My Test of Cell Factor running with and without physX

goodcooper said:
Commander Suzdal, either they are ringers, or more likely they are enthusiasts who frequent other forums that aren't discussing PPUs as objectively as hardforums is, so they feel need to register and post... i doubt there is a need for alarm (tin foil hats)...
Click to expand...
Good point--ardent fans do seem to rush from forum to forum to defend their favorite products, don't they? "We're under attack at the [H]--to the barricades, comrades!" Anand posted another look at PPU performance issues this week, and I saw some familiar user names pop up in the discussion thread over there. Of course, ringers get around too... ;)

Now THERE's a potentially cool PPU trick--put sheets of tinfoil in an X-Files style RPG, and allow you to shape your own tinfoil hat, with realistic crinkles and everything... :D
 
goodcooper said:
i'm just waiting on a review from hardocp on one of these things, you can buy them at newegg.com, who wants to make a bet they've got one on thier bench by now and are doing tests with it
Click to expand...

Well, [H] has done a few editorials which basically showcase why no "review" should be done. If you're looking for benches or such for the extreme few titles supporting the PPU, then check out this and other reviews which can be found by a simple google. All of them say the same thing: GRAW's PPU effects were obviously an afterthought, were a waste of the PPU's potential, and add nothing to the game. Cell Factor is a cool demo, but then again the game isn't going to be released until late 2007, so we'll have to see how that pans out, and whether the prevelance of multi-core cpus with proper support could do the same effects. The only other actual playable thing out there that supports Aegia's PPU is Bet On Soldier, and that just gets a "gooey" flamethrower, hardly worth a $250+ investment.

I just think that people need to leave the PPU where it is for a while, and wait for more info from the big titles claiming support in the future. The fact is the majority of people out there know that as it stands, the PPU isn't worth the money. Lets see that "killer app" [H] believes is necessary, and then I think debates can start with some real substance, because as it stands all these threads are the same.
 
Most of the time the purpose of a review is to see how a product stands up to its competition. When it comes to this it's a choice of getting it or not and I think we can all agree to sit on our hands until prices fall and content rises.
 
Commander Suzdal said:
I don't know if I should say this, but I can't help noticing how many new posters have joined in the last month or so and are spending a lot of their time defending the PhysX PPU. It first began to catch my attention because it seemed like a pretty specialized topic for new members to get worked up about. Add in the fact that most new members here are also relatively new to enthusiast computing, and it seemed strange that they would even know what a PPU was, let alone have a strong opinion on its value. It's even stranger that many of them seem to own one already.

Call me paranoid, but I smell a big, fat, geurilla-marketing rat...
Click to expand...


i agree with you
who the hell buys hardware that currently serves no purpose ? ..expecially these people with ahtlon XPs who supposedly have them..wouldnt you rather get a opteron165?? or more ram or a 300$ vid card?
 
I think that untill we can get full software effects on a low to midrange cpu at ~20fps, that a physics card that can pump out 80fps then becomes something worthwhile.

I mean developers need to depend on the full range of effects being functional on 80% of their user base at a playable frame rate (roughly 20fps).

Then your highend machine which could get say 40fps in full software mode can run w/ a physics card and pull 100fps.

Until they are willing to give a full consistent experience in software mode, physics cards will relegated to eye candy.
 
goodcooper said:
of course he's right, he's kyle
Click to expand...
Yeah, I got a good laugh outta that one--"that guy--ol' what's his name, no one special, just founder, editor in chief, owner, glorious poobah of this entire site...." :rolleyes:
 
Yeah but that's another problem. The physics cards will never get anywhere if they are relegated only to eye candy and explosion effects. There's just no point. We need those massive numbers of physics objects to be fully interactive in the game world.

And the next step after that is to find a way to make the massive numbers of interactive objects not just interactive in single player games but multiplayer also. I've got no idea how this will be done.

My guess is we're going to be stalled out here with nothing much changing until the video card makers all start using the GPUs for physics, then a standard will emerge and it will become mainstream. I wish Ageia the best, but I don't see how they're going to make it. I own most of the latest gadgets for gaming on PC, but I have no desire for one of these. The industry is going to have to show me a mind blowing reason to spend over $200 on this and there's nothing even on the horizon that justifies that kind of expense.
 
