Second Nvidia GPU for Physix?

[Rawns]

A lot of games seem to be using Nvidia's Physix technology these days, ARMA3 being the latest one. As this is now processed by the GPU, has anyone though about buying, or actually bought a second cheaper Nvidia GPU for dedicated Physix processing? If so, what is performance like? Is there any real benefit to doing this?

[SimonD]

Hey Rawns, "it depends" is the answer here. Both on the game and what you currently have.

You need a fairly beefy card (lots of cuda cores) for it to be faster than using your current card. I have a pair of 580GTX in SLi and adding in a 460 didn't make much difference in frame rate, for a big difference in noise.

[DrCheese]

If you have an ATi Card & add an Nvidia card, Nvidia are pricks and disable it from working. You can get hacked drivers that bypass this restriction but it's up to you if you want the hassle

 

It's annoying, because I prefer to buy ATi GPUs, but even I'm tempted to get an Nvidia next as Planetside 2 (that I play a lot) has a lot of effects that look a ton better with it :/

[Rawns]

If you have an ATi Card & add an Nvidia card, Nvidia are pricks and disable it from working. You can get hacked drivers that bypass this restriction but it's up to you if you want the hassle

 

It's annoying, because I prefer to buy ATi GPUs, but even I'm tempted to get an Nvidia next as Planetside 2 (that I play a lot) has a lot of effects that look a ton better with it :/

 

Not an issue as i never buy AMD () graphics cards. Nvidia or bust for me.