Worth using a old card for Physx?

[HoldenBurn1000]

Hi all,

I have seen that it is possible to use an old Nvidia card to handle just the physx side of things.

Anyone know if this is worth doing? I have upgraded to a 680 yesterday and now have an old 8800 GTS OC 512MB lying around.

Worth chucking in there for this reason? Or just sell it?

Cheers

[kalniel]

Not worth it, especially not with a 680.

[HoldenBurn1000]

Yer kind of thought that. For the small amount it's worth thought it might be worth a go.

[shaithis]

It depends. If your playing Arkham City at high res with extreme settings, you could see a small benefit. I cannot think of another title where you would be able to see a difference though.

[andy572]

That's a big jump from an 8800!

Is Physx in-game anything more than extra debris, these days? I haven't seen anything of it since watching some videos comparing - funnily enough - Arkham Asylum with Physx acceleration and without. The only recent thing that I saw was Nvidia's Fracture demo whilst browsing for 680-related footage on YouTube the other day. That was rather impressive, once appreciating the randomness of the breaking columns in the demo.

[watercooled]

It's quite impressive, with smoke/fabric/paper (why do games+zombie films always have a ton of paper scattered on the floor?) reacting to your presence but it's used on very few games, almost exclusively (if not exclusively) Nvidia-sponsored games because of the proprietary nature of the platform (but I'll avoid another PhysX rant).

I doubt it's worth doing, you'll gain an immeasurable gain in performance at best, and quite possibly a significant drop at the cost of a significant rise in idle + load power consumption for the 1 or 2 games which actually allow you to use it.