I'm about to buy an AMD graphics card but I know I'll miss on PhysX. On what does it consist? What is PhysX and where does it affect games?
thanks for the explanation
PhysX is a way, surprise, to generate physics in games. It's not supported by "a lot" of games. Titles I can think of off-hand is the Batman-games and Mafia II.
It's a drain on resources (ie, FPS), but might improve the way the game looks. But really, veeeery few new games gets developed with PhysX support; Rather, they move to more brand-neutral alternatives.
Basically what tetris said. You can read more here:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx_new.html
Mirrors Edge .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0xRJt8rcmY
Basically shows you what you want to know.
But it's not used by most developers, as it's nvidia only, most games are sadly becoming console port overs, and not everyone uses an nvidia GPU. Last game with any real value that I recall releasing with it was Metro 2033 or Mafia II (forget which came last :P)
The concept is pretty damn close to revolutionary. What if i could choose to combine ANY graphics card , and make the weaker one take care of the physics?
To bad its only for Nvidia cards, and then again only for a very few titles.
Your greed, your foolishness has brought you to this end.
- Prince Malchezaar
Allow me.
GTX 580 alone: 60FPS
With a GT450 : 45 FPS
BUT, then you notice that your GTX 580 is not being stressed as much in PhysX mode as in solo mode. So you turn up graphical options that does not have an impact on physics. Options like AA, Tesselation, Shadow quality, viewing distance. And then you experience better graphics at higher FPS than you would if you had run the GTX 580 alone.
You just have to configure the settings so that your most powerfull card is not underperforming. And if it does so at max setting, your PhysX card is not powerfull enough.
Last edited by kailtas; 2011-09-08 at 12:31 AM.
Your greed, your foolishness has brought you to this end.
- Prince Malchezaar
Well. I did mean that the GTX580 itself running PhysX+game is better than the GTS450 running PhysX while the GTX580 ran the game. And still yielding better framerates. IE, using such an inferior card as a dedicated PhysX will lower your playingexperience because you're being bottlenecked by what it can create in its physics-engine.
So not only would it look better with the GTX580, you could run with PhysX on and higher settings.
Also, game-developer has mostly left PhysX completely now. I don't have a game that run PhysX, but I do have mostly/only nVidia cards; starting with the FX5200 to the GTX460 and GT550M.
Well that example was kinda taken out of my fantasy world.
But there are benchmarks where adding a PhysX card added more FPS per dollar compared to the main card.
Linus tech tips GTX 480 + GTS450 PhysX: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQu55bciMt4
Linus tech tips GTX 580 + 8600GTS, GTX 580, GTX 550 Ti, GTX 560Ti: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbww3dhzK0M
Edit: Dont get me wrong, i am in no way defending a system only supported by like 5 games. But the concept is interesting.
Last edited by kailtas; 2011-09-08 at 12:49 AM.
Your greed, your foolishness has brought you to this end.
- Prince Malchezaar
It looked kind of like this! (but I had the 256MiB one) http://usavers.net/images/large/Nvid...%20VER2.10.JPG
But I'm unsure what you mean by leafblower. I wasn't such a junkie back then, that I am now. And I haven't filled in the blanks retroactively :P
There is also Havok. Which is used more often than PhysX, but still not very much (Witcher 2, AC series, Portal 2, Halo series)