Physx heads up.

[alienware]

I was poking around this morning and I found this.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=BFGRPHYSX128P&cpc=SCH

Nothing. Basically nothing.

They do still work and apparently bang out Physx as well as any Nvidia Physx card.

Now I didn't get mine there because I got it on Ebay (there are none here like that, those are new cleared stock) but it's a good price. Ebay US is charging $40 and up.

Now don't be tempted to order one if you live in the UK. Tried that. Shipping? $90 thanks. Idiots. Any way, yeah, sorted.

 

[zak4994]

This must be really old.

They still have the Ageia logo on it.

 

[alienware]

Yeah they are but they work

 

[equk]

cool

could be nice to use with a new ati card, would guess the power consumption would be a lot less than running a nvidia card and an ati card

 

[Brooksie]

You can get a BFG Physx card on eBay (in the International sellers) for £25 plus $13 (around £8) for shipping

 

[alienware]

You can get a BFG Physx card on eBay (in the International sellers) for £25 plus $13 (around £8) for shipping

Yeah well worth it if you're a fan of ME. What a stunning stunning game. Battyman is good too

 

[Ari-M.]

cheap 9400gt will outperform the BFG card though. just use the driver "hack" and be sure to upgrade physX and CCC in the correct orders, and bingo. I actually bought a 9400 gt 512mb for $14 at fry's recently. took it back though because I wound up using a spare gts 250 instead.

the 9400 only took up one slot...and required no extra pciE power plug

in all honesty...a dedicated physX card sounds like such a cool thing, until about 2 hours after you get it running....then you realize that you have spent a card slot, extra heat, extra power for nothing spectacular....at least that is how I felt about it...

thanks for the link though....I did manage to find THIS on that website....http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=BUR-SNUGGIE&cpc=RESX

and by god, look how happy that guy in the chair looks

I can almost get 2 of those for the price of the physX card

 

[alienware]

I have two pcie slots and both are full in both PCs. So it was PCI or nowt.

Most boards only have one or two PCIE slots unless you spend a small fortune.

 

[Ari-M.]

I have two pcie slots and both are full in both PCs. So it was PCI or nowt.

Most boards only have one or two PCIE slots unless you spend a small fortune.

ah....well that's a good find then...I seem to remember some horror stories about those dedicated cards and newer Nvidia drivers....but hell for $13 how can you go wrong....I might order one of those just for the sake of trying it out....great find

P.S. you might want to check out some of Biostar's newest offerings...they certainly don't compete with top tier board (gigabyte, asus, evga etc..) but you can have 3 pciE (2.0) slots for around $50-$80 (depending on chipset)....I have had good luck with them so far, I am not sure about pricing outside of the US though...

 

[alienware]

I run a hybrid Physx set up at the moment. I got a Crosshair 2 formula and was aiming at SLI 280s. Sadly I found out how unreliable hot cards are and then (like you) went 5770s. So that board was sent off to the second machine.

I got a 3870x2 for peanuts and had an 8800 Ultra that had to be baked, so they are in the second machine with the 8800u running GenL's physx mod

Works well, but I just found a second 3870x2 for peanuts and quadfire experiments are on the horizon. This means removing the Crosshair 2 completely so I will be back down to dual PCIE slots.

I only play Mirror's Edge, and as you pointed out later games don't work so well on those PCI cards. TBH I'm not a superhero person so I can take or leave Batman and Mafia 2 is poop. I know for sure it won't work with M2 because Nvidia have brought out Physx 9.10 and it renders those cards unusable (aholes). With 9.09 and 8.5.03 though it'll work on ME and that's what I wanted it for. ME is my sort of game, seriously packing adrenaline

No doubt some one will mod M2 to work with a PPU but the game just didn't grab me tbh.

 

[Ari-M.]

I run a hybrid Physx set up at the moment. I got a Crosshair 2 formula and was aiming at SLI 280s. Sadly I found out how unreliable hot cards are and then (like you) went 5770s. So that board was sent off to the second machine.

I got a 3870x2 for peanuts and had an 8800 Ultra that had to be baked, so they are in the second machine with the 8800u running GenL's physx mod

Works well, but I just found a second 3870x2 for peanuts and quadfire experiments are on the horizon. This means removing the Crosshair 2 completely so I will be back down to dual PCIE slots.

I only play Mirror's Edge, and as you pointed out later games don't work so well on those PCI cards. TBH I'm not a superhero person so I can take or leave Batman and Mafia 2 is poop. I know for sure it won't work with M2 because Nvidia have brought out Physx 9.10 and it renders those cards unusable (aholes). With 9.09 and 8.5.03 though it'll work on ME and that's what I wanted it for. ME is my sort of game, seriously packing adrenaline

No doubt some one will mod M2 to work with a PPU but the game just didn't grab me tbh.

oh boy I wish you luck with those 3870's....that will be interesting to see....

it's funny how they keep coming out with software that renders hardware useless.....then make some fu*k off excuse that developing for "legacy" hardware would drive the price up too high for new users....

isn't that the same as saying "well basically now that you have already bought our junk, we don't care too much about your needs or dollars spent.....buy more fool"

I actually think the 3870's (if you can get them to actually work in tandem) will be perfect with dedicated PhysX card. That might actually be a smoker of a rig.

