AGEIA PhysX Processor Technology Preview

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Terra

2[H]4U
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Didn't know where else to put this, and with all the PPU talk in the Video forum I figured this was the best place to place this:
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=225

A quote form the article:
The GPU debate is much more heated, especially since NVIDIA’s announcement of a partnership with Havok FX just a couple of days ago. AGEIA claims that the requirements for graphics and physics processing differ in fundamental ways that cannot be overlooked or bypassed no matter the software implementation a GPU vendor takes.

First, GPUs do not have enough internal memory bandwidth with their limited texture cache link. Because pixel shading has become more dominant in games that texture shading (which accesses memory), the bandwidth increases on GPUs have not moved up enough to match what AGEIA claims to have and what they claim is required. This will negatively affect the scale that a GPU can address in physics calculations as the number of entities it can store and access simultaneously is diminished.

The lack of a real write-back method on the GPU is also going to hurt it in the world of physics processing for sure. Since pixel shaders are read-only devices, they can not write back results that would change the state of other objects in the "world", a necessary feature for a solid physics engine on all four counts.

AGEIA also claims that since the API for a graphics card is going through Direct3D and any software that does physics calculations on the GPU is forced to "map" the physics language to the pixel processing language, there is additional overhead. The ability to easily map physics code to a physics pipelines will increase speed and lessen complexity on the software back end system.

Because of these limitations, the physical simulations that are possible on a GPU are limited mainly to eye candy and special effects. And actually, NVIDIA didn’t try to deny this fact during our briefing on SLI Physics, so it makes a lot of sense. However, AGEIA doesn’t want to just bring eye candy to games, they want to change the way games are made and played from the ground up. Of course, they will also be starting with the eye candy features as well, but who’s counting? So while AGEIA admits that the NVIDIA and Havok FX announcement will probably be able to produce some simple collisions between particles and static geometry in an "acceptable" manner, they will in no way be able to scale the way the PhysX will.
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Ageia are talking about they have: "They claim to have nearly two terabits per second (2 Tbits/s) of internal memory bandwidth to work with, many times more than even the fastest processors or GPUs available today." :eek:

Terra - The race is on :)
 
Ok, so now we have the card. Where can we purchase it from? I am waiting for this card.....
 
The Cobra said:
Ok, so now we have the card. Where can we purchase it from? I am waiting for this card.....
Click to expand...

From system builders...today...
As a single PCI add-in card...around may the article says....

Terra...
 
Honestly. I am looking forward to this technology. Everyone says it is non important nitche in the market, however so was 3d cards etc back in the day and now look where we are at.

I feel that this will be a revolutionary product that will lead to good things in gaming in years to come. Hopefully this Card will be affordable, and produce things we want / need today... and do it well for a long time to come. I will pay 250$ for a good PPU card if it will last 3 or 4 years.... I dont want it to be like a Video card to where every year it is obsolete....

This is one thing they need to overcome... I mean, we are rediculus with video cards now... it is almost to the point where we need SLI to run games at native resolutions.... now we have 4x SLI.... wtf... soon we will have 2000$ video cards just to run tetris.... fuck
 
I am looking forward to products as well, the PR handjobs are getting old.
 
Terra said:
From system builders...today...
As a single PCI add-in card...around may the article says....

Terra...
Click to expand...
wasn't it supposed to be out before Xmas 2005?
 
Same, I want a real product in my hands, I want to see it on shelves and I want to see real-world benefits from it. There has to be compelling reasons for gamers to want this card, we need to see results.

Physics acceleration in general is very exciting to me, it makes me think back on when games first received hardware 3D acceleration.

You know what is going to be interesting? Evaluating the benefits of these physics accelerators in games. No timedemo or canned benchmark is going to show you what they can provide for gaming. The only way is going to be to get in the game and see what the real benefits are, maybe we were on to something with our gameplay evals eh? ;)
 
One question that probly has already been answered. What benifit will this physics PPU card give me on a game that is 2 or so years old... say... Halo, or Counterstrike Source? Maybe even a game like World of Warcraft?
 
USMC2Hard4U said:
One question that probly has already been answered. What benifit will this physics PPU card give me on a game that is 2 or so years old... say... Halo, or Counterstrike Source? Maybe even a game like World of Warcraft?
Click to expand...

The game has to be programmed to take advantage of the PPU, one of the key benefits will be an increased amount of physics and objects in the game.

It is theoretically possible that some older games could be patched to benefit from the acceleration, though not have any increased physics in the game. If that will ever be implemented though I do not know, I wouldn't hold my breath.
 
