[SavannahMick]

I set Nvidia Control Panel to use my GTX470 for phsyx but it still uses cpu (i7-860) in alot of games like Bulletstorm and Shift 2 but uses gpu in games like Metro 2033. I know Metro uses alot of phsyx processing but I thought if you set it to gpu in NCP it would use gpu no matter what for physx. I guess I'm wrong or do I have a issue? Thanks Again!

 

[Ipwnnubletz]

Neither Bulletstorm or Shift 2 use Nvidia's PhysX engine, so the physics processing is done on the CPU. However, Metro 2033 uses the PhysX engine, so the drivers can offset the load onto your GPU.

 

[SavannahMick]

I see! Not all games that use physics use the Nvidia engine. Thanks!

 

[brettjv]

PhysX is widely used for doing physics effects, however, in the large majority of cases when it is used, it's strictly a software-based solution. Software-based physX will only run on the CPU. Another popular physics engine is Havoc, which also only runs on the CPU.

There's only a few games that are coded to actually run hardware physX (meaning the game can use an nV GPU to do physX calcs instead of the CPU). The most popular of these games are: Mafia 2, Batman AA, Mirror's Edge, Metro2033, Dark Void, Darkest of Days, and Sacred 2. In other words, there's not a lot of them.

If a game doesn't support hardware physX then a dedicated physX card will do absolutely nothing.

nVidia has a list of hardware-based physX games on their website somewhere ...