PhysX launched today.

[sunlitsix]

edit - it not the quietest thing that i've brought, I can hear it over my gtx and it'd certainly not the coolest thing, considering it's not really doing anything at the moment it's very hot to touch

smack a zalman on it tbh

 

[ps3ud0]

smack a zalman on it tbh

Naah vapo the *****

If its hot at idle (well it cant be doing anything) wonder how hot it will get at load and how badly it will effect GPU temps (or temps overall for that matter). Surprised it is so hot compared really - probabaly down to a poorly designed cooling system...

Wouldnt want to put that in a shuttle/sff system

ps3ud0

 

[Things change I've changed]

Naah vapo the *****

If its hot at idle (well it cant be doing anything) wonder how hot it will get at load and how badly it will effect GPU temps (or temps overall for that matter). Surprised it is so hot compared really - probabaly down to a poorly designed cooling system...

Wouldnt want to put that in a shuttle/sff system

ps3ud0

well my gtx used to idle at 55 but with the physX card next to it, it's now idle at 65, I might swap it around with my soundcard, but tbh I only really like having my sound card at the bottom

 

[raja]

I think there is a snowboarding game demo that utilises this device, look over on gamershell, the name of the game should be in the development list.

 

[Steedie]

housemate just got his

playing around with the maya plugins at the moment, looks awesome what he can do now compared to before what ground his pc to a halt

 

[snarloas1982]

http://physx.ageia.com/titles.html titles for the card, think il wait for it all to happen before i get one

 

[VeNT]

so whats everyone think about these cards? worth the spend or better off spending that much on a new graphics card?

 

[squiffy]

I wouldn't buy one...yet. No point until these cards are widely supported and current systems slow down because the lack of one. I'm the type that will buy new technology (Voodoo 1 and 1st gen DVD player purchased) But dunno about this.

 

[easyrider]

simple really, I just wanted to get it out of the way, I did'unt want to take the chance of them being hard to source when GRAW comes out, I really don't think that they will be any cheaper in mid may when they are officially released so why not get one early, at least now I can chill and wait for the physX supported games to roll in.



Not sure really, I did'nt get anything with the card, it was oem tho so that was understandable.

yep, buy when its needed ,not in fear of stock shortage IMO lol

 

[KraniX]

I can't see it succeeding without something dramatic.

A comparison...I bought a Voodoo card when they first came out. At the time I bought it, it was used by a demo that came with the card and a patched version of Quake. That was it. Come to think of it, I'm not sure if the patched version of Quake was available at the time. The card was probably more expensive in relative terms than these PhysX cards.

I installed it and ran the demo. I gawped at it for a while and phoned a friend. He came round, gawped at it for a while and then drove straight to the shop I bought it from to buy one himself.

That's what PhsyX cards need - the gawp-and-buy factor. I don't see it. Where is the physics equivalent of that patched Quake? Or even a jaw-dropping demo that simply cannot run without a PhysX card?

I remember the first 3d accelerator I got, a Matrox M3d. Slapped it in and played Quake 2 - was blown away by the improvement. The M3d was soon replaced by an 8MB Voodoo2 which was quickly dumped in favour of two 12MB cards in SLI... oh those were the days of affordable graphics cards. Actually that lot probably cost me a shed load more than a SLI setup nowadays.

The M3d card was the start of my addiction, damn you Matrox! DAMN YOU!!!

 

[SteveOBHave]

I agree, if they had a release next to say Oblivion, or BF2 (2 personal favs) and been able to see a marked improvement with the games I may have thought about buying one, but as it stands there is no real 'killer app' for the PhysX (IMO).

 

[iamgud]

I cannot wait to see one of these with UT2007. It is the "killer app"

It is expensive though, when they can be had for £100 they will be popular.

I am quite new to graphics cards, how much did an old dual card setup and PC to run it on cost?

 

[SteveOBHave]

I cannot wait to see one of these with UT2007. It is the "killer app"

It is expensive though, when they can be had for £100 they will be popular.

I am quite new to graphics cards, how much did an old dual card setup and PC to run it on cost?

Yeah, ok. I won't argue with that. UT2007 is looking pretty impressive, but I will be curious to see if there will be a large enough gameplay improvement to warrant the £160?

I wouldn't know about the old dual card setups, was a console lad for ages before I bought my PC...

