# BFG Ageia PhysX Card



## Darksaber (Jul 26, 2007)

BFG is one of two companies offering the Ageia PhysX card in form of a retail product. The PPU - physics proccesing unit - is an additioal processor to the GPU and CPU. It enables real life physics and interactivity within supporting games. While the first games and a high price tag upon launch did not live up to expectations, the brand new Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 and a very affordable 120 USD price tag makes this a great addition nowadays.

*Show full review*


----------



## tkpenalty (Oct 1, 2007)

Nice review man . Those GRAW effects look crazy, seriously... I wouldnt mind having one of these PPU installed. The pricing makes it more of a proper product now as well.


----------



## 65tweet (Oct 2, 2007)

Wont the fact that it's on the PCI bus limit performance? I know not everybody has a spare PCI-E 8/16X slot available but it would be interesting to see the performance difference between the two if any. Maybe the technology hasn't evolved enough yet to utilize that much bandwidth. That may explain why it's 128 Mb as well.

The price seems like it may be worth getting it someday. I would like to see more games out supporting it first though.


----------



## kwchang007 (Oct 2, 2007)

Performance down .  But it has really nice effects...that's always good.


----------



## hat (Oct 2, 2007)

You would figure performance would go _up..._ horrible product >.<


----------



## panchoman (Oct 2, 2007)

sorta crazy how much power this card supplies, yet this card is falling short, and is taxing the main vid card some fps.

eventually, for grafix we'll need like 5 cards. one for physics. one for shaders, one for memory, etc.

the cards just get bigger and hungrier.


----------



## DRDNA (Oct 2, 2007)

All known methods of Physic cards gives a slight  hit  in FPS  >>>BUT<<< the performance  increase  is in  realism  and the number  of objects that are being manipulated  at once =ing  end  user  experience this goes  for  Ageia  and  ATI and  Nvidia


----------



## Ravenas (Oct 2, 2007)

I just wish all games supported physics cards.


----------



## DRDNA (Oct 2, 2007)

Ravenas said:


> I just wish all games supported physics cards.



You  will now see lots more as Havoc was just purchased by umm ahh I think Intel ya it was Intel that just bought Havoc.


----------



## Darksaber (Oct 2, 2007)

hat said:


> You would figure performance would go _up..._ horrible product >.<



Why would you think so? The PhysX card *ADDS EFFECTS* which need to be computed by the rest of the system. Thus the drop. More (great looking) particles to render, thus more work for the graphic card.

why figure that performance goes up?

cheers
DS


----------



## HookeyStreet (Oct 2, 2007)

Darksaber said:


> Why would you think so? The PhysX card *ADDS EFFECTS* which need to be computed by the rest of the system. Thus the drop. More (great looking) particles to render, thus more work for the graphic card.
> 
> why figure that performance goes up?
> 
> ...



I agree.  For exampl, my m8s DEL has 2x 8800GTXs and a PhysX, yet his 3DMark06 score is only 14k, yet I nearly get 13k with a single GTX.....the PhysX card impacts performance dramatically


----------



## d44ve (Oct 2, 2007)

HookeyStreet said:


> I agree.  For exampl, my m8s DEL has 2x 8800GTXs and a PhysX, yet his 3DMark06 score is only 14k, yet I nearly get 13k with a single GTX.....the PhysX card impacts performance dramatically




How would the PhysX card effect performance in 3D06?


----------



## Darksaber (Oct 2, 2007)

HookeyStreet said:


> I agree.  For exampl, my m8s DEL has 2x 8800GTXs and a PhysX, yet his 3DMark06 score is only 14k, yet I nearly get 13k with a single GTX.....the PhysX card impacts performance dramatically



as Dave said, 3DMark does not utilize the PhysX card. Thus there should be no difference between an SLI rig with and one without the PPU. 

What CPU, Memory are you running compared to that of your m8s?

that makes all the difference.

cheers
DS


----------



## Wayward (Oct 2, 2007)

Darksaber said:


> Why would you think so? The PhysX card *ADDS EFFECTS* which need to be computed by the rest of the system. Thus the drop. More (great looking) particles to render, thus more work for the graphic card.
> 
> why figure that performance goes up?
> 
> ...



