[TheNewt]

How many of you have heard of it?
So far the only card you can get is the Ageia PhysX card, which ranges from $200 (from the best buy website, this is the price I saw it at) to $300 (unconfirmed, but I've seen some people say its this expensive).

Whats your guy's take on this? Is the PPU going to revolutionize computers, or do you think its a pointless waste of cash?


Me personally I think that this will eventually become like the GFX card, where its a must have for games. Cause think of it, this card does improve the physics of the game, allowing for the CPU to not have to calculate all the physics, but instead focus on integrating the physics and graphics and AI to make a decent game. Also check out some videos for the Ageia physics engine (unreal engine uses this physics engine), some of them are pretty cool.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JSpORyTi5J0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXkSxph75_I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dviWZcphcIQ

So far, I have tried registering for a free physics engine/SDK which according to their site you only have to register to download. I have yet to receive confirmation saying I am a registered member, which is quite annoying cause I would love to use this for my game. ;P



Also you can read this article to get more information:
http://www.behardware.com/art/imprimer/622/

[Lee]

Useless.

I'm guessing you have only recently found out about this; it's been on sale for years. With the advent of multiple cores intended for desktop users, the need for this is just not there.

A must-have game that requires PhysX is probably never going to appear because most developers won't write such a game until the product becomes ubiquitous and that definitely won't happen until it has enough practical uses.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/07/...physx_failing/
http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/60111...s-useless.html

[TheNewt]

Haha, I expected you to say something to that effect.
Note; my support for the Physx card is not that it is good now but that eventually it will become something very useful and will have great effects in game.
http://www.ageia.com/physx/titles.html
Are games already implementing it, at the bottom you can see game engines that are using it. The most notable would be the Unreal Engine 3. The effects that having a Physics card rather then having your CPU handling it, right now it just isn't impressive enough, but I believe that soon it will have a larger portion in the gaming community.
Think about this, Havok is incorprating their own version of a 'physics' card with use of the GPU in ATI's and NVidia's cards. So your using a pseudo physics card if you have the 8 series from NVidia GeForce or the newer ATI Radeon cards.
And the API/SDK for creating a game with the ability to use physics card is free, so you will see more games that have the option to take advantage of the card. Even though the card will only improve the environmental interaction and not exactly gameplay, its mostly for effect.

Anyways, Lee, what is your position about the card for the future? Not now, I know now its pointless to get one, and it will continue being pointless until theres something like a DirectX Physics that can utilize cards on a more broad spectrum rather then having to download a patch to make the game use the card.

And yeah, I just heard about the physic's card recently, a lot of people still haven't heard of it.

[Lee]

The need for a dedicated card is decreasing and will continue to decrease. If there is a specific type of hardware that dramatically increases gaming performance, it will most likely be sold by nVidia or AMD - something you say is already happening.

AGEIA is trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist and should concentrate on utilizing existing hardware with their SDK.

I have no idea why or how you expected I would take this position.

[TheNewt]

Simple question. Why do you buy a GFX card?

[Lee]

The games that I want to play require one.

[TheNewt]

So what about when games start requiring a Physics enabled GFX card or a stand-alone physics card?

EDIT: Games may start to lean more on the CPU for the physics handling or the GFX card, but there are more uses then just games for Physics cards. For researchers trying to emulate an environment as best as possible, they are going to use computers with hardware dedicated parts, such as the physics card, and also what about servers that host online games like WoW or EQ2 etc, when those games start having better quality physics they are going to NEED these cards, simply because the computational power of a CPU or GPU can't make up for the dedicated computation of a PPU. The CPU and GPU are busy handling other things, and if your going to argue that a server doesn't need a GPU to begin with and that could be used as a PPU listen to how ridiculous that sounds. Using a card dedicated to GRAPHICS with a part of it that can do PHYSICS is a reduced efficiency then getting a card dedicated to PHYSICS.

[Lee]

As I've already said, I don't think a standalone PPU will ever be required. I predict that they won't even be marketed to gamers in the not-so-distant future. I also said that if this technology proves useful, it will be incorporated into the major player's graphics cards - either by licensing or a bespoke solution - and this is where it will become successful.

In summary: Your question can be answered by reading my previous responses.

[kp_uparrow]

why not just use those extra cores on the cpu, their idle anyways

[allenwr]

To be honest, I am not going to read 10 different articles, but It is IMO that you are simply adding another processor that simple has the purpose of rendering graphics, when it would be easier for a processor manufacturer to implement this same idea into the processor itself, like a dual core, simply making it as a graphics processor. Take a dual core chip and add in more more little piece and tada!

This statement was made with out reading the 2 post before it.