If you like to play modern games, then for sure high quality graphics is critical to you. Drawing three-dimensional objects, a large number of polygons and shaders, an excellent level of simulation of physical objects - all these are important points that you probably pay attention to when playing.

One of the proprietary 3D physics simulation engines is PhysX from NVidia. Unlike most modern engines that are included in the distribution with the game, PhysX needs to be installed separately. Installed by PhysX as a discrete driver. Also, for processing graphics, a special board installed separately can be used. In this case, the engine driver will use its resources during operation. In the absence of such a hardware component, all computational tasks will be assigned to the central processor.

The Physics engine itself includes three main components that carry out the processing of physics:

• handling of liquids;
• processing of fabrics;
• processing of solids.

In the case of installing the PhysX SDK library, you can personally observe the work of these three components of the engine in relation to the processing of polygonal objects.

PhysX is used exclusively on video cards of the NVidia family starting from the GeForce 8 series and later with a minimum video memory of 256 MB and a number of 32 cores. If you want to use an NVidia graphics adapter to render graphics using PhysX, the other graphics cards in the system must also be equipped with NVidia GPUs.

Possible problems and solutions

Quite often, during the installation of the PhysX driver, errors with serial numbers 1316 or 1714 appear. This problem is associated with incorrect removal of old drivers when they are reinstalled on an NVidia video card. This problem is observed in Win 7 OS and higher. However, PhysX is not installed at all. It should be noted that when using special software systems and utilities for cleaning the system (Reg Organizer, Driwer Cleaner, Drive Sweeper), the problem cannot be solved. Most likely, you will have to delete the old NVidia libraries from the PC's memory entirely.

The author of this article had such a problem with PhysX when it was decided to replace the GeForce GTX 560 with a GTX 670. Of course, the old driver will simply not work with the new video card, and the operating system will start throwing various errors. Here is an instruction on how to deal with this.

It doesn't matter if you uninstalled the old PhysX version or not, in any case, run the Driver Cleaner or Driver Sweeper application, with the latest version.

In the list of drivers, put a check mark next to the option NVidia - PhysX and click on the "Analysis" button.

We manually select all those items that were found by the application, clean up and proceed to the next operation. If the program could not find anything, we also proceed to the next step.

We check the C: \ Progam Filess (x86) folder for a 64-bit system or Progam Filess for a 32-bit OS, respectively, and find the NVidia Corporation directory there. If it contains a PhysX folder, delete it.

Correctly installing PhysX on Windows 7 has not yet been possible, you still need to clean up the registry. Let's use the keyboard shortcut Win + R and run the command regedit... This will open the Registry Editor. It is important to understand that in case of incorrect deletion of keys in the registry, you can lose the reliable performance of the system, or the operating system will stop starting altogether. Therefore, before proceeding with manual cleaning, do it using the same utilities for working with registry keys, which were discussed earlier.

After the drivers were removed from the system, and the registry was cleaned with a special software package, the author of this article managed to find a dozen more keys remaining in the registry, so we clean everything only with pens.

Push Edit -> Find... Set the value "physx" in the search field and click "Find Next"

If all fields in an open branch have something to do with PhysX, delete the entire folder. If you see that the branch contains keys related to other software products or technologies, delete only those keys in the name or meaning of which the search word is found. All other keys are found using the Find Next command.

The complete manual cleaning process will take you about an hour to complete, so please be patient. You must admit that it is much easier to gently clean by hand than whole. And for setting up additional software (archivers, file managers, drivers for components) will take much longer, so the game is worth the candle.

When the registry is cleared, restart your computer and you can proceed with the installation new version PhysX from NVidia's website, available for download. Now you know how to correctly and absolutely correctly reinstall PhysX on Windows operating systems. After that, the problem with errors should disappear, and everything else will go like clockwork.

The American company nVidia Corporation produced many innovations, both in the technical field and in the field of software, however, few new developments were as important as the nVidia PhysX physics engine. PhysX was originally developed not by nVidia, but by a small California-based company, Ageia Technologies. Back then PhysX did not have most of its capabilities, but the potential was visible to the naked eye.

In February 2008, Ageia Technologies was acquired by nVidia Corporation and became fully part of it. Of course, all the developments of Ageia Technologies have also passed into full ownership of nVidia. The management of the latter decided to rename PhysX to nVidia PhysX and will focus on its active development. The engine has been optimized for accelerating physical calculations on graphics chips that also have nVidia's CUDA architecture. Among other things, nVidia PhysX can perform calculations and calculations not only on graphics chips, but also on the most common central processors. Today this physics engine is available on all the most popular platforms such as Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and even Wii, but hardware acceleration is only available on the Windows platform.

What is nVidia PhysX

What exactly is nVidia PhysX and what made it so popular? PhysX is a cross-platform physics engine that relieves game developers from the long, expensive and time-consuming independent development of their own software that is responsible for the physical interaction of various bodies.

An example of the engine can be nVidia PhysX

A distinctive feature of nVidia PhysX is that it must be downloaded and installed separately, while other physics engines are installed along with the game itself. The engine itself consists of three parts:

• Rigid body, responsible for the processing of solids;
• Cloth, which is responsible for processing fabrics;
• Fluid responsible for handling various fluids.

Each of these components is implemented at the highest level. For example, Cloth provides the most realistic behavior of fabrics when interacting with other fabrics and other objects, as well as tearing them and separating them into several parts. A striking example is the game Mirror's Edge, where, thanks to this technology, realistic physical behavior was realized not only for fabrics, but also for tarpaulin, construction film and other similar materials. Today nVidia PhysX is widely used in over 150 gaming projects. It's safe to say that nVidia PhysX is the most widely used physics engine in the world.

As you know, the quality of a computer game depends not only on the manufacturer, graphics or sound. The physics engine also plays an important role, improving playability and image quality. In this article, I will introduce the most popular physics engine for PhysX games.

First, let's find out what is a physics engine and why do gamers need it. In fact, any physics is a subsystem of the game engine. She is responsible for the interaction of objects and, of course, makes the game more realistic.

Today there are several popular physics engines in the world: Hawok, Newton Game Dynamics, Bullet Physics Library other. Most of all we are interested in NVIDIA PhysX- he really is "the best". Why? We'll find out now!

Engine development PhysX(translated from English. "Physics") Ageia company began to be engaged. Over time, the company was absorbed by the giant of the gaming world NVIDIA, as a result of which the engine was renamed to NVIDIA PhysX... At the moment, several hundred games can be accelerated using a physics engine from NVIDIA.

The main merit of the engine is the acceleration of graphics adapters and, consequently, the improvement of the picture and the appearance of additional effects. Once you launch PhysX, you will immediately feel the difference! Chasing a monster or an alien, water will pour from the pipes in a dark dungeon, pieces of paper will appear on wet concrete, the wind will whirl the leaves, and at night you can see smoke or fog. Without PhysX, these effects are scarce or even impossible. The advantages are obvious - such a gameplay will only play into the hands of avid gamers!

Unfortunately, this technology can only support NVIDIA graphics cards. But there is another reason many users are leaving the PhysX engine. It, oddly enough, lies in its advantages. The point is that a physical accelerator is not really an "accelerator" at all. The appearance of new effects (yes, they are beautiful, I admit it!) Often requires additional computer resources. The performance of the video card drops, and the game simply glitches. On the other hand, no technology, no super-duper processor or video card can provide you with all the realism of the picture: clods of dirt flying away when a shell explodes, nasty cobwebs and the crackle of tiles.

What kind of compromise do manufacturers offer? It certainly exists. Owners of machines of not the latest generation will have to slightly lower the resolution or add another good video adapter to the PC. In principle, the well-thought-out plot of the game more than compensates for all the shortcomings of the picture, the lack of a physics engine, etc.

Introduction Developers of modern games pay the most careful attention to the quality and detail of three-dimensional graphics, and sometimes, in the hope of riveting the player's attention to the screen with unprecedented special effects, this is done even to the detriment of the plot. However, in addition to graphics, a significant role in making the player more fully immersed in virtual reality other factors such as sound and realistic physical model... But even the simplest phenomena of the physical world that we observe from day to day, in fact, turn out to be extremely complex when it comes to their modeling and transfer to the virtual world. For example, simulating the flow of water or realistic scattering of shards of broken glass requires a lot of complex mathematical calculations - and, as a result, the corresponding processing power. Most modern games still use the resources of the system's central processor for this purpose, however, developers have long had a much more powerful computing device at their disposal, because any modern video adapter, in fact, is a set of many unified processors that can work in parallel.