It would be awesome if you put it in one of those disgustingly large old-skool beige full towers.....and be sure to stick a turbo button on that

that way you can get twice the frame rate!!!!

 

[alienware]

Yeah the 3870x2 x2 experiment is bound to be fun. I see blue screens on the horizon

I was actually taken aback by just how good they are though tbh. I bought the 8800 Ultra from a guy on Ebay. Turns out by looking through his feedback that he bought and sold a lot of GPUs. Near on 600 feedbacks were either him buying dead cards or selling working ones. After two months it died during a Fallout 3 session so I sent him an email.. Wasn't nasty or anything I just asked if it had been in with the cookies

Well he must have bricked it a little so he sent me a £75 refund. Got the X2 because I just prefer ATI for reliability now (they're cooler, heat destroys) and couldn't believe how much faster it is than the 8800u. When released though? well it was quite a bit slower in the benchmarks. So it would seem that driver support has given it a serious second wind. Honestly I struggle to spot the difference with my Xfire 5770s in most games. Obviously in seriously heavy titles like BFBC2 the 5770s go into a serious lead, but with things like Fallout 3 and Mirror's Edge theyre pretty much identical.

And the same went for Xfire 3870x2. When tested in 2008 they were attrocious. And you had to pay £800 or so for the pleasure. Now? well, if they perform even a little bit better for my £100 all in I will have something really fast on my hands. I did a bit of digging through the 10.8 release notes and it seems that they have added support for dual x2 cards (probably mainly to support the 5970s in Crossfire) but have also fixed the multi monitor part of that (Diablo I'm looking at you mate

)

Either way I get to play for a day or two, which to me beats playing with myself every time

I just love getting thermal paste all over my hands haha.

 

[Ari-M.]

Yeah the 3870x2 x2 experiment is bound to be fun. I see blue screens on the horizon

I was actually taken aback by just how good they are though tbh. I bought the 8800 Ultra from a guy on Ebay. Turns out by looking through his feedback that he bought and sold a lot of GPUs. Near on 600 feedbacks were either him buying dead cards or selling working ones. After two months it died during a Fallout 3 session so I sent him an email.. Wasn't nasty or anything I just asked if it had been in with the cookies

Well he must have bricked it a little so he sent me a £75 refund. Got the X2 because I just prefer ATI for reliability now (they're cooler, heat destroys) and couldn't believe how much faster it is than the 8800u. When released though? well it was quite a bit slower in the benchmarks. So it would seem that driver support has given it a serious second wind. Honestly I struggle to spot the difference with my Xfire 5770s in most games. Obviously in seriously heavy titles like BFBC2 the 5770s go into a serious lead, but with things like Fallout 3 and Mirror's Edge theyre pretty much identical.

And the same went for Xfire 3870x2. When tested in 2008 they were attrocious. And you had to pay £800 or so for the pleasure. Now? well, if they perform even a little bit better for my £100 all in I will have something really fast on my hands. I did a bit of digging through the 10.8 release notes and it seems that they have added support for dual x2 cards (probably mainly to support the 5970s in Crossfire) but have also fixed the multi monitor part of that (Diablo I'm looking at you mate

)

Either way I get to play for a day or two, which to me beats playing with myself every time

I just love getting thermal paste all over my hands haha.

yeah it's odd how game titles and apps. keep getting more efficient....yet the hardware keeps getting bigger. it would make much more sense for developers to write better implementations and start migrating towards low voltage hardware. it's amazing to look at the efficiency of an assembly language, for something like....oh let's say an automate painting robot. the control variables are FAR beyond the physics of any video game. yet the developers manage to write a program that only needs 500k to run.

I know hardware manufacturers need to sell product to stay in business, but it would be nice to see a migration to smaller, more efficient devices....rather than computers that need a dedicated 20 AMP breaker to stay on

And not silly things like "ECO" ram. I mean devices that run on milivolts rather than volts

Good luck with those cards. I would love to see a picture of the 2 3870 x2's and the PhysX card together....that is like vintage porn rite there *grunts and beats chest*

 

[alienware]

Bump. Right, this card is perfectly useful. Basically Nvidia have stopped supporting it from the latest version of Physx. However, Batman wouldn't run with this card either as that uses a newer version than the last one that supports this card (8.09.04). However there are ways around this and I now have mine fully working in Batman. I would imagine it's only a matter of time before they figure out how to get this going in Mafia II (and I have a good idea how this works so I will say it's far from impossible).