That leaves us with some more PhysX related investigation and discussion, and to be honest it couldn't be a better time to re-evaluate this particular functionality. For starters, we now have a brand-spanking new Core i7 setup, which gives us a more powerful CPU to put up against any GPU-based physics acceleration. Then there's the recent WHQL release of NVIDIA's GeForce 180 series drivers, which includes the ability to move all PhysX processing to a second discrete GPU (which doesn't need to be configured via SLI, meaning it can be used on any motherboard with two PCI Express 16x slots), leaving your primary graphics board free to perform normal 3D rendering.

With this in mind, we'll be making use of the contents of both GeForce Power Packs to check out the state of PhysX acceleration with NVIDIA's GeForce 180 series drivers, using both a GeForce GTX 260 graphics board in isolation, as well as paired with a slower (but more than capable for PhysX processing alone) GeForce 9600 GSO to run PhysX processing while the GeForce GTX 260 handles 3D rendering. Read on to see how these combinations fare when coupled with our Intel Core i7 940 system.

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