How do these perform so much better than CPUs?

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Framerate

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 3, 2004
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173
We know that these will perform much better than CPUs in terms of graphics processing, but how will they? I mean what will the clock speeds be? What kind of pipelines will these things have? I really wish they would release more about the meat and bones of these.
 
Framerate said:
We know that these will perform much better than CPUs in terms of graphics processing, but how will they? I mean what will the clock speeds be? What kind of pipelines will these things have? I really wish they would release more about the meat and bones of these.
Click to expand...

The exact specs likely would not tell you very much because it would not be directly comparable with a CPU or GPU in basically any way. I mean you likely would not draw any conclusions comparing a 3Ghz CPU with a 700Mhz GPU just on those numbers, right?

But luckly there is something you can do to test the PhysX engine on your box right now.


If you download the PhysX Software from here:
http://www.ageia.com/products/PhysX_2.4.0_SystemSoftware.zip

When you install it, uncheck the box to install the driver so that it just installs the engine. After that you can find the Boxes demo here: “Program Files\AGEIA Technologies\bin”

The boxes demo will run either in hardware mode (using a PPU) or in software mode if you don’t have a PPU. They seem to have done a great job letting their engine utilize CPU power when a PPU is not present as the engine in software makes full use of multiple cores/processors.

Anyway… If I have fraps open and run the demo in hardware mode, it appears to be capped at 100fps but it is pegged at that regardless of the amount of activity on the screen. In software mode it dips to 50-70fps with lots of activity, and would likely dip even more on a single core/processor machine. The demo is fairly simple but it is about the only thing out right now where you can directly compare hardware vs. software mode of the PhysX engine.
 
First I've heard of this boxes demo. That sounds awesome!!

I can't imagine how much CellFactor probably benefits.
 
Framerate said:
We know that these will perform much better than CPUs in terms of graphics processing, but how will they? I mean what will the clock speeds be? What kind of pipelines will these things have? I really wish they would release more about the meat and bones of these.
Click to expand...

Firstly, it is key to note that the PPU does zero graphics processing. They don't have pixel pipes like a GPU. Instead, the PPU is optimized to run physics calculations, similar to how a GPU is optimized to do graphics processing. Think of the CPU as the jack of all trades. It can do it everything, but nothing great. The add-in cards can only do one specialized task, but they do it extremely well.

There are a few specs for the PPU floating around the web:

• 125 million transistors

• 182mm² die size

• 20W power consumption (with a 4-pin Molex power connector)

• 128MB of GDDR3 memory

• 0.13 micron manufacturing process

and a very technical patent description here http://www.blachford.info/computer/articles/PhysX2.html
 
Think of the cpu as the awd sedan of the computing world, the ppu as the truck, and the gpu as a rwd sports car. The sedan was designed to be reasonably fast, and have a reasonable amount of storage space and be used in the winter. But the sportscar is meant for only speed, can't store nearly as much as a sedan or truck, and is useless in the winter. The truck was designed for storage, and can't go as fast, or store as many people as a sedan. It all depends on what you design something for. It's all about the intent of the design.
 
The reason why the PPU can do these calculations so much faster, is because they know exactly what the chip needs to do, so in one of its instruction cycles, it can do what would take 10 cycles on CPU (this is not a factual number, just one I threw out there). This is because they can put more specific instructions into hardware, rather then being generic like the CPU.
 
CPUs, 10 gigaflops (per core)

PPU, hundreds of gigaflops



comparing the CPU to a GPU for physics you'd need a 38 core CPU to match 1 GPU
 
PPU is gonna be a gigaflop if they can't convince people that it's really necessary for good gameplay. To date it hasn't been.
 
GotNoRice said:
The exact specs likely would not tell you very much because it would not be directly comparable with a CPU or GPU in basically any way. I mean you likely would not draw any conclusions comparing a 3Ghz CPU with a 700Mhz GPU just on those numbers, right?

But luckly there is something you can do to test the PhysX engine on your box right now.


If you download the PhysX Software from here:
http://www.ageia.com/products/PhysX_2.4.0_SystemSoftware.zip

When you install it, uncheck the box to install the driver so that it just installs the engine. After that you can find the Boxes demo here: “Program Files\AGEIA Technologies\bin”

The boxes demo will run either in hardware mode (using a PPU) or in software mode if you don’t have a PPU. They seem to have done a great job letting their engine utilize CPU power when a PPU is not present as the engine in software makes full use of multiple cores/processors.

Anyway… If I have fraps open and run the demo in hardware mode, it appears to be capped at 100fps but it is pegged at that regardless of the amount of activity on the screen. In software mode it dips to 50-70fps with lots of activity, and would likely dip even more on a single core/processor machine. The demo is fairly simple but it is about the only thing out right now where you can directly compare hardware vs. software mode of the PhysX engine.
Click to expand...

do you actually have hardware? is it out now?

i just haven't heard anything about it being released.. if so where did you get it.. i've been waiting for these to be released so i can get one..
 
H-street said:
do you actually have hardware? is it out now?

i just haven't heard anything about it being released.. if so where did you get it.. i've been waiting for these to be released so i can get one..
Click to expand...

They have been released in OEM computers, but not in retail as of yet. I didn’t buy mine ;)
 
Is your card ok from its little mishap ? and did you get another HS/fan to fit onto it ok ?
 
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