hi guys i'm not as rich as some of you here so i'm still only running a single card ..the 8800gt.. My question is should i enable or disable geforce physx ? Will i lose or gain anything by having it enabled ?
It depends on the game really. Even then it depends on which level in the game you are playing. Most of the time though you may lose a few frames while gaining a few physics effects. Nothing mind blowing. If you play specially made maps for physx though, you will get your fps cut in half or worse without a card dedicated to physx. That is unless you run a gtx280. Which you are not.
For some reason NVIDIA's Physx game page is showing up blank. Here's the cached version: Physx Games List There's nothing wrong with having an 8800GT, I still do and I'm consistently amazed at how well it performs with everything I throw at it (Crysis Warhead on High at 1920x1200, etc). But my experience with Physx games has been that since the GPU stream processors are doing the work of both calculations AND graphics, AND your VRAM is used as well, that you lose a few frames off the top in exchange for smooth physics calculations that don't affect framerate. The load is more or less constant, so you don't have big dips as soon as physics objects come on screen. I found this most readily apparent in UT3 and Warmonger. Even though your framerate was lower (still playable, like 50+ FPS), the physics collisions didn't seem to affect it no matter how many objects show up or collide. Usually they're the smoothest part of the game.
And if you disable physx, you will have only a tenth of your normal fps :3eyes:. (except when you turn the physx off, but then there are no advanced physics, which is the whole point of those maps :S)