Aegia Physx PPU, anybody..... anybody?

[nes]

Right, right,

So, I'm coming upon a little bit of dinero (cash) and I'm thinking:lol: about going and picking one of these up. :offtopic:Also, I'm going to get a nice Roland Beat Machine that I've been checking out, on Ebay.

http://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/I/21NMD0B9JXL._SS500_.jpg

Now, do you guys think that it's pointless or do you think that there will be an increasing trend for game developers to adopt supporting function within games for the ageia physx PPU? I know that a few games do support it and the explosions are nice with the PPU taking some of load off of the GPU.

I have heard that the XBOX 360 even has some kind of native support for the Ageia engine but I'm not sure if that's a rumor or not. I can't help but be so enthusiastic when it comes to the idea of having a PPU! I know that Vanguard and GRAW 2 make use of the card. I would really like to see what kind of issues it fixes concerninig frame rate, especially when there are toons abound, on screen, with the MMO and I want to see what GRAW 2 looks like with the physx all hooked up.

The potential for a multicore, dx10, plus PPU comp is mind boggling, when you think about it, no?

[PP Mguire]

You should see the exstensive conversations that have been had over this piece of hardware. In short its not worth it and i had been prooved wrong. You can program ANY one of these new games to use the second (or third or 4th) core of your CPU to calculate Physx and it works better than this slow PCI card. I did it with GRAW2 and it looks the same.

[tomato]

Save your money for something else. Only a handful of games currently support it, and no developer is going to invest the R&D into such a small niche product.... at least, not at this time ;)

And, even if the 360 has one (I'm not sure that it does), a developer may spend the R&D to optimize it, but only because every 360 will have one under the hood.

[werty316]

At this time it is pointless spending any sort of money on a PhysX card; just ask yourself how many games take advantage of it? 2-4 if at that.

[nes]

PP Mguire, how do I program the games to use one of my cores?

[PP Mguire]

Somewhere on here Schwarz posted an article in a thread showing how to do it. It has to do with changing a # in the games settings file. Im pretty sure if you Google search a how to file for each game that supports Ageia Physics youll find a way.

[Frag Maniac]

Nes, with the graphics card you have you wouldn't notice all that much difference anyway. Your 8800GTX already supports physics stream processing via software layering. Sure it doesn't do it at quite the level of the Aegia but it does it for all games rather than a few.

[Acidtears33]

The whole premise of the physx card was wonderful.

Start to introduce games with much more realistic physics calculations rather then the approximations and have it not slow anything down.

The implementation has been very weak thus far.
If you have a ragdoll fall from a window and hit things on the way down it will deform and bounce in a certain fashion according to the laws of physics.

If you have the CPU run the algorithims then you take cycles away from the rest of the system. If you have this physx card then everything keeps sailing along.

The problem is that VISUALLY they would appear the same and it is nigh IMPOSSIBLE to sell people on something they can't see and barely feel.

All the games thus far have been including larger debris explosions as a showcase for the physx card which of course taxes the GPU and slows down the game making people wonder why they have the card in the first place.


It is still a great idea but until it is implemented correctly it will never work.

[nes]

Seems like people like the idea of the hardware but not the support. Should I pull a PS3 enthusiast and get one and just sit back and wait for the apps to fall in my lap?

I just hate to not be ready for the next level, you know?;-)

[Frag Maniac]

Keep in mind that Intel having signed a deal to purchase Havoc may mean that dedicated hardware physics processing will significantly improve and/or become more widespread. One of the problems currently is not many game developers are interested in writing for the physx cards being currently made.

With Intel in the works now we may see MB chipsets support it or even gaming specific models of CPUs. However, I have to think since so many MBs are including Pci Ex 1x slots now and Intel being the ones that brought Pci Ex to the market, that plug-in cards will continue to be the way it's implemented.

Perhaps all this merger will do is make hardware physics processing more commonly used and invested in having a big name like Intel behind it, but that may be all it will take for it to succeed.

[PP Mguire]

The thing is, is Ageia already has their card on the PCI-E 16x/8x slot. Only problem iwth all this is, is that nobody wants to pay for something when you cna just dedicate a second core to the game and it works better because your not lagged by a PCI bus (older cards) nor are you lagged by a Pentium 2 equivalent processor on a board with some RAM. And dont say you cant do that becasue you have a single core becasue if you can afford a PhysX card you can afford a dual core proccy ;)

Yes Schwarz, you completely changed my mind on all this :D

[Schwarz]

I kept away from the discussion cause i didn't want to get into all that again.
But its just that the idea is a great one I would have bought one already if games needed it but with Intel's core 2 Duos and quad cores, its not as appealing anymore...
So you tried to GRAW 2 hack PP ?
You probably didn't see any difference, the problem is that right now the in game physics are actually little extra particles that any processing unit could render.
If it were REAL physics with everything blowing up and falling then it would be a different story, but once again the problem is that the ageai physics cards isn't equiped with a powerfull processor to start with...

[PP Mguire]

Like i said a Pentium 2 equivalent with some ram. My 2.4ghz X2 core will do alot better ;) And since no games are truly multi-threaded i guess we can spare that extra core.

[tyle6]

Honestly guys, i would buy it LOL. only because it matches my ASUS en7600gt's though LOL i like matchy things.

http://images.techtree.com/ttimages/story/75530_acard.jpg (not my card but close enough lookin)

LOL, it really does match!!

[PP Mguire]

Id rather put that money down on a quad core. Then you have 2 PPUs at your disposal with another for the extra stuff the "multithreaded" games put it to use as.

[tyle6]

2 PPUS? i dont have any. where am i gettin the second?

[PP Mguire]

SImple. Quad core, game uses 2 cores and the spare are used for PPUs. Hypotheticaly speaking.