Cryostasis PhysX Performance

Notes

As you can see, all of the high-end graphics cards run at 11 frames per second when PhysX is handled by the CPU. Our OC’ed Nehalem processor just can’t run the Cryostasis PhysX techdemo any faster regardless of the high-end GPU used. Nehalem actually runs the techdemo faster than the GeForce 9500 GT handling a mixture of graphics and PhysX.

When GPU-based PhysX is turned on, the higher-end GeForce cards run considerably faster than the CPU. This gives them an advantage over the Radeon 4800 series, including the 4870 X2. The GTX 260+ and 280 run over three times faster than the Core i7-equipped 4870 X2, while the 9800 GTX+ more than double’s the 4870 X2’s frame rates. Again keep in mind this isn’t the fault of the 4870 X2 card, rather it’s being bottlenecked by the CPU. Even running a mixture of graphics and PhysX the GeForce boards are capable of delivering significantly better performance in the Cryostasis techdemo than the CPU handling PhysX alone.

But what happens when we add a second GPU dedicated solely to PhysX processing. A nice performance boost!