SteveOBHave said:

From what I am given to understand ATIs GPU physics kinda stomped all over Nvidias version in the demos and Nvidia have now gone all quiet on it. ATI is still in development but haven't produced a final product. Incedentally there are a number of motherboards out there that have 2 PCI-e x16 slots and one graphics expansion slot in them so there is obviously some level of industry anticipation.

So far Ageia does seem well placed to get a good hold on the PPU market if they can sort their proverbial out. The flip side, from my perspective, is that if they are going to compete with the opportunity of using a £40 GPU to do a similar job to the PhysX hardware they have two things to catch up on - lower price on the PhysX card and/or totally out of scale performance - but so much of that lays on the lap of the games developers that I believe Ageias PhysX hardware to still be a little precarious.

Good on them for covering bases a bit with making the API available as a software component - it certainly puts it on a more even keel with Havok.

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I believe the first game that will support effect physics on the GPU is Hellgate London? This will make use of Havok FX an add on to the existing Havok API which I beleive will run on any shader model 3.0 graphics card.

This solution has been out fow a fair while now and as far as I can tell has not been very popular with developers judging by the lack of games and game engines that support it.

A reason for this may be that, as far as I know, the Havok API costs substantially more than the Ageia one. Developers are also required to pay an additional sum to be able to use GPU physics from Havok.

Ageia's API is free for non comercial use and for commercial PC titles that support the PPU.

its not like these games are going to affect multiplayer anyway is it, even if it does.. it will be nothing major.

if there was a game that solely relies on running with the physics processor then it would have to be good, such as real water physics or fire.. Thinking about it, how can that even be done? things done with the ppu are meant so everything is random right? how would multiplayer work online with that? i dont think it would, because if everything is random for everyone then the game is screwed and everyone is out of synch.. not gonna work.

Cant see it happening, would have been better if they implemented some form of ppu on the new R600's like i heard originally, this isnt happening either by the looks of it.

Perfect_Chaos said:

its not like these games are going to affect multiplayer anyway is it, even if it does.. it will be nothing major.

if there was a game that solely relies on running with the physics processor then it would have to be good, such as real water physics or fire.. Thinking about it, how can that even be done? things done with the ppu are meant so everything is random right? how would multiplayer work online with that? i dont think it would, because if everything is random for everyone then the game is screwed and everyone is out of synch.. not gonna work.

Cant see it happening, would have been better if they implemented some form of ppu on the new R600's like i heard originally, this isnt happening either by the looks of it.

Click to expand...

Read back through some of the other PhysX threads - we have discussed this quite indepth. There is no readon why the end result of the physics calculations cant be shared in a multiplayer situation. It's a long way in the future anyway since there are no games that impliment PhysX in a meaningful way anyways.

“its not like these games are going to affect multiplayer anyway is it, even if it does.. it will be nothing major.”
I guess it depends how you define major. Is a large speed boost major? There are MMORPG’s that support the PPU both out and due out.




“would multiplayer work online with that? i dont think it would,”
Can I suggest you take a look at the MMORPG’s and multiplayer games out that support the PPU. It does work. Saying you don’t think its will work is an odd thing to say considering its working now. Perhaps your not aware of the MMORPG’s that support the PPU.





“the game is screwed and everyone is out of synch.. not gonna work.”
There are 3 ways to do it. The first way is to have effect physics in multiplayer that don’t change gameplay. The 2nd way is to have the same physics effects only transferred from the CPU to the PPU for a speed boost. The 3rd way is to have PPU only maps, weapons or games that only work with a PPU. All 3 methods are used in today’s games.

There is no reason a PPU cannot be used for multiplayer in fact it’s used in multiplayer today.

Warmonger - Operation: Downtown Destruction GDC 2007 gameplay video (no sound), 124MB

http://file.4gamer.net/movie/GDC_200...7warmonger.zip

Some nice ideas in there. Like blowing up the stairs so you cannot be followed. Blowing up the wall/roof above a player so the bricks fall down and kill him. The soft bending metal was pretty good as well.

It’s a shame the bricks don’t stay on the screen longer but I can understand why they did that.

PPu as i see it is only useful if you have a lack of cpu power. it "might" have been viable 3-4 years ago when everyone hit brick walls in single cpu performance, at that stage amd were already at 2.2-2.4Ghz stock, they took like 2-3 years to gain 400Mhz, intel were up at 3.2Ghz on p4's years ago and it took them 2-3 years to get up to 3.8Ghz, then they went back down massively for dual core due to heat.

but now we have dual core very widespread with a huge amount of new systems shipping with them. quad cores are out and more on the way and they will be very widespread in 1-2 years. I don't want to pay MY money for a game I want to play and ONLY be allowed to use some of the effects if i dump money on a card i do not need.

