eVGA releases GTX 275 Co-OP PhysX

As expected and rumoured earlier last week, eVGA now officially announced their GeForce GTX 275 Co-OP PhysX. This card takes a GTX 275 dedicated for graphics and then adds a GTS 250 dedicated for PhysX and combines them on one single card.

Recap: next to being being/having a GTX 275 the card thus has a GTS 250 embedded tied to 128MB of it's own memory.

press-release: the EVGA GTX 275 GPU with CUDA technology delivers astonishing gaming performance with dazzling gaming effects along with incredible GPU computing performance for everything from video transcoding to video and photo editing. Pair that with the raw PhysX power of the GTS 250 PPU and you have a card ready to take on any of the latest games with full power.

Performance

• NVIDIA GTX 275+GTS 250
• 633+738 MHz GPU
• 240+128 Processing Cores
• 400 MHz RAMDAC

Memory

• 1280 MB, 448+192 bit DDR3
• 2268+2200 MHz (effective)
• 127.0+52.8 GB/s Memory Bandwidth

NVIDIA PhysX technology adds an element of realism never before seen in gaming. With an EVGA GPU and PPU in your PC, experience dynamic PhysX effects like blazing explosions, reactive debris, realistic water, and lifelike characters.

This card gives you the ability to run SLI + PhysX, or 3-way SLI + PhysX on any motherboard that supports it.

More info here

So as much as I like the idea, effort and innovation .. why not just get a more high-end card and flick on PhysX ? Current math shows that it only takes 10%~20% of your shader capacity anyway with a (GT200 series GPU). It seems as a very complicated design to something that doesn't need to be at all as it already works fine embedded in Single-GPU solutions.

Same with video transcoding .. why do it over that GTS 250 when you have the power of GTX 275 at hand ? It just doesn't make a whole lotta sense to me personally.