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My Test of GRAW running with and without physX

Lanz said:
Yup, original xbox games like the new Tomber Raider are really quite impressive considering they are running on a 733mhz Celeron and GF3. If PC developers had time and money, they could produce a Cellfactor type game that runs at 50fps quite easy without any PPU crap, but time is money nowadays, so they have to go for the easy, slow option.
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The problem with a PC is that there are so many different specs possible that optimising is very difficult, with a console you know excactly what hardware is in it and they can optimise much easier.

With a PC game you have to make sure it runs great on new hardware but also on a 1500Mhz CPU and Ti4200
 
Dutch Guy said:
The problem with a PC is that there are so many different specs possible that optimising is very difficult, with a console you know excactly what hardware is in it and they can optimise much easier.

With a PC game you have to make sure it runs great on new hardware but also on a 1500Mhz CPU and Ti4200
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Agreed - something of a vicious circle really, we have the hardware manufacturers creating bigger and better hardware, and the developers creating code at a fast and furious rate and little optimisation for currently existing hardware so the hardware manufactures have to create bigger and better....

It's when you get the games consoles as a status quo, do you get some decent code optimisation. Herein lies what I believe to be the issue with the PhysX card, by the time they have their act sorted the initial release hardware is going to be totally redundant. The goal posts are moving and I suspect Ageia wont be able to keep up...
 
I think the time for this product selling in droves is over. I have played Cell Factor without a PPU, and looking at the demo videos that were on the Ageia site, there's not much extra that the PPU adds. The release of the playable Cell Factor demo was to rescue the hardware's commercial profile, trouble is people worked out how to play the game without the Ageia hardware, finding that there was little that changed in terms of performance and physical appearance. The other factor is since launch and actual testing by consumers Ageia have not been able to make any statements regarding possible fixes or performance boosts that satisfy the global feeling regarding the product and it's abilities.
 
You don't suppose NVidia and ATI might have crippled their drivers so that if a PhysiX card is used, it dosent have a good frame rate, after all, they are looking to provide Physics acceleration themselves!.
 
Clairvoyant said:
This reminds me of the original VooDoo cards.
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Rubbish. I had a Voodoo 1 and they were fab although drivers/DX problems, early demos/games were awesome. Difference betwen GL Quake and Quake at the same rez was former smooth as silk framerate and higher quality textures.
 
Assuming there is not some fundamental sub-system bottleneck (namely the PCI bus), I think its hard for Ageia to introduce a product like this. Games are technology driven but technology is driven by games.

Compare the PPU to shader model 3.

People make do with SM2, and when SM3 was a new technology very little games supported it.

Games take a year or more to make, and to have real support for a new technology it has to have been designed in from the start.

While I would like games to be advanced in this way, in not willing to be a early adopter.

In the same way I use onboard sound Ill wait till its integrated.

In a recent interview of Tim Sweeny of Unreal fame, he told NV-hardware that a physics accelerator is supposed to speed up physics in games, and that he sees the problem as a general computing problem and even 3d acceleration.
 
err, explain how the patch for shader model 3.0 support and HDR came out for farcry? and the game still ran great.

its bad programming from the start that kills pc games.

and this ppu is just a useless device when will people learn that you don;t have to part with 200 quid to reduce your framerates in games.

a fool and his money are very easily parted.
 
If we have massive improved frames could both Lowrider and yourself step up to the plate one more time.
Can you guys confer a little on settings etc. If the frames are "similar" in scenes using the PPU effects heavilly then there is a definite bottleneck on the physics card and everything their PR has spouted is a complete pack of lies (i.e quad-sli VS whatever lowrider has should be vastly different FPS).
Im going to put a small wager on the FPS between you both being rather similar, either that or the game is being told to make the effects in hardware and they have off-loaded most of the calculations to GPU/CPU (i.e a wrapper). CPU usage with the old drivers VS new drivers will prove this quite easilly.

Please, please guys, come together and do one last review - if the above is the case we can bury the heap of poo once and for all and move on to using something which helps. If they ever come out with something that has a higher bandwidth slot available to it then fair play, worth another look.
 
Ageia have taken the Cell Factor download link off their website leaving in place the following message,

"Update: A new beta of CellFactor: Combat Training is arriving soon.

CellFactor: Combat Training will be made available for download again very soon.

We apologize for the inconvenience."

The question is tho, will they be working on improving the ppu performance or tweaking it so that it's impossible to play it without a ppu, if they had archieved this in the first place then just think, we would have all been fooled into thinking that is was the ppu doing all of those fancy physics.
 
Last edited:
lowrider007 said:
Ageia have taken the Cell Factor download link off their website leaving in place the following message,

"Update: A new beta of CellFactor: Combat Training is arriving soon.

CellFactor: Combat Training will be made available for download again very soon.

We apologize for the inconvenience."

The question is tho, will they be working on improving the ppu performance or tweaking it so that it's impossible to play it without a ppu, if they had archieved this in the first place then just think, we would have all been fooled into thinking that is was the ppu doing all of those fancy physics.
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MUHUHAHAHAHAHA... :D

I don't know about you, but I see an Iceberg ahead :) LOL
 
“U dont need a physx card to run cell factor apparently, and there is no diff with or without:
http://www.warp2search.net/modules....order=0&thold=0“

That’s not true there are a lot of effects missing without the PPU. Having a PPU gives you more FPS and more special effects.

I don’t see why everyone is being so harsh to the PPU. Even in games like Ghost Recon with the new drivers and patch you get far better FPS and better effects with a PPU over someone without one. So why is everyone saying its useless and a waste of money?

I recommend to buy a PPU if the games you play support it. It makes a large difference. More FPS and more effects.
 
Pottsey said:
“U dont need a physx card to run cell factor apparently, and there is no diff with or without:
http://www.warp2search.net/modules....order=0&thold=0“

That’s not true there are a lot of effects missing without the PPU. Having a PPU gives you more FPS and more special effects.

I don’t see why everyone is being so harsh to the PPU. Even in games like Ghost Recon with the new drivers and patch you get far better FPS and better effects with a PPU over someone without one. So why is everyone saying its useless and a waste of money?

I recommend to buy a PPU if the games you play support it. It makes a large difference. More FPS and more effects.
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You are like a tadpole swimming against white water rapids. The overwhelming opinion on this and the other side of the globe is that the card is a steaming pile.

As for game support, you need more than just a Ageia logo on the box to claim that the card is actually improving the game at all.

I don't have one, and never intended to get one, but I want to see you go over to the [H] and tell them that they should all spend £200 on a card which makes their games marginally slower or the same FPS and whos effects can be rendered without the PPU.

Software renderers could always mimic the job of the hardware accelerated but the difference was that the hardware was faster and looked better, this card is neither faster or adds anything to the scene.

I don't have any experience of this card but from what Ive read, you don't have any either.
 
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