My Test of GRAW running with and without physX

[Dutch Guy]

You can be fairly sure that some of the people dissing the card publicly have bought one. More money than sense is very true when it comes to PC hardware.

Too true, not only with computer hardware though, no matter how much people hear a Vauxhall Astra is crap compared to others they still buy a new one.

It is a new toy and people are willing to buy it just to have a fiddle with it which IMO is a good thing, the more they sell the more thay can refine the technology and the bigger the chance is that game developers invest time in optimising their games for use with a PhysX card.


[edit]
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/05/08/bfg_ageia_physx_ppu_review/5.html

There have been persistant rumours on the net that the extra eye candy generated when running a PhysX-enabled system would cause a drop in frames per second. As the theory goes, there is extra geometry flying around the screen that wasn't there before that has to be drawn, causing extra GPU load. Many users were expecting the opposite - a speed increase - by offloading physics calculations from the CPU to PPU but those hopes were scotched when we met with AGEIA at the Games Developers Conference:

"We drive sales of high-end hardware," Andy Hess, Director of Content Acquistion for AGEIA told us. "When you have a PhysX processor in your system, you've gotta have that SLI. You've gotta have both graphics cards to handle the amount of data that we send out. We keep those guys really busy."

[/edit]

 

[pedigree]

The bottom line is that you cant blame the hardware for code thats been poorly written, which seems to be the case with GR:AW

 

[SteveOBHave]

There have been persistant rumours on the net that the extra eye candy generated when running a PhysX-enabled system would cause a drop in frames per second. As the theory goes, there is extra geometry flying around the screen that wasn't there before that has to be drawn, causing extra GPU load. Many users were expecting the opposite - a speed increase - by offloading physics calculations from the CPU to PPU but those hopes were scotched when we met with AGEIA at the Games Developers Conference:

"We drive sales of high-end hardware," Andy Hess, Director of Content Acquistion for AGEIA told us. "When you have a PhysX processor in your system, you've gotta have that SLI. You've gotta have both graphics cards to handle the amount of data that we send out. We keep those guys really busy."

Now see that is really quite gutting... and pointless. So we take a major frame rate fall so we can have some more bits flying around - SUPER! (Right, thats the emotive bit out of the way )

Personally I am dubious as to the lifespan of SLI and CrossFire. The reason I say this is due to the inefficiencies of using two GPUs on separate boards, and then there is the extra power consumption and all this for a 10-20% frame rate increase? And now Ageia has kindly let us know their intention to load the GPUs further rather than allow them to do what they do best?

My inclination to give Ageia a chance, to keep touting the 'Early days yet' line is rapidly diminishing.

I've said it before and I will say it again, I believe the future is in a single integrated option rather than a handful of various cards. One card that does the whole thing and so far (ignoring the rather purile recent PR efforts) Havok seem to have a more reasonable implimentation.

Qudos to Ageia for creating something that will cause Havok to buck up its game, and we'll forget about the rather poor example of the PhysX implimentation in GRAW, but there has to be a better and more efficient option than buying an SLI/CrossFire capable MoBo, two high end graphics cards and a £200+ Physics card all for what can easily be an inital outlay of £1000+.

 

[JudgeC]

Surely this is the final nail for PhysX then. We have both ATI and NVidia announcing that they will be implementing a Physics acceleration solution utilising the already hefty investment in hardware that people with SLI or CF have made.
Now Ageia are saying that to get the benifit from the PhysX card, you need to be running SLI or CF. So basically as a single GPU card user, I am going to have to go to a dual card set-up anyway, so I may as well wait for the ATI/NVidia solutions and save myself £200.

 

[Cyanide]

So a PhysX card now costs an extra £450+ to a single GPU user?

I've said it before and I'll say it again... I wouldn't mind those framerate drops or the price tag if the new particles acrtually looked real, rather than appearing from nowhere, looking untextured then disappearing. Even some of the effects on Cell Factor don't look too good, mainly the liquid.

 

[ihatelag]

Too true, not only with computer hardware though, no matter how much people hear a Vauxhall Astra is crap compared to others they still buy a new one.

