Ageia can use more than one card

Durzel · 17 Oct 2006 at 11:51

Pottsey said:
“The games that DO use it, just add extra debris.”
That’s no longer correct we get far more then just debris.

Such as?

You're not going to get anything that is materially different to what people with Havok see, because developers can't rely on the card being there and therefore you won't see any game-affecting physics being powered by it. All its going to be used for is for rendering a bit more flying rubble, and tearable cloth. Wow!

Pottsey · 17 Oct 2006 at 12:16

“Such as?
You're not going to get anything that is materially different to what people with Havok see, because developers can't rely on the card being there and therefore you won't see any game-affecting physics being powered by it.”
So far my games have due to the PPU liquid flame thrower, explosive barrels with liquid flowing out which kill people it hits, chemical grenades which are loads of fun. Other PPU games I don’t own have snow/avalanche’s, liquid pools of chemical waste e.c.t. Along with the performance boost of using the PPU over not having one. Go look up Joint Task Force as well.

PPU also speed up the normal physics up. If your worried about people not having a PPU just do the physics via Ageia API’s but don’t add anything fancy in like liquids or cloth.

Take BOS take out all the extra physics and you still have all the gameplay physics done by the CPU being done by the PPU. They don’t look different but it is faster. Some PPU games even come with PPU only maps. So you do see game-affecting physics. Developers don’t have to worry about everyone not having the PPU.

Its very different to what you get with Havok as currently no Havok games do real 3D liquid that interacts with objects. There are also no Havok only maps that I know off.

"All its going to be used for is for rendering a bit more flying rubble, and tearable cloth. Wow!”
So then why do pretty much all but 1 game use it for more then that? I sometimes wonder if the anti PPU people even bother to look at the PPU games or do they just assume everything’s as bad as Ghost Recon and things never get better?

rayb74 · 17 Oct 2006 at 17:24

Originally Posted by Boogle:
"Its almost the same as putting £187 cash in your PC case and wondering why nothing's improved."

Correction, you would probably get better results than an Ageia.

Pottsey fairplay 10/10 for brand loyalty you remind me of the captain of the Titanic who sank with his ship rather than try to escape !

NightSt@lk3r · 17 Oct 2006 at 17:27

rayb74 said:
Pottsey fairplay 10/10 for brand loyalty you remind me of the captain of the Titanic who sank with his ship rather than try to escape !

Pottsey going to sink with Ageia?

FreeStream · 17 Oct 2006 at 17:55

£200 for a card that does really not a lot isn't worth it, £50-100 maybe, if I actually had a game to use it on.

I'd rather spend £200 of a £1k/1.5k budget on better CPU/mem/mobo/gfx and I will keep this view until there is atleast a FEW games (like 5+ which actually use it to any decent effect).

1 Game which uses PPU? Not worth it.
5 Games which use the PPU? Depends, still pushing it...

Durzel · 17 Oct 2006 at 19:07

Pottsey said:
So far my games have due to the PPU liquid flame thrower, explosive barrels with liquid flowing out which kill people it hits, chemical grenades which are loads of fun. Other PPU games I don’t own have snow/avalanche’s, liquid pools of chemical waste e.c.t. Along with the performance boost of using the PPU over not having one. Go look up Joint Task Force as well.

Are those actual PhysX-showcase titles though, or real games? What happens if someone is playing the game with those "explosive barrels with liquid flowing out which kills people it hits" without a PhysX card? Do they not see the barrels/liquid at all? Are they completely unaffected by it? Surely then the PhysX users are at a disadvantage aren't they?

Pottsey said:
PPU also speed up the normal physics up. If your worried about people not having a PPU just do the physics via Ageia API’s but don’t add anything fancy in like liquids or cloth.

So Havok supports being run in hardware by a PhysX processor? I doubt it. Games programmers will have to write API strands to deal with Havok (for everyone else) and PhysX users combined, with PhysX providing the "frills" physics that isn't vital to gameplay (i.e. deformable worlds, physics puzzles, etc). Havok HAS to be supported by default to allow for the fact that 99% of people won't even have a PhysX card - so it'll be the default physics renderer.

Pottsey said:
Take BOS take out all the extra physics and you still have all the gameplay physics done by the CPU being done by the PPU. They don’t look different but it is faster.

