What are phys x accelerators ?

[dEl_fUEGo]

It's not that simple. Not everybody has a tv tuner. I certainly do not. The telly is for watching tv, the pc is for gaming, internet and other stuff. Thats the way i feel about it anyway. I have Sli and i have a spare slot between the cards which is unusable due to the size of the gap. I have a pci-e x1 slot spare above the cards which mya be usable but can you get a pci-e x1 sound card? No! That leaves the one at the bottom of the board which will be taking my new sound card.

It's also not as simple with the physics cards. A game has to support it for it to be any use at all and there are hardly any games that do at the moment so there's no point in telling everyone to go out and get one. It is more logical to wait until they drop in price and to see if they will catch on. If they don't catch on you will most likely end up with lump of silicone that cost a fortune and will be worthless.

Of course your point is absolutely valid my friend. I only offer a solution from the top of my head, without knowing your system its pretty hard for me to give absolute tailored suggestions. Please, remind me where i tell everyone to go and buy a ppu? My point was that IF you want to play with the full physics experience then peeps will buy them, if they dont then you are again correct and it will become a useless piece of silicon (silicone is for boobies ). The success lies with the API itself, the more games/apps that use it, then (possibly) the more the tech gets licensed untill who knows, maybe Nv or ATI will begin making them??

Please dont mistake my post as a quest for me to get one of these in everyones system so that it takes off, i dont care what peeps prefere, i know what i prefere and just wanted to correct/address the balance in a hugely negative thread. Sorry if it sounds like i was ranting, but i was

 

[dEl_fUEGo]

dEl_fUEGo, your missing the point in order to have an even playing field or too ensure low lathency online play the world objects need to be kept to a manageable level if you suddendly have thousands of objects fully managed by the physics card... how are these represented on your openets screen, if they are only on the screen of the person who has the card they could very well be a a big disadvantage

even if everyone has these cards the bandwidth to maintain then in sync on all the clients would be high

Play on servers that host for the people that have a ppu if you've got one yourself, if you dont have one then play with peeps that dont have one and everyone will be 'balanced'. Again this is a suggestion off the top of my head, but i'm sure the game developers have thought of this concern already, dont you think?

Cheers, del.

P.S - In terms of GRAW, Bo from GRIN (the developers) has already stated in a thread over at ghostrecon.net that there is a balancing system in place for the concerns posted above. He doesnt state the solution technically but i'm sure that will be offered in due course.

 

[PikeyPriest]

To be honest i`m not sure if this physics card will make much difference to performance with quad-core PC's...etc. Wasnt there even talk of AMD/intel looking at putting physics units on their chips? I`m sure i read AMD had bought out a company that was heavily involved in these specialised chips.

TBH i`m just not sold that these cards will be life changing. I have looked at the demos from the site, but with the card running i cant see a big difference compared to current games. Certainly not a £200 difference. I know future games may use it to reach its potential, but by then we will probably have a few generations of these cards anyway.

**edit* hit submit by mistake

 

[sunlitsix]

Intresting you should say that,

Just to get some of you in the physX mood try playing around with this it's really cool, its got loads of little physics demos and objects that you can play around with in realtime, use your right mouse button to drag objects around, my fav is "Psuedo Cloth" found inside "Scripted Demos", its amazing how the cloth moves when your dragging it around, also try "Building Explode" in the same section and that might explain why we need a dedicated ppu, I average around 8fps on that one.


http://www.physicstools.org/NovodeXRocket_2_0_ALPHA.exe

fun demo

 

[geeza]

Intresting you should say that,

Just to get some of you in the physX mood try playing around with this it's really cool, its got loads of little physics demos and objects that you can play around with in realtime, use your right mouse button to drag objects around, my fav is "Psuedo Cloth" found inside "Scripted Demos", its amazing how the cloth moves when your dragging it around, also try "Building Explode" in the same section and that might explain why we need a dedicated ppu, I average around 8fps on that one.


http://www.physicstools.org/NovodeXRocket_2_0_ALPHA.exe

with one of these physics card would the scripted demos like big bang and building explode work at 40fps+ ?

I like the jenga tall, take the bottom piece out and spin it around chopping at the tower as it falls

edit -on a sidenote i think if current high end systems can cope with large jenga stacks in that demo though *should* be able to cope with demos like cell factor. In that demo it looked like it had a lot less 'pieces' to apply physics to, the only difference being they had textures on them

 

[dEl_fUEGo]

To be honest i`m not sure if this physics card will make much difference to performance with quad-core PC's...etc. Wasnt there even talk of AMD/intel looking at putting physics units on their chips? I`m sure i read AMD had bought out a company that was heavily involved in these specialised chips.