I must say that the very idea of ​​taking the physical calculations off the shoulders of the CPU, and at the same time improving the quality of physical effects in games has been going on for more than one year - back in 2006, Ageia, which owned the rights to the physics engine called PhysX, attempted to release a new class coprocessors - accelerators of physical effects (Physics Processing Unit, PPU), for which its engineers developed a chip of the same name. The PhysX processor, made using a 130nm process technology, consisted of 125 million transistors and included a core general purpose that controlled the array of SIMD processors. Accordingly, on simple, but requiring massive parallel computing tasks, such as calculating the collision of many objects, PhysX obviously surpassed any CPU, which, in theory, made it possible for game developers to improve existing special effects, such as explosions, smoke or fire, so and use new, advanced effects - for example, simulate realistic behavior of fluids and tissues or create completely destructible environments. At one time, we were able to test one of the first accelerators of physical effects, Asus PhysX P1, but at that time the conclusions we made were very skeptical due to the weak support of the device from the software developers, although some of the effects were really impressive.

Everything depended only on the game developers, and it is quite possible that PPUs could eventually become a separate and fairly popular class of devices, however, on February 13, 2008, Ageia, along with all its developments, was acquired by Nvidia, which, instead of supporting a separate type of accelerators, naturally decided to endow its GPUs with similar capabilities. As a result, Ageia PhysX remained the first and only discrete physics accelerator in history - starting on August 15, 2008, it was replaced by Nvidia GeForce 8, 9 and 200 series GPUs. Support for original Ageia accelerators is still provided by Nvidia for operating Windows systems XP and Vista, however, for the rapidly gaining popularity Windows 7, it was discontinued.

I must say that the very nature of the computations required for calculating physical effects in a game almost ideally falls on the architecture of modern GPUs, whether it be developed by ATI or Nvidia. However, this naturally entails a problem: if you use the same core simultaneously for graphics and physical calculations, then both of these tasks will compete with each other for the computing power of the GPU, and as a result, a situation can easily arise when they will not be enough to provide acceptable performance in a scene that uses both complex graphics and advanced physics effects. You can solve this problem by installing a second graphics card in the system and assigning it as a PhysX accelerator, since the Nvidia drivers provide this possibility. However, installing an additional card is not always possible or desirable, and the dual-processor GeForce GTX 295 is rarely found on the market, is prohibitively expensive and has a monstrous level of power consumption. Why not complement a powerful and complex graphics engine with a simple and inexpensive but capable PPU? Apparently, it was approximately these considerations that guided the EVGA company, making a decision to create and release a unique video adapter equipped with a separate core for PhysX acceleration. In today's review, we will try to find out how successful and promising this enterprise can be called. Meet the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX Edition!

But do not forget that Nvidia is currently a technological outsider - if we talk about pure performance in games, it is obvious that at a comparable price, the competitor's solutions from the Radeon HD 5800 series look much more interesting, and this is especially true of the ATI Radeon HD 5850. But it lacks support for PhysX, and in games that use hardware acceleration of advanced physics effects, it can turn out to be more helpless than a baby, despite all its monstrous computing potential. As you know, Nvidia in every possible way protects access to the secrets and beauties of PhysX from encroachments on the part of the "red", although in theory nothing prevents the use of ATI Radeon HD graphics processors as PPU, just as it works in the case of processors Nvidia GeForce... Of course, by doing so, it also harms itself, because the exclusivity of any technology hinders its spread on the market, since developers are not interested in introducing innovations that only half of potential fans will be able to use. new game, but, unfortunately, the solution of this issue lies outside the limits of our competence. We will try to take a roundabout way and find out whether it is possible to endow AMD solutions with PhysX support, at least in the form of a separate PPU board installed in the system based on one of the Nvidia cores, after which we will compare the resulting tandem with the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX Edition. But let's start in order, by familiarizing our readers with the heroes of today's review.

EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX Edition Packaging & Included

The design of the boxes in which EVGA products are shipped has not changed for a very long time, and in our opinion, this is worthy of praise: firstly, the company has successfully managed to create a sense of continuity, and secondly, this design itself does not include any lurid elements, making it austere, elegant and attractive.

Before us is the same black box with a colored stripe at the top:

The logic behind the EVGA designers when choosing the color of the stripe for the packaging of a particular product is difficult to understand - for example, the boxes of various GeForce GTX 285 variants can use both red and orange stripes, but it seems that dark red is reserved for exclusive or dual-processor models. All versions of EVGA GeForce GTX 275 use a yellow-orange stripe, and CO-OP PhysX is no exception, although it is a very unusual version of the GeForce GTX 275. The quality of the packaging itself is traditionally high for EVGA products; Of course, if a warehouse loader hits the box, no protection, in principle, can save the fragile electronic contents, but still, from not too serious accidents that can happen to the card on the way to the counter, it is protected quite reliably.

In addition to the video adapter, the box contains the following set of related accessories:

DVI-I → D-Sub adapter
DVI-I → HDMI adapter
Adapter 2x6-pin PCIe → 1x8-pin PCIe
Adapter 2x4-pin PATA → 1x6-pin PCIe
Internal S / PDIF cable
Installation Guide
Quick Start Guide
CD with drivers
EVGA Mods Rigs Branded Sticker
Batman: Arkham Asylum Full Coupon

As you can see, everything is provided for the full operation of the product. A nice addition is the presence of the popular stealth shooter Batman: Arkham Asylum, although before enjoying it, the player will have to use the Steam network distribution system; however, at current internet speeds, this is not a major problem. This game is perfect as a bonus to the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX Edition, since it uses the actual PhysX physics engine. In theory, the presence of a dedicated PhysX / GPGPU processor on board the described product can improve performance in Batman: Arkham Asylum, as well as in other games using PhysX technology, but this statement needs practical verification.

In general, the graphics adapter EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX Edition is packed and equipped very worthy, there is simply nothing to complain about, especially if you do not forget that the described product, despite its unusualness, still does not belong to ultra-fast solutions the highest price range. EVGA evaluates this card at 350 dollars - this is the price indicated on the corresponding page of the company's website.

EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX Edition Design and Specifications

Externally, the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX Edition is practically no different from the single-board version of the GeForce GTX 295, which we described in the corresponding review. At least from the front to the back, you can still find small differences:

But even if we compare the rear view, it is obvious that the design printed circuit board The GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX is largely copied from the reference design of the GeForce GTX 295. This is a logical and sensible approach, which certainly allowed EVGA to save a lot of money when developing a unique novelty. Dismantling the cooling system was not difficult for us, except for the rather boring procedure of unscrewing a lot of screws. After dismantling, it became obvious that the similarities between the described EVGA card and the single-board version of the GeForce GTX 295 are much less than the differences, although here the EVGA developers tried to make the most of the existing design:

EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX (left) and Inno3D GeForce GTX 295 Platinum (right)



EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX (back) without the cooler

Only in the front part of the board, where instead of the usual G200b there is a G92b chip designed to play the role of a PhysX / GPGPU accelerator, a completely new wiring is used, but the power subsystem has undergone almost no changes in comparison with the similar system GeForce GTX 295: each processor is still draws power from its three-phase regulator, built on the basis of integrated assemblies Renesas R2J20651, controlled by the ADP3193A controller from Analog Devices.

The memory power subsystem has changed a little: the Renesas R2J20651 bundle with an unknown chip labeled "N12 VGF932" is responsible for the memory serving the main graphics processor.

But the power supply regulator of the "coprocessor" G92b is somewhat different - it uses conventional power MOS transistors and the uP6161 controller manufactured by uPI Semiconductor.

Other components of the card are powered by regulators using uP6161 and APW7142 chips

Like the GeForce GTX 295, the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX has two power connectors, one of which is eight-pin, although, in our opinion, in this case, two six-pin connectors could be easily dispensed with, because the G92b “coprocessor” consumes significantly smaller than the main core of the G200b. It is easy to bypass the check for connecting the corresponding power supply cable, however, if this is not done, when the 6-pin cable is connected to the 8-pin connector, the card does not start, indicating the presence of power problems via the LED on the mounting plate.