LOL What's wrong with Vauxhall Astra...I just got a new one!

 

[Cyanide]

LOL What's wrong with Vauxhall Astra...I just got a new one!

 

[SteveOBHave]

LOL What's wrong with Vauxhall Astra...I just got a new one!

LOL, nothing really except they aren't one of these

But in all seriousness, didn't the Astra have issues with a little too much power? Something about torque steering and problems applying power around corners?

 

[Fulcrum]

That a good quote Dutch guy, at least they were clear about their aims before the launch even. What they need to do to secure sales then is to make games with content that actually requires the ppu, now it seems the cpu can still handle the extra physics?

I'd be happy with a new astra or ppu, however the price I'd pay for either is debateable

I've said it before and I will say it again, I believe the future is in a single integrated option rather than a handful of various cards. One card that does the whole thing and so far (ignoring the rather purile recent PR efforts) Havok seem to have a more reasonable implimentation.

Intel said the same thing a few years ago however the market has only divisified even more since. I do have one pc that just has a cpu and motherboard and it can play HL2 pretty well, everything is integrated however its no where near cutting edge and I think the best graphics available with this approach is a very low spec htpc type geforce 6 based system.
Even on that system the cpu is under utilised, rarely do games need more cpu power and its only a 1700+ (overclocked a ton).

 

[Dutch Guy]

LOL What's wrong with Vauxhall Astra...I just got a new one!

I bet you had a Astra as your last car as well ...... I just find the ride to be a lot worse than a Focus, But this isn't really the thread for this and I regret mentioning it already

Anyway, If you need SLI/CF to use a PhysX the physics might as well be handled by the CPU as you will not be CPU limited in most cases with a SLI/CF so I am beginning to think it really is a useless invention (in it's current form)

 

[Cyanide]

Anyway, If you need SLI/CF to use a PhysX the physics might as well be handled by the CPU as you will not be CPU limited in most cases with a SLI/CF so I am beginning to think it really is a useless invention (in it's current form)

It'll also give HavokFX a boost as if you've got SLI then the GPU's will run all of the Physics and you won't need to spend any extra on a PPU. It'd probably just about cope on a single card too. Sure, there might not be as many blocks flying around, but it'd still look great. As seen here

 

[SteveOBHave]

It'll also give HavokFX a boost as if you've got SLI then the GPU's will run all of the Physics and you won't need to spend any extra on a PPU. It'd probably just about cope on a single card too. Sure, there might not be as many blocks flying around, but it'd still look great. As seen here

See these are the words gamers like to hear:

"Havok FX - Hardware-Accelerated Physics That Won't Cost Gamers"

Not upping Havok (still not happy about their PR tactics) but IMO this is the correct way to go about selling a product.

EDIT: BTW nice link Cyanide

 

[Cyanide]

See these are the words gamers like to hear:

"Havok FX - Hardware-Accelerated Physics That Won't Cost Gamers"

Not upping Havok (still not happy about their PR tactics) but IMO this is the correct way to go about selling a product.

Yeh... their PR tactics were pretty low... but at least they seem to realise that a true gamer will buy something because it offers the best performance/price ratio, not just because it's the newest piece of kit! If I can buy a £250 GPU and clock the living hell out of it to give decent physics performance as well, rather than buying a shiny new PPU then I will. It's more fun that way

 

[ihatelag]

See these are the words gamers like to hear:

"Havok FX - Hardware-Accelerated Physics That Won't Cost Gamers"

Not upping Havok (still not happy about their PR tactics) but IMO this is the correct way to go about selling a product.

EDIT: BTW nice link Cyanide

Indeed, I am all in favour of HavokFX, just waiting on some technical tests and demos to see how well it performs

 

[SteveOBHave]

Indeed, I am all in favour of HavokFX, just waiting on some technical tests and demos to see how well it performs

Indeed,the proof is in the pudding mmmm pudding

 

[ihatelag]

Indeed,the proof is in the pudding mmmm pudding

Hehe I really like this statement (parry's with what I was saying earlier in this thread about bandwidth issues) :

Ageia's PhysX accelerator is a PCI 33MHz 32bit card, with a maximum bandwith of 0.133GB/sec. Even if a future PhysX accelerator was available as a PCIe 16x card, even PCIe 16x provides only up to 4GB/sec bandwidth, which is only a fraction of the 25GB/sec to 50GB/sec memory bandwidth available on todays high end GPUs.