Exactly.  The whole point of the PPU was to allow a larger number of objects to be present, and make those objects interactive for a more "immersive" experience.  All those extra objects still have to be rendered by the GPU, so of course there will be a frame rate drop.  I'm actually astonished the drop is so insignificant in most cases.

Like with any IQ setting, or visual feature, when you increase the level, FPS goes down.  When you ramp up the AA, FPS goes down.  When you render in HDR, FPS goes down.  When you increase the complexity of a scene by adding objects, FPS goes down.

If a 2-4 FPS drop is really too much to pay, maybe it's time to worry about a new video card instead.


----------



## Deleted member 24505 (Oct 2, 2007)

the physics card does'nt use some system resources does it? just wondered.forgive me if its a daft question.


----------



## HellasVagabond (Oct 2, 2007)

Guys this is the FIRST PhysX card....Later models made from Ageia , Nvidia and ATI will provide better Physics and better graphics.


----------



## Morgoth (Oct 2, 2007)

damn i wish crysis suported ageia ppu card so i could play it on medium or max


----------



## Darksaber (Oct 2, 2007)

Aright I have had a reader contact me directly on IM and we had a long but fruitless talk about this review. My MSN and ICQ contact is visible to everyone out there, so I can help if  there is any question or be of service. but this does not mean that I can accomodate everyone who wants to voice their opinion, as a personal conversation with me is certainly not the right venue. All the reviews we post are backed up by results and we state our reasons for a score or award. This forum is for placing your opinion. I, much like all other staff members do this during their spare time and have real jobs and real lives which have nothing to do with Techpowerup.com, so I am not able or (TBH) willing to spend hours of my spare time discussing what is better, CPU or PPU for Physics. 

As you are all encuraged, I will leave my opinion to this matter right here:

*Statement:*
The person who contacted me has the firm believe that a multi core CPU can deliver just as great physics as this card, so there is no point in the additional 120€s the PhysX card costs. And that the performance hit for such effects is just to great.

*My Response:*
We have seen a lot of games who utilize CPUs for Physics and they do so beautifully. But think of this: 

You get XX frames with a quad core CPU in a game run with CPU based physics turned on
What if you could get exacly those XX frames on a dual core CPU in that game run without the CPU based physics turned on.
The price difference between the dual core and multicore CPU is still something you need to pay. 

*In all cases, the graphic still need to be rendered and you will have a performance drop in every case where physics parts (busted wood, blowing up stuff, bodies flying and bullets hitting) need to be rendered. So this has nothing to do with the fact WHAT PART OF THE PC  CALCULATES the effects. These effects still are additional ones that need to be rendered.*

We have seen many games that are only playable with some horrid hardware (for example: Gothic 3), while other games work grand on a broad range of systems.

So no matter what renderes the physics in games, there will be a performance difference if you can turn these effects on or off.

_This basically removes the argument that the physics displayed do not warrant the frame drop._ The only reason you know that there is a drop with PhysX cards, is because you can turn off the effects of the card. Any game that gives you that option to turn off this additon no matter if it uses a PPU or CPU for such calculations will show a performance gain with the effects turned off.

_The second argument is cost._ If you can theoretically achieve the same or better frame rate with all effects when using a Dual Core CPU and PhysX card or Quad Core CPU without the additional card,_ the price difference is still there. A Quad Core costs more than a Dual Core at same speed._

If such a theoretical game will ever exists which can utilize either the PhysX Card or a seperate core of the CPU, then this game needs to be ready for multi core. This means that a Quad Core CPU with a PhysX Card should deliver even better frame rates. Thus an addition of such a card in a high-end system is still warranted.

*The last point I want to make: *

If you have a PhysX capable game which barely runs fluid on your system, then it should come as no surprise that adding this card will tax the graphic card with further dispayed polygons and effects, which need to be rendered, thus reducing performance. This is just common sense, and as mentioned above, it does not matter what computates the effects, the GPU needs to render them in any case.

cheers
DS

PS: There are surely a few spelling mistakes within this statement, I apologize for such in advance.


----------



## Morgoth (Oct 2, 2007)

1 question is Ageia still working on ppu cards? i havent seen anny updats since 2006?


----------



## Darksaber (Oct 2, 2007)

Morgoth said:


> 1 question is Ageia still working on ppu cards? i havent seen anny updats since 2006?



