2K Games, EA hop on the PhysX bandwagon

[VeNT]

drunkenmaster said "Pottsey, I don't really want to get into it again but, the vid you linked to unsurprisingly says, TECHDEMO."
It's only a techdemo in that it's a scripted demo from the full game. Nvidia described it as a sneak peak first look at the game. The devs said "Cryostasis, the game that probably has more PhysX effects than any other project coming this Christmas or before it"
http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_cryostasis_videos.html skip to just past halfway though they talk about PhysX a lot and some of the stuff sounds very good if they pull it off decently.

As for "You can't blindly say physx does it better, you can only say physx is entirely focusing on those effects while the other companies haven't and aren't."
Many people have tried to do the PhysX effects in the Source engine that PhysX does and its always been much worse in Source. The cloth turned the fps down to sub 1fps, the liquids look really poor and killed FPS. Everything we have says the effects cannot be done decently on the CPU. Just look at all the YouTube videos of it failing on the CPU as its too slow to be useable.

Onto Mirror's edge you said "IE Mirror's edge, spent all the time on a few banners that ripple in the wind, and forgot, gameplay, story, playability, game length and basic collision detection that makes jumping a joke in many parts of the game, and jumping animation, in a game based entirely on jumping."
Load of rubbish, Mirror's edge didn't spend all the time on a few banners that ripple and forgot the story because of it. The game was just about complete and ready to ship when they suddenly decided to delay a month or two to add PhysX GPU effects into it. If the game has no game play or problems it's not because they spent too long on extra PhysX stuff. The point when PhysX was added, the game had already been though development and was ready to ship.

As for your comments on "The problem is every extra has to be programed, the physics and the API might be there..." there is so much wrong I don't even know where to start. Someone else can cover that one.

will you never give up? or learn to quote properly?

 

[Teki187]

Great news, cant wait for better use and implementation.

Loving the whines from the ATI crowd.

Its time for people to accept that the further games progress the more physics will be needed.

 

[layte]

Great news, cant wait for better use and implementation.

Loving the whines from the ATI crowd.

Its time for people to accept that the further games progress the more physics will be needed.

Perhaps you should bother to read other peoples posts and understand the arguments before posting tripe.

Unless you are happy for a standard to be dictated by a company such as Nvidia (ATI, Intel or anyone else for that matter)? If so I have a £500 GTX280 you might be interested in purchasing, which is exactly where we will be if we lose the cut throat competition that currently exists.

I for one am not arguing against hardware physics, just for the need for an open standard that benefits everyone including the consumer, not just a single company.

 

[queamin]

Perhaps you should bother to read other peoples posts and understand the arguments before posting tripe.

Unless you are happy for a standard to be dictated by a company such as Nvidia (ATI, Intel or anyone else for that matter)? If so I have a £500 GTX280 you might be interested in purchasing, which is exactly where we will be if we lose the cut throat competition that currently exists.

I for one am not arguing against hardware physics, just for the need for an open standard that benefits everyone including the consumer, not just a single company.

I agree if nvidia get a big lead again like they did with the 8800 you end up paying through the nose for your cards never mind nvidia sitting back and doing refresh after refresh and renaming XYZ.
People soon forget you would be paying around £100 pound more at least if ati never brought out the 48**.
If amd/ati went under, welcome to the £500 card and who knows what the intel cpu's would cost.

edit:- why would those company's spend money on R&D if there is little or no competition.

 

[mmj_uk]

I for one am not arguing against hardware physics, just for the need for an open standard that benefits everyone including the consumer, not just a single company.

There isn't an open standard though, NVidia are the only company bringing something to the table. AMD have licensed Intel's x86 technology for years, it didn't stop them dominating during the Athlon era though.

I suspect the reason AMD don't want to license Physx for ATI cards is more down to the fact that Physx GPU technology will hurt the future CPU market, how does having to buy a 16 core CPU for physics benefit the consumer? AMD would prefer a software solution which sells newer CPU's.

It's not about an "open standard" at all, it's about AMD trying to see off a threat to their future profits.

 

[Rroff]

Never mind you'd need a CPU like a Q6600 with over 50 cores to keep up with a 260GTX for physics processing... even by the time we have 32 cores GPUs will be massively ahead on parallel processing.

 

[Teki187]

But isn't it ATI faults for not being able to produce the equipment to match that of Nvidia? Plus be on the scale to compete with them.

That alone is the reason why Nvidia have such a hold over the market, they produce equipment faster, better and stronger then that of ATI and it takes ATI too long to match the nvidia equipment like for like and at that point nvidia has produced another graphics card.

Same thing kind of goes for AMD, great pre C2D era, now there just rubbish.

