PSU for GTX 480

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^^ Show me an example of a game where PhysX actually makes a noticeable difference? I always thought all PhysX does it offload the physics part of the game to the second card, allowing the main one to focus on rendering and increase FPS. It doesn't actually change anything in the game, just how it runs. Not to mention you can use PhysX with an ATI main card and lower end Nvidia....

My room is always ~3c warmer then rest of the house, and my 4850 barely scratches 60c, I'd bet the 480 would add another degree or two if it ran at 90c and has a larger die size, which would be more noticeable.

If the 480 actually had any decent features to offer, then maybe it would be doing better. ATI has eyefinity, which is awesome. Not that I've got enough monitors, but its an option. Plus with ATI you got 3 monitors a card, opposed to Nvidia 2.
 
PhysX makes lots of difference. GRAW2, Mafia 2, Just Cause 2, UT3 PhysX Pack to name a few. Get Cryostasis and run PhysX without an nVidia card. You get about 3fps.

And yeh, my room is about 5 to 7c warmer than the rest of the house, my old 4870 raised it by about 4c. It means i dont need my radiator on at all, and after a few days of being on it warms up the surrounding rooms if i leave the door open. It's a benefit if you ask me :)

It's not just the PC though i guess, i have the 360, ps3, lcd tv, two monitors and two speakers on at various intervals each day. The PC does produce a lot of heat though, the room next to my room actually has a warm patch on the wall because the exhaust fan from my case heats up the wall so much.

I guess strictly speaking PhysX does nothing a CPU couldn't do, it's just the efficiency at which it can do it. A easy way to demonstrate it is to download the PhysX Screensaver, with an nvidia card it's buttery smooth, with my current cpu and my old 4870 it went very jumpy after about 5 seconds.

I always have a little bit of a guilt feeling, thinking i should've bought a 5870. But then when i think logically and realise there is no game i can't run that isn't smooth, and the fact i'd be annoyed that i couldn't play Mafia 2 with PhysX when it comes out (My most anticipated title for years) would mean i'd probably be sat there wishing i got this card.
 
I can perhaps understand power, but heat i can not. It doesn't effect anyone, i don't see how it would make any difference if the thing ran at -96c or 96c. It works just fine, and that is what it was designed to run at.

I struggle to see how people can see PhysX as a negative, it greatly improves the physics simulations in games in a relatively realistic manor for something thats real time. But then i am bias, as for some reason i've always loved anything physics related - i find myself spending hours on youtube finding the best water simulations possible :yum: I would easily say i would prefer realistic physics in games than graphics.

Yeh, the gtx4xx cards are very poorly designed in efficiency terms, but to some people like me that really does not care about efficiency, the point is irrelevent. I am only interested in the FPS it delivers and the features it offers. The FPS is great in all games, it may not yet be equal to the similarly priced 5870 but to me it offers beneficial features that i appreciate. The only feature i do truly wish nvidias new cards would have is output through both DVI slots and the mini hdmi at the same time for three monitors, it annoys me that'll i'll need another 470 when i want a third monitor.

Keep in mind that this card is from the same company that had a incredible amount of mobile gpu's die from heat related design flaws It's also a fact that heat reduces a chips life span and since TSMC is responsible for manufacturing all gpu's they will have the exact same tolerances as ATI's cards.

I have no problem with realistic in game physics that have a meaningful impact on gameplay but Physx has never offered that. On the other hand Havoc powered games like BF:BC2 have physics that actually contribute to gameplay.

Also physx performance without nvidia cards doesn't mean much since Nvidia directly benefits from it performing poorly on cpus and therefore have no reason to optimize it.
 
PhysX makes lots of difference. GRAW2, Mafia 2, Just Cause 2, UT3 PhysX Pack to name a few. Get Cryostasis and run PhysX without an nVidia card. You get about 3fps.

And yeh, my room is about 5 to 7c warmer than the rest of the house, my old 4870 raised it by about 4c. It means i dont need my radiator on at all, and after a few days of being on it warms up the surrounding rooms if i leave the door open. It's a benefit if you ask me :)

It's not just the PC though i guess, i have the 360, ps3, lcd tv, two monitors and two speakers on at various intervals each day. The PC does produce a lot of heat though, the room next to my room actually has a warm patch on the wall because the exhaust fan from my case heats up the wall so much.

I guess strictly speaking PhysX does nothing a CPU couldn't do, it's just the efficiency at which it can do it. A easy way to demonstrate it is to download the PhysX Screensaver, with an nvidia card it's buttery smooth, with my current cpu and my old 4870 it went very jumpy after about 5 seconds.

I always have a little bit of a guilt feeling, thinking i should've bought a 5870. But then when i think logically and realise there is no game i can't run that isn't smooth, and the fact i'd be annoyed that i couldn't play Mafia 2 with PhysX when it comes out (My most anticipated title for years) would mean i'd probably be sat there wishing i got this card.

Just Cause 2 has some rather amusing physics on my 4850 lol. Using the unbreakable rope and multiple rope mods, funny times funny times. I just don't see the point of PhysX, it doesn't change anything, sure you're cpu works less, but most people nowadays have quad cores anyways where doing some physics isn't that big of a deal.