Ok, maybe i need to do some more research, but its not surprising that i've never seen a thread like "omg, i can't believe you don't have a PPU, i just started playing gamexxxx and it looks hugely better with it enabled, i cry for you not having one". there should simply be, if needed, better physics options available, you can choose to enable them or not, if your cpu is fast enough you enable, if not, you don't, if you have a ppu instead of a 3rd/4th core then use that, fine, its up to you what kinda of cpu power you want to get. but a ppu is just an extra processor which creates all kinds of needless communication delays.

like i said, if companies specifically screw me out of options unless i buy into tech i don't want or need i'll be very angry.


oh and , pottsey, what game is it that crawls down to single digit fps with it all enabled in software, what does it look like with and without the effects? also what game gets upto 30% boost in fps?

one last think, stairs being breakable to affect gameplay, thats something that would be in the game engine, a ppu would simply model how the parts would blow apart and how they interact with each other and what not?


i don't get it, mostly we are talking about extremely accurate calculations instead of using a sane level of accuracy. i mean, bits of wood on stairs falling down, if they fall down and theres a satisfying explosion or whatever , and they don't fall upwards defying gravity, can you really tell if they fell completely like they would in real life, or if it was just close enough? does anyone, really, honestly care?

maybe theres some amazing stuff that i haven't noticed or heard about, because no ones talking about it, but afaik theres nothing useful about it.

but if you were going to get one, get a pci-e one. pci-e is here, its quier, get used to it pci will die soon enough, if you do waste cash on one, you really want to dump another £100 to buy a pci-e one when pci is finally dead .

the one game that I could really see benefiting from a PhysX card is Sup Comm
but it doesn't support it. and it works fine with a dual core PC

drunkenmaster said:

Can you really tell if they fell completely like they would in real life, or if it was just close enough? does anyone, really, honestly care?.

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nail
head
hit.

“oh and , pottsey, what game is it that crawls down to single digit fps with it all enabled in software
Cellfactor with the cloth and liquids on has tons of slow down when the CPU does the work. You go from about 30+ FPS with a PPU down to 2 or less with the CPU. Pretty much any game with fully detailed and destructive cloth slows down a lot with CPU’s doing the work. Just find a game with real cloth(*) and turn it on and off to see what I mean. The main reason you don’t see mass amount of cloth and liquids in most games is because even a dual core CPU doesn’t have the power to do it at useable speeds.

As for a speed boost pretty much all the PPU games get a decent speed boost. City of Heroes gets a 30% speed boost with extra effects on the screen.

*Real cloth as in it reacts to the environments, fold around objects and preferable can also be torn and ripped. Not fake cloth that doesn’t even more or bend around objects.

As for 3d liquids it’s so slow on CPU’s you don’t even see that effect in games without a PPU. Real liquids that flow out of holes based on force are a good reason to move physics away from the CPU. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1_GrpZZND4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIT4lMqz4Sk

PPU’s either on a GPU or on a PCI card are over 50x faster then 1 CPU core spec wise. Why on earth would you want to waste 1 core doing physics? It makes more sense to move physics away from a CPU which isn’t very good at physics then free up 1 core for something else like streaming level loading so you don’t have load screens.




“but it doesn't support it. and it works fine with a dual core PC“
Sup Comm does not work fine with a dual core PC unless you play with low settings and/or keep the max unit limit down with a small map. Most people find x4 speed is faster then x8 or x10 as the CPU cannot keep up with the work. Most if not all current PC’s cannot play the large maps with large unit limits as the CPU cannot keep up even at x1 speed or slower. Everyone plays the smaller maps with a low unit limit.





“but if you were going to get one, get a pci-e one. pci-e is here, its quier, get used to it ”
That’s very bad advice to give. PCI is faster for physics then PCI-E. Your much better off with network, sound and PPU’s in PCI slots.





