I am pleased to announce that GamePhys will soon have a dedicated test and benchmarking system for the site. This was a project I have been meaning to do since I started the site back in 2009 but never got around to it. The first phase of this project really got started this past Black Friday when I picked up several good deals on hardware and decided it would be a good time to move ahead with the project. I have now finished purchasing all of the hardware and plan to put it all together sometime this week.
I plan to start by doing basic guides and tutorials on how to setup dedicated PhysX cards and Hyrbid PhysX systems using the HD6950 with dedicated NVIDIA PhysX cards. As you can see, some of the hardware especially the motherboard is not exactly top of the line but will be perfect for doing basic Hyrbid PhysX setup tutorials and testing. I eventually plan to replace the motherboard and purchase another HD6950 for CrossFire setups with a dedicated PhysX card and then eventually do some real performance benchmarking with everything from different hardware configurations to overclocking! I also hope that the rumors are true that the upcoming NVIDIA Kepler/GK104 Will Have Dedicated PhysX Hardware so I can use this new system to test it out!
Below are the current specs of the systems inculding the two dedicated PhysX cards I will be using, the XFX GF GT430 and the MSI GeForce GTS 250.
BIOSTAR A870U3 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
1 x AMD Phenom II X6 1055T Thuban 2.8GHz Socket AM3 125W Six-Core Desktop Processor
Cooler Master RR-910-HTX3-G1 130-Watt 92mm Hyper TX3 CPU Cooler
1 x XFX Double D HD-695X-ZDFC Radeon HD 6950 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 Video Card
1 x OCZ Agility 3 AGT3-25SAT3-60G 2.5″ 60GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
1 x G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
1 x Antec NEO ECO 620C 620W Power Supply
MYOPENPC DOMA Pro PCI Black Transparent Acrylic Open Computer Case
XFX GF GT430 700M 1 GB DDR3 PCI-E Video Card
MSI GeForce GTS 250 Video Card 512MB
Overall the GT 430 matches up well and does allow you to enable Physx in Physx titles when playing with an AMD graphics card. There is a pretty big performance hit compared to having Physx disabled but in all cases frame rates were still playable. There is a pretty substantial upgrade when comparing Physx On with the GT 430 added, it made the difference of being playable or not. The GTX 460 does show it’s extra power compared to the GT 430, you will get a few extra FPS using the GTX 460, I noticed between 2-5 FPS increase in most games tested after “upgrading” to the GTX 460. It is also worth noting that the EVGA GTX 460 1GB FTW edition is heavily overclocked out of the box, I ran this card at the factory defaults of 850/1000 which may account for the additional FPS scored, as well as some of the additional power usage. I can only guess, but I would think using a stock clock speed GTX 460 would result in slightly low FPS and slightly lower power draw. There is potential that the FPS performance of a stock clocked GTX 460 could be identical to the GT 430, however the power usage will always be lower on the GT 430. Remember the stock speeds for a GTX 460 is 675/900 and the GT 430 I used is 700/800 which the GTX 460 I used is 850/1000.
With all things considering I think the GT 430 is a very good solution if you must have Physx support with a AMD card. The results are playable frame rates with Physx enabled, something AMD can’t do on its own. If you decide to go with a higher GPU like the GTX 460 you may get some extra performance, it is a very small 2-5fps but there is some performance increase. It is difficult to say if this is due to the extra clock speeds, 256-bit memory bus (compared to 128-bit GT 430), or the extra CUDA cores (336 vs 96). The bottom line is that I cannot justify the cost of a GTX 460 when you consider the minimal increase in performance compared to the GT 430, especially if you value power consumption and case temperatures. The GTX 460 will most certainly require extra power and generate extra heat, this costs you extra money on your electrical bill. The GT 430 is also available in a large variety of single card solutions, the GTX 460 does have some single slot designs but they are expensive and add extra heat due to a poorer cooling solution.
