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AGEIA PhysX™ Physics Processing Unit
- Thread starter evilwood
- Start date
"I guess it doesnt matter that you listed bet on soldier 3 times and all the games on that list suck donkey balls does it?"
They are 3 separate games with over a years difference between them you don’t count Unreal 1 and 2 as the same game do you? Those who say Bet on soldier sucks have you even bothered looking at game 2 and 3 or are you just assuming they are bad based on the first game? I bet you guessing and never even played the demo or full game.
If you have tried them and don’t like them fair enough. I like them my self and the PPU makes them better. Well not played Blackout Saigon yet still working my way though the other 2. If you don’t like any of the games the PPU supports then don’t get one. No one saying you should buy a PPU.
They are 3 separate games with over a years difference between them you don’t count Unreal 1 and 2 as the same game do you? Those who say Bet on soldier sucks have you even bothered looking at game 2 and 3 or are you just assuming they are bad based on the first game? I bet you guessing and never even played the demo or full game.
If you have tried them and don’t like them fair enough. I like them my self and the PPU makes them better. Well not played Blackout Saigon yet still working my way though the other 2. If you don’t like any of the games the PPU supports then don’t get one. No one saying you should buy a PPU.
I'm really interested in the fate of Ageia's PPU. It deffinetly is a nice idea and it does have a lot of potential, however there just doesnt seem to be any point in getting one at present and there are a lot of awesome games coming out that wont be using it, such as Alan Wake and Crysis (both these titles will rely on multi core CPU's for physics simulation. I may consider one for UT2007 if there is actually a big difference in the quality of the physics and performance, but with ATI's and Nvidia's physics solutions becomming ever closer, I'll be very surprised if Ageia's PPU actually gets anywhere in the future.
Soldato
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i'm bored of you guys ripping pottsey to pieces because of the way he quotes. i've said this about similar things on the forums - you may as well just be correcting his spelling mistakes, because you are adding nothing to the thread. if you cant contribute in a positive way, dont bother at all. it's pathetic.
GPU physics has everything on paper needed to blow ageia away for good. The godly memory bandwidth and core speeds on new cards make the physx cards look dated already. BUT, just like agiea, they need to gt the games out there to do the talking because we are seeing nothing from any camp on physics right now.
you can rip a new one for pottsey all you like, but the fact is there is no dominant physics SDK out there right now. If you want to give one camp browny points, at least ageia has cards and a few demo/game patches out there.
GPU physics has everything on paper needed to blow ageia away for good. The godly memory bandwidth and core speeds on new cards make the physx cards look dated already. BUT, just like agiea, they need to gt the games out there to do the talking because we are seeing nothing from any camp on physics right now.
you can rip a new one for pottsey all you like, but the fact is there is no dominant physics SDK out there right now. If you want to give one camp browny points, at least ageia has cards and a few demo/game patches out there.
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Pottsey said:
yes, the boards are out, but drivers arnt available yet to start using the GPU'S for physics simulation are they not? Sure, Ageia currently has more support, but I see Nvidia's and ATI's solutions taking the lead as it just seems more practical using a GPU. For instance, if you wanted to upgrade your graphics card, you can set your old one to be processing physics rather than just selling it off. I think we shall find that game developers will make use the of the GPU physics solution more that Ageia's PPU. Only time will tell I guess...
Soldato
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XtAsY said:
the question is, how long will that take? it's been months and months now since gpu physics solutions were announced. it's taken nvidia less time to release a new generation of cards than it has to get physics out the door lol
james.miller said:
I actually see the CPU taking over, we now have dual and quad core. What’s next? 8, 16, 32 cores? With more cores and higher clocks the CPU will be doing most of the work. The need for a PPU really came about when we were using much slower single core CPU's but things are changing and the PPU’s future is not looking good..
Nice post james.miller one little thing though the Ageia PPU is built for physics only and has 2 terabits per second of read/write memory and the tech specs for physics are far better then GPU’s at least on paper. Its to early to say which its best.
“yes, the boards are out, but drivers arnt available yet to start using the GPU'S for physics simulation are they not?”
The drivers are out earlier on in this thread I linked to the demo you can download and try your elf. The 1 tech demo is all I have been able to find.
As for the upgrade graphics card that only works if you have the right kind of motherboard. If not it could mean spending another £100+ on a decent high end motherboard. Not eveyone has 2 PCI-e x16 slots.
EDIT and if your running sli you need 3 PCI-3 x16 slots.
“yes, the boards are out, but drivers arnt available yet to start using the GPU'S for physics simulation are they not?”
The drivers are out earlier on in this thread I linked to the demo you can download and try your elf. The 1 tech demo is all I have been able to find.
As for the upgrade graphics card that only works if you have the right kind of motherboard. If not it could mean spending another £100+ on a decent high end motherboard. Not eveyone has 2 PCI-e x16 slots.
