Using my 9400GT with My GTX670

[Gravatrax]

I recently ordered an EVGA GTX 670 SC, and I was wondering if it would be possible to use my 9400GT to handle PhysX processing since it supports it. My question is, would the 9400GT be able to handle to modern day calculations necessary for games that support PhysX. Obviously this is one of those things where I might as well use it since I have it :P And my pc would not be completely ruined if this were not possible.

[Illiad86]

Yes, you can let your 9400GT be a dedicated PhysX card. Does your motherboard have two x16 slots though? Some "SLI/XFire" boards have one x16 and one x8. If you only have an extra x8 slot it wouldn't be worth using that card for PhysX, it would run at half the speed and there wouldn't be any change.

 

If you have another x16 slot, you could put it in there. I was reading up a bit and a few people have used one for PhysX. Many have said you won't see a huge difference in frame rates, but if you have the card laying around, why not? Something's better than nothing :)

[Gravatrax]

Ahh I didnt think about that. I'll have to check.

 

One PCI Slot is 2.0 and one is 3.0 I know that much.

 

- 2 x PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots (PCIE2/PCIE3: single at x16 (PCIE2) / x8 (PCIE3) or dual at x8/x8 mode)

- 2 x PCI Express 2.0 x1 slots

- 2 x PCI slots

- Supports AMD Quad CrossFireX™ and CrossFireX™

- Supports NVIDIA® Quad SLI™ and SLI™

 

Oh...wait a second....Why would my PC3 slot only be x16 at single? Or am I missing something here? I don't know the bandwidth different between PC3 and PC2 thus implies using my PC2 slot will give me more bandwidth then the PC3

[Gravatrax]

There is warning that goes along with that portion

 

4. Only PCIE2 and PCIE3 slots support Gen 3 speed. To run the PCI Ex- press in Gen 3 speed, please install an Ivy Bridge CPU. If you install a Sandy Bridge CPU, the PCI Express will run only at PCI Express Gen 2 speed.

 

Im using a 3570k. So yes I am using an Ivy Bridge

[Gravatrax]

Ahh I figured it out. PCIE2 and PCIE3 are designations of PCI Slots on the board but both are PCI3.0 Gen 3 with the Use of IB. It looks like it does exactly what I don't want it to do. knocks down the other bus rate by half so I guess I won't bother still strange that one of the PCI 3.0 Slots is only x8

[Erik005]

Socket 1155 CPU's only have 20 lanes available for graphics card, so your cards will run 8x/8x but even at PCI Express 2.0 the difference between 8x and 16x is negligible.

 

Only the high-end socket 2011 CPU's have 40 lanes for 16x/16x or 8x/8x/8x/8x

Edited July 3, 2012 by Erik005

[Gravatrax]

Yea so I am told. I was told in actuality the difference between 3.0 and 2.0 is pretty minimal.

[Vecna6667]

I wouldn't use the 9400GT any more as it will most likely slow down your GTX 670 instead of speeding it up. Check this video to find out what I mean:

 

 

The whole point is that the 9400GT going to bottleneck the system.

Edited July 7, 2012 by Vecna6667

[Gravatrax]

Good to know.

 

Pah Im sure the 670 can handle PhysX while processing games graphics just fine anyways

[eltucu]

Exactly. 9400GT is way too little to handle physx. Usually its recommended a GPU with 128 or more cuda cores, 9400GT has 32.

 

Besides the point that most of nVidia's higher end cards can handle PhysX alone just fine.