It's in your mind. Gameplay physics is done by the CPU - period. It's instructions fed to the CPU, the results of which are "passed" to the graphics card(s) (that's over simplifying it I know). PhysX cannot possibly offload Havok CPU time because they are incompatible.

That is the bottom line whether you are prepared to accept it or not.

PhysX powered titles (the ones Ageia churns out - e.g. CellFactor) are not representative of real released games.

Pottsey · 17 Oct 2006 at 20:29

“Are those actual PhysX-showcase titles though, or real games?”
Real games.

”What happens if someone is playing the game with those "explosive barrels with liquid flowing out which kills people it hits" without a PhysX card?”
No idea I only play single player. In multiplayer there are meant to be PPU only maps so no problems hitting people without a PPU at least that’s the case in BOS and Switchball. I say meant as I haven’t looked at multiplayer yet just going by what other PPU owners told me and the adverts said. Unfortunately none of the multiplayer games I like use the PPU. I only use my PPU in a handful of single player games.

“So Havok supports being run in hardware by a PhysX processor?”
No I didn’t mean to sound like that, havok does not run in hardware on a PPU.

“Games programmers will have to write API strands to deal with Havok (for everyone else) and PhysX users combined, with PhysX providing the "frills" physics that isn't vital to gameplay (i.e. deformable worlds, physics puzzles, etc). Havok HAS to be supported by default to allow for the fact that 99% of people won't even have a PhysX card - so it'll be the default physics renderer.”
Havok does not have to be supported by default for 99% of people without a PPU. In fact its most games don’t event support Havok.

Havok isn’t the only Physics API out there lots of game use the Ageia API instead and have done for years and other games use different physics API’s. What I meant to say is you code a game for the Ageia API and it works in software without a PPU just like it’s always did. Then you plug in a PPU and the CPU physics are transferred to the PPU boosting FPS. Both the none PPU people and the PPU people get the same physics the only difference is the PPU people get a speed boost due to offloading the work from the CPU to the PPU.

There are 3 ways to use the PPU. Transfer the physics from the CPU to the PPU but add nothing new and get a speed boost. This is how most multiplayer games have to work unless they have PPU only maps.

The 2nd way is to add new effects that only work with the PPU like liquid or cloth or just extra effects and at the same time transfer the physics from the CPU to the PPU.

The 3rd way is like Ghost Recon where you run the new physics effects on the PPU but leave all the other physics on the CPU either by Ageia or Havok or some other API.

“It's in your mind. Gameplay physics is done by the CPU - period. It's instructions fed to the CPU, the results of which are "passed" to the graphics card(s) (that's over simplifying it I know). PhysX cannot possibly offload Havok CPU time because they are incompatible.”
It’s not in my mind and it’s not physics done by the CPU period. You misunderstanding me or don’t realize there are other API’s apart from Havok.

Take an Ageia API game with all the extra PPU effects disabled. None PPU owners have all the physics done in software by the CPU. PPU owners get the same gameplay physics done on the PPU offloading work from the CPU. Now this only works for Ageia API powered games and only the new games. Older Ageia physic API games use software physics’ only and don’t benefit from the PPU.

My point is people saying the PPU does not do gameplay physics are wrong as it is accelerating gameplay physics in a handful of games. When I was benchmarking BOS in the areas of the game without the new PPU effects I was getting a noticeable speed boost with a PPU over using the CPU.

“That is the bottom line whether you are prepared to accept it or not.
PhysX powered titles (the ones Ageia churns out - e.g. CellFactor) are not representative of real released games.”
Its not the bottom line and its got nothing do to with me accepting it or not. Your misunderstanding the facts and I wasn’t talking about games Ageia churn out like Cellfactor I was talking about the commercial games from various developers. I have a number of none Ageia games that benefit form the PPU.

Boogle · 17 Oct 2006 at 21:23

Pottsey said:
“The games that DO use it, just add extra debris.”
That’s no longer correct we get far more then just debris.

Not much more, its still fluff on top that adds very, very little.