TBH i`m just not sold that these cards will be life changing. I have looked at the demos from the site, but with the card running i cant see a big difference compared to current games. Certainly not a £200 difference. I know future games may use it to reach its potential, but by then we will probably have a few generations of these cards anyway.

**edit* hit submit by mistake

I'm sure quad cores could do the trick if one of the cores was tailored specifically for the job at hand. Lets hope that this happens. If it indeed does then that would cement the use of more realistic physics calculations in games and such, thus making Agieas point of business even more valid than it is today.

Cheers, del.

 

[Lanz]

Play on servers that host for the people that have a ppu if you've got one yourself, if you dont have one then play with peeps that dont have one and everyone will be 'balanced'. Again this is a suggestion off the top of my head, but i'm sure the game developers have thought of this concern already, dont you think?

I dont think that would work niether, like someone said. You have the enhanced physics, but each one of those boxes (or whatever) has to be kept track of by the server, this would require vast amounts of bandwidth both server and client side compared to todays online games. And wouldn't the dedicated server also have to have one of these cards to process all this physics at the same speed as the client? So i think this technology is mainly for single player games, and would only increase fps for online games.

 

[mqketucker]

i think the best solution for these ppu is to put them on the same card as the gpu in one package

does buying one of these cards increse load on the gpu due to the fact that there are many more objects that need to be rendered?

 

[dEl_fUEGo]

UT2007 doesnt strike me as a mainly single player game, multi all the way i think. I'm sure Tim Sweeney knows what he is doing.

Cheers, del.

P.S. Yes, i guess there will be a heavier load on the graphics cards as it indeed will need to do more rendering, how much is still to be seen.

 

[Things change I've changed]

P.S. Yes, i guess there will be a heavier load on the graphics cards as it indeed will need to do more rendering, how much is still to be seen.

So you think that the ppu *may* even decrease you fps, tbh I, like proberbly many other people was thinking that using this ppu with a physX supported game you would get an increase in fps but that inceasingly looks like its not the case, by your reckoning then, the most we can expect is the same fps but with the added effects ?

 

[geeza]

ok, on that demo a wall has 100 blocks, I added 30 walls, so thats 3000 blocks and messed around with the mavity and threw a few balls in there aswell. It dropped to about 20fps. If this equates to a 20fps drop in games plus the additional drop the actual game will take it to without physics (say 30fps) then i can see why physics processors are required. If it means this card can run the physics demo above with no or very very little drop in fps then i would be convinced it would do an ok job in games (so long as they are properly programmed to take full advantage of it that is)

 

[dEl_fUEGo]

So you think that the ppu *may* even decrease you fps, tbh I like proberbly many other people was thinking that using this ppu with a physX support game you would get an increase in fps but that inceasingly looks like its not the case, by your reckoning then, the most we can expect is the same fps but with the added effects ?

Yes, that could well be the case. Where you would gain is in interactivety/objects/more particles etc. That load is removed from the cpu (which by todays standards is pretty poor for the job) and that freed up 'power' can be used for better AI etc. Removing certain calculations from the cpu allows developers to implement more of *something else* for it to use, what that would be i dont know. In my eyes it would be worth losing a few fps (not too much i hope) for the enhanced experience these ppu's *could* potentially bring us over the next year or so.

P.S - the above post is a good one. 3000 blocks dents your fps from anywhere between 20 - 30 fps. The ppu can handle roughly 32,000 blocks (rigid bodies). If a game still used only 3000 blocks an increase in fps would be had if the ppu was used, but would also be a waste of potential power that game developers would know exactly how to use for a more enhanced experience. Its about making games better not faster and easier to run.

 

[geeza]

Yes, that could well be the case. Where you would gain is in interactivety/objects/more particles etc. That load is removed from the cpu (which by todays standards is pretty poor for the job) and that freed up 'power' can be used for better AI etc. Removing certain calculations from the cpu allows developers to implement more of *something else* for it to use, what that would be i dont know. In my eyes it would be worth losing a few fps (not too much i hope) for the enhanced experience these ppu's *could* potentially bring us over the next year or so.

P.S - the above post is a good one. 3000 blocks dents your fps from anywhere between 20 - 30 fps. The ppu can handle roughly 32,000 blocks (rigid bodies). If a game still used only 3000 blocks an increase in fps would be had if the ppu was used, but would also be a waste of potential power that game developers would know exactly how to use for a more enhanced experience. Its about making games better not faster and easier to run.

thanks. though i dont see how an increase in fps would occur if less blocks were used, wouldnt it just stay the same.
I thought the ppu just processes the on screen physics nothing more?

