Nvidia GPU PhysX almost here

[Pottsey]

Having trouble reading this due to blocking at work. But from what I can gather GPU PhysX is almost here. At long last hardware physics for the masses. I just hope the GPU can run all the older and upcoming PPU games. I don’t want to see 3 sets of the PhysX API with each one only working on one device.

If the GPU can run older PPU games it will be interesting to do benchmarks between the GPU and PPU. It makes sense give GPU owners a back catalogue of PhysX games to play along with any new ones. I assume newer games will be for the GPU only but GPU PhysX is more likely to take off with a back catalogue of games. It’s just a shame ATI cannot use PhysX GPU. I hope PhysX takes off and ATI get permission to use it.

I wonder how many people who said PhysX PPU games are rubbish will suddenly like them now they run on the GPU. Assuming they run.

“We can’t really recall how long and how often true physics capability has been promised by various parties over the past three, four years. But there are more signs that stunning physics visualization in fact is becoming a reality and it appears that Nvidia is taking the lead for now. With Ageia on board, the company has a key technology and Manju Hegde, co-founder and former CEO of Ageia, confirmed that the port of Ageia’s technology to Nvidia’s CUDA is almost done.”

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/36915/135/

 

[RoachycaL]

Man, what cards would this be used on? The 9900 series?

 

[dazz25]

Apparently they've had some really promising results with there new drivers. Nvidia have said all 8 & 9 series users will be able to download the drivers when available.

Tempting me to go Nvidia but i'll wait till the drivers are released and reviewed first!

 

[gt_junkie]

Does this mean you could use an extre 8/9 series GPU alongside the graphics GPU for physics only?

Also, if you could do that will it work on an intel (p35/p45/x38/x48) crossfired chipset?

Either way this is physics i'd happily invest in.

gt

 

[Schnippzle]

Who else but Pottsey would have posted this

 

[LoadsaMoney]

yep i rekon old games can be ran on old GPU's with ease, even new games can, as we've seen for nigh on the past 2x years.

 

[Pottsey]

"extre 8/9 series GPU alongside the graphics GPU for physics only?"
I am hopeing those of us with 1 GPU can use it for both Physics and GPU work. But who knows how its going to work. One can hope. I dont see PhysX taking off if you need a 2nd GPU.

 

[Greebo]

Okay, from what I can make out it runs on 8 series upwards and basically is just an algorithm for the gpu to carry out the physics calculation.

So if we have a game now which is struggling to run at fast framerates eg Crysis, once you load physics calculations onto the gpu, your framerate will just descrease. The gpu can't do both at the same time if all the stream processors are been used on the gfx as the algoithm just uses the stream processors.

Plus from months ago I saw an article which suggested than was the exact reason tri pci-e boards where coming out - say you have one or two 9800 GTX cards in SLI and you put say a third 8800 GTS card in to handle the physics - why is this any different to buying a dedicated physics card now?

It just means that with the backing of Nvidia it is more likely we will see games with physics.

It will sell more cards for Nvidia or reduce the likelhood of you selling your old card when you upgrade - eg I just bought the new 9900 GTX but I'm keeping my 8800 GTS for the physics. That will keep more 2nd hand cards off the market and hence they will sell more new ones.

 

[NickK]

So how many people will buy an additional GPUs to play a game? Especially with the currently minute improvement to games to anyone with a normal sized screen.

Basically they've had to find an additional market. No getting away from it it's faster but the statement "focuses on physics for fun and entertainment" removes any scientific application leaving just gaming..

So perhaps the next Xbox666 will have muiltiple GPUs..

Perhaps I'm missing the longer term vision here..

 

[Greebo]

"extre 8/9 series GPU alongside the graphics GPU for physics only?"
I am hopeing those of us with 1 GPU can use it for both Physics and GPU work. But who knows how its going to work. One can hope. I dont see PhysX taking off if you need a 2nd GPU.

Yep you will need a second card if you want to keep your framerates up. There are only so many stream processors and that is what is been used for the physics.

 

[LoadsaMoney]

yeah i rekon its gona mean a second card, i mean come on, this is Nvidia were talking about here, they have a chance here to flog you a second card for Physics, they'll take it KERCHINGGGGG £££££££.

Thats probably why they wont do the mix and match cards for SLi like Crossfire, as they don't want you to spend £300+ on 1x card, and only £100 on another, they want you spending £300+ per card, as its more ££££ for them.

 

[Dicehunter]

I think that ppu's should be standalone not intergrated in to gpus, i can see this going horribly wrong, if it doesnt then great, but its nvidia so i think theyl just sell the ppu seperatly and stick an nvidia logo on it.