I did a little research, with articles as recent as possible to keep them relevant. Articles from May, June & September this year:

http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q2/physx/index.x?pg=5
http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/06/19/can_ageia_uk/index.html
http://www.maximumpc.com/2006/09/physx_six_month.html

THG looked at software mode in the CellFactor demo:
http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/07/19/is_ageias_physx_failing_uk/index.html

Essentially you get fabric physics, the rest can be performed in software - faster. OK the CPU isn't performing the fabric calculations, but considering that shouldn't affect the FPS by more than frame or so due to extra detail in the fabric itself.

Posted on the BFG site are a list of supported games (http://www.bfgtech.com/physx/):

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter
Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends
Bet on Soldier: Blood Sport
Cell Factor
City of Villains
Unreal Tournament 2007
Gunship Apocalypse
Sacred II
Loki
Dogtag
Fallen Earth
Crazy Machines 2
Arena Online
Diabolique
Warhammer MMORPG
Eye of the Storm
KARMA
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
Alpha Prime

COV barely uses PhysX, debris again. Rise of Legends had PhysX hardware support added in a later patch, no word if anything actually changed in the game. UT2007 is about the only game of note, however I suspect it'll be like CellFactor. You'll get a scant few special effects, but nothing earth shattering.

With the G80 having dedicated hardware, and dedicated memory for Physics (rumoured to utilise Havok, which lets face it is used in almost all games that utilise physics for gameplay *cough*Source*cough*), is there really a need for PhysX anymore? Personally I would rather spend £187 x2 on two graphics cards in SLI/Crossfire and get a massive boost to my FPS as opposed to losing a couple of FPS and getting the odd pretty flag.

Pottsey · 17 Oct 2006 at 22:09

“Essentially you get fabric physics, the rest can be performed in software - faster. OK the CPU isn't performing the fabric calculations, but considering that shouldn't affect the FPS by more than frame or so due to extra detail in the fabric itself.”
Its not just fabric it’s also liquids even when the PPU did both fabric and liquid and CPU skipped both the PPU was still faster.

There reviews where terrible as well the one from tomshardware was particularly bad with them blaming the problems with Havok physics on Ageia and they also used very old drivers. Most of those review used old drivers with known performance problems in Ghost Recon that have since been fixed. Why can we not get reviews with new drivers and games other then Ghost Recon?

How can we trust a review by someone who doesn’t even know the difference between Havok and Ageia and who use release drivers not any of the drivers that came out since. They used drivers about 5 versions out of date.

“Not much more, its still fluff on top that adds very, very little.”
Thre liquid weapons in both BOS games are not fluff and add a lot to the game.

If anyone’s interested there’s some new vids up at http://www.ageia.com/physx/videos.html of BOS: Blood of Sahara where the fluid weapons have a big impact on the game (not to be confused with BOS: Bet on Solider which also use’s the PPU). There is also a vid of City of Villains.

Also look up Joint Task Force.

“(rumoured to utilise Havok, which lets face it is used in almost all games that utilise physics for gameplay *cough*Source*cough*),”
The thing is according to Havok there hardware physics do not do gameplay physics. Do you really want none gameplay physics on the GPU over gameplay phsyics on the PPU?

“to my FPS as opposed to losing a couple of FPS and getting the odd pretty flag.“
You don’t lose FPS you gain FPS. Please stop looking at reviews with the old drivers. I think the performance bugs where fixed in the 2.4.4 drivers or was it 2.5. Anything below 2.4.4 and older will be slow.

Pottsey · 17 Oct 2006 at 22:19

I guess no one wants me to make a new thread so.

New Ageia PPU drivers 6.09.28 with Vista support.
Performance
• The performance improvement of scenes with some types of extensive activity.
• Fluid collision performance improved, especially for dynamic convex shapes.

http://www.ageia.com/drivers/drivers.html

The drivers have gone from 5.9meg to 19.9meg, I wonder why? Surly Vista alone cannot make up all that difference.

cleanbluesky · 17 Oct 2006 at 22:23

There is a lot of division over the Ageia card, and I think pottsey argues against the critics well but I also think that the Ageia card will end up being another Kryo card.

The reason for this is becasue Havok are already vital to existing heavyweight titles and I suspect that this will enable them to integrate the idea of hardware physics into the mainstream more easily than Ageia have done. But then again, how many people would take the technology to heart merely because it was endorsed by NVidia? How many game producers would take a gamble and introduce a revolutionary game based around a new piece of hardware?

dbmzk1 · 17 Oct 2006 at 23:06

Pottsey I am convinced you work for Ageia. How can you defend something so strongly when all the evidence is against you. You sound like an automated pr machine. It's quite funny. I simply fail to understand how you can support a £200 add-on card which does nothing more than add more debris and a few (quite poor) liquid effects.