“like i said, if companies specifically screw me out of options unless i buy into tech i don't want or need i'll be very angry.”
People where just like that with the first 3dcards. It was all they are screwing us out of money to buy hardware we don’t need. CPU can handle all the 3d graphics e.c.t Next year CPU will just get faster so your dont need 3dcards. I take it your very angry at 3d cards today as you now have to buy into the tech to play your games? Unlike years back when you didn’t need a 3dcard. Go back further and people said the same thing about sound cards.

supreme commander proberbly would benefit as he is right, it doesn't work 100% fluidly on ANYTHING, and don't go shouting about C2D or any of that crap, cause friend runs supreme commander with C2D and he his the same brick wall as myself, large map + large amount of units = dramatic slowdown regardless really, but then whats the point on going on about this as theres no physx support in supreme commander, so unless more games support ageia card, im sorry but there 100% first rate pointless waste of space and power inside your system, you'd be better of spending the money getting some watercooling parts and clocking your processor to its limit, you'd get better performance

Pottsey said:

“but it doesn't support it. and it works fine with a dual core PC“
Sup Comm does not work fine with a dual core PC unless you play with low settings and/or keep the max unit limit down with a small map. Most people find x4 speed is faster then x8 or x10 as the CPU cannot keep up with the work. Most if not all current PC’s cannot play the large maps with large unit limits as the CPU cannot keep up even at x1 speed or slower. Everyone plays the smaller maps with a low unit limit.

Click to expand...

odd
works fine here
core2duo E6300 @3.2, only issues I've had would be resolved with 2Gb ram,
if we get concord_rules in here I am sure he'll testify to that
the Physx card would do bugger all thinking about it, as 99% of the slowdown is from unit movement and thats all pathfinding rather than physics.

oh, btw, LEARN TO USE THE QUOTE BUTTON.

errm, its not bad advice, what good will your faster(can you explain why its faster?) pci version be when you buy a new mobo without pci slots and with only pci-e and probo whatever comes next?

i have a dual core, it was £200, in september, a quad core E6600 , Q6600, will be about £180. with 8 cores to come. not to mention it sounds VERY likely that both intel and amd are going 8 and 16 core in not to long and both companies sound like they might be adding basic gpu stuff into their cores and a lot of talk about a couple cores being different to accelerate certain tasks. once you get lots of cores, all with vastly more bandwidth and with no communication penalty, whats the point of the PPU.

city of heroes, to me it looked no different, not effectively different WITH the extra particles all pushed up to upper limits, and still played fine for me, but the performance hit wasn't accompanied by better looking graphics or , well, anything for me basically.

simply put, show me a game that can do these liquid/cloth effects in screenshots, both with and without ppu enabled and with/without the effects enabled. i don't care if the water is swirling about in a puddle following a preordered pattern or its reacting realistically but looking the same. ok i'm kind of challenging you, but its because i've as of yet not seen any evidence that the benifits are really there yet.

adding overly complicated, not needed effects that you can't really see anyway, at a huge performance cost is pointless right now.


3dgraphics cards instantly took us to a whole new level, and got us to where we are now, cpu's getting fast got us to the point where physics in games are pretty damn good, i can't tell what this new level ppu cards are giving us. 3d wasn't a gimmick, the benifits were obvious, instantly and i never once complained about them when they came out, thats the difference here.

“Originally Posted by VeNT
works fine here”
An Intel Core 2 Quad QX6700 with all four cores enabled gets in benchmarks without FSAA less then 26fps average and as low as 5fps in game with everything maxed. You’re saying your dual core is faster then a quid core by a long shot!

I find that very hard to believe without evidence.

As for my posting style learn to be more tolerant. It’s not been a problem for 5+ years on these forums. Only recently a few people have got very intolerant unless things are done in the way they want.








”Originally Posted by drunkenmaster
but the performance hit wasn't accompanied by better looking graphics or , well, anything for me basically.”
What performance hit? All the benchmarks are showing a performance boost in that game. Only the oldest benchmarks with very old drivers show a performance hit. The first few drivers had some major performance problems but those where fixed.

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/physx performance update city _090506100924/12955.png







”Originally Posted by drunkenmaster
simply put, show me a game that can do these liquid/cloth effects in screenshots, both with and without ppu enabled and with/without the effects enabled.”
You’re asking the impossible. CPU’s are to slow at rendering the liquids effects so no games implant it on the CPU only so I cannot show screenshots without a PPU.

I posted enough movies in this thread and others proving the PPU can do liquids and cloth. Your the one saying CPU’s are enough and we don’t need a PPU. So its your turn to prove a CPU can do real cloth and liquids at a useable speed. We have seen the PPU do it but not a CPU. Decent cloth and liquids are not a gimmick and can have tons of use’s in games and gameplay.






“Originally Posted by drunkenmaster
adding overly complicated, not needed effects that you can't really see anyway, at a huge performance cost is pointless right now.”
That’s very short sited thinking. There is no huge performance cost and the extra effects are needed to push physics forward. Or are you happy with the basic physics in most games? Why are you so against physics being pushed forward from today’s low level to a new higher level? Why do you want games to be stagnant? Even if you don’t want new effects surly adding a PPU and freeing up a CPU core to do other things is better then using a Core? I don’t see why anyone would want to bog down a CPU with physics when it doesn’t need to do any physics. I would rather have all the cores inside a PPU or a GPU do physics work so the CPU can do everything else.

