PPU coming "soon"!!!!

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Russ

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(This is linked to on the [H] front page).

http://www.xzentech.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=59&Itemid=48

Xzentech: When will we begin seeing retail PPU boards hit the market?

Manju: I think the answer to that is very soon. We are waiting to get confirmation from some of our leading launch titles so I think that pretty soon you will be able to purchase a PPU card. We would like to announce the date and we will be able to announce the date pretty soon.........


.......and be sure to check out part 2, which will be posted in a few days
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I heard they have the launch ready, but are waiting for a game that will actually support it.
 
I don't know about this with all the SLI users :) We only have a slot to spare that we already populate with soundcards ;) Imagine quad sli users.. you'd have to choose...damn
 
I honestly don't think this tech will take off. With dual core CPUs coming out, why not just dedicate and entire CPU core to physics? It would be a hell of a lot faster and cheaper than a $200-$400 add-in card I would think.
 
S1nF1xx said:
I heard they have the launch ready, but are waiting for a game that will actually support it.
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Wasn't Bet-On-soldier supposed to support Ageia PPUs? Although even if it did, it's not like a killer app or anything. All Ageia needs is one good game to get their forward momentum going and other devs will jump onboard. Unfrotunately, none of the games I am anticipating within 2006 have even mentioned support.
 
S1nF1xx said:
I honestly don't think this tech will take off. With dual core CPUs coming out, why not just dedicate and entire CPU core to physics? It would be a hell of a lot faster and cheaper than a $200-$400 add-in card I would think.
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For the same reason you can't use the 2nd core to do all of your graphics calculations instead of buying a $200-$400 video card...
 
bobzdar said:
For the same reason you can't use the 2nd core to do all of your graphics calculations instead of buying a $200-$400 video card...
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Because I don't know why, could you enlighten me on why a second core couldn't handle the physics calculations? Or would it be way slower? Just trying to learn.

 
bobzdar said:
For the same reason you can't use the 2nd core to do all of your graphics calculations instead of buying a $200-$400 video card...
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qft ^^
 
bobzdar said:
For the same reason you can't use the 2nd core to do all of your graphics calculations instead of buying a $200-$400 video card...
Click to expand...


I'm pretty sure right now my CPU core IS doing all the calculations. Where as my current CPU is not doing any of the graphics processing. Apples to oranges.

The whole point of the PPU is to take the load off the CPU and have processing power to spare so they can add more calculations. However, when you have a full second core at your disposal, why not use that?
 
zoobaby said:
Because I don't know why, could you enlighten me on why a second core couldn't handle the physics calculations? Or would it be way slower? Just trying to learn.
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Your CPU can and right now does do your games physics, just like it used to do graphics as well. However, the CPU is a general purpose processor, it's a jack of all trades and a master of none. Meaning, there are some things, graphics and physics amoung them, that can be much better handled with a processor purposefully designed for them from the ground up.

Also the CPU is handling a lot of other things in addition to physics (game AI, generating the 3D images thats translated into 2D by the graphics processor, backround apps etc.) so taking any work off of it and putting it onto a coprocessor will free up precious cycles, thereby making everythig run faster.
 
Because standard processors aren't designed to calculate Pysics like the physx chip is.
Personally, I'd chose a Physx card over SLi. When games come out, those cards will make games much better, mostly because you could then blow up buildings by shooting at them instead of having buildings as invulnerable static objects, you could have almost all objects including ground as dynamic. Allowing bombs to actually blow craters in the ground. Try playing like that with SLi, there's no way.
Now, what they should do, is make another version which fits into a drive bay, and the controller card is connected to the PCI slot, you could then choose a very small controller card and still have SLi.
 
yea, I believe the numbers are something like a cpu can handle 400-800 objects, a PPU can handle 32,000 (this was their initial touted number, I've heard that the first version will only be able to handle 8,000).

And haven't you guys seen the news articles on the [H] front page about Aegia? Over the past months, I've seen at least 10 or so that say a certain mobo manufac or game developer is supporting Aegia. they have plenty of support. Unreal 3.0 supports the PhysX.

The PPU has over 200 million transistors dedicated to physics. No way a CPU could come close (not even quad core).

----

O, and sorry for posting in Video Cards. I remember some posts about the PhysX last year that got moved from general hardware to video cards, and some that started there and were allowed to stay. You have to admit, it will get a lot more attention in the video card general forum. :)
 
Everyone seems to forget that having increased physics in a game will make the graphics slower.

You shoot that single polygon building face and it explodes into 30,000 polygons. Slow down whether there's hardware physics processing or not.


I really thing AGEIA have mis judged the market and the ppu will just be a little niche at best. Most people own a 9600 series card right now.

http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

But we'll find out soon how things go. I reckon that if a future console gets a ppu chip, then it'll take off, otherwise...
 
spine said:
Everyone seems to forget that having increased physics in a game will make the graphics slower.

