How do I enable PhysX?

[thecartman]

I have a GeForce 8500 GT 512MB and just installed the new Nvidia 177.83 Drivers on my computer.

I also downloaded the Particle Fluid Demo and when I ran the application, the frame rate was very slow.

The Great Kulu demo ran very slow too.

Do I have to activate the PhysX drivers or is my video card simply not powerful enough?

[Gizmo]

The support is enabled automatically, from what I gather; there is nothing special you have to do to enable it.

It is my understanding that enabling Physx processing won't actually increase your frame rate; in fact it might reduce it. What it DOES do is give you more 'eye candy'. However, as I don't own a video card capable of Physx processing, I can't make that statement with any authority.

[MUff1N]

Originally Posted by thecartman

I have a GeForce 8500 GT 512MB and just installed the new Nvidia 177.83 Drivers on my computer.

I also downloaded the Particle Fluid Demo and when I ran the application, the frame rate was very slow.

The Great Kulu demo ran very slow too.

Do I have to activate the PhysX drivers or is my video card simply not powerful enough?

The last sentence hit it dead on.
You have to have Both a fast and powerful graphics card & CPU to get the most out of the PhysX engine and not loose FPS.
The main reason though that your FPS is so slow with your card is it's not powerful at all by today's standards & only has a 128bit memory interface with 16 stream processors, so there's no way it can render that fast enough to have smooth playback.
Now a 8800GT 512mb / 112 stream processors card can easily and the prices for those are getting very low even for the best ones!

Gizmo is right on the PhysX. It automatically enables itself for anything that uses that engine such as the games and demos on that Nvidia Webpage where you get the drivers.

Even on my setup the Great Kulu pushed my system pretty hard just to keep it at around 30 FPS with all the "eye-candy" turn on at high resolution.

[PorPorMe]

Originally Posted by MUff1N

The last sentence hit it dead on.
You have to have Both a fast and powerful graphics card & CPU to get the most out of the PhysX engine and not loose FPS.
The main reason though that your FPS is so slow with your card is it's not powerful at all by today's standards & only has a 128bit memory interface with 16 stream processors, so there's no way it can render that fast enough to have smooth playback.
Now a 8800GT 512mb / 112 stream processors card can easily and the prices for those are getting very low even for the best ones!

Gizmo is right on the PhysX. It automatically enables itself for anything that uses that engine such as the games and demos on that Nvidia Webpage where you get the drivers.

Even on my setup the Great Kulu pushed my system pretty hard just to keep it at around 30 FPS with all the "eye-candy" turn on at high resolution.

Since I don't game, DVD play back tv-out is the most I use the graphics for, would I be better off w/o the PhysX drivers?

I saw on Nvidias site that CUDA is a seperate download of 3 apps. Do I need those or are they in my driver? [177.89]

[danrok]

Have just installed these drivers and it is enabled by default.

Seems to work very nicely on my 8800 GTX.

[MUff1N]

Originally Posted by danrok

Have just installed these drivers and it is enabled by default.

Seems to work very nicely on my 8800 GTX.

And what exactly are "these" drivers?
PhysX stand alone drivers? (AOA files) or the Nvidia graphics drivers that have the PhysX drivers in the driver package?

[danrok]

The drivers mentioned at the top of this thread.