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PPU more then 100% faster then CPU in UT3 benchmark here.

Pottsey said:
“Do you have a PPU? If you do try it for yourself and see. You don't need a timedemo to see that you are not getting much of an FPS boost.”
I appear to be getting a decent FPS boost about 15fps. But I want a time demo to be sure. Like I said before bots could be messing up my score. Its not a fair bencmark and I might be wrong about 15fps.
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Why are you going on about bots? No one cares about single player. In MP there is always the same variety of things going on. If it botheres you that much then run a server yourself and then you will be alone. Then you can test without anything polluting your results. Personally I'm seeing more like a 8-12 FPS boost.

Pottsey said:
“The amount going on is not going to be THAT much different. Sure it won't be totally accurate, but it will give you a rough guide as to what difference it will make.”
It is. Without a PPU, record results on the same map. The average FPS jumps around a lot based on the bots and your play style. If you spend lots of time with the sniper one map, then close range weapons next time on the same map get a very different FPS results. Hanging around one part of the level more then the other part can change results a lot as well.
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Strange as my average FPS seems very stable no matter what is going on. That after all is pretty much what average means. Apart from in extreme situations my FPS stays within around a 15FPS range.

Pottsey said:
“But you are lucky if you get just a few FPS, which at anything already over ~40FPS is pretty much pointless.”
100 is better then 60 and 65 is better then 55. More FPS is always better. Anything over 40 isn’t useless. Your just guessing at it only being a few FPS. There is no evidence to say that. We don’t have any evidence about the precise number yet. You could be right, then again you could be wrong we need a good benchmark.
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Again it is a case of it might provide something, but it is not worth it? Most people would say not. 100 might be better than 60 (only because you're lows would be higher) but you don't get anywhere near that kind of increase. The difference between 50 and 60 or 60 and 70 is not that great and certainly NOT worth £80.

Pottsey said:
“A64 @ 2.45GHz yet even then the PPU does not give me an FPS boost big enough to warrant its £80 price tag.”
So you have a PPU or is that another guess?
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Yes, as I've explained before I got it free. I don't use it but put it back in today to test UT3. I'm about to take it back out again as it's pointless.

Don't get why you're not banned yet. I've never seen anyone troll so much and get away with it!

Combat squirrel for president :p
 
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The benchmarks quoted earlier are utterly meaningless.

There's no point having a special map with so much physics involved that, even with a PPU, the framerate is half what it would be on a map without so much physics.

What would be more interesting is if they reduced the physics involved in the "Phys-X" map until the framerates with a PPU matched those of the "non-Phys-X" map without a PPU. At that point you could then see exactly how much additional physics the PPU was bringing to the table and whether the benefits to the game merited the cost.
 
I wonder how the PPU maps perform with 2 8800s in sli as that would rule out the extra load on the GPU slowing em down. If I had a PPU I would try but I aint, not getting one either (in its current state).
 
I still believe what I said was true 2 years ago, when this card was new, which was if it was 100 times cheaper, or 100 times better, I'd buy one :) Because currently it just isn't that clear cut that this PPU non-sense actually does any good. You shouldn't have to convince us they are good - we should be lining the streets, queuing up to buy them, but we're not, because they are pointless :)
 
metalmackey said:
I wonder how the PPU maps perform with 2 8800s in sli as that would rule out the extra load on the GPU slowing em down. If I had a PPU I would try but I aint, not getting one either (in its current state).
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Have you tried running the ppu maps without a ppu on your quad core?

If not can you run them and let us know what kind of fps you get.

If you want to rule out the GPU once you have tested it at your normal res try lowering the resolutions to see if it increases fps.
 
....if you can't tell there's any difference in performance unless you run a timedemo (and even then the difference is negligible), then OBVIOUSLY it's not worth 88 quid.

in other words....the ppu is worthless

/thread
 
Ok just tested it and it went as low as 6fps in some places but around an average of around 18fps.
The map was not that impressive i thought anyway and does not look any better than any other ut3 map, infact i thought it looked worse than quite a few of them.
The physics in the map were well enough done but nothing amazing or which i have not seen before too.
 
