My Test of GRAW running with and without physX

Cyanide · 11 May 2006 at 20:13

Don't know if this has been said already or not... but...

(Crysis)

"They confirmed that there are no plans to integrate Ageia PhysX support, and that all the physics routines were written by themselves. Most of the processing is done on the processor - making use of multiple cores where they're available - and some processing is even offloaded to the GPU where it can, although to quote the Crytek rep, "We're going to be keeping the GPU pretty busy most of the time just with graphics, though.""

From here

Considering the supposed awesome physics in that game I'd say that was another serious blow for Ageia.

Lanz · 11 May 2006 at 21:02

HangTime said:
The fact that performance drops off with Crossfire, but not with a single card solution, indicates to me that it is probably creating a cpu bottleneck. With physX disabled, you Crossfire can really stretch it's legs, but switch physx on, and you end up waiting around for the cpu to do it's share of the work.

I would think its a PPU bottleneck more like, the GPUs are waiting for the PPU to finish its work, probably due to the crappy old PCI interface.

A PPU is the ideal thing to really make use of PCI-e, but instead they release it on PCI, that decision could really backfire for them, as first impressions mean everything.

Cyber-Mav · 11 May 2006 at 21:37

first impressions do mean everything and i agree with you on that. this ppu leaves a very sour taste and now way is it worth it.

megatron · 12 May 2006 at 00:42

PCI can barely handle sound, be it onboard or not; Ive had to kill a few programs since they were lagging my games:
1) ATItool does I guess where it changes fan speeds
2) Nvidia sound drivers dont play well with my board so I use Realtek drivers.
3) Running Nvfirewall caused a lag when in game server browsers were working, fps dropped to single figures; which may or may not be to do with the pci bus.

The fatal flaw with all mobos Ive used from KR7A-133 abit, nforce2, nforce4 has been the IRQ assignments which is very much associated with the PCI bus. I believe if the operating system allowed control over PCI assignments it would allieviate the problem (as indirectly I did on nforce2).

Dutch Guy · 12 May 2006 at 08:15

Surely if it really is the PCI bus that is the problem Ageia would have known from the beginning and they would not have gone this far in developing the cards :confused:

Cyanide · 12 May 2006 at 10:07

Dutch Guy said:
Surely if it really is the PCI bus that is the problem Ageia would have known from the beginning and they would not have gone this far in developing the cards

And surely they wouldn't develop a product that's going to need both SLI AND PCI-E? :confused:

SteveOBHave · 12 May 2006 at 10:13

Lanz said:
I would think its a PPU bottleneck more like, the GPUs are waiting for the PPU to finish its work, probably due to the crappy old PCI interface.

A PPU is the ideal thing to really make use of PCI-e, but instead they release it on PCI, that decision could really backfire for them, as first impressions mean everything.

I agree, the system is always going to be as fast as the slowest part. Also agree on the first impressions. It's going to take something really special to turn around the general opinion of the PPU. I can't imagine what the moral is like for the Ageia team at the moment, it'd be pressure all the way and not a whole bunch of positive feedback. It wouldn't be the first time a small player has jumped into the game and been blitzed by the market giants.

ihatelag · 12 May 2006 at 14:25

SteveOBHave said:
I agree, the system is always going to be as fast as the slowest part. Also agree on the first impressions. It's going to take something really special to turn around the general opinion of the PPU. I can't imagine what the moral is like for the Ageia team at the moment, it'd be pressure all the way and not a whole bunch of positive feedback. It wouldn't be the first time a small player has jumped into the game and been blitzed by the market giants.

They're going to feel the strain even more when HavocFX appears.

I would like to think that AGEIA have some sort of strategy on how to convince everyone to not to go for the all in one approach (HavocFX) and to instead get a PPU to enchance the game.

SteveOBHave · 12 May 2006 at 14:42

ihatelag said:
They're going to feel the strain even more when HavocFX appears.

I would like to think that AGEIA have some sort of strategy on how to convince everyone to not to go for the all in one approach (HavocFX) and to instead get a PPU to enchance the game.

They have a tough act to follow with Havok being 'free to gamers'... Regardless of how much money a person has, having something for nothing is always a bonus.

Fulcrum · 12 May 2006 at 14:43

How is Havok going to be free, isnt the GPU allready used for graphics so its just going to use spare cycles and the same video memory for physics as well ?

