Anyone know what kind of performance hit this will cause? I have a 8800GTS OC2 (640MB). If part of my GPU is doing physics calculations, won't frame rate just suffer to compensate?

NoOnions - It will be like kicking your GPU in the nuts and you'll have to upgrade, run two cards or run at a lower res with the levels set to mid or low.

Lol! Thanks waxdart! Pretty much what I expected. Lots of pain for no gain. I've seen the 'proper' PCI card on sale for about £58 but can't see the point really.

People currently running ut3 say they've had no performance problems

Sosrandom yes they don't because they aren't using a PhysX intense map. The PhysX mod includes a map called "Tornado". Before the PhsyX driver a 9800 managed about 10FPS, after the driver it managed over 50FPS. The PhysX only uses idling SPs so it doesn't slow graphics down. Quite the opposite, if the GFX needs all the SP for some reason PhysX doesn't use any GPU power.

Hi JDocs

I'm slightly confused here then. If you enter a PhysX enabled map and part way through your GPU needs all its power for GFX, not physics calculations, won't that cause issues? Won't the game slow to a crawl anyway as your GPU is trying to process graphics commands and can't cope with the map's demands for physics processing? Or is UT3 and the like clever enough to reduce the demands for physics calls on the fly? I suspect that the current games cannot. My guess would be that a graphics card is either powerful enough to do both or not? Please let me know your thoughts.

Regards,

NoOnions

Hi JDocs

I'm slightly confused here then. If you enter a PhysX enabled map and part way through your GPU needs all its power for GFX, not physics calculations, won't that cause issues? Won't the game slow to a crawl anyway as your GPU is trying to process graphics commands and can't cope with the map's demands for physics processing? Or is UT3 and the like clever enough to reduce the demands for physics calls on the fly? I suspect that the current games cannot. My guess would be that a graphics card is either powerful enough to do both or not? Please let me know your thoughts.

Regards,

NoOnions

Page cannot be displayed error and then a double post - sorry readers!

NoOnions, yes actually that did happen but it was fine until they went above 1650x1080. Besides a second graphics card, say a 8400 / 8500 (no SLI support required in this instance) dedicated to PhysX would be a lot cheaper than a Aegia PhysX card. For those with a single card this solution is a middle ground. Sacrifice 10% GPU performance for a 400% total gain sounds worth it. Also who really uses a single card to go above 1650x1080?

I already tried the UT3 Physx mod with 8800gt handling graphics and 8600gt handling physx, and there was no difference in FPS to having the 8800gt handle both physx and graphics.
I'm going to try again when the new physx drivers are released, by i feel im losing FPS by having the PCI-e run at 8x.