Some of you (especially those who like to dabble and push hardware to its extremes) will find this interesting. Some of you will find it incredibly long winded and boring.

I had to water down the methods of getting this to work because the site I write for has a close liason with very powerful companies. All of which would probably take a very dim view on the methods used to get this working. The names have been removed to protect the innocent.. If you have an ATI card and an old Nvidia one lying around though this stuff is just awesome sauce.

VIVA MAFIA 2 !

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Is Physx actually worth having? or is it something well left alone? In today's roundup I will compare apples to apples and post some thoughts on the subject matter at hand. From there on it's up to you I guess

Right. So after finding out recently that Nvidia had 'slipped up' (a matter of opinion perhaps?) and left in open Physx support I decided that maybe I should do something with the 8800 Ultra that I had repaired and had sitting under my bed. The first thing to do was gather the necessary weapons of choice in order to get this baby to work.

So, if you are about to embark on a mission to run a dedicated Physx card with your Radeon card? Then you are going to have to track down the following weapons of choice. Note, I have blacked something out? This is plan B.



There you can see just what you will need for the job.

The first stage of getting this up and running is obviously to shut down your PC and find an available slot (hint : not the primary one !) to fit the Nvidia card into. You can pretty much use any 8 series and on however as I suspected you need something with quite considerable muscle in order to shove it around. You will see later in the performed test just why I say that. There are a few checks you will need to perform before even taking your case apart, however, and these are.

Is my Nvidia GPU going to be powerful enough running Physx?

Check the end results. As you can see, even a 8800 Ultra KO edition is not enough to keep the frames as they were without Physx enabled. However, please also note that my tests were with Physx on maximum using quite an old Radeon card (3870x2). In my humble opinion I would not even waste your time aiming for Physx on high with anything less than an 8800 GTX. What would happen on medium or low? well, you will have to suck em and see I am afraid.

Is my PSU powerful enough to run both cards?

Please please check this. Your PSU may well be powerful enough to run them both individually but please take into account that when they are both in they are both going to pull power. And if your cards are as greedy and once high end as mine are? You are going to be in big trouble if you don't feed them properly.

Once you have figured out the logistics of the above then you are free to go ahead and fit your cards. I would reccomend very strongly that you use either an SLI approved PSU or a Crossfire approved one. If you cannot find approvals then simply look at how many PCIE power connectors you have. If you don't have enough? leave it. Don't start rigging adapters to molex as your PSU simply isn't rated at the power you will need.

So here we go then, in goes the 8800 Ultra and the power wires routed accordingly.



From here it can get very very confusing. Here is the order of events I used in order to get this thing firing.

Uninstall all drivers. This includes Physx (you need this on ATI just to get games running)

You should not have any Nvidia drivers installed and the Windows one will not show up in the control panel. Uninstall your ATI drivers like this.



Note I have used the express uninstaller? that's because I want rid of all of it.

Now. Note in the weapons of choice picture that you can see Driversweeper? This is what you are going to use next. However, it is best to use this in safe mode. There are a couple of ways of going into safe mode. The first is to boot and use an F key to select it, the other one (and faster in our case because we are already in Windows) is to just load up msconfig and enable safe boot that way. Kind of like this.



Reboot your PC.

Then, when you get in run Drivesweeper (freeware, BTW) and select any ATI or Nvidia display and Physx drivers you have. All you need to do is check the box and click remove, at which point you will get a list like this one.



With everything cleaned and removed load msconfig back up and reverse the safe boot option. If you don't you will restart in safe mode. Once you have restarted the PC back into normal mode (non safe) you then need to do the following.

Install the ATI drivers FIRST. whatever you do, DO NOT install the Nvidia driver first. If you do then there's a very high chance that your Nvidia card will take president over your slots and make itself the primary card. If you do this by mistake go back to the beginning and repeat the above steps.

Installing the ATI drivers is as follows. Please note I do a custom install to get rid of any crap, bloat or demos.



When prompted to reboot the computer, do so. When you check Device manager you should see the following.



Note : the ATI card/s are above the 8800u? This is how it needs to be.

Now you can install the Nvidia drivers. The ones in my weapons of choice picture are the ones that have Physx unlocked. If you want to use any others? You're on your own. Note, the drivers that you need are a beta, so when you install them you will get this.



Simply tell it go ahead and then you should get this.



Once done reboot your PC.

You can load up GPUZ if you like to check they are all firing. This will look like this, although you can actually load GPUZ twice and look at each card independantly.



Now it will get a bit confusing. When you try and open the Nvidia control panel it will give you an error complaining that there are no displays attatched to the card. This is quite normal, however you will need to chop things around to fool it into thinking there is one there. To do this right click your desktop and go to Screen Resolution. Once there you will see your single display. Hit DETECT. You will then see a empty screen next to your primary one that says Another display not connected. Select it, and then use the drop down to pick the Nvidia card you are using for Physx. Once you have selected it hit apply.