Will that work with ATI and Nvidia then..

ihatelag · 12 May 2006 at 15:18

Fulcrum said:
...
Will that work with ATI and Nvidia then..

Of course it will

Cyber-Mav · 12 May 2006 at 17:15

well all havok fx has to do is add a tiny bit of physics and no loss in speed and it will easily beat the ageia implementation.

ihatelag · 15 May 2006 at 16:07

Asustek claims world's first PhysX add-in card, but it's probably #2

Article: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2006/05/15/asus_physx/

Funny calling it the worlds first PhysX add in card

I wonder if Asus have made the product more compatible with Asus brand graphics cards? Bah...I still think we're a long way away until we find out the true potential (or lack of) of PhysX.

raja · 15 May 2006 at 17:34

FWIW I've been playing the Cellfactor demo without a Physx card, I'm getting the same frame rates if not better than those of the guys using the cards, and the effects seem almost the same. We'll have to see what happens for Ageia over the next 2 months, I think the whole picture should be out in the open by then. ATM there is plenty of hearsay, leaving Ageia with much to prove.

spookywillow · 15 May 2006 at 18:59

i agree raja,

i too have been playing it without a ppu using the high graphics shortcut and my fps generally stay maxed at 44 fps until i shoot something and then they average around 25 fps and big explosions drop me to about 10 fps.

the only thing i can see different in cellfactor without a ppu is no cloth or liquids but they dont seem that amazing anyway.

SteveOBHave · 16 May 2006 at 08:17

spookywillow said:
i agree raja,

i too have been playing it without a ppu using the high graphics shortcut and my fps generally stay maxed at 44 fps until i shoot something and then they average around 25 fps and big explosions drop me to about 10 fps.

the only thing i can see different in cellfactor without a ppu is no cloth or liquids but they dont seem that amazing anyway.

Ageia sounds like it has been implimenting smoke and mirrors... very very dissappointing. Where I was previously happy to say, wait and see, now I am not sure I can be bothered waiting...

ihatelag · 16 May 2006 at 10:02

SteveOBHave said:
Ageia sounds like it has been implimenting smoke and mirrors... very very dissappointing. Where I was previously happy to say, wait and see, now I am not sure I can be bothered waiting...

Indeed the wait can be long...but... I just hope that this card doesn't become a "one-hit-wonder" just for UT2007 as everyone is hyping it up to be.

Even if UT07 is good, it still needs to be seen how well it works on many other games...it's pointless to get a hardware card for just one game :s And so far from the current tests of games that are going to be released, it's looking to be this way.

Anyway, there interesting times ahead, with the soon to be released HavocFX, this will force AGEIA to come up with better ways/ideas to improve physics performace, in order to stay a market player in the GPU world.

SteveOBHave · 16 May 2006 at 10:39

ihatelag said:
Indeed the wait can be long...but... I just hope that this card doesn't become a "one-hit-wonder" just for UT2007 as everyone is hyping it up to be.

Even if UT07 is good, it still needs to be seen how well it works on many other games...it's pointless to get a hardware card for just one game :s And so far from the current tests of games that are going to be released, it's looking to be this way.

Anyway, there interesting times ahead, with the soon to be released HavocFX, this will force AGEIA to come up with better ways/ideas to improve physics performace, in order to stay a market player in the GPU world.

A little off subject here, but I noticed in your sig that you have 4GB of mem... do you find that this makes much difference in your PCs performance in and out of gaming?

ihatelag · 16 May 2006 at 11:44

SteveOBHave said:
A little off subject here, but I noticed in your sig that you have 4GB of mem... do you find that this makes much difference in your PCs performance in and out of gaming?

A hell of a difference now im on x64. Games run faster, aswell as fast load times. As for out of gaming experience, I experience faster rendering (maya) and faster programming compiling - but that is relative to its size. 2GB of ram would render my 20 minute scene in a hour, at 4GB its about 40mins which is cool

Any improvement is a good improvement in my book

SteveOBHave · 16 May 2006 at 11:52

ihatelag said:
A hell of a difference now im on x64. Games run faster, aswell as fast load times. As for out of gaming experience, I experience faster rendering (maya) and faster programming compiling - but that is relative to its size. 2GB of ram would render my 20 minute scene in a hour, at 4GB its about 40mins which is cool Any improvement is a good improvement in my book

Yeah fully... They are suggesting that 4GB be the new standard for Vista... Looks like we will all be going that way sooner rather than later...