX card (PhysX being one of the reasons to choose nVidia over AMD). I know that people are going to say PhysX is a gimmick, and that I shouldn't care about it too much, and I don't. This is just an add-on thing.
I saw the video that LinusTechTips did on using a dedicated PhysX card alongside a GTX 580, and the 8600 he used actually created a bottleneck, which to me seems odd, because I didn't know adding a GPU could slow down a computer (it just seems so counter-intuitive). It's probably not going to change between the video and my experience, but I was just wondering if anyone had any experience with this, and if they could shed any light on the topic.
And as a side-question, would getting the ASUS Radeon HD7970 DirectCU II TOP edition be worth the extra $30 it is over the non-TOP edition?
Lol, greetings and welcome.
First of all anyone who says PhysX is a gimmick is an AMD zelot, you can disagree until you are blue in the face.
Second of all it doesn't work that way. There is a way to hack your Nvidia card to remove the restriction of Physx so you can use it with your AMD card. But it is not only unreliable but dangerous. You could possibly ruin your Nvidia card.
Imo, physx is not worth that kind of risk in any way shape or form. If you want Physx that badly, just get a main Nvidia card. Otherwise "try" to sell off the 9600 and get an AMD card.
*coughs* excuse me, but whats the point in making yourself blue in the face over a disagreement? Just smack them and walk away nice and slow. And as for the last question, its $30, thats like three hours work, if you clean molluscs for a living. So yes, it is worth it.
I think you should sell the old Nvidia card and if you have a decent CPU let that take care of Physx as you can still get decent preformance in games that way. I think Tiny Tom Logan did a benchmarking of an AMD card in which the AMD card beat the Nvidia card with Physx enabled even though the CPU scored worse in the benchmark because thats what handles physics calculations.
Something to note is that the 9600GT may actually bottleneck a the system doing PhysX, as it isnt actually fast compared with current graphics cards.
EDIT: As can be seen here (8600GTS)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbww3dhzK0M
Lol, that's the exact same link I put in my original post. That's what I was wondering about, if it would actually be a bottleneck.
Well, given that my 9600GT has been used almost religiously over the last 5 years, I don't suppose it would fetch for much. I'm not too worried about the 9600GT being damaged as a result, just the 7970. But if it's a risky business, I suppose I'll just let my CPU do the work (I'm assuming that an overclocked i5-3570k would be sufficient, given that it's amazeballz).