There are about 10 games currently out which use the PPU and about 20 in development. None of these games currently add anything more than a few fancy effects, all of which can be done in software with Havok or in one way or another. None of them get a major speed increase. No games add any major gameplay improvements from supporting a PPU.

For comparison, Havok is used in over 150 games - all of which would get a speed boost from a GPU based physics solution or faster CPUs.

The add-on PPU, like the PhysX card, seem doomed for the PC. Sure a lot of big games coming out in the future support it, like UT2007, Vanguard, Warhammer Online, etc. But with dual and quad core CPU's and increasingly powerful GPU's with physics acceleration coming out, there will simply be no need for a separate card to do the calculations.

EDIT: By the way, CoH uses Havok and as far as I know does not support the use of a PPU.

Boogle · 17 Oct 2006 at 23:16

Its not just fabric it’s also liquids even when the PPU did both fabric and liquid and CPU skipped both the PPU was still faster.

There reviews where terrible as well the one from tomshardware was particularly bad with them blaming the problems with Havok physics on Ageia and they also used very old drivers. Most of those review used old drivers with known performance problems in Ghost Recon that have since been fixed. Why can we not get reviews with new drivers and games other then Ghost Recon?

How can we trust a review by someone who doesn’t even know the difference between Havok and Ageia and who use release drivers not any of the drivers that came out since. They used drivers about 5 versions out of date.

I won't trust Ageia's drivers simply because they said they fixed the Ghost Recon problems, the driver was tested (by Anandtech and others), and the performance was almost identical. Since Ghost Recon was just particles, it didn't exactly provide a good impression.

You may trust the review, you may not. The point of the software article was merely to point out that all the amazing physics you did see (the boxes, and vehicles) could be performed by a single CPU just fine. This isn't dualcore, quadcore, just a single core. The cloth is barely here nor there, and certainly not worth the price of a very powerful graphics card.

If anyone’s interested there’s some new vids up at http://www.ageia.com/physx/videos.html of BOS: Blood of Sahara where the fluid weapons have a big impact on the game (not to be confused with BOS: Bet on Solider which also use’s the PPU). There is also a vid of City of Villains.

Also look up Joint Task Force.

I looked at the videos, very impressive

However the Monster Madness video looked no better than the Xbox 360 trailer of the game, which as you know has no PPU. Most of the effects in the videos were basically particle systems with higher counts, and greater interactivity. Nothing that can't be done with a faster CPU, especially now that dualcore is coming in. I'm sure PVR-based GPUs would quite like these particle systems, I'm sure you could get a good 50x overdraw or more with some scenes.

However JTF is something else (video here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6433791285344086653). Very impressive, and much more than just particle systems. However, I still have the nagging feeling that a dualcore CPU wouldn't have much trouble getting close to that sort of effect. Sure the extreme detail will be gone, but it would still be roughly right. Afterall HL2's physics aren't exactly 'bad', and they run on low-end CPUs.

The thing is according to Havok there hardware physics do not do gameplay physics. Do you really want none gameplay physics on the GPU over gameplay phsyics on the PPU?

Well, almost all games utilizing the PPU use it almost purely for pretty effects - so its not that different from the Ageia solution

Unless lots of people have an Ageia PhysX, its not an easy decision to have the PPU affect gameplay. You don't want to stop people playing your game, since you need cash to fund it. The big, big advantage of having the GPU handle 'fluff' physics is that the graphics card can offload the graphics and the physics from the CPU. Its like an extension of T&L/Shaders. The CPU can then focus on the core game itself, its quite elegant imo. Physics effects, graphics effects, all handled by a single card. Scaleable too presumably, so you get more and more particles automatically generated if you have a more powerful GPU (with attached physics in the GPU itself).

You don’t lose FPS you gain FPS. Please stop looking at reviews with the old drivers. I think the performance bugs where fixed in the 2.4.4 drivers or was it 2.5. Anything below 2.4.4 and older will be slow.

