BF2S Forums Video Card Rodeo

Put the 9800gt in your work computer, physx is useless.

Benchmark results for with/without the 9800GT.


lol, open office three-click chart

Particularly considering a good 5 or so fps margin of variance for benchmark results (notably Mafia 2), if the 9800GT bottlenecks system performance, it's negligible. Batman seemed to love it, but that's about it. It could be my imagination, but physx seemed to behave better visually on a dedicated card (through two test runs) than without.

So I still haven't decided. It helps where I use it and doesn't hurt where I don't. The low-profile design is nice, since it doesn't block any of the motherboard's USB sockets (or the on-board power/reset) beneath it, and I can't think that even a GTX260 would be much of an improvement.

To balance things out, I'm leaning towards a GTX460 for the work PC, but I'll sleep on it.

Also, lol at DoW2.

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

For a while I was on the verge of simply ordering another GTX 570 and improving performance across the board, while moving the 9800 to the work PC. Thank god I didn't. It's far too close to the 600 series to consider it.

I think I'm definitely going to leave the 9800GT in the computer it's in (disabling it when I'm not specifically using physx), since it'll help me finish Arkham 1 and play Arkham 2, and ordering a GTX460 for the work PC as I was most intending originally. If I pick up a GTX 670 later, I'll have to play musical cards again.

Then, 570 to work PC, 460 to other work PC, 9800GT stays or is shelved if the 670 can cope alone (which I'm sure it'll be able to do).

/wall of text thread






e: picking up a ~$230 GTX560 Ti's instead. Gotta love a free PC Batman, since I've already ordered the PS3 CE one.

Which one you end up getting? I should be getting my http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6814130604 tommorow. Glad I snagged one when I did because they are sold out atm :X

Aside from the fact that it isn't much more than previous generations of cards, you can call it future-proofing. In the unlikely event of the CPU dying, the video card won't bottleneck the next work rig. It ran games great with the 4650. If they're only slightly better with something like a 460 or 560, tough. I don't want to use AGP again.

eusgen wrote:

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

e: picking up a ~$230 GTX560 Ti instead. Gotta love a free PC Batman, since I've already ordered the PS3 CE one.

Which one you end up getting? I should be getting my http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6814130604 tommorow. Glad I snagged one when I did because they are sold out atm :X

See underlined. $ 560 Ti + free PC Batman ~ $ 460 + PC Batman.

All tests run on maximum possible settings at 1920x1200 on a 25.5" LCD monitor.

The following is tl;dr hobbiest crap:

After hearing how benchmarks have stumbled on older video cards being used for physx, I tested the GTX 560 Ti as a dedicated physx card. After the last results, I wasn't really expecting to see a performance difference. So when I get a chance, into the work PC it goes and I'll reload the 9800 GT. Still helps a ton with Batman.

Visually, the physx seemed to be have better with the GTX 560 than with the 9800GT, but they also misbehaved when the 9800GT went through them just fine. Also visually, the solo GTX 570 seemed to have the most difficult time with physx. I'm willing to write it all off as my imagination.

So here's the current setup:

Home PC - 2600K; GTX 570 2.5GB + GTX 560 Ti 2GB (will swap to work pc 1)
Work PC 1 - E6600; 9800 GT 512MB low-profile (the one I'd been using for physx; will put back in the home PC)
Work PC 2 - some AMD cpu (threw it together YEARS ago); 9800 GT

Future setup:
Home PC - 2011; GTX 6x0 + GTX 560 Ti 2GB
Work PC 1 - 2600K; GTX 570 2.5GB, 9800 GT low-profile
Work PC 2 - 9800 GT (or 560 Ti if it's hobbling the 6x0; 9800 GT would become a spare part)

Summary: Negligible enhancement. I doubt the 850W PSU is choking (only running two optical drives, an SSD and a 3TB hard drive), so changed software or luck of the draw may have had an impact on the GTX 560's performance, but I wouldn't give it more than a few frames of difference.