U guys ever notice without a PPU the explosions/details look less and crappy? with ppu the details of the explosions are very distinct and clear
 
lemmy said:
U guys ever notice without a PPU the explosions/details look less and crappy? with ppu the details of the explosions are very distinct and clear
Click to expand...
No, I didn't notice that. It looks exactly the same in PPU videos as it looks when I played it without a PPU. Smoke and debris looks the same with and without a PPU in CF. The cloth and blood are missing without a PPU though.
 
digitalwanderer said:
I'm disapointed, I wanted to believe. :(
Click to expand...


Understood....

Wasn't necessarily for or against the PPU... Just looking forward to another technological leap to further immerse and heighten gameplay and didn't care what did it. A PPU card or some radical idea like taking the GPU and making it a socket chip much like a CPU, instead of an add-on card, it didn't matter...

Its like looking upon a distant mountain range and seeing the first rays of dawn...and just as that serene feeling begins to wash over you as you expect to see our glowing orb of life peek over the caps... its instanly midnight again....
 
hey everybody! just joined from anandtech.

I've played around with the demo a few times now and got really sick of that physX logo in my face constantly so.. I removed it!! here's how:

open Artificial/cellfactor/cellfactor/scripts/base/GameCore.cs then search for physxlogo
should be 2 lines of code you remove.. when you are done the term shouldn't be found in the file at all, save, restart the game.. no more logo in the way of your gun.

enjoy :D

I was getting roughly 13fps on my X200 @ 640x480.. not bad for an integrated board I guess
 
64ninjas said:
I was getting roughly 13fps on my X200 @ 640x480.. not bad for an integrated board I guess
Click to expand...

13fps, that's pretty dam good for a X200 thats integrated :)
 
yeah it held that pretty well when I was walking around and such, once the shooting began it dropped to about 10, and explosions.. it bogged, 1-2 fps maybe

but yeah, 1 gig ram, athlon64 3700+ s754, 64MB shared to the video

--'Low Graphics' mode btw
 
Commander Suzdal said:
Good point--ardent fans do seem to rush from forum to forum to defend their favorite products, don't they? "We're under attack at the [H]--to the barricades, comrades!" Anand posted another look at PPU performance issues this week, and I saw some familiar user names pop up in the discussion thread over there. Of course, ringers get around too...
Click to expand...

64ninjas said:
hey everybody! just joined from anandtech.
Click to expand...

lol point and point


the problem with UT2007, is that it is a game that has such a huge following, that requiring their users to buy a ppu to play a large amount of the content in thier game would cut thier user base down big time... i don't think that a super popular franchise game is going to be able to be the saving grace... i mean when you sell a game like UT2007, you count on all the sales you got going back to the original Tournament... do you understand what i'm trying to say?, 15 million people won't buy a game if the majority of the features require a PPU, but you can't show the usefulness of the PPU unless the majority of the features in the game require a PPU... see the catch22? i think the makers of UT will choose the selling copies over the helping out some obscure (by worldy standards) API maker who sells accelerators for 300 clams, 0% of which they get

how many non hardware junkie friends do you have that played DOOM3 on a geforce4 mx440 PCI, or HL2 on thier radeon 9200s? cuz i can give you many such examples, and i'm betting the majority of buyers of DOOM3 didn't even own a gen 5 or 6 geforce (or 9 or 10 radeon)

it has to be some little undeveloped franchise/underhyped game (a la farcry)... i thought cellfactor (a game in which the whole thing is supposed to revolve around the use of the PPU) was supposed to be that game
 
using me as an example for something I've never even read isn't very fair. I came over here to share how I removed the physX logo, nothing more.
 