Yes, a mobile variant is out and a PCIe for OEMs is being built...

They are working on the next Gen card, but this time they will wait for bigger support before releasing it. The current cards are perfectly fine for all the current titles.

cheers
DS


----------



## Morgoth (Oct 2, 2007)

hmm i tough i have once seen a 256mb version of the 128mb
btw can we overclock those ppu cards? that would be great


----------



## lemonadesoda (Oct 2, 2007)

Just 3 quick points worth mentioning:

1./ If you have a GREAT GPU, but an average CPU, then you are CPU bottlenecked, and a PPU will NOT reduce performance, only add extra candy at NO performance cost, because the GPU can handle the extra rendering data.

2./ AF and AA (esp. at high settings) are a huge burden on the GPU. (This is not so obvious on the review benchmarks when using the 8800, but is more clear on normal GPUs).  By turning down your AF and AA settings, you gain extra FPS, then add the PPU, and you get a similar performance as before. What is your preferred option? More action with a few jaggies, or less action and ultra smooth lines. QED?

3./ If average FPS > 70 then aren't these points moot? As long as FPS > refresh, then you aren't going to notice any difference in gameplay. Note I'm talking AVERAGE not max FPS here.


----------



## unsmart (Oct 2, 2007)

Morgoth said:


> hmm i tough i have once seen a 256mb version of the 128mb
> btw can we overclock those ppu cards? that would be great



 there was a 256mb card but it was pulled from retail after it came out that the core can only us 128mb and as far as I know you can not OC it.
 I think part of the problem is that there secretive about the cores specs. I for one like to hear the full story when looking at a product. Still I would like to see a next gen card using the 1x pci-e slot and at lest a 60nm die.
 they did show a 16x pci-e card awhile back and Ageia said it had no really advantage over pci cards.


----------



## cdawall (Oct 3, 2007)

how does this compare to ATi's version of this ie using a X1K series card to run as ppu?


----------



## kwchang007 (Oct 3, 2007)

lemonadesoda said:


> Just 3 quick points worth mentioning:
> 
> 1./ If you have a GREAT GPU, but an average CPU, then you are CPU bottlenecked, and a PPU will NOT reduce performance, only add extra candy at NO performance cost, because the GPU can handle the extra rendering data.
> 
> ...



I agree with everything you said, but just wanted to make one point.  As long as FPS is above 25-30 fps....you'll be fine.  There's no discernible difference between 25 and 200 FPS unless you have a counter.  Personally, I run things as close to 25 fps as possible.


----------



## unsmart (Oct 3, 2007)

cdawall said:


> how does this compare to ATi's version of this ie using a X1K series card to run as ppu?


 
 PPU is a lot better, because it exist
All ATI/NV did is show off there physic a few times running there own apps on there own systems. It's all talk and no show,not even a demo yet but they still push the third pci-e slot


----------



## hat (Oct 3, 2007)

Those of you wondering why I think it would increace performance:
You've got your own card with 128MB GDDR3 and it's own processor, you would figure any physics work it would do would not only look better, but increace performance by doing all the physics work on-card rathat than done by CPU/GPU. You would figure all the physics work would be done by the card and that's that, NOT offload it to other parts of the system that were previously doing it *faster*.


----------



## Wile E (Oct 3, 2007)

hat said:


> Those of you wondering why I think it would increace performance:
> You've got your own card with 128MB GDDR3 and it's own processor, you would figure any physics work it would do would not only look better, but increace performance by doing all the physics work on-card rathat than done by CPU/GPU. You would figure all the physics work would be done by the card and that's that, NOT offload it to other parts of the system that were previously doing it *faster*.


The PPU only handles the physics calculations. It can't actually render the particles. It doesn't even hook to a monitor. It tells the gpu where to render the particles, but the gpu must still render all these extra particles. Therefore it is rendering more stuff on your screen, therefore it is working harder. That's why you see a drop.


EDIT: To further elaborate, without the ppu, these particles are NOT rendered at all. They don't even exist, so you are adding extra stuff to render when you enable the PPU. It's not like the ppu is offloading something that was already there, it's adding extra stuff.