There is only one NVIO2 chip in this case, because, firstly, the G92b contains all the necessary logic inside itself, and secondly, it does not need this logic, since its tasks, limited by PhysX and CUDA acceleration, do not display an image on a monitor. enters at all. The usual nForce 200 chip is responsible for switching the PCI Express bus, although its marking differs from the one installed on the GeForce GTX 295: “NF200-SLI-A3” versus “NF200-P-SLI-A3”.

The main core, which acts as a GPU, is labeled "G200-105-B3"; the second number indicates that in the production of this model the same copies of the chip are used as for the production of regular versions of the GeForce GTX 275, while in the GeForce GTX 295 chips are used, marked as “G200-400 / 401- B3 ". This copy was produced on the 41st week of 2009 and operates at frequencies of 633/1296 MHz, that is, the frequency of the shader processors unit has been lowered for some unknown reason - for a regular GeForce GTX 275 it is, as you know, 1404 MHz. Alas, as a result, a slightly lower performance in games should be expected from the GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX, despite the presence of a physical coprocessor.

The memory bank serving the main core corresponds in its characteristics to the reference design of the GeForce GTX 275 - its volume is 896 MB, the access bus width is 448 bits, and the memory itself operates at a frequency of 1134 (2268) MHz, which provides throughput the entire subsystem at 127 GB / sec. On this side, the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX does not come as a surprise. In the described design, GDDR3 Hynix H5RS5223CFR-N2C chips with a capacity of 512 Mbit, designed for a frequency of 1200 (2400) MHz are used, so there is some room for further overclocking of the graphics memory.

The latter is indeed a regular G92b, manufactured using a 55nm process technology. The EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX Instance released in week 37 of 2009 is labeled "G92-421-B1". It really works at the same frequencies as the core of a regular GeForce GTS 250 - 738/1836 MHz. In our opinion, if the problem lies in the increased level of heat dissipation of the GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX, then the developer should have reduced the clock frequencies of the coprocessor, and not the main core, which is responsible for the 3D part, which, in turn, would have avoided a drop performance in games. Why EVGA engineers chose the more logical opposite path is anyone's guess, and how significant the drop in performance turned out to be, we will check.

It is curious that the "coprocessor" has one RBE section disabled, which is due to the volume of the local memory bank, which has been truncated from 512 to 384 MB; correspondingly, the access bus to it has also become narrower. Hynix H5RS5223CFR-N2C chips are also installed here. With 192-bit access at 1100 (2200) MHz, peak bandwidth is provided at 52.8 GB / s. Apparently, the EVGA development team felt that these characteristics are more than enough to service an auxiliary processor, which has nothing to do with 3D processing, and is primarily intended for performing PhysX calculations. Considering that the use of this video adapter as an accelerator for physical calculations is also called one of the possible options for using an inexpensive GeForce GT 220, the capabilities of the GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX coprocessor seem to us even redundant; however, we are going to test this assumption in practice.

As for the "means of communication with the outside world," their set of EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX is standard - two dual-link DVI-I ports supporting S / PDIF audio streaming to HDMI and two MIO connectors serving the SLI interface. In other words, if you add two regular GeForce GTX 275s to the described card, you can get a 3-way SLI system, in which the resources of all three G200b GPUs are used to accelerate 3D, and a dedicated G92b coprocessor is responsible for PhysX calculations, equipped with its own memory bank and not consuming resources from the main GPU array. Quite a tempting picture in theory, in practice today there are already much more productive solutions for demanding players, for example, the Radeon HD 5970. In addition, in practice, we were faced with the fact that the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX completely refused to work in paired with a GeForce GTX 275, being installed in the top PCIe x16 slot, and agreed to joint work in SLI mode, only being moved to the second, lower slot, while the first was occupied by the regular version of the GeForce GTX 275.

As for the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX cooling system, it is almost completely copied from the single-board version of the GeForce GTX 295 and provides two separate heatsinks, each of which cools its own core.

As practice has shown, such a system works quite quietly and efficiently, and the only drawback of this arrangement is that part of the hot air is not thrown outside the system case, but remains inside. In this case, the aforementioned drawback is aggravated by the fact that the main core of the G200b, which heats up more than the much less complex coprocessor G92b, is located at the back, that is, it will actively contribute to the temperature regime inside the case, making it more tense. A natural question arises - why did the engineers at EVGA not place the G200b chip in the front of the board in order to provide it with better conditions for cooling? We have no rational answer to it; however, EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX looks like a very strange and unusual solution without all these questions, which we know of no analogues. It remains only to find out what he is in business. But first, let's take a closer look at its future rival - the XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition.

XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition: packaging and contents

XFX packages are famous for their originality - what is the value of the box in the shape of the letter "X", once met in our practice! Of course, such an approach to design can be reprimanded for being overly extravagant to the detriment of storage convenience, but it certainly attracts the attention of a potential buyer. But this time, the packaging is not so extravagant, although not quite ordinary:

The box is narrow and long, while its dimensions are rather modest, so there should be no problems with transportation from the store. The design is not as austere as in the case of the EVGA product, but it still looks quite strict and solid, and the font used for the Black Edition evokes memories of the 80s disco style. Of the useful information, there is only an indication of the type and amount of video memory, and the mention of the presence of the Colin McRae: Dirt 2 car simulator in the kit, but only the aforementioned inscription testifies to a much more important feature of this product, factory overclocking. Inside there is another box made of thick black cardboard with the XFX logo on the roof, and in it, in turn, there is another flat box containing the accessories accompanying the video adapter, and only at the bottom, placed in an antistatic bag, rests the XFX Radeon HD itself 5850 Black Edition.

The list of accessories is as follows:

DVI-I → D-Sub adapter
2 adapters 2x4-pin PATA → 1x6-pin PCIe
CrossFire connecting bridge
Quick Installation Guide
User guide
CD with drivers
XFX Black Edition branded sticker
Door sign "I am Gaming, Do Not Disturb"
Colin McRae Full Version Coupon: Dirt 2

As a result, the XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition is equipped at least as good as the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX Edition, and in this case there is also a full version of one of the modern games. There is one more, more subtle similarity - in each case the game-gift was selected in such a way in order to demonstrate the advanced capabilities of EVGA and XFX products: in the first case it is PhysX support, and in the second - DirectX 11. However, we will repeat ourselves if the acceleration support is exclusive PhysX by Nvidia solutions was created artificially and has no technical reasons behind it, the support for DirectX 11 by the new generation of ATI Radeon HD graphics processors is really unique and is a consequence of their new, more advanced architecture.

Overall, the packaging and packaging of the XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition deserve as much praise as those of its opponent, the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX Edition. But if we talk about the price, then the advantage is again on the side of XFX, since even the "Black Variant" of the Radeon HD 5850 can be found on sale for less than $ 350, while the above-described GeForce GTX 275 model, created by EVGA, will have shell out at least $ 349. Thus, while the XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition has only one drawback - the lack of PhysX support. Perhaps we will be able to overcome it, but first, let's look at the map itself in detail.

XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition: design and specifications

This variant of the Radeon HD 5850 uses reference PCB and thermal design from Advanced Micro Devices Graphics; at the moment this is true for all other Radeon HD 5800 models on the market. This design was detailed in our Radeon HD 5850 review. The only difference between the XFX product is the branded sticker on the cooling system cover. The board itself is almost four centimeters shorter than that of the Radeon HD 5870, as already described in one of the previous reviews:

XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition (left) and ATI Radeon HD 5870 reference (right)

Thus, when buying this card, you don't have to worry about the length. The XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition fits seamlessly into most chassis except the most compact models. The power subsystem is made according to the "3 + 2" scheme, that is, the part responsible for powering the graphics core has one phase less than the analogous part of the Radeon HD 5870 circuit. overall, this is more than enough.

The heart of the GPU power regulator is the Volterra VT1165MF controller, known primarily for its software-controlled power supply voltage. In theory, this should save overclocking fans from the dangerous hardware alteration of the card, but in practice, the most gambling overclockers still combine both methods in order to squeeze out a couple of tens of megahertz and a couple of hundred 3DMark Vantage points from the unfortunate video adapter. Often, such experiments end in failure, but this does not stop true enthusiasts.