You shoot that single polygon building face and it explodes into 30,000 polygons. Slow down whether there's hardware physics processing or not.
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We're already putting far more than 30,000 polygons on a screen at once. The problem now is there's no physics behind them...they either follow wholly unrealistic paths, or we're forced to lump those polygons into just a very few discrete objects. Neither is an ideal situation.
 
yea, it's more that the existing polygons will have more realistic paths interactions, meaning the GPU will get more realistic and better instructions on what to draw, rather than a million more things to draw.
 
We're also getting into SLi setups, Quad SLi setups, Dual core GPUs, and more powerful GPUs. I think we'll be covered.
 
ShepsCrook said:
Because standard processors aren't designed to calculate Pysics like the physx chip is.
Personally, I'd chose a Physx card over SLi. When games come out, those cards will make games much better, mostly because you could then blow up buildings by shooting at them instead of having buildings as invulnerable static objects, you could have almost all objects including ground as dynamic. Allowing bombs to actually blow craters in the ground. Try playing like that with SLi, there's no way.
Now, what they should do, is make another version which fits into a drive bay, and the controller card is connected to the PCI slot, you could then choose a very small controller card and still have SLi.
Click to expand...


Why not just have SLI and a Ageia Card? :cool:
 
will ageia use pci, pci-x or something new? i am wondering if sli boards would allow a vid card +ppu card in pci-x... or is it going to be something else?

some people think it would slow games down, they miss the whole point. by taking away the heavy physics loads from gpu/cpu.... this will allow a new chip to process the info while the other chips have more time to process gpu/cpu stuff!

think about it. if in 1994

someone told you that they were going to come out with a new idea, lets say a video card gpu! (nvidia in 1997?)... you would say "oh, why not use 2 cpus" or some crap lol. (as someone posted above).

that is why the gpu was created, to pull stress off the cpu , to let the cpu do more stuff. same goes with ageia...

technology is advancing... to make advance graphics requires realistic physics . having a physics chips saves alot of the stress.

furthermore, if you ever take some cs courses you will learn how chips are programmed to do certain actions. this means, a ppu can focus on physics processing coding... while a cpu may be inefficient and take many more steps to do the same thing! meaning, a specialized processor (gpu, ppu cpu etc) is better then a general one (due to latency)
 
jroe52 said:
will ageia use pci, pci-x or something new? i am wondering if sli boards would allow a vid card +ppu card in pci-x... or is it going to be something else?
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Initially they will be PCI cards, eventually moving to PCI-Express X1.

spine said:
I really thing AGEIA have mis judged the market and the ppu will just be a little niche at best. Most people own a 9600 series card right now.

http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html
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That survey is biased at best, since all of the 9600/9800 cards had HL2 slapped all over them then of course most people will be using those cards.
 
spine said:
I really thing AGEIA have mis judged the market and the ppu will just be a little niche at best. Most people own a 9600 series card right now.

http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html
Click to expand...


Correction...you mean most people who play CS own a 9600 card...which makes sense since it's a 5+ year old game mod. You don't see these same people playing D3 or Q4 because they can't be competitive on that slow of a card.

I say the PPU will be no more of a niche item than a 7800GTX ior X1900XT is right now. It will just be a matter of time before the 9600 erra CS players catch up.
 
this is not a very correct description, your CPU feeds the video card geometry for the video card to calculate.

STR said:
Also the CPU is handling a lot of other things in addition to physics (game AI, generating the 3D images thats translated into 2D by the graphics processor, backround apps etc.) so taking any work off of it and putting it onto a coprocessor will free up precious cycles, thereby making everythig run faster.
Click to expand...
 
haha, I like the hilarious thread resurrection. :p

I stand by what those valve surveys suggest. I realise they're biased, but I don't think alot of enthusiasts here realise how 'unique' they are in being willing to spend alot regularly on PC hardware.

The fact that The two top video card companies are unwilling to make top end AGP cards surely makes you realise how tight the PC hardware market is right now.

Even if every PC hardware enthusiast bar none bought a dedicated physics card, there still wouldn't be a big enough market for companies to make physics based games that fully utilise the card and make a worthwhile profit.


You can still play BF2 or whatever on your 9600 - you just have to turn your settings down. You can't do that if a game NEEDS a certain piece of hardware (such as a physics card). This is the crucial problem here.
 
I don't believe these physics cards will take off because the PCI-E bus will be far too slow to handle the processing of "12,000" independant objects. If these objects influence the environment like in HL2, its going to be back and forth for every object, from the cpu to the PPU, and that will be way too slow.


A PPU is not analogous to a video card. Video is essentially a one way data stream, physical modeling is not.
 
w00t got my PPU and it is really fun to play with, cant wait for the supported games!
 
dhslammer said:
w00t got my PPU and it is really fun to play with, cant wait for the supported games!
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Revival! Have you posted in all the other PPU threads yet? :rolleyes:
 
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