64ninjas said:
using me as an example for something I've never even read isn't very fair. I came over here to share how I removed the physX logo, nothing more.
Click to expand...

oh good sir, i wasn't in any way dissing you and CERTAINLY not your help... i was just showing the other people who were worried about The Man that these new people joining the forums probably aren't payed ringers from AGEIA here to bolster sales and product confidence
 
Yea the difference in pics is unoticeable.,i stared at them for 10 minutes trying to decide what it was i was supposed to see.
 
IT makes me wonder if the PhsyX is actually doing the calculations for the rigid bodies at all.

The frame rates are so close it wouldn't supprise me if it's just do the work for the fluid physics and the real time cloth. The blood and other liquid effects are surely going to be the effects that require the most rendering power.
 
goodcooper said:
the problem with UT2007, is that it is a game that has such a huge following, that requiring their users to buy a ppu to play a large amount of the content in thier game would cut thier user base down big time... i don't think that a super popular franchise game is going to be able to be the saving grace.... i think the makers of UT will choose the selling copies over the helping out some obscure (by worldy standards) API maker who sells accelerators for 300 clams, 0% of which they get....
it has to be some little undeveloped franchise/underhyped game (a la farcry)... i thought cellfactor (a game in which the whole thing is supposed to revolve around the use of the PPU) was supposed to be that game
Click to expand...
Here's what I'm interested to know. What kind of mods will be available for UT2k7 that take advantage of physx? Just because Epic isn't making PPU-only levels, doesn't mean that some guys can't come along and make a cellfactor-type MP level using the ut2k7 engine. That's my hope anyways....also the reason I'm waiting to buy a PPU until I see some real results.

Weren't there some game developers that invested in Ageia?
 
anantech Does a full review on it,

and it seems that there are some banwith issues with the PPU..

( Pci? who woulda thunk it?! )
 
pArTy said:
I thought you couldnt play Cell Factor without physX card?
Click to expand...

lol, after all the threads and discussions on here that was funny :D , but if you've been to Ageia's website then your probably one of the manys thousands that believed this (Like I did),



I love the little "(Yes, it is required)"
 
lowrider007 said:
lol, after all the threads and discussions on here that was funny :D , but if you've been to Ageia's website then your probably one of the manys thousands that believed this (Like I did),



I love the little "(Yes, it is required)"
Click to expand...
I didn't go to there site. Some other hardware site did a review and said you couldnt run the game without physX card. PhysX wont take off untel there more powerful. Right now there only good for mid/low range rigs. But with the price it would be worth it just to upgrade your CPU than get a physX card.
 
I dont know what gave you the idea that they are only good for low/mid level rigs at that price, but I dont think they are good for any computer at the moment.
 
Killa_2327 said:
I dont know what gave you the idea that they are only good for low/mid level rigs at that price, but I dont think they are good for any computer at the moment.
Click to expand...
I have a P4 2.4GHZ and it bogs down with CSS and the ragdolls somtimes. So if 30+ ragdolls bog down a P4 2.4GHZ then I'm pretty sure it wouldnt beable to run CellFactor very well or any future games that have good amount of phyiscs in them. So if you had physX card to help off load physics from CPU.......
 
pArTy said:
I have a P4 2.4GHZ and it bogs down with CSS and the ragdolls somtimes. So if 30+ ragdolls bog down a P4 2.4GHZ then I'm pretty sure it wouldnt beable to run CellFactor very well or any future games that have good amount of phyiscs in them. So if you had physX card to help off load physics from CPU.......
Click to expand...

Putting a PPU in your computer isnt going to magically make it run faster. The game has to be specifically coded to take advantage of it, and even then, it appears that there is a bottleneck either in the pci bus or at the gpu end. Its usefulness in net game is also questionable given the amount of data you have send over a network
 
It is required if you want all the physx effects such as blood and real time cloth in the demo.

Running it on a CPU doesn't give you those things, probably because of how badly it would slow the game down, wouldn't be worth implimenting it across the CPU.
 
defiant007 said:
Putting a PPU in your computer isnt going to magically make it run faster. The game has to be specifically coded to take advantage of it, and even then, it appears that there is a bottleneck either in the pci bus or at the gpu end. Its usefulness in net game is also questionable given the amount of data you have send over a network
Click to expand...
I know the game has to be coded for it. I'm pretty sure there may be a bottleneck over PCI bus just because of how much information traffic physics can cause. Also CSS ragdolls arent synced with the server. Adanved physics wont be able to sync with servers for a few years because of bandwidth.
 