V|per said:
I'm guessing nobody has actually played with agiea physx enabled then....








... nuff said



:D
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Not played what? The PPU maps still run WAY to slow with one in despite adding nothing to justify the huge FPS loss. The normal maps do get a small speed increase but it is hardly noticeable seen as the game runs well anyway.
 
Pottsey; said:
some rubbish
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doesn't the fact the amd are pumping millions of pounds into fusion show the convergence in computers is the way forward.... not divergence... (the spider platform has 2+2=5 benefits.... of about 10%)
also anyone else played max payne 2 recently... physics are pretty awesome for a game that was released 6ish years ago... and hl2 has awesome physics....

Do people really care that much about better physics than these two games (i mention them cos i've got first hand experience of playing them)?

so physics being pretty much sorted... games developers are putting money into raw graphics in games like bioshock and crysis... making games with photo realistic graphics is a LOT harder than realistic physics.

also going back to my first point... people will say that it's better to run nvidea card gpu with a nividea chipset.... surely true compatiblity will limit the effectiveness of these cards...
equally surely theres the possiblity of confilicts and issues all the way through non ppu optimised games...
personally i'd MUCH rather have quad than a ppu

or a better sound card
or another hard drive
or a better case
or a better motherboard
or a better screen
or a better.....

my 2 pence
 
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metalmackey said:
I agree. Max Payne 2, HL2 amd Painkiller still have the best "fun" physics of all games.
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Yeah, they all use Havok physics, which revolutionised game interaction.

Max Payne 2 was a real showcase for Havok. There were even some rooms designed solely to let you play with objects and see how they interact, like the room with a see-saw, boxes, and other stuff to mess with. I spent ages playing with stuff in the first few levels of that game. Then HL2 gave us the gravity gun, so we could do even more cool stuff :).

The awesome thing about Havok is that it hardly affects the engine's framerate, so there's no need for an option to turn off physics in the game's menu.

If the Aegia PPU could give us Havok-style physics on a mass scale, with no loss in framerate, then it might attract some more interest.
 
Pottsey said:
A PPU card boosts FPS and doesn’t add any extra effects in UT.
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That's complete rubbish. If it doesn't add any extra effects, why should I bother buying one? If it doesn't add extra effects, why should I buy a PPU just to play some PPU map at 26fps? You seem to be implying that PhysX boosts FPS in all circumstances. That just isn't true, and if anyone spent £88 on a PhysX card based on your advice and discovered that there was no difference apart from a couple of purpose-built maps that are unplayable anyway, I can imagine they'd be pretty hacked off.

This is Unreal Tournament. It's fast and frenzied and all about reflexes and adrenaline. Nobody cares if explosions are more realistic - especially if it means they miss their headshot. PhysX is a dead horse. Gameplay is important. Graphics are sexy. Physics never will be. It's the ugly duckling. To most people, 'good graphics' (since physics calcs, at the end of the day, are manifested in graphics) means decent graphics at 60+ fps, not 26fps with a few more dust particles, especially if they have three fewer games because they spent their money on a PhysX card.
 
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Pottsey said:
The point is it proves the PPU makes noticeable FPS difference.
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All it prooves is that the physx supporting levels that Ageia are releasing run better with a physx card. Which is to be expected.
But they still run hugely sub par to the rest of the game.

Its not going to act as a saviour for physx as


Pottsey said:
The PhysX API is widely regarded as just as good as Havok if not better. It’s a very popular API to use..
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Regarded better by who? :confused:
Imaginary people?
The peopple who work for Ageia?
Loonatics?