Under multiple displays select Try to connect any way on : VGA

Once done hit apply. Also you need to make sure that both displays are then set to Use display 1 or you will lose your picture on the Radeon card.

Now you need to load Nvidia control panel. However, you will note that the Physx option simply isn't there. This did my bloody head in for about 7 hours before I finally realised the only way to enable Physx was to connect my monitor to the display output I had created. It's really odd that it works that way but I can understand it. So, remove your monitor from the ATI card and put it into the primary output of the Nvidia card. Once done you will get the Physx option and from there you can enable it.



Now for the acid test. It's now time to see if Physx is actually working and making a difference. In order to do this you need Fluidmark. It is similar looking to Furmark in ways, but tests the Physx capabilities of your card. Please remember we are not doing this for bragging rights or high scores, merely to see if Physx is alive and well. Apparently when you run Fluidmark with a Hybrid Physx setup the scores are all out of whack, so as I say, don't do this for bragging rights !

Load Fluidmark up and run it. A screen similar to Furmarks will open and look like this.



TAKE NOTE OF THE GPU IT IS USING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SCREEN - It will be your Nvidia one It should also say "GPU2" Your results will look like this, which can be confusing. Note the only card mentioned is my Radeon 3870x2 yet, all of a sudden I have a Physx score and results



If you like you can also take heed of the score my 8800 Ultra is whacking out from the FRAPS FPS counter. 35 FPS is just about scraping on the kind of onions we like to peel. This is why I totally agree with Nvidia when they say it's not really worth using less than a 9800GTX or 260 series GPU for Physx.

Time for the game test.

The game of choice here (because it's pretty much the only one at present) has to be Batman : Arkham Asylum. This was a game I purchased right before the death of my 280GTX and hadn't played because I then went on to buy ATI cards. I am a snob, and I don't like running games at anything less than max settings. Thus, these broken drivers were music to my ears The hardware used today (as far as I can remember it, long day) is as follows.

AMD Phenom 9950 (stock speed of 2.6GHZ).
3GB DDR2 800.
Asus Crosshair 2 Formula (780a SLI)
ATI Radeon 3870x2 running Cat 10.7 - Primary
EVGA Geforce 8800 Ultra KO edition - Physx
Couple of Baracudas

Nothing more to really speak about tbh. The rest of the system would have no bearing on the results IMO. Any way, let's get on shall we. Once Batman is installed run the launcher. It will then come up with a pre screen. Hit the settings button. You will then be faced with a screen like this one, nothing that you have options in here for ATI and Nvidia cards



I have obviously set it to high. Also note that it reccomends at least a 260 GTX AND a 9800GTX for this. Now you can begin to understand why it's not even worth getting that 8800GT out of the box under your bed or wherever it is. On medium setting it will want at least a standalone 260GTX. I don't know if anything less would be of use to the lower setting because as I pointed out earlier, I am a snob

The settings used are as you see them (everything maxed) on an Acer monitor set to its native resolution of 1680x1050. Please note though that I have force set the AA to 4XFSAA using the CCC. Basically the game wants you to do it there as I don't think it has any AA settings of its own.

And now ladies and gents the moment we have all been waiting for.

Here I have a series of pics that denote how the game looks with Physx on and off. First pic on, second pic off. However I will point this out in bold above each pic. These pics were taken with FRAPS running the benchmark in the game (it's on the main menu). Please also note that it was pretty much impossible to get exactly the same screenies in exactly the same place, so I took them at comparitive locations.

Pic 1 Physx on



Pic 1 Physx off



Pic 2 Phsyx on



Pic 2 Physx off



Pic 3 Physx on



Pic 3 Physx off



Benchmark results Physx ON



Benchmark results Physx OFF



Even though converting them to JPG has mashed them and even though Facebook mashed them again and even though OC3D mashed them some more the difference is as blatant as morning. It's not just steam fog and spider's webs either, it's fabrics and pretty much anything that moves.

My final thoughts.

As I said this is not a review. Thus I won't rate Physx I will leave that to you. Is it worth it? No. I know I know, with what it does to Batman it's quite amazing yes? this is true.. However, at this precise moment in time it only does it to Batman.

If you like Batman? do it. If you have a spare card and want a piddle around for the day and have Batman? do it. But please do not go out and buy a dedicated Nvidia GPU in order to run Physx as it would be a complete waste of money.

The good news is that it won't just be limited to or end with Batman. TBH Batman was not the reason I sat and messed around all day long in order to write this up. Coming soon to the PC is Mafia 2. This should be an absolutely groundbreaking game. Not only does it use all kinds of new engines and models but it also (apparently at last check) fully utilises Physx. A few months ago I saw comparisson screens in a magazine of mine that showed it on and off and the entire damage engine (for instance dents dings and broken panels on cars) is based on the use of Physx.

So would it be worth it to spend out the money on Mafia 2?

I would say so yes.

Lastly, these broken drivers can finally give 5 series owners who upgraded from 8800GTX and above a reason to actually get out their card and put it to some use.