Surly you would like to see decent liquid and cloth in games?





“Originally Posted by drunkenmaster
errm, its not bad advice, what good will your faster(can you explain why its faster?) pci version be”
PCI-Express has slower latency over PCI which is bad for soundcards, network cards and PPU’s. All 3 don’t need much bandwidth so PCI provides more then enough to operate what’s more important is fast latency. PCI Express will not be faster and the slower latency is counter productive. Its odd you talk about “ needless communication delays.” then go and recommend the slot with the worse communication delays.






“Originally Posted by drunkenmaster
with 8 cores to come. not to mention it sounds VERY likely that both intel and amd are going 8 and 16 core”
Perhaps you should go and check how many cores are in a PPU. There are tons of reason CPU’s are bad at physics like lack of internal bandwidth. You really think it’s a good idea to use 4+ cores on physics only to get less physics processing power then 1 PPU or 1 GPU? I would rather have those 4+ cores on more useful things.

There are only two smart choice’s for physics Ageia style PPU or a GPU for physics. Current CPU’s just don’t have an optimal layout for physics.





“Originally Posted by drunkenmaster
3dgraphics cards instantly took us to a whole new level,”
No it didn’t. It caused a loss in performance with very little difference in graphics quality. It was only after the 2nd and 3rd generation 3dcard games like Quake that 3dcards became worth while.

VeNT said:

odd
works fine here
core2duo E6300 @3.2, only issues I've had would be resolved with 2Gb ram,
if we get concord_rules in here I am sure he'll testify to that
the Physx card would do bugger all thinking about it, as 99% of the slowdown is from unit movement and thats all pathfinding rather than physics.

oh, btw, LEARN TO USE THE QUOTE BUTTON.

Click to expand...

Ummn, I can't actually remember LOL

Against AI then yes it struggles, which is weird cos Total Annihilation is fine

But MP is fine 2 vs 2 as far as I can remember...

SupCom coding is pretty poor.





But anyway, if all these bloody games were coded properly for the hardware, my X1900XTX would be able to play every game out there at 1600x1200, 6xAA and 16xAF with all the bells and whistles.

But the games arn't and thats why quicker and quicker PCs are needed to keep up, if speed increased at 10% it did games would be far far far better coded and run far far far better.

Adding another bloody set of drivers and hardware to an already set of code is completely and utterly stupid when we now have multiple cores doing absolutely sod all.

FarCry for example, is one of the better coded games, 1600x1200, max AA and AF and HDR and its runs > 40FPS all the time and looks fabulous!

This physics card with multi-core CPUs is pointless. END OF.

Why is it pointless? Its not pointless you cry!! It is because CPUs do physics now, how much more physics is there to do that a 2nd or even 3rd CPU can't do? Yes, collapsing walls/buildings/water are more advanced than physics now but thats what the other cores are for FFS.

CPU manufactures have already said multi-core is the future NOT pushing mhz. So ladies and gentleman, your Physics card is pointless, because games will HAVE to be coded for multi-core, because thats all we are going to get in the future it seems.

Instead of wasting money on pointless hardware, don't buy games until the developers have coded it properly instead of shoving them out as quick as possible

“how much more physics is there to do that a 2nd or even 3rd CPU can't do?.... thats what the other cores are for FFS.”
Liquids, cloth and soft deformable metal in decent numbers. 5000+ rigid bodies all at once are all things a 2nd and 3rd core cannot do at useable speeds.





“This physics card with multi-core CPUs is pointless. END OF.!”
Your right with a physic cards it’s pointless to use a multi-core CPU for physics as its so much slower. Not only is a PPU muti core but its far faster then a CPU at physics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIT4lMqz4Sk
5 or 6 FPS with 2 cores 3 threads on physics, double that to 4 cores and your still at unuseable speeds (sub 15fps). Use 8 cores and your still under 30fps and you have no cores left for anything else like AI.

All the evidence shows CPU’s are not good for advance physics even with 8 cores. When your getting sub 5fps with 2 cores doubling your cores to 4 or again to 8 is not suddenly going make it useable.

How is that demo even relevant? Its not even a game and stuff like that doesn't sway me towards a physics card at ALL.

Im sorry, but a properly coded game with a quad core is more than capable of running a game with a decent amount of physics in.


CPUs are capable of millions and millions of calculations a second, im sure they are quite capable of calculating physics when its coded properly.


