News Ageia outlines plans for PhysX

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/02...ans_for_physx/

[DougEdey]

Still no use for them IMHO.

Taken from Ageias hidden plans:

Plan for PhysX:
Sell lots of units
Make lots of money







That is all

[r4tch3t]

I think that this is a better option than using a GFX card to do it. Just think how much power 8800GTX SLI uses, not to mention R600 (which is rumored to be more power hungry) And they want us to use a third to do physics? I would prefer to go the PhysX or CPU route.

[TheSaladMan]

I think the entire concept of a PPU came too late, with multi core processors becoming more common these days there's just gonna be no point in having a dedicated PPU to do your physics when you'll be able to dedicate one or two of your CPU cores to it sooner or later.

[yakyb]

the only saving grace for these will be unreal tournament 3 if this does indeed use the ppu then i could see thsi working however if not it will fail

[Omnituens]

waste of a mobo slot tbh. already hard to come by.

[randosome]

now that their opening it up a bit with a SDK may finally allow this to take off

ATM there just is not enough support for PPU's and that is what will kill it, hopefully they will succeed eventually, if they increase support and drop prices i can see this working

[Tyinsar]

I thought this was dead already. Plus as others said, yes this is better than using the GPU but do multi-core systems really see any benefit?

[Nikumba]

Great product but not real DX support, if they had MS include their API into DirectX they would have a much larger customer base IMHO

Kimbie

[atanum141]

Originally Posted by r4tch3t

I think that this is a better option than using a GFX card to do it. Just think how much power 8800GTX SLI uses, not to mention R600 (which is rumored to be more power hungry) And they want us to use a third to do physics? I would prefer to go the PhysX or CPU route.

Na mate, the GFX card option is better as there would be lot less code and drivers added into the equation, also similar hardware allways works best together most of the time.

I prefer the idea of having two 8800GTX's in sli and using a old Geforce4 to do the physics calculations, same goes for the ATi camp. just using a old card would be enough power for any of the physics calculation's, that means more money for the firms but not at the rate Ageia is asking for its POS.

Funny thing is that theres a thread i made last year about the Ageia demo, and even without the card it would run the demo, i was on SktA last year and i had miniumal overheads when running in software mode, even i believe that Bit-Tech or someone did a test on games that used the card like GRAW and showed no improvement or extra "wow" factor other than the extra cost to the end user.

[Baz]

the rise of dual and quadcore CPUs has killed physx where it stood.

Why spend £100+ on a physx card when you have a 2md/3rd/4th CPU core sat idle?

Company of Heroes for instance, uses the 2nd core to handle its physics in multicore machines.

[Kipman725]

erm seen the physics in alan wake? thats using a quad core cpu not a phyisics card or special GPU drivers. The whole phyisics card idea and using graphics cards for phyisics (at least in games) is dead with the rise of multi core cpus.

[EQC]

For those of you who think an extra core on a CPU can do the physics that a PPU can do: you're very likely wrong. You can successfully argue that the physics YOU are looking for in games could be done on the CPU...but the PPU from Ageia is (according to the article I link below) capable of more than 10x more physics than a dual core CPU.

An extra CPU core is still a general-purpose piece of hardware that has tons of extra silicon that does very little to help physics calculations. A PPU is designed for physics the way a GPU is designed for graphics...think about that...how much graphics can your computer do if you take out the graphics card and force it to use the CPU? Even if your CPU has 4 cores and runs at 3GHz (almost 6 times faster than a high-end GPU), it still can't compete with a simple integrated GPU when doing graphics.

For more information, I've quoted one of my own previous posts (which referenced a previous post I made) here:

Originally Posted by EQC

for a little more info on what the physx chip can do relative to a high end cpu, you might check out this post I made a little while ago:

http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthrea...16#post1322716

I have no 1st hand knowledge...but my post mentions a toms-hardware article:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/07/...physx_failing/

...toms-hardware seems to show that using the physx chip for certain very intensive physics calculations (fabric and fluids) is many times better than using a dual core AMD Athlon FX-60. So, in that sense, even with a quad-core CPU, there might be some advantages to using a PPU because it's designed specifically for physics, while the CPU is designed more generally.

In a way, I think the PPU is good for physics the way a GPU is good for graphics -- it's custom built hardware to do 1 thing very well. You still can't run high-end games without a decent GPU, no matter how good your CPU is...I suspect that if games start including more physics, it could end up the same way for a PPU.

But, with multi-core cpus, there may eventually be the option of actually making one of those cores be a PPU/GPU (ie: not a general core, but a physics/graphics-only core)...in that case, you'd still actually have a PPU in there and get all its advantages, but it would be more like Intel/AMD using Ageia's structure as a component inside one of their CPU packages.

Additionally, as this bit-tech article mentions, there could be applications for a PPU in scientific physics-type computations -- for those of us interested in the physics, and not the gaming, a PPU is a better choice than a GPU for certain. And, if Tom's hardware is correct, then a PPU is much much better than a run-of-the-mill multi-core CPU by itself.

[randosome]

EQC hit the nail on the head

ATM games could use another core for physix, because they don't have the level of physix that a PPU can handle, once you start moving into the PPU realm the physics in the game rises sharply, and a CPU just cant handle it
However, if we ever get games that make real use of a PPU - i have no idea

[Tyinsar]

The problem is that superiority does not automatically mean success <insert VHS / Beta or such example>. Without a decent market-share and game / app support <insert chicken / egg quip> this will die / is dying. I think it would be great if this took off and games got way more realistic and this became a common and reasonably inexpensive part of every game computer - but until then I'm putting my money back in my pocket.

[DXR_13KE]

wasn't this already dead?

[Aankhen]

Originally Posted by atanum141

Funny thing is that theres a thread i made last year about the Ageia demo, and even without the card it would run the demo, i was on SktA last year and i had miniumal overheads when running in software mode, even i believe that Bit-Tech or someone did a test on games that used the card like GRAW and showed no improvement or extra "wow" factor other than the extra cost to the end user.

Funny thing is that Tom's Hardware did an article (perhaps other sites did too, TH is the one I remember offhand) where even they had to grudgingly admit that a CPU can't handle the same sort of physics that a PhysX can. For example, in software mode, liquids are completely ignored; they aren't even rendered. In addition, as soon as you see a hint of proper cloth physics, the game comes to a grinding halt.

PhysX is overpriced, and there aren't many reasons to buy it yet. But I don't believe a GPU or CPU can suffice in its place.

[DougEdey]

Sorry, but I've seen physics models produced that run at a few hundred FPS on a single core machine. These are engines produced by students and liquids and cloths render correctly.

[Cthippo]

I still believe that the PPU is the correct answer, but conversely I think Ageia arreived too early with a product the market is not yet ready for. I've long been a believer in discreet cards for seperate tasks on the principal that somthing designed to do just one thing does that thing better than somthing designed to do many things. Perhaps if they had done a better job on the demo, produced somthing that truly stressed the PPU and would bring a conventional computer to it's knees they might have a better chance.

[DougEdey]

But at £140 you're reaching 8800GTS territory (only £35 more) and I'm sure that the GTS could do the job better.