 

[willhub]

I think that ppu's should be standalone not intergrated in to gpus, i can see this going horribly wrong, if it doesnt then great, but its nvidia so i think theyl just sell the ppu seperatly and stick an nvidia logo on it.

They wont, they currently have a PPU (Ageia PhysX)

 

[Pottsey]

“Yep you will need a second card if you want to keep your framerates up. There are only so many stream processors and that is what is been used for the physics.”
Surly that depends on the game. Freeing up the CPU and moving physics off it will in some games give a bigger FPS boost then the drop from running physics on the GPU.

 

[Dicehunter]

Im just saying as nvidia are sly ive had bad experiences with them in the past and i just dont like them, i wouldnt have an nvidia card if someone payed me a million and then bought the card for me, i think ageia should have held back and not sold out to a faceless corporation like nvidia.

 

[Lightnix]

I see it like this, in some games, the 9600 GT is barely behind the 8800 GT, despite having almost half the shader processors, you could use those extra 48 mostly unused shader processors for physics on the 8800 GT.

 

[bee]

While Intel's Nehalem demo had 50,000-60,000 particles and ran at 15-20 fps (without a GPU), the particle demo on a GeForce 9800 card resulted in 300 fps. If the very likely event that Nvidia's next-gen parts (G100: GT100/200) will double their shader units, this number could top 600 fps, meaning that Nehalem at 2.53 GHz is lagging 20-40x behind 2006/2007/2008 high-end GPU hardware. However, you can't ignore the fact that Nehalem in fact can run physics.

There was also a demonstration of cloth: A quad-core Intel Core 2 Extreme processor was working in 12 fps, while a GeForce 8800 GTS board resulted came in at 200 fps. Former Ageia employees did not compare it to Ageia's own PhysX card, but if we remember correctly, that demo ran at 150-180 fps on an Ageia card.

One software application that was shown off during the Analyst Day was RapiHD – a video encoder designed to run on the GPU using CUDA. Sam Blackman, CEO of Elemental Technologies, the company behind RapiHD, showed a GeForce 8800M GTS running an h.264 video encode completing around 10 times faster than a quad-core Intel CPU. The software will be available in August or September and will be price competitive with current video encoders – expect it to be around $50 US for the standard version.

Jen-Hsun hailed this as the first killer application for CUDA before going onto talk about the era of heterogeneous computing. He wants video encoding to be instantaneous and the good thing for Nvidia is that Blackman said that RapiHD scales linearly across the number of stream processors available, meaning you can expect to see double the performance if there is twice the processing power available. “If you’ve got 128 stream processors, it’ll run twice as fast as if you’ve got 64 stream processors [in your system],” he said.

sure a few people on here will try and put a negative spin on this

 

[Greebo]

I think that ppu's should be standalone not intergrated in to gpus, i can see this going horribly wrong, if it doesnt then great, but its nvidia so i think theyl just sell the ppu seperatly and stick an nvidia logo on it.

Don't need to. As the article says they have just written the algorithm so physics works on any gpu from 8 series upwards. Call it a driver tweak if you want.

So you will get it on your 8800 GTS card once they release the driver.

How much of an impact it will have on framerates remain to be seen. On a game without physics enabled and getting 100 fps then dropping to 60 fps with physics enabled will be acceptable. On a game you were only getting 30fps and then it drops to 20fps you won't be so happy.

Perhaps with their next gen and loads of stream processors it will come into it's own and the gpu will be powerful enough to do the normal gfx and the physics at the same time. For everybody else it will be a choice or stick in another card.

A bit like now. If your card is powerful enough and the game doesn;t demand too much, you can switch on loads of AA. The rest of us have a choice.

 

[Andeh]

the idea of an expansion card to simply help render a small part of a game, a little better, has always been utterly ludicrous to me. But as long as there are people with more money than brains, then silly ideas like this, will always be on the horizon

 

[LoadsaMoney]

Yes why not give it a neagtive spin, all that is great don't get me wrong, but they are going to want you to get another gfx card to do it, as as i said above, this is Nvidia here, no one can tell me they are just going to enable the physics in a future driver, a driver that you do not have to pay for, so your effectively going to get physics for nothing if you already have an 8/9 series etc.. card, a card that you could have bought nigh on 2 years ago, yeah right.

Im not saying that it wont be enabled so it will run on your single 8/9 series card you already have, but come on, it will run like ******, so you end up getting a second card, its gona be yes, you can use it on a single card you already have, but for best results GET YER *******WALLETS OOT!!!.