Unlike the Radeon HD 5870, only one VT1165MF controller is installed on the Radeon HD 5850; instead, in the area of ​​the CrossFireX connectors, there is a VT237WF chip that combines the control and power parts of the power supply stabilizer, which, apparently, is responsible for the power supply of the RV870 memory controller. And a pair of tiny chips from the same manufacturer, labeled VT243WF, are responsible for powering the memory itself. Also, the configuration and location of the power connectors are different: in this case, both connectors are six-pin, and they are located on the short side of the board, while on the Radeon HD 5870 they were installed on the upper, long side. This can make the process of connecting cables from the power supply less convenient if the card is already installed in the system.

The board contains eight Samsung K4G10325FE-HC04 microcircuits, that is, the same ones that are installed on the Radeon HD 5870. These GDDR5 chips with a capacity of 1 Gbit (32Mx32) are designed for a 1.5 V supply voltage and can operate at a frequency of 1250 (5000) MHz. The standard value for the Radeon HD 5850 is 1000 (4000) MHz, which gives the memory subsystem a bandwidth of 128 GB / sec. However, the described XFX product bears the title of "Black Edition" for a reason - the memory has already been overclocked by the company itself and operates at a frequency of 1125 (4500) MHz, which raises the peak bandwidth to 144 GB / s. The access bus width remains 256-bit, and the total volume of the local video memory bank is 1024 MB - the standard value today.

The marking of the graphics core tells us that this RV870 instance was made on the 39th week of last year, and, as usual, no more intelligible information can be extracted from it for an ordinary user. As expected for the Radeon HD 5850, 2 out of 20 RV870 stream processing cores are disabled, so the total number of active ALUs is 1440, and texture processors - 72, versus 1600 and 80 for the Radeon HD 5870. Like memory, the XFX graphics processor The Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition is overclocked quite seriously by the manufacturer: if the reference value of the GPU frequency for the Radeon HD 5850 is 725 MHz, then in this case the core operates at 765 MHz, which promises a rather solid increase in performance in games. However, taking into account the fact that in the production of the Radeon HD 5850 in any case, RV870 instances are used that have not passed frequency control and / or have defective blocks in their composition, there is no reason to hope for serious overclocking beyond the specified value.

Like its older brother, the Radeon HD 5870, the XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition can display images on three monitors at once, although one of them must have a DisplayPort interface, which reduces the practical value of this feature for most players who are theoretically interested in it. In addition to two DVI-I ports and one DisplayPort, the board also has a native HDMI connector, so if the card is connected to a plasma or LCD panel, an adapter is not required. Supports HDMI output of all currently available audio formats, including multi-channel formats high resolution which, today, is a unique opportunity family ATI Radeon HD 5000. Two "combs" of the CrossFireX interface allow up to four cards in multi-GPU mode, however, in practice, rarely does a motherboard allow you to install four double-height video adapters at once.

As for the cooling system, the XFX card is equipped with a reference cooler Radeon HD 5850, which is a smaller and slightly modified version of the cooler Radeon HD 5870:

The radiator has a smaller area and is equipped with only two heat pipes, compared to four in the Radeon HD 5870. In addition, the radiator itself, unlike the older single-processor model Radeon family HD 5800 is not part of the base and is not physically associated with it. Reliable thermal contact of the copper base of the heatsink with the GPU crystal is provided by a layer of dark gray thick thermal paste. Other elements requiring active heat dissipation are in contact with the aluminum frame by means of two types of thermal pads - three-layer elastic "sandwiches" filled with gel-like white paste in the case of memory chips and dry brittle greenish plates for power elements of the power supply system.

A radial fan FD9238H12S manufactured by NTK (HK) Limited is responsible for blowing off the radiator. With a supply voltage of 12 Volts, the current consumed by the fan is 0.8 Ampere, that is, the fan is quite powerful and, accordingly, very noisy at maximum speed. However, in this mode it will only work for extreme overclockers, but under normal conditions its speed is automatically regulated by the pulse-width modulation method, and, in general, the card does not behave too loudly. Note that, as in the case of the Radeon HD 5870, partitions in the profiling casing rotate part of the air flow 90 degrees so that it leaves the cooling system through the slots on the side of the card and, accordingly, enters the system case. The remainder is thrown out, as usual, through a series of slots in the mounting plate. Since the latter is much more densely populated than the previous generation ATI Radeon HD, and free space there is less on it, such a compromise is inevitable.

Overall, the XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition cooling system utilizes a robust, well-established, time-tested layout that has been proven to be effective many times in practice and is now used by both AMD and Nvidia. We do not have to fear that it will not cope with cooling or will be so noisy that it will be uncomfortable to be near a working system equipped with this video adapter, especially since this issue was clarified in one of the previous reviews. However, the XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition is overclocked quite substantially by the manufacturer, which means increased GPU and memory heat dissipation, so it's worth checking how well this system behaves in tougher conditions.

Power consumption, thermal conditions, noise and overclocking

An asymmetric dual-processor video adapter is encountered in our practice for the first time, and, of course, while investigating it, we could not pass by such an important characteristic as the level of power consumption in different modes... To carry out the necessary measurements, the following configuration of the test platform was used:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Processor (3 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB x 9, LGA775)
DFI LANParty UT ICFX3200-T2R / G (ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200) Motherboard
PC2-1066 memory (2x2 GB, 1066 MHz)
Power supply unit Enermax Liberty ELT620AWT (power 620 W)

CyberLink PowerDVD 9 Ultra / "Serenity" BD (1080p VC-1, 20 Mbps)
Crysis warhead
OCCT Perestroika 3.1.0

The heart of the new measurement platform for examining the electrical performance of graphics cards is the board detailed in the article “ Power consumption of computers: how many watts do you need?". Its use makes it possible to significantly simplify and automate the measurement process.

To create a load on the video adapter in various modes, the following tests were used:

CyberLink PowerDVD 9: FullScreen, Hardware Acceleration Enabled
Crysis Warhead: 1600x1200, FSAA 4x, DirectX 10 / Enthusiast, frost card
OCCT Perestroika GPU: 1600x1200, FullScreen, Shader Complexity 8

For each mode, with the exception of the OCCT limit load simulation, measurements were taken for 60 seconds; In order to avoid card damage due to overloading of power circuits, for the OCCT: GPU test, the test time was limited to 10 seconds.

Using this technique, the following data were obtained for EVGA and XFX cards:

EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX Edition clearly cannot be attributed to economical solutions: even in idle mode, this video adapter consumes twice as much power as a regular GeForce GTX 275. Both external power lines are loaded almost the same, which may mean that both cores are active - the main G200b and subsidiary G92b. Although the latter obviously has nothing to do in this mode, the operating system recognizes it as a graphics processor of a full-fledged GeForce GTS 250 and, accordingly, is on "full food content", which leads to such uneconomical indicators. When playing video, only the main core is clearly involved, while the current on the line supplying the auxiliary core remains practically unchanged. As a result, the maximum consumption level in this mode still exceeds 100 W, which cannot be called a good indicator, especially against the background of AMD / ATI solutions. In game mode, the peak power consumption of the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX matches that of the reference GeForce GTX 275 as Crysis Warhead does not have PhysX support. However, the six-pin connector is quite heavily loaded, which means that it is not intended to power exclusively the auxiliary processor. As for the OCCT: GPU test, as in the case of a regular GeForce GTX 275, the unique development of EVGA loads the card a little less than Crysis Warhead.

