30 replies to this topic

[tObiW4nkenObi]

hello alltogether,

i have some special trouble i think, and it would be great if someone can help me out of this =)
First of all my specs so u don´t need to ask hehe:

Athlon ii X2 250 @3.8ghz
6gb DDR2-800 Corsair
Gigabyte ga-ma78g-ds3h
Creative Audigy 4pro
Radeon HD5670 512mb DDR5
Geforce 8800GT 512mb DDR3

My question is pure physx related and there is no official support for Hybrid physx, so i hope to get helped here. After installing the 8800gt for seperate physx calculation i set hawken physx.level to 1/low.
It runs very well and it really spends fun having gpuphysx. I had to move some files manually out of hawken folder to get the nvidia-gpu working. I have 30-50 frames ingame and even in 2/3/4 mech-situations it does NOT drop under 25frames which is acceptable for myself.

GPU-Z says, the geforce has only 5-15 percent work ingame and ram is used ~150m
So i tried to set physx to mid/high in .ini-file. This ended up in an unplayable game with 3-20frames.
As there is no excisting information about which physx-files to move out of folder, i want to know:

is it related to the game, to my 8800gt or to the physx-core-files of the game, that i have ~10%gpu usage on my geforce at low physx __
Moved physx files:
physx3gpuchecked_x86 grbchecked_1_1_api2_x86 cudart32_42_9 cudart32_50_35
physxcooking physxcore physxloader cudart32_41_22 physxdevice

If u can help me, i write a tutorial how to get hybrid physx running in hawken, even with the newest physx installer ! But at this moment, a tutorial for getting ~10% geforce-usage is not worth the time i think.

groovin greetings from cologne,
tObiW4n

[KyRoS]

If you look it up, there is info that a dedicated PhysX card should be about 1/4 the power of your GPU. I have a GTX 570 and was going to use a 8800 GT that I have as a dedicated card,  till I read that (and this was dated early 2012) the 8800 GT lacked the power to do PhysX properly. If you can even get Physx = 1 to work, you are pretty luck I do believe. I'd say you are out of luck  on the Apex particles and all. Please PM me though if you get it working with an 8800GT, but from everything I've ready, it's just not gonna happen

[Elix]

Sometimes Hawken doesn't even properly engage the GPU and instead dumps the PhysX math on the CPU instead. PhysX support in Hawken is far from complete.

[machmanx]

Elix, on February 08 2013 - 01:37 PM, said:

Sometimes Hawken doesn't even properly engage the GPU and instead dumps the PhysX math on the CPU instead. PhysX support in Hawken is far from complete.

^This.  I have a post somewhere that talks about dedicated cards and Physx.  Basically any Nvidia card that works alongside an AMD card will see performance improvements in FPS.  BUT, the game has to be coded properly to drop all the physx calculations onto the GPU.  I say this because another forum member and myself had an argument about whether Physx is being used regardless of your computer supporting it or not.  So if we're both right, then the game is forcing a bunch of Physx calculations onto the CPU and until they fix that, we can only wait.  Of course, this is merely speculation.

[Slimmoo]

Ok, this is what I found, you can get PhysX working on the 8800, or at least you should be able to get it working as I have it working on an 8600 GT.  The 8000 series is the first to have PhysX on the GPU, so in comparison to the cards that are out now they don't do that much.  You will never have your GPU go much above what you mentioned.  It's a graphics card first and barely a PhysX accelerator second.  Word is that the more Cuda cores the card has the better it will be at PhysX..  So if your seeing PhysX be happy that it is working and enjoy the game.  

Also, lower your resolution and you might be able to increase the PhysX level, at least that helped with Arkham City for me.

[tObiW4nkenObi]

Thank you all very much for your response !

it seems like i should be happy with my hybrid physx in hawken =)
But after a raise from 780 to 2.280 points in fluidmark, i "hoped" for more.

i will sit back today and write a tutorial about enabling hybrid in hawken.
Your informations are welcome and i´m very happy about more.

Overall, enabling physx in this game improves my fun at gaming.
meanwhile i´m at 1.400x1.050 with ~40fps with low physx.
Reducing shadows slowly helped me out of this fps-dropping problem.
thx for this great game !!


groovin greetings from cologne,
tObi

[Dave_YVR]

I have hybrid physx working with a AMD7970 and a nVidia 560Ti.  worked fine (more debris), without moving any files, until I enabled physxlevel=2.  Then it drops to very low unplayable framerates when action is happening (vehicle explosions, etc.).  I never tried any other physx levels (i.e, =1).  Just default and =2.

This setup should have the muscle to run any current physx title, so I suspect above comments are true about dumping to the CPU.

Any help improving physx on a hybrid system would be nice if anybody figures something out down the road.

Edited by Dave_YVR, February 19 2013 - 07:02 PM.

[machmanx]

Actually, Dave, that's more of an internal problem.  They are still working on properly implementing Physx on those higher settings than 1.  So even if you had the best system in the world, you'd still have problems.  But since they made a post about advanced physx settings, I guess they are actually working on it.

[Elix]

PhysXlevel=2 is unsupported at the moment, basically, so expect weird things to happen with it. It's still unfinished.

[Dave_YVR]

Thanks for the responses.  Will give =1 a shot.

[hackle]

I installed a Nvidia GT640 DDR5 with a Radeon HD 7870 Tahiti LE today to try out hybrid Physx with Hawken.

First, I confirmed that I configured hybrid Physx correctly using Hybridiz by comparing FluidMark 1.50 benchmark runs at 1280x720 with Physx GPU enabled and disabled. The results were 70 fps using the GT640 and 22 fps with a 3 GHz Q9300 CPU.

