Fermi + GTX 260 = DX 11 compliant w/Physx?

[Hauk]

Fast foward a couple months..

One Fermi for primary rendering and one GTX 250/260 for Physx.
Is this a fully compliant DX 11 setup or does the Physx card have to be DX 11 as well?

Thanks in advance..

 

[v8envy]

Depends on how well NV is selling the new hardware. Nothing stops NV from locking out pre-fermi GPUs from doing PhysX acceleration at the driver level. At the moment there's no reason for a PhysX processor to implement DX7, let alone DX11.

Lots of people thought they could use 8800GTs to do PhysX. The hardware is willing and able, but the software may have an artificial block.

 

[schenley101]

With windows 7 you can use multiple graphics drivers, so you may be able to do that, but only nVidia knows.

 

[Hauk]

Argh..

Keys, can you add this to your list of questions? I'll post in your thread in case you don't see this one..

 

[aka1nas]

Originally posted by: v8envy
Depends on how well NV is selling the new hardware. Nothing stops NV from locking out pre-fermi GPUs from doing PhysX acceleration at the driver level. At the moment there's no reason for a PhysX processor to implement DX7, let alone DX11.

Lots of people thought they could use 8800GTs to do PhysX. The hardware is willing and able, but the software may have an artificial block.

You can use 8800GTs for PhysX, it was only the bottom end cards that were recently dropped from support (8400/8500).

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: Hauk
Argh..

Keys, can you add this to your list of questions? I'll post in your thread in case you don't see this one..

I did. It's seems to be in the top 5 for next week, but not set in stone yet. Still finalizing next weeks questions.

 

[Hauk]

Thanks. :thumbsup:

 

[happy medium]

Originally posted by: Hauk
Argh..

Keys, can you add this to your list of questions? I'll post in your thread in case you don't see this one..

I already did.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: aka1nas
You can use 8800GTs for PhysX, it was only the bottom end cards that were recently dropped from support (8400/8500).

This month you can. But nvidia has shown they will disable cards just for "business reasons." They've made no promises to support older cards for PhysX, so who knows how long they'll still allow 8800s to work?

That sounds like FUD, but without promises and given their past actions, continued support is uncertain.

 

[Zstream]

Originally posted by: Hauk
Fast foward a couple months..

One Fermi for primary rendering and one GTX 250/260 for Physx.
Is this a fully compliant DX 11 setup or does the Physx card have to be DX 11 as well?

Thanks in advance..

No the Physx card does not have to be DX11 compliant. Physx cards just send point data, it sends geometry updates to the main card for rendering. It does nothing more then that.

 

[Hauk]

Originally posted by: happy medium

Originally posted by: Hauk
Argh..

Keys, can you add this to your list of questions? I'll post in your thread in case you don't see this one..

I already did.

 

[tviceman]

If you're going to be using a gtx 260 and a higher performing fermi part, you'd better have the PSU to drive those suckers!

 

[thilanliyan]

Why would they allow you to use an old card for PhysX when they can make you buy a brand new one for DX11 "compatibility" reasons!!
Seriously though...I'm sure it's possible...the PPU was able to work in different DX versions so I'm sure if the 260 was treated solely as a PPU by the drivers it could work but who knows if they'll spend the extra effort to make that possible.

 

[Hauk]

In posing the question, I was wondering about things from a hardware standpoint; from the responses, drivers seem to be key, and nVidia makes the call. Will be interesting to see what they do..

 

[sbuckler]

I bet physx will stay DX10 card based for quite a while, however I suspect the hit for using fermi + physx on one card will be much lower due to the compute friendly re-design effectively multi-tasking better so you might not need to bother with 2 cards just for the odd physx game.