 

[Things change I've changed]

game spot have already tested GRAW with and without a physX card,

heres an extract from the article,

Visually, the PC version looks to be on par with the Xbox 360 version, despite the fact that it uses different technology. However, you'll probably need a beefy system with a top-of-the-line video card in order to run the game well at high detail. The version of the game we played had trouble maintaining a smooth frame rate on our older hardware, though the developers may have yet to optimize the code fully. Still, if you have the processing power, the PC version looks just as good as the Xbox 360 version, if not better, from the incredible draw distances (imagine standing on the roof of a building and seeing buildings extend for miles) to the dust and grit particle effects that effuse the air. You'll also discover an environment that's fairly reactive, thanks to the sophisticated physics engine. You can take apart cars with gunfire, and then push the parts around, something that you can't do in the Xbox 360 version. The physics in the game are so abundant that the PC version will have support for the upcoming Aegia PhysX card, the add-on physics chip due out next month. If you have the PhysX card, you'll see complex physical interactions without a hit on your frame rate. We saw the game running on an extremely high-end system without the card, and there were still some impressive physics in action, such as a grenade sending dozens of boxes in the air. However, on less powerful hardware, the same demonstration can send the frame rates plummeting, so we'll see how Ubisoft scales and optimizes the performance in the final version of the game.

full link here,

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/tomclancysghostrecon3/news.html?sid=6147676

 

[SteveOBHave]

errr... I must be blind - I can't see anything in there about testing with a PhysX...

 

[Durzel]

errr... I must be blind - I can't see anything in there about testing with a PhysX...

Me neither, it's just supposition based on marketing fluff?

Might as well say "you'll hear some amazing sound with Creative X-FiXT MaXX Pro" or something. Until someone shows me framerate benchmarks with and without PhysX, I'm not convinced.

Also, and here's the kicker, physics is done on the CPU - not the graphics card. Actually rendering the results of the physics computations is done by the graphics cards (together with whatever lighting is required, etc). Unless you are CPU-bound, having one of these cards isn't going to speed up your framerate whether its supported or not.

(Obviously on SLI/Xfire systems, you probably are CPU bound... just pointing out that a PhysX card isn't a substitute for a powerful graphics card).

 

[Things change I've changed]

Also, and here's the kicker, physics is done on the CPU - not the graphics card. Actually rendering the results of the physics computations is done by the graphics cards (together with whatever lighting is required, etc). Unless you are CPU-bound, having one of these cards isn't going to speed up your framerate whether its supported or not.

what are you going on about ??, the physics on GRAW will be done on the PPU (physX card) if you have one installed, and this card is'nt supposed to increase you fps, it's just stops it from dropping when for example a car blows up in a game or a smoke grenade is let off.

(Obviously on SLI/Xfire systems, you probably are CPU bound... just pointing out that a PhysX card isn't a substitute for a powerful graphics card).

that fact that people with sli/xfire systems are more CPU bound gives them more of a reason to purchase a PPU.

 

[Durzel]

what are you going on about ??, the physics on GRAW will be done on the PPU (physX card) if you have one installed, and this card is'nt supposed to increase you fps, it's just stops it from dropping when for example a car blows up in a game or a smoke grenade is let off.



that fact that people with sli/xfire systems are more CPU bound gives them more of a reason to purchase a PPU.

Why does your framerate drop? It's because either your CPU or GPU (or both) are at max load (ok, technically a background process can cause it but lets not get pedantic).

My point is, if physics is done on your CPU, and your CPU isn't running at 100% CPU (i.e. your potential framerate is being crippled by your CPU being overloaded) then it wont matter whether you have a PPU (PhysX card) or not because there is spare processing power available.

IF your CPU is running at 100%, and your GPU isn't - then a PPU will help because it will remove x% of the CPU time spent processing physics computations.

My point is - it's a false economy to think "oh I'll just get an X800 and a PhysX card, instead of getting SLI/XFire" because the only time you are likely to be CPU bound in games is when your graphics card(s) are too fast for your CPU to keep up.

The only practical applications where I can see it would work effectively (assuming it was supported) are either for "top end CPU + SLI/Xfire" or "crappy CPU and fast graphics card(s)". If you're in the middle ground with a pretty decent CPU and decent graphics card, then you probably wont see any tangible benefit at all.

 

[frisson]

You don't really get it, do you Durzel?

This card allows particle and object modelling orders of magnitude higher than today's games. If you ran this with a normal cpu it would hammer it into the ground and your frame rate would be destroyed.

Games manufacturers will therefore have a number of objects on screen dependent on whether or not you have one of these installed. If you do - you have far more objects on screen and better particle effects than users not running the card.

However - a good sli setup will be required to get the best out of it because all these objects still have to be rendered once their dynamic properties have been calculated otherwise the GFX will become the bottleneck.

The important thing to remember is that games will have two modes depending on whether the card is present. It's a bit like comparing hardware and software driven OpenGL back in the early days. Both modes would work, but the hardware accelerated looked soooooo much better.

 

[BubbySoup]

My point is, if physics is done on your CPU, and your CPU isn't running at 100% CPU (i.e. your potential framerate is being crippled by your CPU being overloaded) then it wont matter whether you have a PPU (PhysX card) or not because there is spare processing power available.

You are totally missing the point of what the PPU does. It wouldn't matter if you had an entire CPU just for physics, it still wouldn't be able to calculate a tenth of what the PPU can.

On another point, I'm not sure why people are saying they will wait until their frame rate gets affected enough to warrant a PPU - your frame rate won't suffer because without the PPU installed, you won't be seeing the extra physics anyway.