Legit Reviews

I ran across an article earlier that mentioned how the game is taking advantage of the PhysX API. I downloaded the demo and ran the "benchmark" with both my GTX 260 and 9400GT acting as my PhysX accelerator. The theory behind buying the 9400GT was to offload PhysX to a dedicated card and keep my GPU crunching out the video. After running this and a few other demos (Far Cry 2 and The Last Remnant Benchmark) I have to say that I have wasted my money. Granted it wasn't a lot of money but I'd have to say if you are thinking of going this route save your money for something else.

Cryostasis Tech Demo:
http://nzone.download.nvidia.com/nodlm/ ... chDemo.exe







As you can see the 9400GT did offload some of the graphics processing, hence the higher Max FPS, but overall I think I'll take the 9400GT out of the system. It's PureVideo capabilities could be better utilized in another computer.

Here are the two articles I wrote on Cryostasis:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/852/1/
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/855/1/

So basically the 9400GT is a worthless card and if I would've seen this before I made the purchase I would've saved myself grief?

I'm going to swap the 9400GT with the 8800GTS in my HTPC and see if the results vary. Since I don't play games on my HTPC it's probably the better card for that setup anyway.

Interesting stuff . Gonna try this out on my bro's X58 rig with a differant array of cards on the Physx side .

Thx .

*Update*
I swapped out my 9400GT with my 8800GTS and re-ran the demo.

Major_A wrote:*Update*
I swapped out my 9400GT with my 8800GTS and re-ran the demo.

So.....this picture shows your 8800GTS acting as PhysX while your GTX260 gets dedicated gaming power? Money is still wasted imo. I'll gadly save my money in expense for like 10FPS which isn't really noticeable by my 20/20 eyes. Did I just show off my eyes?

On a serious note. I see using dedicated PhysX GPU as a marketing gimmick by NVIDIA. What do you guys think?

No money wasted, the 8800GTS was in my HTPC box processing SD video. Now it is actually doing something useful again.

According to HardwareZone PhysX isn't a gimmick.
http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/vi ... cid=3&pg=5

Hmmm interesting.. i was thinking of getting a 9600GT for PhysX and save my GTX280 for video.. After seeing your results, i am having doubts.. Maybe it is better to save the money

Major_A wrote:No money wasted, the 8800GTS was in my HTPC box processing SD video. Now it is actually doing something useful again.

According to HardwareZone PhysX isn't a gimmick.
http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/vi ... cid=3&pg=5

well its looks like this is just showing that it is better to have physx turned on and have the GPU process it over the CPU. it doesnt really help though when wondering how much a dedicated physx card will improve game play.