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PhysX Card

  • 30-04-2006 12:27pm
    #1
    Robertr
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 729 ✭✭✭


    Anyone have one of these? Are the any use? Where you can get one?


Comments

  • #2
    8T8
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,757 ✭✭✭8T8


    Robertr wrote:
    Anyone have one of these?

    I dont think so they are not available quite yet.
    Robertr wrote:
    Are the any use?

    Yes if paired with a game that makes use of it.*
    Robertr wrote:
    Where you can get one?

    OcUK are so far the only joint selling them in this neck of the woods. At the moment pre-orders sometime May 06 they are saying is launch time.

    *This is a wide ranging topic to cover with a lot questions but to keep it concise the number of games making use of PhysX PPU's is small and mostly for visual effects. There are some games out there in development designed to take full advantage of it but it remains to be seen if this sort of thing will take off & unless there are several killer apps (read games) in the near future then it probably wont.

    Whether such killer app PhysX games will appear is also another matter though reportably Ageia are practically giving away their PhysX SDK software based physics engine to developers on condition you support their hardware based physics accelerator so who knows if it will succeed…

    Personally I cant see it happening unless those PhysX PPUs get really cheap & have games worth getting them for.


  • #3
    Richard Dower
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 21,634 ✭✭✭✭Richard Dower


    The Asus card will have 256meg of RAM onboard.


  • #4
    Dooom
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,808 ✭✭✭Dooom


    Someone on the OcUK forums got one, and tested it out in the GRAW demo. Apparently it looked only marginally better, and reduced his fps - although that's most likely down to the extra effects thrown off due to the PPU.

    So, 200 bucks for a PPU, plus 800 for two graphics cards. Sorted! I'll have 7 please.

    On another note, a lot of games coming out are supporting this (UT2007, SC Double Agent etc.), so it'll get better in time.


  • #5
    8T8
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,757 ✭✭✭8T8


    There is an underwhelming video of GRAW and PhysX in action here, even with big names like UT2007 it depends on what they do with it and whether it will make it worth while.

    Also Havok's competing solution by offloading some of it to the GPU at first sounds like a good idea but the catch is that it is limited to effects only, you cant interact with it. Think GRAW above for effects only & for interaction look at the CellFactor video link I posted above.

    Still an advantage of dual GPU's with one for physics acceleration at least in games that don't support HavokFX you can make use of the two GPU's for accelerating your graphics. Whereas as a PPU would be sitting pretty twiddling its thumbs in games that don't support it.


  • #6
    DemonOfTheFall
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,279 ✭✭✭DemonOfTheFall


    The Cellfactor video of the PPU in action looks pretty amazing though....

    I won't be buying one until there are several decent games out that make use of it. Or some decent use for it at least. GRAW sounds like the worst reason ever to buy a 200 euro card.


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  • #7
    projectmayhem
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 9,480 ✭✭✭projectmayhem


    it's early days for it yet and it does seem to be a popular solution with some devs. i'd consider it if it made a big difference in games. right now the only game listed to make use of it that i care about is UT2007... and even then, it'll probably run fine on my machine anyway without spending €200+ on a physics card.

    i think the one benefit of the card's cost is that they don't plan on releasing a new one every year like GPU's. instead they'll do incremental software updates for the drivers to improve its performance

    also, i was reading up and it will be a PCI bus card, rather then PCI-e. the explination given was that PCI-e is "too fast" for it... that doesn't really register for me at all... does it even make sense? (not that i'm complaining - i've no free PCI-e slots anyway :D)


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