So should AMD dictate the future of the processor market or should intel? No, because why would we want the processor market to take on the attributes of a weaker company?

All the graphics industry needs is a company to step in and produce better equipment. Until the market gets more diversity it'll always be intel/nvidia for high performance and AMD/ATI for budget.

 

[layte]

There isn't an open standard though, NVidia are the only company bringing something to the table. AMD have licensed Intel's x86 technology for years, it didn't stop them dominating during the Athlon era though.

I suspect the reason AMD don't want to license Physx for ATI cards is more down to the fact that Physx GPU technology will hurt the future CPU market, how does having to buy a 16 core CPU for physics benefit the consumer? AMD would prefer a software solution which sells newer CPU's.

It's not about an "open standard" at all, it's about AMD trying to see off a threat to their future profits.

AMD are allowed unfettered access to the architecture due to a very old agreement between the two companies.

Plus your comment about PhysX hurting CPU sales is comical, do you really think that? Do you honestly think the future of companies such as Intel and AMD depends on them selling 16 core processors for physics calculations?

 

[Final8y]

There isn't an open standard though, NVidia are the only company bringing something to the table. AMD have licensed Intel's x86 technology for years, it didn't stop them dominating during the Athlon era though.

I suspect the reason AMD don't want to license Physx for ATI cards is more down to the fact that Physx GPU technology will hurt the future CPU market, how does having to buy a 16 core CPU for physics benefit the consumer? AMD would prefer a software solution which sells newer CPU's.

In fact it did stop AMD dominating during the Athlon era.
AMD held the performance per Ghz crown in that time that only Enthusiasts cared about & not market share in way.

And No, Physx GPU technology will not hurt the future CPU market as it can not replace all the functions of the CPU & uses far to much power & space.

 

[Rroff]

I wouldn't say AMD's CPU are rubbish - they are fairly solid overall - they just can't touch C2D for overclocking, stability (which is outstanding tbh) and performance.

The 4870 is also a great high end GPU (ignoring a few issues - you can't dispute its overall performance) - as they obviously have no answer to physx they need to get on the bandwagon, swallow their pride and do something for everyone. Currently they are in a position to negotiate this to their own terms and due to the way physx works theres not much scope for nVidia playing dirty if they open up the development process as they claim they want to. Leave it too long and should physx take a strong position in the market they will have to go cap in hand to nVidia relatively speaking.

 

[mmj_uk]

Plus your comment about PhysX hurting CPU sales is comical, do you really think that? Do you honestly think the future of companies such as Intel and AMD depends on them selling 16 core processors for physics calculations?

People will buy whatever gives them a higher frame-rate in games.

Like Rroff says a 50 core CPU is probably equivalent to a decent GPU today, so we'll be forced to upgrade our CPU's for years to come because as physics gets more complex it will continually require more processing, a general purpose CPU just isn't cut out for physics.

 

[Final8y]

But isn't it ATI faults for not being able to produce the equipment to match that of Nvidia? Plus be on the scale to compete with them.

That alone is the reason why Nvidia have such a hold over the market, they produce equipment faster, better and stronger then that of ATI and it takes ATI too long to match the nvidia equipment like for like and at that point nvidia has produced another graphics card.

Same thing kind of goes for AMD, great pre C2D era, now there just rubbish.

So should AMD dictate the future of the processor market or should intel? No, because why would we want the processor market to take on the attributes of a weaker company?

All the graphics industry needs is a company to step in and produce better equipment. Until the market gets more diversity it'll always be intel/nvidia for high performance and AMD/ATI for budget.

This is an API not a hardware hard-wired feature standard like DX.
So the equipment does not come into it as ATI has more hardware features than NV.

 

[layte]

But isn't it ATI faults for not being able to produce the equipment to match that of Nvidia? Plus be on the scale to compete with them.

That alone is the reason why Nvidia have such a hold over the market, they produce equipment faster, better and stronger then that of ATI and it takes ATI too long to match the nvidia equipment like for like and at that point nvidia has produced another graphics card.

Same thing kind of goes for AMD, great pre C2D era, now there just rubbish.

So should AMD dictate the future of the processor market or should intel? No, because why would we want the processor market to take on the attributes of a weaker company?

All the graphics industry needs is a company to step in and produce better equipment. Until the market gets more diversity it'll always be intel/nvidia for high performance and AMD/ATI for budget.

The fastest current single slot GFX card money can buy right now is ATI, also AMD dominate in the multi socket server market, heck the fastest super computer in the world currently uses almost 7000 Opteron processors along with improved versions of the Cell. Whilst the second fastest uses Opteron processors and nothing else. By your crude logic that makes them superior to Intel.