Adding another layer of software and hardware into an already complex system is stupid and pointless.

Sound (although I think this is a gimmick aswell - I didn't notice anything changing from onboard to soundcard - only did was to get rid of the rubbish onboard crackling and driver problems)


Graphics and multi-core CPU, all thats needed, with super fast interconnects between CPU/MEM/GPU. In 100s of Gb/sec. With decent dam coding.

Concorde Rules said:

Im sorry, but a properly coded game with a quad core is more than capable of running a game with a decent amount of physics in.

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By todays standards perhaps. But not by tomorrows.

I think what pottsey is trying to get across is that in order for us to ever see a huge leap in terms of the quality of physics we see in games then dedicated PPU or physics processing GPU's are the only way forward.

And as much as I hate to admit it, I think he may be right.

.....Unless of course Intel/AMD can actually redesign one or more of their CPU cores to better handle physics calculations. In which case everything could be done within the CPU.

“How is that demo even relevant? Its not even a game”
It was a tech demo to show some of the stuff you can do with a PPU or GPU physics that you cannot with a CPU. It’s very relevant as it shows how even an 8 core CPU is to slow for high end physics even when the CPU is doing nothing but physics. Add on everything else the CPU has to do and it only gets worse.





“Im sorry, but a properly coded game with a quad core is more than capable of running a game with a decent amount of physics in”
Prove it. Everything so far shows it cannot be done.
Also explain how this quad core is going be more then x6 faster then a dual core! If you’re getting 5fps or less with dual core best case means 10fps with quad core in practise its not even 10fps. 8 cores best case would be 20fps. Now add on AI and everything else the CPU does and it drops down from the already low max of 20fps.

Logic says quad core is going be double the speed of dual core best case and we all know it’s going be less then double speed in practise. That’s a long way short of being able to run the physics effects we have seen on PPU’s and GPU’s.

GordyR has it. If you want to see a massive jump/improvement in physics we need to move away from the CPU doing physics unless there is a massive rewrite of how CPU’s work.





“and stuff like that doesn't sway me towards a physics card at ALL.”
What games do you play? Surely you can see how it’s useful for say a snowboarding game or racing game on a mountain? Even a FPS could make good use of it.






“CPUs are capable of millions and millions of calculations a second, im sure they are quite capable of calculating physics when its coded properly.”
It’s been proven time and time again CPU are not capable they don’t have enough internal bandwidth and they don’t process data in a sutable way for physics. You need to process lots of data in parallel which CPU’s cannot do. GPU’s and PPU’s can on the other hand.

If CPU’s are enough show me avalanche’s with 1000’s of rigid body’s, show real cloth and liquids or soft metal in decent numbers running at decent speeds.

For physics calculations a PPU can calculations over x50 more data then a CPU. Even a GPU is massively faster. A PPU has a peak Instruction bandwidth of 20 Billion Instructions⁄sec and 250GB/s of internal bandwidth no way can a CPU match that.

Not only that but there are dozens of cores inside a PPU which is a lot more then 4 or 8 cores in a CPU.
I just don’t see how an 8 core CPU not made for physics is going beat a 12+ core PPU made for physics or even a GPU.




“Adding another layer of software and hardware into an already complex system is stupid and pointless.”
There is no extra software layer. The same API deals with the hardware as well as software physics. If add hardware is stupid why dont you just take out your 3dcard and make a few cores do the gfx? While your at it take out the soundcard and put a few more cores on sound and network.

I play FS-X, TDU, LFS, SupCom, MoH, CoD, HL2...

To prove that this physics card is worth it a game has to come out with completely deformable terrain and then have a GPU that will be able to render it.

Is there anything like this?

HL2 has some excellent physics, and I notice no slowdown even with a lot of them going on and its not even multi-core enabled IIRC.

Until its proven, its a gimmick and im a hardware enthusiast...

“HL2 has some excellent physics, and I notice no slowdown even with a lot of them going on and its not even multi-core enabled IIRC.”
HL2 has low end physics it all basic stuff by today’s standards. There was no cloth, liquids or 1000’s of objects. There was no soft or deformable metal like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsoxCEVHEuQ





“Is there anything like this?”
You mean like this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKu9yimjn6Y
Or http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/physx performance update city _090506100924/12955.png or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjB4EzbIgSw
skip to 20 seconds to see how cloth can be used in games.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy36sQKoS7c
shows liquids in use something a CPU cannot do.





“Until its proven, its a gimmick and im a hardware enthusiast...”
Show the benchmarks I posted early showing a 30%+ FPS boost are a gimmick?