Does SL Use Physx?

[Jennifer Boyle]

I just got a new Nvidia graphics card to replace my old Nvidia graphics card.  I understand that if I install both cards, the old one can be used for Physx processing, which, I presume, would help SL performance if SL uses Physx.  I don't know if it does.  Can someone tell me?

Thanks.

[Amras Martynov]

Short answer; no.

Elaborative: In SecondLife, all physics are handled serverside, which uses the Havok engine. As I understand it, nVidia's PhysX is a physics rendering app which some games (such as Warmonger: Downtown Destruction) utilise.

[Veritable Quandry]

What Amras said.  SecondLife does not use Physx.  For games that use it, a lower powered second card will enable using Physx without slowing down the main graphics unit (download the Batman Arkam Asylum demo to see how it looks).  Some programs can also use a second graphics card for processing (CUDA and OpenCL in the Nvidia drivers and DirectCompute in Windows 7).  Neither will help in SecondLife, but programs like Photoshop can get a boost as long as it as an 8000 series or later Nvidia card.

[Ariu Arai]

PhysX is a technology that allows for hardware acceleration of physics such as in games that support it. In Second Life, the only physics that your computer is in charge of processing are flexi prims such as what's used in hair and tails. Currently the Viewer does not support PhysX and there really isn't a need to since flexi prims are basic physics and aren't CPU demanding.

If you don't play any games that do not utilize PhysX, then it'd be best just to sell your old card.

[Nalates Urriah]

SL uses Havok 7.?... mostly it runs server side. Some parts of Havok are used in the viewer. For instance a part is used to calculate the convex hull for meshes prior to upload. The rest of it I'm pretty fuzzy about.

You could search around the web and find out whether keeping the card is a good idea. But, for SL it is not going to do much. A good nVidia 200 series card gives one about the best performance available.

Probably as important as the GPU is the speed of the CPU.

There are new things coming to SL and the render pipeline is changing. So, what we can do in 6 months may change a bit. Rendering in SL is consider to be rather inefficient. The new pipeline is supposed to be improving it.

[Jennifer Boyle]

Thanks for the helpful answers.