Unlike the EVGA card, the XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition takes full advantage of the advanced power-saving features of the ATI Radeon HD 5000 family. Yes, in idle mode it is slightly less economical than the Radeon HD 5870, but in absolute terms this means a difference of less than 1 Watts, along with a peak that does not even reach 17 watts! Compared to the 52W showcased by the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX Edition, this is a clear win. The victory of the “red” is also quite serious when playing high-definition video, where the advantage of XFX is more than two-fold, as well as in games - the comparison of the numbers “122” and “219” does not need any comments. I must say that under load in the synthetic test OCCT: the GPU from the XFX card managed to squeeze more than 150 watts, but even in this case, it turned out to be significantly more economical than the EVGA product, whose peak figure exceeded 200 watts. There is nothing to be done, such is the price to pay for the obsolescence of the technologies used in the latter. As for the nature of the load, in all cases the upper connector is loaded more than the lower one, and in the most severe case, the peak load on it is 90 watts, which seriously exceeds the recommended maximum of 75 watts. However, in real conditions such a load does not occur, and the 57.6 W we obtained in Crysis Warhead with a margin fit into the official standards. In general, there are no problems for concern - even not the most powerful power supply can easily cope with the power supply of the XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition, the main thing is that it itself is of high quality and provides good stability of output voltages.

In general, the described EVGA product looks no worse in terms of power consumption than a regular GeForce GTX 275, but only when it comes to games - in modes that do not load the card so much, it is significantly less economical. GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX is clearly not the best choice if you are concerned about the level of power consumption when playing video or working in Windows environment; against its background, even the outdated Radeon HD 4890 looks like an economical solution, and more new radeon The HD 5770 leaves no chance for an EVGA card. The XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition looks much nicer in this regard, consuming less than 170 W even under the most severe synthetic load, and less than 130 W in real games. Moreover, in 2D mode, it is so economical that the power consumption can simply be ignored.

With the temperature regime, the GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX is in perfect order: the main core, even under load, does not heat up above 75 degrees Celsius, and the numbers shown by the auxiliary are completely ridiculous. We can safely say that the choice of EVGA, which fell on the reference cooling system GeForce GTX 295, turned out to be correct. But the XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition disappointed a little - its graphics core warmed up to 80 degrees Celsius under load. However, the result is quite natural and is caused by a combination of a core overclocked by the manufacturer and a smaller radiator area in comparison with the Radeon HD 5870 cooling system.

A small study of the noise characteristics showed the following picture:

Alas, the situation with the noise level is not as good as with the temperatures, more precisely, the favorable temperature regime of the investigated product is provided due to the increased noise level, especially in 3D mode: with a background noise level of 37 dBA, at a distance of one meter from the operating system the sound level meter showed as much as 49 dBA! By ear, the card makes a much louder noise than the Radeon HD 4890, and this, to put it mildly, is a rather unflattering characteristic, even taking into account the use of a fan model, which is not the most successful in terms of noise characteristics, in the old ATI reference cooling systems. But in normal mode, the GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX is quiet, which, however, is a weak consolation, because the main purpose of this graphics adapter is games. In turn, the XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition in normal mode also behaves quietly, no louder than most modern cards. Under load, the noise level increases significantly and the card is clearly audible "by ear", but the XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition still works much quieter than the competitor. Unsurprisingly, although numerically the difference in noise level at 1 meter is only 3 dBA, this means a twofold difference in sound pressure power, since the decibel is a logarithmic unit. As a result, XFX is awarded another victory it deserves.

In terms of overclocking, the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX can overclock both the main core and the physical coprocessor, as well as each of the memory banks separately or together. Having made an attempt to overclock, we managed to get the graphics part of the card to work at 700/1515 MHz for the core and 1200 (2400) MHz for the memory, and the auxiliary subsystem worked steadily at 750/2000 MHz for the processor and 1150 (2300) MHz for the memory.

Quite a good result, although, in our opinion, only the graphic part makes sense to overclock - it is unlikely that PPU overclocking will give at least some visible result in real games. How the overclocked GeForce GTX 275 behaves, we have already found out several times; This is well known to our readers, so it was decided not to test the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX in overclocking mode, but instead push it toe-to-toe with other combinations that support PhysX hardware acceleration.

Overclocking the XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition turned out to be more difficult: with the help of the integrated Catalyst Control Center, we easily reached the ceiling, which was expressed in an increase from the factory 765 MHz to 775 MHz in GPU frequency, and there was no room for overclocking for memory at all. Other tools refused to work correctly with this card, and only using the AMD GPU Clock Tool did we successfully overclock the core to 900 MHz, and the memory to 1200 (4800) MHz.

A very good result, especially taking into account the use of RV870 crystals, not the best in terms of frequency potential, in the production of the Radeon HD 5850, however, one should not hope that any other XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition will overclock as well. One way or another, it's time to move on to practical testing of the heroes of today's review in games.

Test platform configuration and performance testing methodology

The gaming capabilities of EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX Edition and XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition were tested on a universal test platform with the following configuration:

Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition Processor (3.33 GHz, 6.4 GT / s QPI)
Cooler Scythe SCKTN-3000 "Katana 3"
Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme motherboard (Intel X58)
Memory Corsair XMS3-12800C9 (3x2 GB, 1333 MHz, 9-9-9-24, 2T)
Samsung Spinpoint F1 Hard Drive (1TB / 32MB SATA II)
Ultra X4 850W Modular Power Supply (850W)
Dell 3007WFP Monitor (30 ”Max Resolution [email protected] Hz)
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Nvidia GeForce 196.21 WHQL for Nvidia GeForce
ATI Catalyst 10.1 for ATI Radeon HD

ATI Catalyst and Nvidia GeForce drivers have been configured as follows:

ATI Catalyst:

Smoothvision HD: Anti-Aliasing: Use application settings / Box Filter
Catalyst A.I .: Standard
Mipmap Detail Level: High Quality
Wait for vertical refresh: Always Off
Enable Adaptive Anti-Aliasing: On / Quality

Nvidia GeForce:

Texture filtering - Quality: High quality
Texture filtering - Trilinear optimization: Off
Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization: Off
Threaded optimization: Auto
Vertical sync: Force off
Antialiasing - Gamma correction: On
Antialiasing - Transparency: Multisampling
Multi-GPU performance mode: NVIDIA recommended
Multi-display mixed-GPU acceleration: Multiple display performance mode
Set PhysX GPU acceleration: Enabled
Ambient Occlusion: Off
Other settings: default

The test package includes the following games and applications:

3D first-person shooters:

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Crysis warhead
Cryostasis
Dark void
Darkest of days
Far cry 2
Left 4 Dead 2
S.T.A.L.K.E.R .: Call of Pripyat
Wolfenstein

3D shooters with a third person view:

Batman: arkham asylum
Resident evil 5
Street fighter iv

RPG:

Fallout 3: Mothership Zeta

Simulators:

Colin McRae: Dirt 2
Tom Clancy "s H.A.W.X.

Strategies:

BattleForge
World in Conflict: Soviet Assault

Semi-synthetic tests:

Futuremark 3DMark Vantage

Each of the games included in the set of test software was tuned in such a way as to provide the highest possible level of detail, and, moreover, only the tools available in the game itself to any uninitiated user were used. This means a fundamental rejection of manual modification of configuration files, since an ordinary player is not required to be able to do this. For some games, exceptions were made, dictated by some or other considerations of necessity; each of these exceptions is mentioned separately in the corresponding section of the review. This time we tried to include in the set as many games as possible that use the PhysX physics engine and are able to use hardware accelerated physics effects.

The tests were carried out in resolutions of 1280x1024, 1680x1050, 1920x1200 and 2560x1600. In all cases, when it was justified, the standard 16x anisotropic filtering was supplemented by 4x MSAA anti-aliasing. Anti-aliasing was activated either by means of the game itself, or, in their absence, it was forced using the appropriate settings of the ATI Catalyst and Nvidia GeForce drivers. To obtain performance data, we used the tools built into the game with the obligatory recording of the original test videos, if possible. If the built-in testing tools allowed, data were recorded not only on the average, but also on the minimum performance. In all other cases, the Fraps 3.0.2 utility was used in manual mode with a three-fold test pass with fixing the minimum values ​​and then averaging the final result.

