BFG ... The next BIG thing ?

welshtom · 21 Feb 2006 at 08:40

locutus12 said:
oh god, not here too... this damn physics craps doing the rounds at the moment...

its never going to be used, dont get your knickers in a twist... 1, by the time the platforms ready multi GPU cards will be on the shelves and will be more than capable of handling the newer physics models, 2, quad core CPU`s will also be available by then as will powerful single and dual core equivelants, again negating some of the need for this.

3, what game designers going to develope an engine to take advantage of a card that only the minority will own,

4, if you were to buy into this, youd simply be buying another "well marketed" product on top of you two to five hundred £££ for your latest greatest graphics card.

YES YES and YES, Someone who can see through the misty marketting haze like me

BubbySoup · 21 Feb 2006 at 09:48

Mmmm, from the early pics I remember from last year, the board looked to have one of those small annoying, whiney fans on it.

Oh well, lets hope a waterblock is produced for it

I wonder if they can be overclocked ...

BubbySoup · 21 Feb 2006 at 09:52

As for the dual core comments, I'm no expert here, but wouldn't it be a hell of a lot easier to write code that gets offloaded to a seperate board than to have to multi-thread your code to run the physics bit on another core, be it CPU or GPU?

Or do I have the wrong end of the stick?

mmj_uk · 21 Feb 2006 at 10:23

locutus12 said:
its never going to be used, dont get your knickers in a twist... 1, by the time the platforms ready multi GPU cards will be on the shelves and will be more than capable of handling the newer physics models,

Graphics will also be a lot more advanced and you'll want those multi GPU's to be rendering scenes and not physics/ai.

locutus12 said:
2, quad core CPU`s will also be available by then as will powerful single and dual core equivelants, again negating some of the need for this.

You'd need a CPU with about 20 cores to even begin to compete with a dedicated ppu on its own turf, a general purpose cpu ain't so hot at calculating physics/ai.

locutus12 said:
3, what game designers going to develope an engine to take advantage of a card that only the minority will own,

Games utilising Physx will use software physics if a hardware ppu is not found, in other words those without a card will still get the effects but just not as advanced and obviously frame-rate will suffer.

locutus12 said:
4, if you were to buy into this, youd simply be buying another "well marketed" product on top of you two to five hundred £££ for your latest greatest graphics card.

Like the graphics card you mean? people were saying the same thing about those when they first hit the scene.

Domo · 21 Feb 2006 at 10:32

mmj_uk said:
Like the graphics card you mean? people were saying the same thing about those when they first hit the scene.

I know what you mean but it's like a backward step in many ways - rather than simplifying architecture PC's are becoming more like a Vauhall Nova, with bits bolted on all over the place.

1 x sound card + 1 x Physics Card + 2 x GFX cards = zero airflow

Maybe BFG and co might include the processor on it's graphics cards providing an all in one solution.

ethan · 21 Feb 2006 at 11:29

An all in one solution would be beneficial 2 bfg as well methinks

FreeStream · 21 Feb 2006 at 13:32

Wonder if you can overclock it

Good that it works with X1900, if not they can shove it

Conc

jrodga2k5 · 21 Feb 2006 at 13:53

Well they aint producing these for the hell of it thats for sure! If these do in theory take all processing for the Physics and A.I then that surely is a good thing as all the GPU power will go directly into Rendering so the frame rates will improve!

I will get one......eventually, once I see how drastic the improvement will be! I guess all the new tech and engines being built will support this card so it WILL take off, it better not be an every 6 months a new faster version comes out but anyways I wont get one at launch until I see how much better these things are!

G.O.A.T · 21 Feb 2006 at 14:43

Looks to me just like one big ass Floating Point Co-Processor, I assume that once these things become standard they can be used for all sorts of floating point processing. I only hope the Ageia look to get the API intergrated into DirectX asap, as we all know what happened to Glide.

pastymuncher · 21 Feb 2006 at 15:12

What on earth is the point of buying one of these until there are loads of games that are written to support it? As already stated, UT2007 will be the first game to actually support it. Is everyone expected to get one just to have it work with one game? It's all very well bringing these new advances out and shouting from the rooftops of how they will change the way we play games, but they will only work if they get the support from the game developers.
Take dual core processors for example. They have been with us for sometime now and we are only just seeing games start to make use of the second core. 64 Bit processors are another one. Do we have a proper 64 bit OS for it? Yes and no. We have XP 64 but finding drivers for it is a nightmare and some manufacturers can't even be bothered to write 64 bit drivers. Vista will be here late in the year but you need a beast of a pc just to run the OS and you may even have to upgrade some components just to make it comply with Vista. On top of that it will be a DRM laden nightmare.