Brent_Justice said:
The game has to be programmed to take advantage of the PPU, one of the key benefits will be an increased amount of physics and objects in the game.

It is theoretically possible that some older games could be patched to benefit from the acceleration, though not have any increased physics in the game. If that will ever be implemented though I do not know, I wouldn't hold my breath.
Click to expand...
Well that answers that. Now is company (who produces the PPU chips) going to make the cards? Or will the use 3rd partys like Abit, Asus, BFG etc to make these cards? Also will these come at different speeds and have different amounts of ram? Like Entry level, Midrange and high end cards? Or is there only 1
 
drizzt81 said:
wasn't it supposed to be out before Xmas 2005?
Click to expand...

It was supposed to be out in November, 2005. I have been awaiting this product since I first heard abotu it a few years ago.

My question is this: Since it is a PCI card, how will it operate with my Sound Blaster and Wireless Card? Won't bandwidth be an issue?

I hope I have enough room in my machine...LOL
 
However, a very prominent title (hint hint) will be hitting shelves in early May that might increase the interest for these PPUs quite a bit.
Click to expand...

UT2k7?
 
The Cobra said:
It was supposed to be out in November, 2005. I have been awaiting this product since I first heard abotu it a few years ago.

My question is this: Since it is a PCI card, how will it operate with my Sound Blaster and Wireless Card? Won't bandwidth be an issue?

I hope I have enough room in my machine...LOL
Click to expand...

My guess is they want to release it when games will actually support it. If they released it last year, by the time it was any use, it would basically be "old" tech, and probably wouldnt sell as well.
 
USMC2Hard4U said:
One question that probly has already been answered. What benifit will this physics PPU card give me on a game that is 2 or so years old... say... Halo, or Counterstrike Source? Maybe even a game like World of Warcraft?
Click to expand...
Presumably nothing because at this point, only games using the PhysX physics engine can be accelerated with the PPU. If Ageia signs up with Havok to accelerate the Havok engine, then I suppose games made in the past with the Havok engine would benefit, but only if you are CPU limited in those games.
From a pure acceleration standpoint, only games that are currently CPU limited will benefit from the PPU.
However, things will get really fun when games are specifically coded for the PPU, and we get destructable environments, liquid weapons, etc, which are only possible in PPU enabled PCs.

I think it's interesting in the Hothardware article how it says the PhysX API is extremely multi-threaded. I suppose this means that games that use the PhysX engine will perform well on dual core CPUs. I'm interested to get my hands on the new Ghost Recon game to test all this out!
 
USMC2Hard4U said:
Well that answers that. Now is company (who produces the PPU chips) going to make the cards? Or will the use 3rd partys like Abit, Asus, BFG etc to make these cards? Also will these come at different speeds and have different amounts of ram? Like Entry level, Midrange and high end cards? Or is there only 1
Click to expand...
There's only 1 at this point, but I'm sure other versions will follow in time. ASUS apparently makes cards for OEMs (Dell, Alienware) and BFG will make the retail cards that we can buy.
 
Looking at the pictures doesn't look like anything special. Reading the article with movie realistic special effects I dunno I don't see it. I'll watch a video but I don't see the hype. Ageia the company going to turn ipo anytime soon anyone know? Do they make their own chips or do they just design them then sell the technology to nvidia and ATI?
 
Most people are going to find a problem getting these cards on their systems when they already have an X-Fi and 7900gtx's packed on their boards in SLI.


They are going to market it out to 3rd parties (BFG, etc), however I don't know what specs are going to be offered if any. I'd be curious to see how the video card companies would react and if companies such as ATI would just offer their own.
 
well ATI and NVIDIA do already offer their own

sounds like a lot of good competition to me, that only means good things for the end users!
 
Brent_Justice said:
Maybe!

Check it

http://www.beyondunreal.com/main/ut2007/about.php



That is a lot earlier than I thought it would be out, originally I had heard fall of '06.
Click to expand...

I have been reading and hearing (From a Gamestop sales associate) last night that UT2007 won't be out until late fall (Around the same time that Windows Vista was due out)

This has gone against the grain with UT releases, usually late spring. If this release date from beyondunreal is true, I will be a very happy camper. I have spent the last 4 months buying a second video care, Dual Core Processor and waiting for the PhysX PPU specially for my computer. Every other game as far as I am concerned, is just added icing for me.
 
Ockie said:
Most people are going to find a problem getting these cards on their systems when they already have an X-Fi and 7900gtx's packed on their boards in SLI.