----------



## Ketxxx (Oct 3, 2007)

Oh dear lord... there is so much more technical detail thats important but not covered here. For example the bandwidth restrictions of the PCI bus, especially so when an add-in sound board is present along with the PPU. Then theres the fact Ageia announced a PCI-E version of the PPU, I havent heard when the PCI-E version will be lanuched, but you can bet due to the bandwidth bottleneck of the PCI bus being taken out of the picture it'll perform somewhat better than the PCI version. Which will naturally make the price of the PCI version fall dramatically, which it should. Currently the PPU is an over-priced collection of PCB, resistors, capacitors and sillicon SOI.


----------



## Darksaber (Oct 3, 2007)

As long as no problems arise with a sound card + PhysX combination, then why is the PCI bus  bad for such a combination?. The PCIe variant exists! but only for OEMs atm. 

The price of the PCI card:

http://geizhals.at/?phist=194860&age=2000

this should give you a good Idea of the price drop within the last 12 months. It has dropped quite a lot.

The one and only question ATM is: do the positive effect warrant the price and performance drop? IMHO yes, now more than ever.

Will the PCIe variant perform better? maybe...but we will see when it is available in retail.

You have to look at the situation RIGHT NOW...not in 6 Months, not from 6 Months ago...that is what this review is based on.

cheers
DS


----------



## DaMulta (Oct 3, 2007)

I wonder with the newer cards coming how much faster they will be. I would almost buy one of these, but what's stopping me is that games are just now starting to come put for it. 

If say in the next 6 months they release a way more powerful one when games are really starting to use. it. Would you be left out in the cold?

I like the ATi idea with physics, but that could be over with Intel buying Havok. I would like to have both setups in my machine to catch both the ideas if I needed too.


----------



## Morgoth (Oct 3, 2007)

i hope the still releas it on pci slot and posible a sli ppu setup on pci  + overclock


----------



## Ketxxx (Oct 4, 2007)

Darksaber said:


> As long as no problems arise with a sound card + PhysX combination, then why is the PCI bus  bad for such a combination?. The PCIe variant exists! but only for OEMs atm.
> 
> The price of the PCI card:
> 
> ...



And thats my point, a PCI interface is old, very old. Why waste some $150 on the damn thing when in maybe 6 months you can get something using the PCIE interface for the same price. Theres still not even that many games out that use the PPU either.


----------



## hat (Oct 4, 2007)

Morgoth said:


> i hope the still releas it on pci slot and posible a sli ppu setup on pci  + overclock



That's a pretty big waste of money


----------



## devguy (Oct 4, 2007)

Morgoth said:


> i hope the still releas it on pci slot and posible a sli ppu setup on pci  + overclock



That would make things worse.  Having two ppus taxing the PCI bus would be awful.  And I agree with Ketxxx saying that even just having a sound card on the pci bus could tax it a lot.  For example, my Audigy 2 ZS does hardware acceleration on many games.  

I wonder how much the pci bus would be taxed in a game using sound hardware acceleration and a ppu both on the pci bus...


----------



## W1zzard (Oct 7, 2007)

devguy said:


> That would make things worse.  Having two ppus taxing the PCI bus would be awful.  And I agree with Ketxxx saying that even just having a sound card on the pci bus could tax it a lot.  For example, my Audigy 2 ZS does hardware acceleration on many games.
> 
> I wonder how much the pci bus would be taxed in a game using sound hardware acceleration and a ppu both on the pci bus...



the pci bus can do up to 133 mb/s burst transfers.

audio is 44.1 khz 16 bit stereo 7 channels = 44100 * 2 * 2 * 7 = whopping 1.2 MB/s


----------



## Solaris17 (Oct 7, 2007)

W1zzard said:


> the pci bus can do up to 133 mb/s burst transfers.
> 
> audio is 44.1 khz 16 bit stereo 7 channels = 44100 * 2 * 2 * 7 = whopping 1.2 MB/s



Pwned


----------



## Morgoth (Oct 7, 2007)

wat abouth a overclocked pci bus to  45,87mhz stock is 33mhz


----------



## lemonadesoda (Oct 7, 2007)

W1zzard said:


> the pci bus can do up to 133 mb/s burst transfers.
> 
> audio is 44.1 khz 16 bit stereo 7 channels = 44100 * 2 * 2 * 7 = whopping 1.2 MB/s



It's actually a LOT LOWER than that!  In games, the "7 channel" feature is not actually 7 separate independent and discrete channels, but a decoding and "hardware" effect for positioning sound in the 360 field, and for reverb effects, e.g. EAX. Neither Dolby Digital EX or THX actually send 7 channels of full 44.1Khz, 16bit. 

