sethleigh
I just pulled my 960 SSC 4gb out of my machine today and put in the 1080 SC.
 
I'm thinking of putting the 960 back in and setting it up as a dedicated physx card. I've got two or three games that actually use physx. In my Firestrike scores the 960 was performing about the same as the 1080 SC in physics, so I'm thinking this could be quite a good setup.
 
Has anyone else tried this? I should have tried it sometime this weekend. I'll return and report.

sethleigh
Hmm. I have Batman Arkham Origins and Asylum, though I've never played either. I may try this out just to see how the 960 as dedicated Physx card does. I also just purchased Witcher 3, which apparently uses physx. I'll give that a try and let you know how it works out.
 
 

HeavyHemi

sethleigh
Hmm. I have Batman Arkham Origins and Asylum, though I've never played either. I may try this out just to see how the 960 as dedicated Physx card does. I also just purchased Witcher 3, which apparently uses physx. I'll give that a try and let you know how it works out.
 

I'm doing another play through of Arkham Asylum at 4K with every setting maxed and maintaining over 60 FPS min frame rates. It's almost like an entirely different game running it at that level of visual fidelity.

sethleigh
Yeah this is interesting because my pairing is different than yours in that the 1080 SC is more powerful than the 980 Ti, but the 960 SSC is less powerful than the Titan SC.
I'll tell ya what, since you just stopped what you're doing to run this, I'll start downloading Arkham Origins right now (I own it on Steam, just don't have it on my box right now) and install the 960 to test this out as soon as it's done.

sethleigh
I've checked and at least four of my games support Physx, those being Batman Arkham Origin, Killing Floor 2, Landmark (just got it to check it out - I used to play EQ and EQ II), and Witcher 3. Of these, Batman, Landmark, and Witcher are brand new to me. I just bought them over the last couple of days to have more games to try out.
 
I believe Planetside 2 also supports PhysX. I don't have it on my machine right now but I've played it before.  Planetside 2 is a game I got playable performance on back in the day with my Geforce 8800gtx at 1920x1200, so with a 1080 SC it's likely to be pegged at 60 fps even without a physx card. I've also got Metro 2033, which I've never played but own on Steam, that supports physx.
 
One problem is that a lot of the games that support physx are old enough that my new 1080 SC will probably peg them at my 4k monitor's top refresh rate of 60 Hz even without a physx card.
 
This list of physx games seems to be more up to date: http://www.geforce.com/ha...technology/physx/games

Torso
I have a 770GTX SC currently and I have a 1080GTX FTW arriving Monday. I plan on keeping my 770 in as a physx card and for added monitor capability. (I have 7-8 display devices to connect, 4-5 will be on 1080, 3 on the 770) I am glad it seems like it shouldn't be an issue.
 
Thanks for running these tests.

sethleigh
Ok, I put the 960 SSC 4gb back into my machine. I should point out that my machine is fairly long in the tooth now, but packs quite a potent cpu for its age. It's an X58 board running a Xeon 5680, 6-core at 3.3 MHz. It's not overclocked.
 
I ran the internal benchmark from Batman: Arkham Origins under several circumstances, they being PhysX on High using the 1080 SC, PhysX off, PhysX on Normal (as high as it goes) using the cpu, and PhysX on High using the 960 as dedicated physx card. I ran the benchmark three times for each setting, and four times for the 960 just because.
 
3840x2160 at all highest possible settings but AA off
 
PhysX Off:
Min Max Avg
84 145 114
84 194 115
84 144 114
 
PhysX Normal w/cpu:
9 142 83
8 142 84
8 142 83
 
PhysX High w/1080 SC:
24 94 61
27 93 62
25 95 62
 
PhysX High w/960:
29 103 81
34 107 80
26 107 79
36 106 80
 
It's gratifying to see that with the 960 dedicated as PhysX card, the minimum rose a good 3-9 fps, the maximum went up a good 8-14 fps, and the avg went up a good 19-20 fps. Of course, turning PhysX off completely achieved by far the highest framerates, however the things that PhysX are used for in this game add to the eye candy and look quite nice. With this 1080 I feel like indulging in whatever eye candy a game offers, and it's nice to see that in some games my 960 will actively contribute.
 
I'm going to test some other things later on this morning to see how they react. I actually play Ashes of the Singularity (not just benchmark like seemingly everyone else), and I'm anxious to see how Ashes reacts with the 960 used in concert with the 1080 in DX 12 multi-gpu mode. It might actually make it worse, but there's only one way to find out.
 

hansot85
I don't see the need for dedicated physx anymore. The 10 series of cards are so very powerful plus not many games included physx support these days.

HeavyHemi
Odd, but gaining 30% in average frame rates is nothing to sneeze at. At  4K, in Arkham Orgins, he's going from a marginal 60 FPS average to ~80FPS. That will make a large difference in the smoothness of the game especially if you're using vsync. Which of you arguing against it, have actually used one? When it's not being used, it uses less than 10 watts.