They are going to market it out to 3rd parties (BFG, etc), however I don't know what specs are going to be offered if any. I'd be curious to see how the video card companies would react and if companies such as ATI would just offer their own.
Click to expand...

http://www.bfgtech.com/physx/index.htm

This is the link for the add-in board from BFG, I will be purchasing this one.
 
I watched the vid with the hanger and the plane flying in, game looks stupid shoot boxes for 3 minutes. But not impressed when the guy is running with a gun out graphics go to shit screen like shifts I dunno too many fps to handle it looks like
 
All this stuff is exciting.

Will nvidia be integrating this technology in their cards instead of having a seperate card?


It almost feels like we will all be forced to buy these cards because of the new games coming out. $250 is quite a bit of money for a piece of hardware for a lot of people.


I just hope that they either integrate it onto the video cards or they make a PCI-E version.
 
UT2007 will definately use physX according to the BFG website.

Im interested to see how cell does with it though, because if cell can do it, x86 can do it IMO, and were all getting ripped off.
 
The Cobra said:
http://www.bfgtech.com/physx/index.htm
Click to expand...

Great, another whiny little chipset fan ;)

While I'm actually looking forward to seeing more dynamic game words, i can't imagine that it will make a serious difference to the gameplay beyond simple eye candy, just because if it did then the game would play differently with vs. without the ppu.
 
I hope they release a PCI-Express x1 version of this card too... if I remember correctly from awhile back, weren't they planning on doing that?
 
shacknews lists a number of titles that support it, including ut2k7:

The company also says that over a hundred games from sixty different companies including Epic Games, Ubisoft, SEGA and NCSoft will be supporting the AGEIA PhysX processor. Specific games announced as supporting the PPU include City of Villains, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter for the PC, Unreal Tournament 2007, Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. Here's how the PhysX PPU will help G.R.A.W.
 
GoldenTiger said:
I hope they release a PCI-Express x1 version of this card too... if I remember correctly from awhile back, weren't they planning on doing that?
Click to expand...

they will eventually.
 
pain.angel said:
shacknews lists a number of titles that support it, including ut2k7:

The company also says that over a hundred games from sixty different companies including Epic Games, Ubisoft, SEGA and NCSoft will be supporting the AGEIA PhysX processor. Specific games announced as supporting the PPU include City of Villains, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter for the PC, Unreal Tournament 2007, Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. Here's how the PhysX PPU will help G.R.A.W.
Click to expand...

There is a list on http://www.bfgtech.com/physx/index.htm that list:

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter
Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends
Bet on Soldier: Blood Sport
Cell Factor
City of Villains
Unreal Tournament 2007
Gunship Apocalypse
Sacred II
Loki
Dogtag
Fallen Earth
Crazy Machines 2
Arena Online
Diabolique
Warhammer MMORPG
Eye of the Storm
KARMA
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
Alpha Prime

As games comming out in 2006 with PhysX support...

Terra...
 
seems like you can buy it from Dell now

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=DXPS600G2&s=dhs


PhysX Accelerator
>The AGEIA ® PhysX ® physics accelerator is a dedicated PCI add-in card specifically designed to enhance the performance of PC games that can be played on your Dell system. Its special performance features can only be utilized with games designed to take advantage of the physics accelerator. The addition of a stand alone physics accelerator to the gaming hardware line-up represents a radical breakthrough in the way in which you can experience the virtual environment. Click on ''Help Me Choose'' for this section to learn more.



if that dont work, just go configure a XPS.

Wish someone had a review of the hardware...




OCP GUYS GO BUY ONE PLZ :)
 
EchoMatrix said:
Wish someone had a review of the hardware...
Click to expand...

the dell machine or the ppu? last i checked you still can't use the ppu with anything yet.
 
they could... but the only thing they can run on it would be bet on soldier... not exactly a glorious title..
 
According to gamespy Playboy: The Mansion, expansion pack, is slated for May 1. Think "silicon" and "life-like physics". :D
 
What is the cost? The Dell site indicated it would be 250 extra to add the card. If it gives me a better gaming experience will it be worth the 250 bucks, maybe. Does anyone have any movies of this hardware in action?
 
GabooN said:
What is the cost? The Dell site indicated it would be 250 extra to add the card. If it gives me a better gaming experience will it be worth the 250 bucks, maybe. Does anyone have any movies of this hardware in action?
Click to expand...

They're on the link posted a little earlier in this thread. otherwise just check out the ageia site for some demos.
 
I really cant wait for this card either. I wonder how much resources its going to take off the CPU to increase processing power. One less thing for it to process. Im also anxious to see how it works in games, actually SEEING benefits from it in games, not just hopeing there are benefits. Well wait and see....
 
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