EDIT and if your running sli you need 3 PCI-3 x16 slots.
Shocky-FM said:
Yes, I think this is likely to happen actually. I mean take a look at this tech video of Alan Wake > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGoiQaMM61E
You see, they used a single core on the quad core CPU to handle the physics and the end result looks great. The question is what's easier and cheaper for the developers (its not till the end of the video that the physics is demonstrated)
Shocky-FM said:Thats really impressive, they say it was clocked at 3.6GHz but if it can do that with one core then its hard to see the point in the PPU, afterall they still have another 3 core's there which can be utilized.
it is indeed very cool. The processor used was an Intel Core 2 QX6700 clocked at 3.73GHz
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Soldato
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Pottsey said:
i'm really not sure about that. It only uses gddr3 with a 128bit memory interface. there's no way it has 2tb/sec memory bandwidth. an 8800gtx for comparison has 768mb of gddr 3 clocked at 1800mhz connected with a 384bit interface.....that has a theoretical peak of 86.4gb/sec
by my calculations, the physx ppu would need to run the gddr3 at 5400mhz on a 128bit bus to compete lol
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Shocky-FM said:Ahh, thought it was 3.6, hard to tell with poor audio quality and the guys strong accent.
looks like a sweet game though, I'm deffinetly going to be looking forward to it. Going back to PhysX, being a huge Unreal fan, I'm prob still going to end up getting Ageia's PPU for UT2007 
Potsey, owning one yourself, you seem to know a lot about the PPU, will there be a PCI-E version?
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”i'm really not sure about that. It only uses gddr3 with a 128bit memory interface. there's no way it has 2tb/sec memory bandwidth. an 8800gtx for comparison has 768mb of gddr 3 clocked at 1800mhz connected with a 384bit interface.....that has a theoretical peak of 86.4gb/sec”
The internal structure for the PPU is very different from a GPU. All those saying the PPU is just a cheap GPU have no idea what they are talking about.
For physics its internal bandwidth that matter as collision detection requires tons of it. If my math doesn’t let me down the PPU has 250GB/s of bandwidth for physics.
http://www.blachford.info/computer/articles/PhysX2.html explains why it’s so high.
Going by what we know a PPU can do pure vector math at over 50times more then a single core CPU (dual core by 25 times etc.)
A lot of people say GPU’s are more powerful at physics but they are looking at the wrong specs.
These are the specs that matter for physics PPU below.
• Peak Instruction Bandwidth: 20 Billion Instructions⁄sec
• Sphere-Sphere Collisions: 530 Million⁄sec max
• Convex-Convex (Complex Collisions): 533,000⁄sec max
• Internal Bandwidth: 250GB/s estimated
Of course all the power is useless without decent games but the point is a PPU spec wise is far in advanced of today’s GPU’s and quad core CPU’s for physics. Ageia said the first games hardly used the PPU powers and it’s going to be 2007 games that make real use of it. This is backed up by the fact that the last few games made x10 better use of the PPU then Ghost Recon. Most current games had PPU support patched in we have yet to see any games developed from the ground up with the PPU in mind. If Ageia live or die all depends on how good or bad the games are which where made with PPU support from the ground up. I personally think Infernal could be the killer app they need.
“Potsey, owning one yourself, you seem to know a lot about the PPU, will there be a PCI-E version?”
There was an announcement saying yes but there was no mention of a timeframe.
The internal structure for the PPU is very different from a GPU. All those saying the PPU is just a cheap GPU have no idea what they are talking about.
For physics its internal bandwidth that matter as collision detection requires tons of it. If my math doesn’t let me down the PPU has 250GB/s of bandwidth for physics.
http://www.blachford.info/computer/articles/PhysX2.html explains why it’s so high.
Going by what we know a PPU can do pure vector math at over 50times more then a single core CPU (dual core by 25 times etc.)
A lot of people say GPU’s are more powerful at physics but they are looking at the wrong specs.
These are the specs that matter for physics PPU below.
• Peak Instruction Bandwidth: 20 Billion Instructions⁄sec
• Sphere-Sphere Collisions: 530 Million⁄sec max
• Convex-Convex (Complex Collisions): 533,000⁄sec max
• Internal Bandwidth: 250GB/s estimated
Of course all the power is useless without decent games but the point is a PPU spec wise is far in advanced of today’s GPU’s and quad core CPU’s for physics. Ageia said the first games hardly used the PPU powers and it’s going to be 2007 games that make real use of it. This is backed up by the fact that the last few games made x10 better use of the PPU then Ghost Recon. Most current games had PPU support patched in we have yet to see any games developed from the ground up with the PPU in mind. If Ageia live or die all depends on how good or bad the games are which where made with PPU support from the ground up. I personally think Infernal could be the killer app they need.
“Potsey, owning one yourself, you seem to know a lot about the PPU, will there be a PCI-E version?”
There was an announcement saying yes but there was no mention of a timeframe.