Since the purpose of this review is to find out the efficiency of using dedicated PhysX accelerators, we decided to compare the performance of the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX and XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition with the following solutions:

GeForce GTX 275 + GeForce GT 220
GeForce GTX 275 (PhysX acceleration support enabled)
GeForce GTX 275 (PhysX acceleration disabled)

Unfortunately, an interesting idea to additionally test the GeForce GTX 275 + Asus PhysX P1 bundle had to be abandoned: Nvidia, trying its best to push support for PhysX acceleration by its GPUs, decided to finally bury the discrete PPUs based on the original Ageia chip. Although these cards are still supported for Windows XP and Windows Vista, they are not officially planned for Windows 7, and this system has already become the de facto standard among fans of modern games. Using some tricks, you can install the drivers and enable the original PhysX accelerator in Windows 7, however, the method itself, although easily found by means of Google, is not obvious and extremely unintuitive. We recommend it only to those who have already paid money for one of the physical accelerators based on the Ageia processor, and do not want to throw them away, following the lead of Nvidia, persistently offering to make another purchase. Alas, even in case of success, one cannot count on the stable operation of such a bundle under Windows 7.

Users have not so many original Ageia PhysX accelerators in their hands, but the question of the possibility of pairing an ATI Radeon HD 5970, 5870 or 5850 with one of the inexpensive Nvidia cards as a physical effects accelerator is much more acute. At the moment, the solutions of the Radeon HD 5900 and HD 5800 series are significantly ahead of their rivals both in terms of speed and technical characteristics, and the only thing they lack is support for hardware acceleration PhysX. Moreover, as already mentioned, the use of this feature by the owners of ATI Radeon HD cards is not hindered by anything, except for the stubborn desire of Nvidia at all costs to preserve the exclusivity of the technology.

Enthusiasts have not hesitated to develop a method of bypassing the protection, with a tenacity worthy of the best application, implemented by Nvidia at the level of GeForce drivers. The method is quite simple and consists in the correct installation of the unofficial PhysX mod patch, which exists in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. The latest version, numbered 1.02, is universal, and you can download it from here

The procedure for installing and enabling PhysX for ATI Radeon HD cardholders is as follows:

Download latest version Nvidia GeForce drivers and the correct PhysX mod.
Remove already installed Nvidia GeForce / PhysX / Stereo drivers.
Install the downloaded version of the Nvidia GeForce drivers.
Restart the system at safe mode using the F8 key.
Install PhysX mod.
Restart the system. Summon context menu desktop right-click, select "Screen resolution", select "Detect". Then select the "gray" monitor icon corresponding to the Nvidia card installed in the system. Force the connection of a non-existent monitor ("Multiple screens: try to connect anyway"), then select the option to extend the desktop to this monitor.
Bring up the desktop context menu, select the NVIDIA Control Panel item, enable PhysX acceleration using the appropriate option in the Nvidia Control Panel.

Despite the seeming simplicity, the process of installing the patch is rather nontrivial and may not work the first time. In addition, the configuration of XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition + GeForce GT 220 as a PhysX accelerator in our case worked extremely unstable, which manifested itself in an unpredictable spontaneous disabling of PhysX acceleration after changing the resolution in a game, as well as a temporary loss of access to the ATI Catalyst Control Center settings. Nevertheless, we were able to successfully test this unusual tandem in all the games used in this review. It's time to acquaint our readers with the received numbers.

Game tests: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

The game does not use PhysX, and as a result, all solutions based on the GeForce GTX 275 behave the same. The dual-processor EVGA card shows a slightly lower result due to the reduced frequency of the shader unit, however, the lag is extremely small and in practice it is impossible to notice it. All Nvidia cards provide acceptable performance at resolutions up to 2560x1600 inclusive, while the two junior ATI Radeon HD models that took part in the tests, in the latter case, can no longer support the comfortable minimum indicators. But the XFX Radeon HD 5850 is quite naturally out of competition and provides excellent speed even at the highest resolution.

Game tests: Crysis Warhead

The CryEngine 2 engine, famous for its advanced shader special effects (and as a result, extremely hungry for GPU computational resources), also does not take advantage of PhysX capabilities. Therefore, in this case, disabling the corresponding option in the drivers leads, albeit to a small, but visible increase in performance, since the freed up computing power of the GPU begins to be used for calculating visual effects... But the situation with comfort is not the best for most of the test participants - with FSAA 4x enabled, even at 1280x1024 the minimum performance is too low. The XFX card is once again out of competition - at a price comparable to that of an EVGA solution, its performance is high enough for practical use, even if only in a resolution of 1280x1024.

Game tests: Cryostasis

In this case, the presence of hardware acceleration PhysX means the very ability to play Cryostasis, since disabling it instantly leads to a fatal drop in performance and turns the game into a slideshow. I must say that it is the presence of a dedicated coprocessor on board the EVGA card that allows it to achieve acceptable performance for the player, even if only in 1280x1024 resolution. An ordinary single GeForce GTX 275 is not capable of this - it clearly lacks computational resources, some of which have to be devoted to calculating physical effects, which leads to a drop in the minimum performance below an acceptable level.

However, if you just install an inexpensive GeForce GT 220 into the system and assign it the PhysX acceleration function, you can achieve excellent performance that allows you to play quite successfully even at 1920x1200! Despite the modest specifications core GT216, this hybrid solution is head and shoulders above the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX. Although it requires a second PCI Express x16 slot in the system, it is not uncommon these days. The XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition + GeForce GT 220 tandem looks even better, which is quite significantly ahead of the aforementioned bundle in all resolutions. True, the resolution of 2560x1600 is beyond his powers either.

Game Tests: Dark Void

If the system does not have or is disabled PhysX accelerators, the game does not allow for advanced physics effects, therefore testing was conducted only on systems with PhysX support. PhysX High mode was used.

The worst result was naturally demonstrated by a single GeForce GTX 275, which had to "torn" between graphics and physics, but both systems with discrete acceleration of physical effects performed well. At the same time, the EVGA solution, although it outstripped the GeForce GTX 275 + GT 220 in the minimum performance, was inferior to it in the average, especially in the 1920x1200 resolution. Perhaps the role was played by the larger amount of video memory available to the physical coprocessor in the latter case. In our opinion, it is the option with a separate GeForce GT 220 that is the most attractive, although it is somewhat less convenient to install due to the need to use a second PCI Express x16 slot. At 2560x1600, both systems did not cope with the task of providing a comfortable environment for the player. But the performance of the hybrid solution with the XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition as the main graphics accelerator is unprecedentedly high, and, in comparison with the performance of competitors, almost does not drop with increasing resolution. Alas, the stability of the work of such a bundle, as already mentioned, is far from ideal, otherwise there would be no price for it.

Game tests: Darkest of Days

Testing was carried out using built-in tools with maximum settings for graphics quality and physical effects.

At first glance, the situation repeats the one that could be observed in Cryostasis - the presence of a dedicated PPU provides a solid performance boost, which can mean the difference between the possibility and the impossibility of a comfortable game. Disabling PhysX acceleration causes the game to actually turn into a slideshow. But the use of a separate GeForce GT 220 as an accelerator of physical effects for some reason does not provide a visible gain in speed, with the exception of the 2560x1600 resolution, where the GeForce GTX 275 + GT 220 can catch up with the EVGA solution. Quite strange behavior against the background of other PhysX games, suggesting that Darkest of Days is either wasteful of PPU resources, or the advantage of EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX is due to more high frequency, on which the computing units of the physical coprocessor work.

Owners of AMD / ATI cards can either forget about this game altogether, or try to use the PhysX mod patch we described. In this case, the performance can be raised to acceptable values, albeit at the cost of losing stability, although even a system equipped with an XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition will be far from the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX performance. Nevertheless, the persistence of Nvidia in the desire to make PhysX an exclusive technology is surprising, because it is precisely as such that it is a priori doomed to marginality.

Game tests: Far Cry 2

The minimum performance of the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX is noticeably lower than that of the regular GeForce GTX 275. The PhysX coprocessor is not needed here, as in the vast majority of games, which is also confirmed by the results of the hybrid XFX tandem Radeon HD 5850 BE + GeForce GT 220. But the reduction in the shader unit frequency was clearly not in vain for the EVGA card, although it did not affect the level of subjective comfort, so you can still play even at 2560x1600.

Game tests: Left 4 Dead 2

The game-integrated testing tools are significantly more accurate than Fraps, but do not provide information on the minimum performance.

The gap between the EVGA card and the regular GeForce GTX 275 is minimal and does not affect the player's experience in any way. The performance is more than enough even for a 2560x1600 resolution. However, even the Radeon HD 5770 with its 128-bit memory bus can handle it, not to mention the much more powerful representatives of the Radeon HD 5800 family.