I have never seen a benchmark where the Ageia increases FPS. Since the PhysX creates more visual detail indirectly, the FPS will have to drop - the GPU is doing more work.

Boogle · 17 Oct 2006 at 23:19

dbmzk1 said:
Pottsey I am convinced you work for Ageia. How can you defend something so strongly when all the evidence is against you. You sound like an automated pr machine. It's quite funny. I simply fail to understand how you can support a £200 add-on card which does nothing more than add more debris and a few (quite poor) liquid effects.

...

For comparison, Havok is used in over 150 games - all of which would get a speed boost from a GPU based physics solution or faster CPUs.

...

Don't underestimate Pottsey, he's a very clever bloke

Havok won't automatically be accelerated by the NV solution, the game dev will still have to hook in to the hardware. On the plus side it means future games with Havok could be accelerated in hardware, and older games may *possibly* be able to be patched.

Pottsey · 18 Oct 2006 at 07:20

“For comparison, Havok is used in over 150 games - all of which would get a speed boost from a GPU based physics solution or faster CPUs.”
None of them will get a speed boost from the GPU physics. Just like the 100+ or what ever it is Ageia games don’t all benefit fro the PPU. Games need special coding to support hardware physics and if you think Agiea’s PPU has little support go look up the game list that supports GPU physics its tiny.

“EDIT: By the way, CoH uses Havok and as far as I know does not support the use of a PPU.“ &
“of them get a major speed increase.”
What do you class as a major game or major speed increase?

Now tell me the PPU does not give a speed increase and it works in CoH.

“Pottsey I am convinced you work for Ageia. How can you defend something so strongly when all the evidence is against you.”
The evidence isn’t against me you and others are ignoring the evidence or are just no aware it’s out there. You all focus on the old drivers and 1 bad game instead of looking at all the games.

“I have never seen a benchmark where the Ageia increases FPS. Since the PhysX creates more visual detail indirectly, the FPS will have to drop - the GPU is doing more work.”
Unless I read the bars the wrong way around you linked to one. There is the COH bencmark above and your link to
http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q2/physx/index.x?pg=8
http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/07/19/is_ageias_physx_failing_uk/page5.html

When I get home from work I will try and find some new benchmarks of Ghost Recon some show the minimum FPS to be 50% higher with the PPU.

“Unless lots of people have an Ageia PhysX, its not an easy decision to have the PPU affect gameplay.”
That I agree with and unless they start getting games out at a faster pace they will not survive much longer.

jrodga2k5 · 18 Oct 2006 at 12:19

Pottsey said:
That I agree with and unless they start getting games out at a faster pace they will not survive much longer.

Lets be honest thats been the problem with them from day 1!

Instead of rushing out a product with no games(well one or 2) to support they should have waited for a larger catalogue, sorted out the issues and launched a really effective way!

Unfortunately they didnt

Cyber-Mav · 18 Oct 2006 at 12:43

give pottsy a break guys, like any 10 year old he is trying to defend his purchase of the agiea card. i bet he has a hard time going to sleep at night knowing he wasted all his money on the physx card hoping for miracles in speedboost for his celeron system.

james.miller · 18 Oct 2006 at 12:46

Truth be told im getting tired of the pottsey bashing. while I could never jusify the card, he is not wrong in anything he says and you guys need to clam up and start accepting it.

Too little too late? quite probably, but wether the ageia fails or succeeds accelerated physics IS the way forward. If it fails, something else will just take over. Give him a break.

Darkwave · 18 Oct 2006 at 14:46

People have had holidays for talking about Nvidia or ATI in the way Pottsey talks about Ageia, so I don't see why it should be left alone TBH. I myself have had warnings for it and I buy both brands.

Pottsey displays fanboy behaviour, and when I say "fanboy" here it's his words and not mine, so nobody can accuse me of making a personal attack.

People usually frown upon fanboyism here, but it's become the norm over the last year or so.

Boogle · 18 Oct 2006 at 15:25

I think as long as you backup what you're saying, its not really fanboyism. For example if I just come along and say 'Killer NIC is amazing! Buy one now, only stupid people don't have a Killer NIC. You're stupid', then thats definitely fanboy with a little personal attack thrown in for good measure.

He just argues his case well, to the point that nothing else can really be said on either side outside of personal opinions. imo of course