 

[Final8y]

People will buy whatever gives them a higher frame-rates in games.

Like Rroff says a 50 core CPU is probably equivalent to a decent GPU, so we'll be forced to upgrade our CPU's for years to come because as physics gets more complex it will continually require more processing, a general purpose CPU just isn't cut out for physics.

Yes all people will be doing for years to come on computers is run physics calculations
Im mean its all round family entertainment

 

[layte]

People will buy whatever gives them a higher frame-rates in games.

Like Rroff says a 50 core CPU is probably equivalent to a decent GPU, so we'll be forced to upgrade our CPU's for years to come because as physics gets more complex it will continually require more processing, a general purpose CPU just isn't cut out for physics.

I wonder how long until Larabee tech is integrated into general purpose Intel CPU's? Or AMD integrate their own GPU SIMD units into the successor to the Phenom. What happens to Nvidia then?

Remember back in the misty past of the Intel world all those companies making plug-in FPU units? Nope, me neither until a few minutes ago.

 

[Rroff]

I wonder how long until Larabee tech is integrated into general purpose Intel CPU's? Or AMD integrate their own GPU SIMD units into the successor to the Phenom. What happens to Nvidia then?

Remember back in the misty past of the Intel world all those companies making plug-in FPU units? Nope, me neither until a few minutes ago.

But then you can have the CPU+GPU doing processing on these things for an even bigger boost - I don't see the GPU going away any time soon.

Infact if hardware physics was to really take off - then we'd need this along with all the GPU performance we can get.

 

[mmj_uk]

Yes all people will be doing for years to come on computers is run physics calculations
Im mean its all round family entertainment

Not physics specifically, but take a look at peoples signatures in this thread, quad cores and 4870x2's... do you think they bought those for running MS Word and Photoshop?

Game benchmarks sell hardware, fact.

If we get stuck with software physics running off the CPU, a 16 core CPU is obviously going to be faster at crunching physics than an 8 core one, so people will see the game benchmarks and buy it.

Deny it all you like it will happen, if Physx takes off CPU's eventually won't be used for game physics so it's common sense that CPU's will see a drop in demand, because a better graphics card will have a bigger impact on performance.

 

[Final8y]

Not physics specifically, but take a look at peoples signatures in this thread, quad cores and 4870x2's... do you think they bought those for running MS Word and Photoshop?

Game benchmarks sell hardware, fact.

If we get stuck with software physics running off the CPU, a 16 core CPU is obviously going to be faster at crunching physics than an 8 core one, so people will see the game benchmarks and buy it.

Deny it all you like it will happen, if Physx takes off CPU's eventually won't be used for game physics so it's common sense that CPU's will see a drop in demand, because a better graphics card will have a bigger impact on performance.

The CPU will not see a drop in demand because of physx as its not what's been driving the demand of CPU's over the years.
What do you think 99% of people have been doing over the last 20 years with CPU's...running physics? & now there is a better way so no more need for the CPU.
99% OF people don't give hoot about physics or need it.

 

[mmj_uk]

The CPU will not see a drop in demand because of physx as its not what's been driving the demand of CPU's over the years.

Of course CPU manufacturers will see a drop demand if people see that a 16 core CPU is barely any faster than an 8 core one in games; whilst at the same time see a 10-20fps boost just by upgrading their graphics card.

The more the CPU has to do the better as far as AMD is concerned, because then people are forced to buy newer and better ones... what next will be offloaded from the CPU to the GPU? we've already seen Photoshop adding CUDA support.

AMD are seeing their CPU's steadily becoming more and more redundant in favour of GPU acceleration is it any wonder they want to see Physx fail?

What do you think 99% of people have been doing over the last 20 years with CPU's...running physics? & now there is a better way so no more need for the CPU.
99% OF people don't give hoot about physics or need it.

Buying newer improved CPU's to get better performance because the CPU had a far bigger role in the acceleration of gaming/applications/physics etc.

What item do you think people will upgrade first if the GPU is primarily responsible for accelerating apps/games/physics etc?

 

[Final8y]

Of course CPU manufacturers will see a drop demand if people see that a 16 core CPU is barely any faster than an 8 core one in games; whilst at the same time see a 10-20fps boost just by upgrading their graphics card.

The more the CPU has to do the better as far as AMD is concerned, because then people are forced to buy newer and better ones... what next will be offloaded from the CPU to the GPU? we've already seen Photoshop adding CUDA support.

AMD are seeing their CPU's steadily becoming more and more redundant is it any wonder they want to see Physx fail?

LOL yeahhh.
My bad! I did not realise that 99% of all game code has all been psychics code.