Game tests: S.T.A.L.K.E.R .: Call of Pripyat

This test uses the highest possible detail setting, but does not use anti-aliasing. For cards with the appropriate capabilities, the DX10.1 and DX11 modes are enabled.

The presence of an additional G92b core on board the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX does not give this product any advantages in this game either, but the reduced frequency of the computing part leads to a slight but natural decrease in performance. The developer company really should lower the coprocessor frequency, but keep or increase the clock speeds of the main graphics core.

As for the Radeon HD 5800 family, the average performance of its representatives is significantly higher, but the minimum disappointing - it is quite high only at a resolution of 1280x1024, and already at 1680x1050 a player who wants to play at maximum detail settings may encounter twitching in saturated with complex graphics and populated many opponents of the scenes.

Game tests: Wolfenstein

The game is tested in multiplayer mode using the OpenGL API. The integrated test tool does not display minimum performance information.

The above is true for Wolfenstein as well: the EVGA card lags slightly behind the reference model already at 1280x1024. Fortunately, it is really scanty, and the game itself is not too demanding, so in practice, no player will feel anything even at 2560x1600. Both models of the Radeon HD 5800 family presented in the review practically do not stand out from the overall picture.

Game tests: Batman: Arkham Asylum

Testing was carried out using built-in tools with maximum settings for graphics quality and physical effects.

I must say that of all PhysX-enabled games presented in this review, it is in Batman: Arkham Asylum that the latter is best seen with the naked eye. The advanced physics practically take the game to the next level, so it really makes sense to fork out for a dedicated PPU. The best result belongs to the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX, but the modest GeForce GT 220 paired with the usual GeForce GTX 275 literally steps on its heels, noticeably losing only in the minimum performance, but still allowing the use of a 2560x1600 resolution. Moreover, such a tandem does not make as much noise as the development of EVGA.

But the owners of ATI Radeon HD cards can only sigh and think about changing the platform, or try to get PhysX support by unofficial methods. If the latter succeeds, then using the XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition, you can get a good level of performance comparable to the above-mentioned tandem based on the GeForce GTX 275, albeit only in resolutions not exceeding 1920x1200. For some unknown reason, the speed of the hybrid tandem at 2560x1600 drops sharply below the acceptable level.

Game tests: Resident Evil 5

And again, the absence of the PhysX physics engine in the game means the uselessness of the corresponding accelerator, but again the negative effect of the reduced shader unit frequency of the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX graphics core is obvious. Fortunately, the effect is too insignificant to somehow interfere with the player, otherwise there would be more reason for criticism of the described product. However, we can recall the cost - having spent a comparable amount of money to purchase a Radeon HD 5850, you can get significantly higher performance, albeit unnecessary in this game.

Game Tests: Street Fighter IV

Another game without PhysX support - and another obvious result. Where a second GeForce GTX 295 processor could benefit from SLI performance gains, the G92b coprocessor onboard the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX is just a waste of power. Better for the same, or even less, to purchase one of the Radeon HD 5850 models, for example, offered by XFX.

Game tests: Fallout 3: Mothership Zeta

For this reason, the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX scores are slightly lower than those of the other G200b-based solutions presented in this review, but the performance level itself is high enough to use all currently widespread gaming resolutions, including the relatively rare 2560x1600. But this is not the merit of Nvidia or EVGA, but a consequence of the relatively modest requirements imposed by the game itself, because the modest Radeon HD 5770 can provide the same comfortable conditions for the player in Fallout 3, which, moreover, has much more modest appetites in terms of power consumption.

Game Tests: Colin McRae: Dirt 2

For cards supporting DirectX 11, the corresponding mode is used.

The game has an advanced physics engine, but it has nothing to do with PhysX, and therefore does not know how to use hardware acceleration. As a result, the presence of an EVGA card on board does not give it any advantages in Dirt 2, but the lower frequency of the shader unit leads to a rather noticeable lag behind the usual GeForce GTX 275 - at 2560x1600 the loss reaches 15%. The comparatively low performance of the ATI Radeon HD 5800 family should not be regarded as a failure - the speed is high enough even at 2560x1600, and in addition to this, a much more visually attractive DirectX 11 mode is used, which, in principle, is not supported by Nvidia solutions.

Game tests: Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.

For testing, the tools built into the game are used, which do not provide for fixing the minimum indicators. For solutions that support DirectX 10.1 capabilities, this is enabled.

The lag behind the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX from the usual version of the GeForce GTX 275 with reference frequencies is quite noticeable and at 2560x1600 it can reach 15%. However, in the latter case, the minimum performance is the same, and in general the indicators are high enough for practical use. It should be noted that at 2560x1600 resolution ATI Radeon HD 5800 solutions start to look more attractive than EVGA card, which has a price comparable to Radeon HD 5850. In other words, the XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition in this case is better suited to the owner of a 30 "monitor than the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX.

Game tests: BattleForge

For the Radeon HD 5x00 family, DirectX 11 support is used.

Once again, a picture is observed that is typical for any game that does not use the PhysX physics engine - any PPU that uses this standard is just a dead weight and does not affect performance in any way. Enabling or disabling PhysX acceleration on a single GeForce GTX 275 also has no visible effect. But with the XFX card the EVGA product clearly does not stand up to any competition - the average performance of the former is much higher, and if it were not for the low minimum indicators, one could speak of a sufficient level of comfort even at 2560x1600.

Game tests: World in Conflict: Soviet Assault

Like all games without PhysX support, World in Conflict does not respond to the presence of a physical coprocessor in the system. At low resolutions, a meager increase in average performance was recorded when PhysX acceleration was disabled for a single GeForce GTX 275, however, it could just as well be explained by random fluctuations or an error in our testing method. The XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition scores only marginally better in this game than the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX scores.

Semi-synthetic benchmarks: Futuremark 3DMark Vantage

To minimize CPU impact, 3DMark Vantage uses an “Extreme” profile that uses 1920x1200 resolution, 4x FSAA and anisotropic filtering. For the sake of completeness, the results of individual tests are taken over the entire resolution range.

Surprisingly, 3DMark Vantage practically did not react to the presence of an additional PPU in the system! The only effect that we were able to find was an increase in the result in the GPU test when PhysX support was forcibly disabled on a single GeForce GTX 275. None. interesting effects could not be found in individual tests either. Even the reduced shader clock on the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX had little to no effect on its results in this popular benchmark suite. The hybrid tandem XFX Radeon H 5850 Black Edition + GeForce GT 220 behaved in almost the same way.

EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX Edition: Pros and Cons

Advantages:

Outperforms Radeon HD 5770
Almost as good as GeForce GTX 285
Wide range of FSAA modes
Minimal FSAA performance impact
The presence of an additional core G92b, which can be used as a PhysX / CUDA coprocessor
Good overclocking potential
Batman: Arkham Asylum included

Disadvantages:

Lack of DirectX 11 support
Incomplete hardware support for VC-1 decoding
Lack of an integrated sound core
High energy consumption
High noise level
Narrow scope

XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition: pros and cons

Advantages:

GPU and memory frequencies increased by the manufacturer
Outperforms GeForce GTX 275 in most games
Wide range of FSAA modes
Industry leading edge-detect CFAA anti-aliasing
Industry leading anisotropic filtering performance
Support for output to three monitors
DirectX 11, Shader Model 5.0 and DirectCompute 11 support
Full hardware support for HD video decoding
High-quality post-processing and scaling of HD-video,
Integrated audio engine with support for HD audio formats
Low energy consumption
Low noise level
Good overclocking potential
Colin McRae: Dirt 2 included

Disadvantages:

Lack of support for PhysX acceleration

Conclusion

As a result of the study of the capabilities of the unique dual-processor video adapter EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX, we fully confirmed the earlier assumption that the presence of a dedicated accelerator of physical effects PhysX in the system can bring visible benefits and even be necessary for a comfortable game, but only in if the game itself also uses the appropriate physics engine. Otherwise, the additional G92b core installed on the EVGA card is simply idle, having no effect on performance - in fact, unlike the GeForce GTX 295, it cannot be used in SLI mode together with the main G200b core.