That's why when using "software" rendered sound, the game is usually ONLY 2 channel. For "hardware" rendered sound, the sound card itself creates the 7.1 channels, but the input data to the soundcard is a lot lower that the "output" sound data.


----------



## unsmart (Oct 7, 2007)

You guys are thinking of this as a vid card, it's not. They have not released and really data on bandwidth or even core speed as far as I know so we can't really calculate anything. Ageia has already said and shown[ with no gains with the pci-e cards] that it's not limited by the pci bus. Though pci is slow by todays standards it took years for even graphics cards to start bottle necking it.  Makes you wonder what it's really doing and how much could be done to improve it.


----------



## lemonadesoda (Oct 7, 2007)

Rough calculation of the bandwidth for the Ageia in typical game scenario:

1./ Map, or environment, is preloaded at start of map. Maybe a few 100K of data, maybe a few MB. One off upload.

2./ Physx doing the calculations for 10,000 objects in "realtime"

3./ Each object has an x, y, z, and movement and acceleration vectors, and some ID fields

4./ Bits of data for each object "within" the PPU, is (3 + 3 + 3) x 32 bits for single precision float, or 64 bits for double precision, and some ID and "status" fields.  Lets take double precision, then thats 9 x 64 bits + ID + status fields, so maybe upto 1024 bits of data for each object = 128 bytes. So the 10,000 objects need only 1280K (just over 1MB) for variable space.

5./ What data is sent OUT every frame to the GPU (or in-game rendering engine before going to the GPU)? That will only require the x,y,z coordinates single float (32-bit) and some basic ID fields, say 32-bit = 4x32=128 bit

6./ 10,000 objects x 128bit = 160,000 bytes per frame

7./ At 100fps that would be 16,000,000 bytes per second, or approx 16MB/s

So yes, when you are talking about MORE THAN 10,000 objects, you are beginning to take a chunk out of the PCI channel.  Unless, of course, your software is smart enough to know WHICH objects you are looking at, and therefore you dont need to send ALL the environment object data. Relatively simple FOV calculations could reduce the outputted object count by a factor between 4-16 (90 degress FOV left to right and top to bottom) hence 10,000 objects require bandwidth of between 1-4MB/sec.

CONCLUSION:

PCI Soundcard + PCI Network card + PCI PPU = no problem.


----------



## hat (Oct 7, 2007)

Morgoth said:


> wat abouth a overclocked pci bus to  45,87mhz stock is 33mhz



4.5GHz PCI bus! WTF 
I know, you brits use commas not periods.


----------



## cdawall (Oct 8, 2007)

hat said:


> 4.5GHz PCI bus! WTF
> I know, you brits use commas not periods.



45mhz pci and 87mhz agp?


----------



## lemonadesoda (Oct 8, 2007)

@morgoth,

that's a very interesting OC P4 system you have there. Congrats.

But it looks like you have a pre-Northwood P4, and you are not running DDR _dual-channel_.

I would suggest getting a 865 mainboard and cheap North P4 on ebay. You could probably get the combination on ebay.de for EUR 30.

Alternatively, find an ASROCK 865Conroe. This is a s775 Core 2 compatible, and will let you use your DDR ram and AGP GPU. Board + E4600, EUR 120 and you will have an up to date PC with a CPU = 2-3x faster than your current system.


----------



## Morgoth (Oct 8, 2007)

hat said:


> 4.5GHz PCI bus! WTF
> I know, you brits use commas not periods.



i'm not brithis  

my agp bus is at 91,75x4 stock at 66x4


----------



## Morgoth (Oct 8, 2007)

tec anny one? XD

talking abouth custom cooling wat vga coolers fit on those ppu cards ?


----------



## lemonadesoda (Oct 9, 2007)

You can probably passively cool it. Why? 99.9% of software doesnt use it. LOL


----------



## AddSub (Oct 9, 2007)

99.9%? That's too generous for Ageia. 