As for cryostatsis, well yeah you'd get about 3fps since your 4870 wouldn't be doing any physics if you turned on physicsX somehow. Crystasis was just a attempt at another crysis, except they just made a decent looking game and didn't optimize it much so it seemed to use far more power. Crysis looks better, and its actually fun to play, got bored of Cryostasis after an hour or so.

What I meant was to show me a game where PhysX actually changes something. Like a youtube comparison or something, I've never seen anything noticeable. Maybe a board or rock bounces a bit different, but really nothing worth the extra money for a second card. Either I'm thinking of physX wrong or you are:umm:
 
The 480 is a great card. It fulfils the primary purpose of every graphics card extremely well, that is to process frames.
It's hotter than normal? yep
It's louder than normal? yep
It didn't come in the colour you wanted it? probably that too.

CUDA isn't done and dusted just because of OpenCL, yes one day that probably will be the case but for now (and likely as not for a little while longer) it's still very relevant.

I don't really mind if it runs 10c hotter than a 5870, my 285 runs just as hot right now.
I don't really mind that it uses more power, a few extra bucks a month isn't going to kill me.

At the end of the day it's a very powerful card, the most powerful GPU in production atm. Nuff said, nuff hating
 
The 480 is a great card. It fulfils the primary purpose of every graphics card extremely well, that is to process frames.
It's hotter than normal? yep
It's louder than normal? yep
It didn't come in the colour you wanted it? probably that too.

CUDA isn't done and dusted just because of OpenCL, yes one day that probably will be the case but for now (and likely as not for a little while longer) it's still very relevant.

I don't really mind if it runs 10c hotter than a 5870, my 285 runs just as hot right now.
I don't really mind that it uses more power, a few extra bucks a month isn't going to kill me.

At the end of the day it's a very powerful card, the most powerful GPU in production atm. Nuff said, nuff hating

It's good to know it's not just me that can grasp this concept :)

Yeh, the PhysX implementation in most games isn't particularly well done. Because total implementation as the main physics engine wouldn't be viable, as the ~40percent of gamers that have ATI cards wouldn't be able to run the game. But it does add some really nice small particle physics to stuff like gunsparks and debris in most games that support it. Whether you care about this is totally arguable, but i like to see it in games - just adds that extra element of detail.

The fairly suttle use of it in Mafia 2 seems nice, from what we've seen.



You can see the detail much better in 720p mode. But as you can hopefully tell, the game uses it well.

Keep in mind that this card is from the same company that had a incredible amount of mobile gpu's die from heat related design flaws It's also a fact that heat reduces a chips life span and since TSMC is responsible for manufacturing all gpu's they will have the exact same tolerances as ATI's cards.

I have no problem with realistic in game physics that have a meaningful impact on gameplay but Physx has never offered that. On the other hand Havoc powered games like BF:BC2 have physics that actually contribute to gameplay.

Also physx performance without nvidia cards doesn't mean much since Nvidia directly benefits from it performing poorly on cpus and therefore have no reason to optimize it.

About the life expectancy, for the kind of people interested in these cards it's unlikely they will keep it anymore than 2 to 3 years. And i'm very confident the card will last longer than this. The temps arn't that bad if you put the fan speed up a bit.
 
CUDA isn't done and dusted just because of OpenCL, yes one day that probably will be the case but for now (and likely as not for a little while longer) it's still very relevant.

How is CUDA relevant for consumers? Photoshop does not support CUDA and the few plugins that do support it are extremely expensive and only work on Quadros. Video encoding doesn't count either as the current gpgpu applications are widely considered to produce inferior quality results when compared to cpu encoders.
 
Everything that happens in that video happens on my 4850 in many games. It's just Nvidia giving those guys discounts on stuff, and asking them to promote Nvidia in return. Physx doesn't do anything special, it offloads the physics work from your cpu to your gpu. Which is irrelevant if you have a decent cpu. So the whole "40%" of ATI users cannot run a game, that doesn't even make sense.

PhysX adds nothing to the game, it makes it run better. Unless Nvidia's page and wiki is wrong, and somehow it does add more little effects and such, then there isn't much point to PhysX if you have a decent cpu. So instead of buying a dedicated "physX" card you might as well just spend another $100 on a better cpu.

You are glorifying what PhysX actually does. It is nothing more then middleware, offloads some work from the cpu to the gpu.
 
You are seriously underestimating the sheer amount of work it offloads from the CPU. I don't see a single game on this planet that runs in real time, produces small physics particles, and runs on a normal CPU that produces the same standard that PhysX achieves. And trust me, if you've played GTA4 on PC - you know how much open world games need the CPU even when nothings happening. My CPU runs into problems occasional and it could not be called 'slow' by anyone except purist enthusiasts.

What you are seeing with your 4850 are mesh objects that are scripted and don't have collision or mass or anything to do with physics. All the debris and ruble from grenade explosions does nothing in non PhysX games, it looks pretty but then it seemingly vanishes and fails to interact with any object it should of hit. PhysX actually enables real time physics for all them pieces of debris, not just some scripted event. I am almost positive Havok physics is perfectly capable of doing everything PhysX does. But we don't see it, because CPU's aren't powerful enough - You only rarely see Havok physics used in a similar way PhysX is used in the above video, but it is not anywhere near on the same scale. GPU's are better at maths than CPU's, this is why everything that is GPU accelerated is so much faster than a CPU, same applies for physics in games, they just gave it a glorified name.

Whether you appreciate it (which you clearly don't) is another matter entirely.
 
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