LinusTechTips has done a nice video showing the GTX 580 being benchmarked with a dedicated PhysX card to see exactly how powerful it should be and whether or not a low end graphics card being used a a dedicated PhysX with a more powerful card like the GTX 580 has any value by improving PhysX performance these days. The cards being tested with the GTX 580 was a 8600GTS, GTX 580, GTX 550Ti, and a GTX 560Ti. The benchmarks were done using the Mafia II benchmark. Check it out below.
Now this is a pretty cool PhysX video. YouTube user tinyzoo has recorded the physics demo level that comes with the Torque 3D editor and uploaded it to YouTube. We have seen and posted about some cool PhysX videos made with Torque 3D but this video shows everything the Torque 3D engine currently has along with some nice destruction. Check it out below.
Well it is been a while since I have posted and need to get back into the swing of things, so I think posting these awesome UDK Apex PhysX destruction videos would be a good start. The NVIDIA APEX Destruction Project – Destroy Aarhus by Allingby is very impressive, an entire level that is 100%Read More
Futuremark has released a new Tech Demo showing off the next 3DMark that is going to be released sometime this year. I am not exactly sure what is going on in the demo but it has some cool particle and smoke effects. According to the press release “The visible particles and clouds of smoke inRead More
Several months ago I announced that I would be building a dedicated PhysX test system for the site to test out Hybrid PhysX configurations and do benchmarking and reviews. This past weekend I finally got around to playing around to putting it together. I got it up and running with Windows 7 and the GT430Read More
I have been excited about Hawken for awhile, not just because it looks like a great game but it will also be making heavy use of GPU PhysX as confirmed by the developers. Geforce.com has done a nice video interview with Bill Wagner of Meteor Entertainment at the recent E3 expo about the GPU PhysXRead More
I have been watching the development of Planetside 2 closely, not just because i was a huge Planetside fan when it first came out over 9 years ago but because SOE Announced PlanetSide 2 with PhysX support. We have not heard much else about it since the game with PhysX support was first announced, butRead More
INVERSION is a PS3 and XBOX 360 only title but it has caught my attention after watching the new “Inversion Powered by Havok Phyiscs and Havok Destruction” video uploaded to the official Havok Physics YouTube channel. The game makes extensive use of Havok Physics and Destruction. From the looks of it the Havok physics andRead More
Recruits is a new top-down indie shooter where “the players take charge of the Army’s newest soldiers to fight the war against their deadly Enemies.” There is a new video log from the developers showing off some cool features we would be interested in, physics and destruction! Recruits is being made with the Unreal DevelopmentRead More
A Sneak Preview trailer for Arma 3 has been released by Bohemia Interactive ahead of this weeks E3 2012. We have been excited for Arma 3 since it was announced that Arma 3 Will Implement PhysX for in-game Physics. This new trailer briefly mentions that the vehicles use PhysX simulation for the handling. Hopefully PhysXRead More
Now this is pretty cool, ARM has posted a video to YouTube from GDC 2012 showing the Havok Physics Vision Engine running on an ARM Mali GPU based Android tablet with the new Havok mobile tech demo and some cool Havok physics integration. In the video Peter Wos, a Software Engineer for Havok goes overRead More
Hawken is Adhesive Games’ upcoming free-to-play multiplayer mech combat game built with Epic Games’ Unreal Development Kit (UDK) and Unreal Engine 3. I first saw this game back when it was first announced and was very impressed with the visuals. Now I am even more excited and interested in this game with the recent newsRead More
PLA – Passion Leads Army is a Chinese Unreal Engine 3 game being developed by Giant Interactive for the Chinese military. There is a really cool DX11 benchmark included with the game that was announced by Jen-Hsun Huang at the recent NVIDIA Gaming Festival in Shanghai. The demo shows off some pretty cool cloth, particle,Read More
I posted this video a few months ago and then a few days later it went to private on YouTube for some reason, i sent a message to the HavokSimulation YouTube account with no response. Now this video of the tank destroying several buildings has been uploaded to YouTube again and hopefully this time itRead More