I don't see a difference between this card and a pair bright red neon lights for your case. Flashy status item. 5-10 years from now, who knows. But today, it is largely useless.


----------



## LazyE101 (Oct 12, 2007)

*Hey*

I'm not trying to burst anybodys bubble but that (Agiea card) doesn't  add much of anything other than some extra pieces.  If you play both with and without card videos at the same time you won't see that big of a difference.  If you search many other reviews and watch the videos for the games supported it doesn't seem that it's worth $50 bucks let alone 100-120.  Even when you watch the Island level on GRAW2 which was specially designed for the card and only be played with the card, it's still not impressive.  While a really good idea it's got a long way to go IMO before it takes off.


----------



## hat (Oct 12, 2007)

Morgoth said:


> tec anny one? XD
> 
> talking abouth custom cooling wat vga coolers fit on those ppu cards ?



You can't overclock the PPU, and there is no need for extra cooling if it can't be overclocked.


----------



## pbmaster (Oct 12, 2007)

You have to admit that is pretty neat though.


----------



## Grings (Oct 12, 2007)

Thats ridiculous, what next, phase change X-Fi's?


----------



## Steve O B Have (Oct 16, 2007)

I think the reviewer has missed something fundamental about the PhysX card and the implementation within games.

The simple fact is that until the PhysX card makes a ground breaking impact on game play, not just on aesthetics and effects but a real impacting next generation style impact, it will remain as a luxury item for the enthusiast with too much money.

There will be no games developer worth their own pennies that will create a game that is solely reliant on something like the PPU.  They simply will not sell the units to justify taking the risk on a 'nice idea' like the PhysX card.

In my opinion it is going to take a totally revolutionary game to launch the PhysX card, a game that is truely next gen in its game play not just additional particle effects, and unfortunately I don't see UT3 or any number of half produced free games (there is a reason why they are free) from Ageia bringing that about.

Where do I think that they could really succeed?  If they did whatever it took to integrate the PPU into a medium to high end set of graphics cards or motherboards.  Currently Ageia is missing the proverbial barn door in trying to do it themselves.  The Author mentions that he thinks that the PhysX card is coming into it's own and that there are a whole raft of new games coming out that supports the hardware.  How many of those games actually gain a major difference in gameplay when untilising the PPU? Very very few if any - why?  Because game houses want to sell games not cut their own legs off before they even get started.

/Rant Over.


----------



## Wayward (Oct 19, 2007)

Steve O B Have said:


> I think the reviewer has missed something fundamental about the PhysX card and the implementation within games.
> 
> The simple fact is that until the PhysX card makes a ground breaking impact on game play, not just on aesthetics and effects but a real impacting next generation style impact, it will remain as a luxury item for the enthusiast with too much money.
> 
> ...



You make a good point but you're forgetting one thing.  None of the game houses are betting anything on the PPU.  All games that can use it also work just fine without it (except for Ageia's own Cellfactor).  They can market to the general gamer population, while still appealing to those with the PPU.  It's an optional feature, nothing more.


----------



## Steve O B Have (Oct 19, 2007)

Wayward said:


> You make a good point but you're forgetting one thing.  None of the game houses are betting anything on the PPU.  All games that can use it also work just fine without it (except for Ageia's own Cellfactor).  They can market to the general gamer population, while still appealing to those with the PPU.  It's an optional feature, nothing more.



Well no - I didn't forget that:



			
				Steve O B Have said:
			
		

> There will be no games developer worth their own pennies that will create a game that is solely reliant on something like the PPU. They simply will not sell the units to justify taking the risk on a 'nice idea' like the PhysX card.



My point is as long is it is just an 'optional feature' it will not take off.


----------



## W1zzard (Oct 19, 2007)

i remember when people said 3d accelerators will be a niche product for just a few gamers


----------



## Steve O B Have (Oct 19, 2007)

W1zzard said:


> i remember when people said 3d accelerators will be a niche product for just a few gamers



I'm not suggesting that it will never take off, just that in its current form it will not.  It has to become of a higher necessity.  As it stands the PPU is just not making enough difference to the gaming experience to be an overly valid addon.  I'm not writing it off just yet.