 

[geeza]

ive just done 100 walls so 1000 rigid bodies. times this number for just over 3 and the fps would be *slighly* unplayable, to say the least. I just cannot see developers adding 32,000 rigid bobies to every map somehow. If they did it would be immense though (of course getting rid of shadows would help quite a bit i think)

heres a screenshot

edit - id love to see a specific novarocket demo designed for use with a ppu showing the above screen running at 90+fps. a video would be nice

 

[Noxis]

Just to clarify (and repeat myself) a second (or third or fourth core) on a CPU will NOT perform anywhere near as well as a dedicated PPU.

Statements such as "yea but another core will do this" are not accurate. People seem to be missing this is a DEDICATED PPU designed from the ground up for very specific calculations as such they are INCREDIBLY efficient at this one single job - while a CPU is designed to deal with many many different types of situations.

 

[dEl_fUEGo]

thanks. though i dont see how an increase in fps would occur if less blocks were used, wouldnt it just stay the same.
I thought the ppu just processes the on screen physics nothing more?

Its dependant on how cpu limited a game is at certain resolutions. We know that games become cpu limited at say 1024x768, the difference between fps between different graphics cards is negligable because the cpu cant provide the graphics card with enough info to increase frames (UT2004 is a good example, overclocking your cpu nets you more gain than overclocking your gpu). But when you introduce a ppu that helps free up cycles on the cpu then that in turn lets the cpu provide the graphics card with more to do, thus an increase in frames. But, that is only the case if there isnt enough objects/interactivety being loaded up in the first place - i.e: why just use the same 3000 blocks when we now have the power for 32,000 without such a huge hit to frames. This example doesnt include the added rendering needed for the huge number of objects i used as an example. If you then factor that number of things to render by the graphics cards the resulting increase in frames itself becomes negligable and you are left with similar framerates that you had before, but this time you have a lot more going on in the game. I hope thats clear enough? Sometimes i confuse myself!!

P.S - 32,000 objects is indeed a bigger number than we have systems for 'at the moment' but the power for it is there with the ppu and soon with graphics cards also. Where are you r600 etc.

 

[geeza]

^ yep good explanaton. Try the jenga tower tall and then 'stand' right next to it looking up. put the drag force on higher and drag the bottom blocks away. It looks good as you sort of look up at the tower swaying before it tips over. I could see this sort of technology in games being excellent. i.e whole destroyable buildings made from a few thousand blocks. Imagine a game where many structures can be entered, moved around then smashed down from the inside. Of course however, blocks will need to be made of smaller blocks and smaller blocks to make things like bullet holes appear

I now see that its not too long before we will see this. If on that demo, you could place yourself in/on something (like standing on the jenga pile) and knocking away bits and falling down through it or something that would be a start.

the geo-mod used in red faction was good for the time but lacked the real physics to make it work, i.e a tunnel made would not cave in

 

[dEl_fUEGo]

^ yep good explanaton. Try the jenga tower tall and then 'stand' right next to it looking up. put the drag force on higher and drag the bottom blocks away. It looks good as you sort of look up at the tower swaying before it tips over. I could see this sort of technology in games being excellent. i.e whole destroyable buildings made from a few thousand blocks. Imagine a game where many structures can be entered, moved around then smashed down from the inside. Of course however, blocks will need to be made of smaller blocks and smaller blocks to make things like bullet holes appear

I now see that its not too long before we will see this. If on that demo, you could place yourself in/on something (like standing on the jenga pile) and knocking away bits and falling down through it or something that would be a start.

the geo-mod used in red faction was good for the time but lacked the real physics to make it work, i.e a tunnel made would not cave in

Thats indeed where i see this heading. Imagine being able to destroy a damn and watch the resulting flood wipe out the village where your enemies are hiding out, but in turn the resulting flood blocks your escape route and you instictively have to abandon your original plan and do something else entirely. The days of shrub-stopping-jeep (i could never understand that?) should be over too. I'm sure everyone has seen the Crysis video where the guy walks past the plant and the leaves react exactly as they would in real life, those little touches make a huge amount of difference to me. The possibilities are endless and at last there should be the power to let developers truly design a realistic, realtime emmersive world that can be effected in a realtime, real-world way.

 

[Things change I've changed]

Just updated my sig , hopefully it will arrive by monday, gonna be intresting to see if there will be any differences in performance running 3dmark 2006 as it's supposed to support physX.


Edit - ummmm, maybie not

"3DMark06 does use Ageia PhysX API library (PCi's note : It is optimised for multi-threaded programing), it is not hooked to take advantage of hardware acceleration, all is done in CPU. We think though that hardware accelerated physics calculations are both immensely important and interesting, from gaming and from benchmarking point of view, as we move forward."

 

[geeza]

Just updated my sig , hopefully it will arrive by monday, gonna be intresting to see if there will be any differences in performance running 3dmark 2006 as it's supposed to support physX.


Edit - ummmm, maybie not

run the Novode demo and see what difference it makes, should be interesting. however i can see it making little or no difference as it will need physX programmed into it to work