As you can see in the above pivot charts, in games that do not use PhysX, the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX is quite naturally inferior to the Nvidia reference card due to the reduced frequency of the shader domain. Why the development team of this solution took such a step is unclear to us, but, fortunately, its consequences were not fatal: the lag recorded in game tests is extremely insignificant and does not have a tangible effect on the degree of comfort, expressed exclusively in numbers. In other words, in all cases where a regular GeForce GTX 275 was able to provide the player with acceptable conditions, the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX coped with this task just as well. Comparing the unique EVGA card to the Radeon HD 5850 is out of the question - the latter is significantly faster in most modern games.

But in games like Cryostasis, Dark Void, Darkest of Days and Batman: arkham asylum, the described EVGA product showed itself from the best side, since all the worries of calculating physical effects were shifted to the shoulders of the G92b auxiliary processor, which made it possible for the main GPU to use all available computing resources exclusively for the schedule. The resulting winnings ranged from a modest 13 to a very impressive 70%, depending on the game and the resolution, and, moreover, in some cases it became the difference between the possibility and the impossibility of a comfortable game! However, firstly, there are still few PhysX games on the market, which is in no small part due to the exclusivity of this technology, and especially the efforts actively made by Nvidia to maintain this exclusivity. The last dubious "achievement" in this field is the rejection of support for PhysX accelerators based on the original Ageia processor in Windows 7. At the time of this writing, the list of games that benefit from the presence of a hardware accelerator PhysX in the system, published on the website nZone.com there were only 16 names, and, moreover, one of them, Nurien, is not a game at all in the full sense of the word, but one more, Unreal Tournament 3: Extreme Physics Mod, is only a modification of an existing game. Secondly, only in some cases does the use of PhysX effects really significantly improve the visual side of the game to seriously think about purchasing and using PPU; in our case it turned out to be a game Batman: arkham asylum... And finally, thirdly, if you are really seriously interested in one of the few PhysX games, you can achieve the desired effect by purchasing and installing an inexpensive Nvidia GeForce GT 220 video adapter, which can be found in retail for less than two thousand rubles... In some cases, such a bundle, consisting of GeForce GTX 275 and GeForce GT 220, can show itself in operation even more efficiently than EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX. In particular, when testing in Cryostasis it demonstrated a significantly higher level of minimum performance, making the gaming process comfortable in resolutions up to 1920x1200 inclusive, which the GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX could not do, despite the formally more powerful PPU. In addition, such a tandem was much quieter than the original EVGA product.

Moreover, if you apply the tricks described in this review, and cross the GeForce GT 220 with one of the representatives of the ATI Radeon HD 5800 family, you can get an even higher level of performance in games that take advantage of PhysX hardware acceleration, significantly higher than for any variant. GeForce GTX 275, performance in other games, plus full support for DirectX 11 capabilities, HDMI audio engine with support for high-definition formats, and much lower power consumption as a bonus. If it were not for the instability of such a hybrid tandem, it would easily have left out of work both the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX and any bundle of the form of GeForce GTX 275/285 + GeForce GT 220/240. Alas, the method we used, due to its non-triviality and stability problems, cannot be recommended to a mass player, and Nvidia itself, with perseverance worthy of a better application, continues to bury a generally good technology.

In general, EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX is a very interesting product, which has no analogues in our practice before, however, like any solution designed for the use of exclusive technologies, it is a niche one, which is why it is of significant interest for a relatively small category of buyers. In this case, this is exacerbated by the fact that the effect desired by the user is relatively easy to obtain in an alternative way, by purchasing any low-power Nvidia graphics card that supports operation in the physical effects accelerator mode, for example, the GeForce GT 220. And in the overwhelming majority of cases, EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX will behave no better and no worse than any other version of the GeForce GTX 275, therefore, serious attention to this unique video adapter should be paid only to those who certainly want to comfortably play games that use advanced PhysX capabilities, but do not have with funds for the purchase of a GeForce GTX 295 and / or an empty PCI Express x16 slot. In this case, the EVGA GeForce GTX 275 CO-OP PhysX may well become indispensable. But if your area of ​​interest does not include advanced PhysX games, then the XFX Radeon HD 5850 Black Edition is clearly a better value: faster, quieter, smaller, more economical, and more advanced than EVGA. In addition to all its advantages, this XFX product outperforms the regular Radeon HD 5850 due to its factory overclocking. And if you like to experiment, then at the cost of some effort it can be supplemented with support for PhysX, but we, as already mentioned, cannot vouch for the reliability and stability of such a system.

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Apparently, many owners of NVIDIA graphics cards have seen a lot of recommended additional utilities for installation on computers on the Internet, in addition to the required drivers. A software called PhysX is often referred to. What PhysX is, by and large, few ordinary users imagine, considering this application to be some kind of control program or something like a means of overclocking video cards. Let's try to figure out what it really is and what it is for.

What is PhysX?

First of all, it should be noted that PhysX is an additional engine that allows you to implement the processing and modeling of many physical phenomena in the form of three-dimensional computer models.

Very often, their use can be seen in modern computer games, which significantly increases the requirements for graphics accelerators. But this is only one side of the coin. If we talk about what PhysX is in terms of software that interacts with the interface of a video card, in fact, the similarity to the driver can be found the most direct, since the main application (without an SDK) is also installed as a discrete driver.

At the same time, in the program itself, you can find a special control panel with graphic characteristics of the installed adapter.

The main directions in modeling

If we consider what PhysX is in the sense of an environment for modeling physical phenomena (it’s not for nothing that its name is pronounced “physics”), there are several main directions in it that relate to the most accurate reproduction of the processes of interaction of environments or some objects with each other, again the same when creating computer games.

It is clear, however, that it is quite difficult to achieve realistic fluid behavior in a game by writing program code. Thus, in PhysX, there are three main directions in which modeling is performed:

• liquids;
• fabrics;
• solids.

With all this, one can observe the cross interaction of the above-presented components with each other, and not just the behavior of one of them.

Installing NVIDIA PhysX for Windows

Now a few words about the installation of this software product on computers running Windows, and a little about how necessary this application is for owners of NVIDIA graphics chips. Let's start with the latter. As it turns out, such a discrete driver is highly desirable for the owners of NVIDIA video cards, although it is not necessary. Using such an additional engine will allow you to unload a little CPU, which can be responsible for processing textures using hardware acceleration, and transfer some functions to the graphics core.

But for programmers who install this software along with the SDK, it can be a very significant help when creating computer games using a variety of modeling patterns, environment or object behavior to optimize the process.

Actually, the installation is very simple. It is necessary to download the necessary components from the official website, and then integrate them into the system, following the prompts of the built-in "Wizard".

Can PhysX be used with other graphics cards?

On the internet, some users and developers claim that this software can be used exclusively with NVIDIA graphics cards. This is not true. Back in 2008, someone named Eran Redith, based on the PhysX SDK, was able to launch and optimize hardware support for the Radeon 3870 series graphics accelerators, after which he was even asked to join the development team. According to other information, despite the presence of an open source code and the distribution of this software under the GNU license, it seems that NVIDIA has repeatedly stated that support for GPUs (graphic processors) from ATI is not included in its plans and will not have support. But here, too, there was a loophole. The fact is that many game developers for realistic simulation of game processes are invited to install a special APEX PhysX package, which allows designers and artists to perform necessary actions for drawing objects without the explicit participation of programmers.

Possible problems with installation, functionality and simplest troubleshooting methods

As for installation failures, most often they appear for some reason when trying to install PhysX in Windows 7 (mostly failures with numbers 1714 and 1316 appear), and it is precisely during a second installation. It is not known for certain why this happens, but some experts have found that this is mostly due to incorrect initial or repeated installation of NVIDIA drivers (or when replacing video cards, but with the PhysX package installed), for which even optimization programs do not always remove the corresponding entries in the system registry. In this situation, you will have to delete all driver libraries entirely and completely manually.

Sometimes you can recommend using the Driver Sweeper utility, highlighting the PhysX component (if you cannot reinstall it), and then analyzing it. All found objects must be deleted, then the system registry must be cleaned (again, by itself, by searching by the name of the applet - PhysX), and then the computer must be completely rebooted. And only after all the above steps, you can reinstall the PhysX package. In addition, it may very well be that the PhysX version itself does not comply operating system or graphics chip model. You also need to pay attention to this.

Problems