I moved PhysXDevice.dll out of C:Program Files (x86)MeteorEntertainmentHawkenInstalledHawkenFi lesBinariesWin32 and configured the in-game Physx setting to High. Frame rates averaged about 30 fps in the drone firefight in the tutorial (eyeballed 'stat fps'). With Physx set to On (CPU based Physx) and the game restarted, fps seemed higher, closer to 40 fps. I expected PhysXLevel=1 performance to be lower than PhysXLevel=2, not higher.

Any other people trying hybrid physx_

[machmanx]

Um, PhysXLevel=1 is the LOWEST setting for PhysX particles.  This means that it has the LEAST amount of particles produced.  So naturally you're gonna see MORE FPS because your computer doesn't have to work that hard to produce the additional effects.  Level 2 creates MORE particles is has more strain on your system, so LESS FPS.  PhysX is NOT a performance enhancer, it's a VISUAL enhancer, which means MORE WORK for your computer.  Hope this makes sense

[hackle]

Thank you.  The answer was in front of my face and I could not see it because of my preconception that Physx options are to use a CPU or to use a GPU.  Now I understand that hybrid Physx is working successfully, as much as it can, on my system, and I did not recognize that,

In other words,
PhysXLevel=1 means some Physx effects are active and will be generated by a Nvidia GPU if available, otherwise the CPU will crunch the numbers.
PhysXLevel=2 means that all available Physx effects are active and generated by a Nvidia GPU if available, otherwise the CPU will crunch the numbers. Performance by CPU will be horrible.

Edited by hackle, March 19 2013 - 03:46 AM.

[hackle]

After using GPU-Z to watch a load of zero on the GT640 and Windows Task Manager to watch CPU usage head toward 100% in a furball, I conclude that the GT640 is not running any of the PhysX on my system that has the AMD 7870 XT + Nvidia GT640.

I was able to configure Fluidmark to use the GT640 but not Hawken.

Edited by hackle, March 19 2013 - 08:16 AM.

[machmanx]

I hope you read this page, because it clearly states that it doesn't support driver versions 29x.xx and above nor PhysX software 9.11.1107 and above.  You gotta stay within their specified requirements to get Hybrid PhysX to work.  Here's the page:-

http://physxinfo.com/wiki/Hybrid_PhysX

[Xacius]

Dave_YVR, on February 19 2013 - 07:01 PM, said:

I have hybrid physx working with a AMD7970 and a nVidia 560Ti.  worked fine (more debris), without moving any files, until I enabled physxlevel=2.  Then it drops to very low unplayable framerates when action is happening (vehicle explosions, etc.).  I never tried any other physx levels (i.e, =1).  Just default and =2.

This setup should have the muscle to run any current physx title, so I suspect above comments are true about dumping to the CPU.

Any help improving physx on a hybrid system would be nice if anybody figures something out down the road.

I'm bumping this thread because I need infoz.

I have a similar build in the works (acquiring a second nvidia card for hybrid) with the same dedicated AMD GPU as you.  I was wondering if you've tried hybrid physx since the most recent patch_  I know that PhysX was updated to work better on HIGH mode sometime this year.  The game has also been optimized a bit.  What are your results FPS-wise with the most recent patch on all stages of PhysX_

[La_Parca]

I was also running hybrid physx with an i5 2500k @4.5, 7970ghz and a gtx 460 since the beta up until about 3 months ago(_). The post you quoted couldn't have been running physx on the 560 as you need to remove at least physxdevice/physxcore dlls in order to use the hw accelerated physx, atleast with current drivers and hybrid method. Regardless, up until about 3 months ago, Adhesive was not checking(server side) the physx dlls, then bam! "fuzzy bunny you for buying an amd AND nvidia gpu!". They started checking files, and if those dlls are not present the game does not launch and errors out.

I stopped playing Hawken that moment but would check every other day to see if they would revert to not checking but after about 2 weeks I gave up and haven't checked since. I may check again but I doubt it. I'm sure Nvidia paid or forced them to do the checks but what I don't understand is if we're buying a SECOND gpu just for physx and nvidia aggressively blocks it's use as a ppu what makes them think that were going to go out and buy anonther green gpu when(and we will) upgrade. I for one will not be considering nvidia in the near future especially with the upcoming consoles being "optimized" for the red team when nvidia slaps me in the face for buying their $200 gpu(at time of purchase)  for a "single" feature.

Sorry about the rant but I've been carrying that on my chest for a few years. In other words either forget about physx if you plan on using an amd gpu as either! primary or secondary(not sure why you would, maybe amd app_) gpu as it's only going to get worse or impossible to run hybrids or go full green only and maybe(not sure) use a second green gpu to dedicate as a ppu if your primary isn't up to snuff but I'm almost sure that even green+green(not sli, 660+560etc.) is shunned for some reason.

Edit: Just checked and if you remove only physxdevice.dll(some games only require this file be removed to work) physx do indeed work but use the cpu and cause a high fps drop once the action starts and riva tuner osd reports no gpu load on the 460 and removing both physxdevice and physxcore gives a fatal error, so nothing has changed since last I checked, oh well.

Edited by La_Parca, June 20 2013 - 05:11 AM.

[hackle]

Well stated. Nvidia is missing the opportunity to sell more units by not supporting hybrid physx.  As you pointed out too, games sales don't go as high as they could.

[Elix]

This just in, proprietary Nvidia technology used to discriminate against the competition's hardware. More details tonight on Action 11 News at 6.

[La_Parca]

Mea culpa, I did not realize my Evga Gtx 460 sc 768mb was an amd gpu. Now I realize why they block physx on it. o_O