I did read somewhere a couple of months ago that these physics processors can be placed on the graphics card as well. As someone said, 7900?

n3x · 21 Feb 2006 at 16:33

This is a new and promising piece of kit im my opinion! if current processors can only manage around 1000 rigid bodys and these can handle 32,000 can you imaging the performance increases or the realism? I just read somewhere that the PS3 will be using it now when its finally released!

Yeah it may take a while to kick off but what piece of new technology doesnt?

Its a move in the right direction but will likely stuggle as a standalone card. When its integrated onto gfx cards or even motherboards i reckon it will be truely awesome! hopefully

ethan · 21 Feb 2006 at 16:36

it looks optomistic for pc gaming and I think that we, as users ought 2 support it even if it does take a little while 2 kick off. Remembering what happened 2 glide is a good point.

mmj_uk · 21 Feb 2006 at 17:59

n3x said:
This is a new and promising piece of kit im my opinion! if current processors can only manage around 1000 rigid bodys and these can handle 32,000 can you imaging the performance increases or the realism?

Exactly, good example... and not only that but your CPU won't have to calculate 1000 rigid bodies meaning more CPU cycles for geometry, end result = 31000 more rigid bodies AND much higher frame-rate.

pastymuncher · 21 Feb 2006 at 19:23

It's not just us that needs to support it! It needs the support of the game developers first. If they don't support it then there's no point in us going out to buy it as it will be useless and just sit there doing nothing. Games have to be written to take advantage of it and that may be it's downfall. It's all very well saying we need to support it but what's the point if no games get written to take advantage of this potentially brilliant bit of kit?

jrodga2k5 · 21 Feb 2006 at 19:49

pastymuncher said:
It's not just us that needs to support it! It needs the support of the game developers first. If they don't support it then there's no point in us going out to buy it as it will be useless and just sit there doing nothing. Games have to be written to take advantage of it and that may be it's downfall. It's all very well saying we need to support it but what's the point if no games get written to take advantage of this potentially brilliant bit of kit?

Exactly, its all down to the Devs at the end of the day, i mean minimum specs on games could not mention the kit but you could be seeing games with the PPU mentioned as a recommended peice of kit!

This is only the beginning of a huge market for these things I'm sure! I still cant imagine an overclocking thread for a PPU tho lol!

locutus12 · 21 Feb 2006 at 19:57

BubbySoup said:
As for the dual core comments, I'm no expert here, but wouldn't it be a hell of a lot easier to write code that gets offloaded to a seperate board than to have to multi-thread your code to run the physics bit on another core, be it CPU or GPU?

Or do I have the wrong end of the stick?

multi threading capable versions of various software are slowly becomming available, it will eventually become the norm to have 64bit mutithreaded software on your box.

welshtom said:
YES YES and YES, Someone who can see through the misty marketting haze like me

glad to see im not the only one.

Alexrose1uk · 21 Feb 2006 at 19:58

I noticed on its site, that City of Villains supports this tech, as well as supporting dual cpu, so obviouslysome tech departments are taking notice of new stuff, and it should mean that other companies see benefits to jumping on the bandwagon, rather than leaving thier rivals with a propaganda coup...

LoadsaMoney · 21 Feb 2006 at 20:46

LoL, so if paying £400+ for a graphics card aint bad enough for some ppl, they now have to pay an extra £200 on top of that for these.

Duff-Man · 21 Feb 2006 at 21:17

LoadsaMoney said:
LoL, so if paying £400+ for a graphics card aint bad enough for some ppl, they now have to pay an extra £200 on top of that for these.

Ironic statement, given your username...

Legless · 21 Feb 2006 at 23:24

Until software companies start to support this card, i can't see many people buying it, unless 3dmark06 supports it and we get a load of willy waving... Hehe...