As I said before if the PPU is boosting FPS on all normal maps over the CPU how is it useless? You have a very strange definition of useless. I am not wrong. Prove me wrong if I am. Show the PPU slowing down the FPS on normal maps. O wait I forgot from the past you dont like to prove people wrong with facts. You just like to tell them they are.
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I think he was getting at the fact that the whole Ageia package is useless, not just the card.
The card clearly runs the poorly optimised Ageia levels better than a physx-cardless system.
But the addition of the physx stuff makes the whole game run like crap.
the Physx supporting levels look poor from what I have seen too. That tornado video that was released a while back was so bad it was embarrassing
Numerous engines had been doing better physics than that for quite a while now, not to mention how bad it looks next to the Alan Wake tornado footage and the Crysis tornados (which ironically have a far smaller effect on fps than all the physx stuff)




Once again I'll happily point out the non Physx levels on UT3 recieve no boost from the physx card.



Until you show an example of some decent quality physx (ie unlike the tornado video) running well on a game NOT made by ageia directly (thus counting cellfactor) no-one i going to be interested in these cards except a few delusional madmen.



edit_ realised I posted this before reading the whole second page. Except an update ;)
 
“That's complete rubbish. If it doesn't add any extra effects, why should I bother buying one? If it doesn't add extra effects, why should I buy a PPU just to play some PPU map at 26fps?”
What I said is not rubbish, its true. Some of you guys need to learn to read. A lot of you are having a go at me for things I never said. I never said the bonus maps are worthwhile, I never said the PPU is worth while for UT. I never said go out and buy a PPU. All I said was its not true that it lowers FPS and that it does boost FPS and that we cannot say for sure how much it boost FPS as no one has run a fair benchmark.




"Personally I'm seeing more like a 8-12 FPS boost."
Another person agrees with me. The PPU does boost FPS. We just need some fair benchmarks now to find out the precise FPS boost.







“Once again I'll happily point out the non Physx levels on UT3 recieve no boost from the physx card.”
Everything points to them getting a boost, yet you say they don’t. Are you making that up or do you have evidence? The question is how big or small is the boost and that we don’t know as no one has ran a fair benchmark




“Why are you going on about bots? No one cares about single player. In MP there is always the same variety of things going on. If it botheres you that much then run a server yourself and then you will be alone. Then you can test without anything polluting your results.”
You fail to completely understand me. You cannot benchmark 2 multiplayer games with human players as a means to compare FPS results between two settings. Its completely unfair. If someone did that while testing ATI v Nivida GPUs everyone would be up in arms and there would be pages of people complaining about it.

You can record a timedemo of a multiplayer game, then use that time demo that’s fair. But two different multiplayer games is not.





“There's no point having a special map with so much physics involved that, even with a PPU, the framerate is half what it would be on a map without so much physics.”
30fps is playable and with quad core it’s over 30fps. Why is it pointless? I don’t like the maps my self but they seem popular to play so cannot be that bad.




“You seem to be implying that PhysX boosts FPS in all circumstances. That just isn't true,”
But it is true from what we have seen so far. If you mean the PPU that is.
Show me where it doesn’t boost FPS in UT?






”But the addition of the physx stuff makes the whole game run like crap.”
A minuet ago everyone has going on about how well the games runs on normal levels with physx and its over 60fps. Now you’re saying it runs like crap? As far as I can see physx works very well and the FPS as a hole are very high. The whole game is not poor due to physx. Your just makeing stuff up. Physx is not poor. Just look at how well UT runs.






“Numerous engines had been doing better physics than that for quite a while now, not to mention how bad it looks next to the Alan Wake tornado footage and the Crysis tornados”
The Alan Wake tornado was terrible and the Crysis ones I have to look closer at but they don’t appear to be that good physics wise.



“100 might be better than 60 (only because you're lows would be higher) but you don't get anywhere near that kind of increase.”
I don’t agree 100 is much better then 60 not because of the lows. 100fps looks far more smooth with better movement then 60.



“Regarded better by who? Imaginary people? The peopple who work for geia? Loonatics?”
The Ageia API is very popular with developers. At shows the stand is full of people impressed by what it does. The people who use the API say its better.
 
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