Would a physx card increase framerate here?

[martinblank]

I have noticed that when playing WAR and VCTF particularly, the FPS can go down significantly when I drive through water, like in the red base of Corruption, and in Suspense.

And oh boy. If you want the monster of all performance drops, try driving the tank through the central river in Torlan.

Are the water effects physics based, and if so, would getting a PhysX card increase performance of in these areas?

[bclagge]

What are the specs of your PC?

But generally I have to say put your money into a CPU upgrade or an 8/9 series Nvidia card because soon they will all gain Physx capabilities.

[martinblank]

It's not my system.

C2D E6750 @ 3.4GHZ
2x1GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800 @ 1062MHz 4-4-4-12-2T
Sapphire 2900Pro 512-bit 1GB GDDR4 @ 914/999
ESI Juli@
PCP&C Turbo-Cool 860

I get 13.1k in 3dmark06, and the Anandtech review of the PhysX card shows an improvement of ~1.1k when using it. I know that UT3 supports the physx card, and it occurred to me that the water effects are probably physics and thats why they slow the game so much. Anybody know if this is true?

[[YS]Alienz]

A Physx card will not increase your framerate in the game.

[martinblank]

A Physx card will not increase your framerate in the game.

Really?
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3171&p=3

EDIT:
Though it seems like the PhysX card scaled performance a lot better when using a quad core .... ****! I can't afford one All this **** money. I could have gotten a Q6600 back when I built my PC, but I was told that it hardly made any difference compared to the C2D... OMFG I want to slap the person that told me that!!!

[bclagge]

You have a better system than me:

AMD Athlon X2 4200+ at 2.55 ghz
XFX 8800 GT 512mb
2 x 1 gb Mushkin 800mhz DDR2 RAM

I have no problems with water. None whatsoever. I have other problems, like the portal slowdowns and when lots of players are in my view. But nothing with water, not even when I had dual 7600 GSes.

[T@F]

I would say no to an increase,but it would steady your frame rate.
but i don`t have one of them cards so i don`t know for sure tbh.

[[FT]ALiAs]

My brother has an Ageia card and it does absolutely jack **** for him in UT3, and he has a nice machine also, go figure...

[Goobers]

My brother has an Ageia card and it does absolutely jack **** for him in UT3, and he has a nice machine also, go figure...

you do realize that in the base game, the card ISN'T supposed to do anything for him, right?

i've said it before and i'll say it again for your benefit...

Epic did NOT make this game to rely on the PPU. this game is only physics instense enough to be playable on ANY system, with or without a PPU.

again, you won't see any major benefits from the PPU unless a game is specifically written to take advantage of it... and UT3 isn't it.

[Harmatia]

Actually, "use hardware accelerated physics" implies that there would be some reason to do so. Ie: A performance increase.

And in fact there is a tiny (2-3 FPS) framerate boost across UT3 from having $100 physics card. Hardly worth it.

[martinblank]

Well, it's more than that according to anandtech. Over 10fps one some of the stock WAR maps. And the PhysX demo maps are unplayable without a physx card.

[campbullard]

The company got bought out, and most likely we won't see them working more on physx cards, so I would pass.

[Harmatia]

Well, it's more than that according to anandtech. Over 10fps one some of the stock WAR maps. And the PhysX demo maps are unplayable without a physx card.

The physx demos are unplayable WITH a physx card, unless you had a system that could already handle the demos-- in which case, they will play decently with a card. They are poorly designed and optimized pieces of ****. Ageia cared more about making sure only people with physx cards could play it than making sure people with physx cards COULD play it.

And 10 FPS is the best case scenario, on one of the maps tested, on ONE of the rigs tested. I call luck.

The piece of **** also generates lots of heat in your rig...

[13th_Disciple]

Well, it's more than that according to anandtech. Over 10fps one some of the stock WAR maps. And the PhysX demo maps are unplayable without a physx card.

then get it.

[obZen]

at this point you would be crazy to waste your money on a PhysX card.