I for one would love to see physics take a greater roll in gaming - why can't I take out a lowly wooden door with a weapon that will take out a tank?  Makes no sense does it?  I just believe that Ageia have it wrong and their marketing department are going about launching their product in the wrong way.  They should be working to get the PPU integrated but they just keep on plugging away on their own.


----------



## unsmart (Oct 19, 2007)

I think you make a good point about marketing. There one size fits all approach is whats holding them back I think. what if ATI only had the hd2900, not to many can justify that expense to play 3D games. They need to target a broader market from low to high offering a varied degree of physics and mem. I'm sure this is probably a limit of the architecture that hopefully will be dealt with in the future. It would be nice if they could integrate this in to the southbridge though. Also if they could run some other apps[ like folding or encoding ] on it when ideal that would make it more worth while.


----------



## happita (Oct 20, 2007)

Steve O B Have said:


> I'm not suggesting that it will never take off, just that in its current form it will not.  It has to become of a higher necessity.  As it stands the PPU is just not making enough difference to the gaming experience to be an overly valid addon.  I'm not writing it off just yet.
> 
> I for one would love to see physics take a greater roll in gaming - why can't I take out a lowly wooden door with a weapon that will take out a tank?  Makes no sense does it?  I just believe that Ageia have it wrong and their marketing department are going about launching their product in the wrong way.  They should be working to get the PPU integrated but they just keep on plugging away on their own.



ATI and Nvidia have been working on the physics thing on their cards for a while now and I actually think their getting somewhere. By the time more than a few games are supported by the AEGIA's PPU, graphics cards will have already integrated their own physics within them.

One thing I find disturbing is that the PPU negotiates frame-rates when the physics card is in use, that right there is already reason enough for a person to not want one.


----------



## Wile E (Oct 21, 2007)

happita said:


> ATI and Nvidia have been working on the physics thing on their cards for a while now and I actually think their getting somewhere. By the time more than a few games are supported by the AEGIA's PPU, graphics cards will have already integrated their own physics within them.
> 
> One thing I find disturbing is that the PPU negotiates frame-rates when the physics card is in use, that right there is already reason enough for a person to not want one.


I'll gladly take a hit in fps, if it provides more eye candy, so long as it retains a playable framerate. Who cares if you go from 100fps to 50fps? Still perfectly playable.


----------



## Ketxxx (Oct 21, 2007)

100 > 50FPS is massive. Agreed some FPS hit isnt terrible, but drivers \ game code should be optimised far better than that.


----------



## cdawall (Oct 21, 2007)

got to agree with ket on that 50fps is around the change i got from going from a ti4200 to a 7800GS both oc'd thats a MASSIVE difference although once you get past 25-30fps your really cant tell as much  esp. if the game is coded right MOH airborne plays ~15-25FPS on my PC and looks just as good as it does @ the same res on my uncles C2D 6850 and dual 8800GTS 640 system and he got upwards of 60-70FPS with my settings


----------



## Solaris17 (Oct 21, 2007)

cdawall said:


> got to agree with ket on that 50fps is around the change i got from going from a ti4200 to a 7800GS both oc'd thats a MASSIVE difference although once you get past 25-30fps your really cant tell as much  esp. if the game is coded right MOH airborne plays ~15-25FPS on my PC and looks just as good as it does @ the same res on my uncles C2D 6850 and dual 8800GTS 640 system and he got upwards of 60-70FPS with my settings



agreed...i ghet like 30 fps in oblivion its not 60 but i cant detect it


----------



## Wile E (Oct 22, 2007)

Ketxxx said:


> 100 > 50FPS is massive. Agreed some FPS hit isnt terrible, but drivers \ game code should be optimised far better than that.


That's not my point, tho. I was using a theoretical example. My only point is that the fps drop doesn't matter if the game is still perfectly playable. The only way the fps hit would matter is in benchmarks, or if it lowers the fps to the point where the game becomes unplayable.


----------



## KNIFE-APEX (Feb 25, 2008)

yes it looks great the graphics!!!!!!!!!! instead of bringing out new cards as mutch as you pay for cards why this not on videocards!!!!!!!!!!!! they are expencive as it is now and going from 500.00 to like 600.00 now if not more or less....crazyness look i do enjoy the realism of whats out... great job ageia


----------



## Morgoth (Feb 25, 2008)

eh...


----------

