My Test of GRAW running with and without physX

Things change I've changed · 5 May 2006 at 15:47

I can't believe HAVOK have used to my performance test of GRAW to attack AGEIA and tbh i'm not really that happy they've qouted me as I still believe it's early days yet, I have now passed my number on to ageia so they can contact me,

This is the statement that HAVOK released on the 3rd,

SteveOBHave · 5 May 2006 at 15:53

lowrider007 said:
I can't believe HAVOK have used to my performance test of GRAW to attack AGEIA and tbh i'm not really that happy they've qouted me as I still believe it's early days yet, I have now passed my number on to ageia so they can contact me,
...

Yeah dude, that was kinda low, expected

, but low. But I guess that is what spin doctors do...

Durzel · 5 May 2006 at 19:24

This is a public forum though, you have to expect that anything you say on here is considered "public domain". Nowhere in your post, or anywhere else on the forum does it state that any copyright is held by people who post comments.

Durzel · 5 May 2006 at 19:31

Domipheus said:
Yes, I dont understand why no one else has picked up on this. Even though the PPU is present, they only use it for particles, and keep havok for everything else - it's stupid sloppy design. If a PPU is present, ALL physics should be moved onto it. I really do feel for Ageia here, because instead of showing the power of the card GRAW just utilises it in an inefficient way. The slowdown could probably be put down to overheads of using a full-on PPU for deciding where some particles fall.

I don't know enough about the Havoc SDK to give a totally authoritative viewpoint, but I doubt its something that is just "bolted on" to a game in the same way as perhaps Creative EAX support would be. Therefore I don't think its something that can realistically be "switched off" as easily as you suggest. It's part of the game in the same way that the AI is.

Given that developers are going to keep using Havoc where financially viable for the conceivable future (as its the market leader in non-hardware specific physics implementations), it's fairly safe to assume that games that are on the horizon will exhibit characteristics and performance similar to GRAW - i.e. tacked on added explosions, etc for PhysX enabled users.

I think people are losing sight of the fact that because Havoc isn't dependant on any hardware configuration, PhysX will have to show marked performance benefits before it will have a hope of displacing it as a viable development platform.

megatron · 5 May 2006 at 20:21

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2751&p=4

Not sure if u have seen this, but in contrast (IIRC) to the OP saying that software was faster look above.

oweneades · 5 May 2006 at 20:55

Meh £200 for some other useless* add on.

Think I will stick with my 360 for now.

* Please note I say useless as once again something has been released for the pc without any real software support or anything like even remotely uses it properly.

Ashcrapper · 6 May 2006 at 01:19

Ageia response: http://www.firingsquad.com/features/ageia_physx_response/

raja · 6 May 2006 at 06:10

Nothing conclusive from that article, Ageia really need a game to show off their hardware capabilities to full effect without compromising frame rates. I think blind purchases are now out of the question for most of us, I would like to see this work, I guess we'll have to wait it out. The good thing is that it's all in the open, so I'd expect plenty of tests will be run by most sites showing the implementation and effectivness of future titles.

Fulcrum · 6 May 2006 at 06:18

Why was it ever needed, cpu power is allready far more then a game needs

Cyber-Mav · 6 May 2006 at 08:06

its to reduce development times. with dedicated ppu less coding needed for physics and faster to pull games out then.

Cyanide · 6 May 2006 at 09:11

They have a new driver out, which they claim helps the fps loss in GEAW, anyone care to test it now? There's also a PhysX enabled CellFactor demo

[ui]ICEMAN · 6 May 2006 at 09:58

Cyanide said:
They have a new driver out, which they claim helps the fps loss in GEAW, anyone care to test it now? There's also a PhysX enabled CellFactor demo

Testing both now, will get back to you guys with some results and some more vids.

NickK · 6 May 2006 at 10:07

Cyber-Mav said:
its to reduce development times. with dedicated ppu less coding needed for physics and faster to pull games out then.

They don't develop the physics engines - all that is required is to integrate with the API. The software/hardware implementation is then up to the physics engine vendor and the user use of hardware.