I wonder how will AGEIA be able to compete with the bandwidth of graphics cards which use HavocFX.

 

[Things change I've changed]

Too true, not only with computer hardware though, no matter how much people hear a Vauxhall Astra is crap compared to others they still buy a new one.

It is a new toy and people are willing to buy it just to have a fiddle with it which IMO is a good thing, the more they sell the more thay can refine the technology and the bigger the chance is that game developers invest time in optimising their games for use with a PhysX card.


[edit]
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2006/05/08/bfg_ageia_physx_ppu_review/5.html



[/edit]

I'm not happy with that comment one bit, and thats not the impression that they gave from the start, basicly then they fooled us with stupid marketing spin like the "gaming power triangle"



and comments like like this from Curtis Davis (Ageia)

"The PPU and GPU are developed to run a set of focused specific class of applications, exceling in their respective algorithms with highest possible performance."

Curtis Davis : "PCI Express is by far a more scalable interface and the high end gamers will seek out this interface."

Really? what a fool you look like now then considering that Andy Hess, Director of Content Acquistion for AGEIA has now stated

"When you have a PhysX processor in your system, you've gotta have that SLI. You've gotta have both graphics cards to handle the amount of data that we send out. We keep those guys really busy"

yeh, highend users will really be going for pci-e when it comes out considering they won't be able to fit in there machine b-cos sli is recommended.

Curtis Davis : "The PPU in many ways will make changes in the game industry in similar ways as the GPU did in the late nineties, Similarly GPU’s made many leaps in graphical processing power available to the game developers"

Strange as i rememberd it GPU's improved peformance, oh, and quality.

If you want to have a good laugth then read this quote also,

Curtis Davis : "The advent of PPUs and the anticipated transformation of games mirror the story of 3D Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) in the 1990’s. 3D GPU’s abstracted the rendering and display functions which were until then performed in software, applying purpose-built architectures to speed up and enhance those functions. As a result, the visual quality of games increased dramatically, and soon after their introduction every significant game was compelled to incorporate the new 3D hardware technology, much to the happy benefit of gaming.

The adoption of 3D GPUs reduced the CPU rendering load in most games, but interestingly, as graphics content expanded in scale and scope, the requirements on the CPU for preparation, housekeeping and other tasks increased. A similar phenomenon can be anticipated with the adoption of PPUs"

What a joke, Curtis Davis, you sir, are a fool.

 

[SteveOBHave]

What a joke, Curtis Davis, you sir, are a fool.

LOL nice spotting, he has nicely managed to point out that the PPU will cause extra load on the CPU. Slowly it is looking like the PPU is mearly re-routing the physics calc load and slowing it down... woops

Seems like Ageia should have been using a half decent PR team and had someone writing their speeches for them...

QUICK - EVERYONE POINT AT THE SPECIAL GUY => Curtis Davis

 

[ihatelag]

What a joke, Curtis Davis, you sir, are a fool.

LMAO!! I didn't even notice that he made the comment in that way!!!!!

Words can't describe how stupid that last line of his was.

I think we no longer need to justify the problems with PPU, Curtis has managed to do that himself!!! lol


*oops missed your post Steve*

LOL, nothing really except they aren't one of these

... *edit pic for space*

But in all seriousness, didn't the Astra have issues with a little too much power? Something about torque steering and problems applying power around corners?

I would love one of those cars..but I got my Astra at a good deal. Plus I drive roughly 30 miles a week...so im not putting the car through its paces...yet. Although as for turning corners, it works just fine for me

 

[Cyber-Mav]

*** a fool, hope ageia goes bankrupt and it will teach allt eh fools who rushed out and bought this card a real lesson.