The only thing I can think of to support that is the released CPU time is then squandered by inefficient CPU code in a vain attempt to save development time. All that does is increase your minimum system spec requirements.

Without hardware on the motherboard to increase penetration into the market - games developers will still have to code for the minimum spec requirements using the software physics engine.

Also the companies should be targetting the likes of online games such as EQ, WOW and Vangard where the server farms can make use of the hardware.

One last point - with all the physics for a game on the car memory (rather than eyecandy) then the games will be driven by the maximum amount of memory on the card.. closely followed by the bandwidth (for MMORPGs this then becomes more complicated!). The result is the cost for these cards will result in graphics card style costs unless costs come down.. back to square one..

NickK · 6 May 2006 at 10:28

Fulcrum said:
Why was it ever needed, cpu power is allready far more then a game needs

Only because the games are limited by the slowness of CPUs to start with - it's a chicken and egg situation. The only way to move forward is to challenge the status quo and "put your money where your mouth is" in a business case and run with it.

Sharkypal · 6 May 2006 at 10:37

Total and complete waste of money IMHO. I saw it running GRAW at my mates place yesterday and was totally unimpressed! £184.00 for dust? No thanks. TBH, it looks better without the PhysX. When it is enabled, the effects look out of place.

I really hope this technology proves to be a lot better in the future but for now I just cant justify £184.00 + VAT for a card that does very little. Who knows what the future holds.

S

ihatelag · 6 May 2006 at 10:37

AGEIA's response said:
It’s unclear how this individual measured frame rate impact,

He's got to be joking right?

However we aren’t keeping our heads in the sand.

Hopefully that would be a no brainer since they have marketed themselves as a big player the PPU market. It would be pretty crap if they did nothing about the problems!

We appreciate feedback from the gamer community and based partly on comments like the one above, we have identified an area in our driver where fine tuning positively impacts frame rate. We made an adjustment quickly and delivered it in a new driver (2.4.3) which is available for download at ageia.com today.

Lowrider can you download the new driver and let us know the new fps and the look of the debris.

Iceman: cant wait till your tests come back ^^ this will be interesting.

That’s the beauty of the PhysX solution. A powerful processor is in place now and a flexible software solution is there to continue improving the PhysX experience for our customers. Buy a PhysX accelerator today and it keeps getting better.

Well wouldn't HavocFX be the same? It can be updated with a software patch too? Plus you have the backing of the graphics cards company aswell.

It seems AGEIA are running in damage limitation mode, which is what you would expect from a first generation/first product release from a company..I just hope they will keep on learning and improving their technology, with all the hype behind the PPU, I hope they can live up to consumer expectations.

[ui]ICEMAN · 6 May 2006 at 10:52

Well Cell Factor looks incredible but I'd love to know what kind of system they did the vids on lol, it brings my SLi and Quad SLI systems to their knees even at 1024x768 regardless of HDR being on. Loading up GRAW now, will get back to you.

Sharkypal · 6 May 2006 at 11:10

[ui]ICEMAN said:
Well Cell Factor looks incredible but I'd love to know what kind of system they did the vids on lol, it brings my SLi and Quad SLI systems to their knees even at 1024x768 regardless of HDR being on. Loading up GRAW now, will get back to you.

Yah, that reads as totally impractical. So now we are going to pay to slow our rigs down? I think not!

S

[ui]ICEMAN · 6 May 2006 at 11:13

Well I'm personally not seeing any performance increases in GRAW with the new drivers, if I am, they're very slight. Still getting the same minimum fps as reported in my previous tests during gunshots/grenades/tanker explosions.

Cell Factor is PhysX only so I can't test it without, could be a bunch of reasons why it doesn't run that well so I'm not going to say its definitely the PhysX card until I've ruled out factors like graphics drivers etc.

raja · 6 May 2006 at 11:14

The question of frame rates was cleverly avoided in the article above, hopefully Ice can confirm that the new driver rectifies this issue. If the new driver does not improve frame rates to the point of 'normal' (without PPU rates), that won't impress at all. Given that the physics used in GRAW pale in comparison to the Cell Factor demo, this would leave us pretty dissapointed, certainly would not justify the need for the hardware at all.