I can run that game fine, and my hardware isnt even fast, I just have to turn down resolution, but on fast hardware without the ppu this game would run perfectly. The ppu doesnt do anything atm, and isnt even worth buying. I only have a 3200+ venice clocked upto 2.4 ghz with a 6600 gt 570/1200 and 1 gig of dual channel value select corsair. I really think that our current generation processors are fast enough to run any physics that are available to us, crysis has the most advanced physics engine created, and it doesnt recommend or need a physics card. Conroes, and quad core processors are going to eliminate any need for a PPU, I personally woudl rather that ATI and nVidia not put physics on their gpus and dedicate them to what they were built to do, as im sure quad cores will be quite fine for physics calculations.
 
OOOK folks...am I the ONLY one here that thinks all of this FPS data is worthless when it comes to a PhysX card?

Believe me when I say this, I didn't buy the PhysX card to get better frame rates. I got it to get better PHYSICS.

Demo Screen captures will NEVER exemplify what a PhysX card can and cannot do.

What do I mean?

The PhysX card isn't so much about the "added debris", it's about what that debris DOES. Regular games/software will simply spit out one of many "stored animations" for an event (e.g. car exploding, debris flying, etc.). Just to mix it up they may add different animations that can run in combination to mask any real detection of it being a stored animation.

Where the PhysX card SHOULD come in (I hope this is the case, for which is the reason I got the card), is that when things go BOOM or break or whatever...that it's not scripted, it's not ever going to be the same, but rather that each and every little piece uniquely follows it's "physics" and fall, tumble, roll, whatever.

A screen shot will never display this. A clip might, but definitely not a screen shot.

So far, this thread has not shown me anything to prove that the PhysX card is useless or subpar. I agree that there can be better support (better drivers) for the card and even better titles (UT). So I am patient, and waiting for that time and waiting for games like Cell Factor to be released, before I pass judgment. For the time being, I'm enjoying GRAW and biding my time.

300 dollar paper wait? Perhaps? But it won't be sitting on paper in my house...it'll be in my rig...waiting :)

Lets just hope its not waiting for nothing :)
 
bildad said:
Well in your first video as you got closer I couldn't tell if that was cloth or your video card was overheating. First there was this thing, and then there were oddly shaped pollys all over the screen.

Your second video is a little better, but the way the cloth tears apart when shot doesn't look too good. It's a little cheesy and overdone
Click to expand...

Looked pretty damn realistic to me. Why can't people just be excited and hope agiea makes this thing work good instead of being so damn cynical?
 
I have not any of the equipment to run such a test (all my hardware is generations behind) but I would like to see a multiplayer test. maybe 4-8 people or so (on a lan) with results recorded from a computer with the PPU and one without. (if it is possible to have PPU / Non PPU in the same multiplayer)
 
jebo_4jc said:
It was odd though, because the FPS would go up and down dramatically. If I shot a grenade in a pile of stuff, the FPS would dip, then resume normal speeds while the stuff flew through the air.
Click to expand...
The stuff moving is not hard to do. I can write code to make 10000 boxes fly through the air in an hour or so, and it will run nice and fast. The hard part is making it all interact. What you described is exactly what should happen: things slow down when they get close/touch eachother.
 
jebo_4jc said:
Because both processors never hit 100%. I'm not sure how it is with a dual core CPU while playing single threaded games, but with HT, both "CPUs" fluctuate between about 10% and 90% usage, with the average usage at any one time being about 50%. In other words, sometimes one CPU will be about 20% loaded, while the other one is 80%, sometimes it will be 50/50, sometimes it will be 75/25. Cellfactor showed the same behavior in my brief playing with it last night. I'll try to run some benchmarks. We should try to compile benchmarks to see exactly what is going on here.
Click to expand...
This is not unusual for multi-threaded software because the system reports useage as an average. The useage could go from 100 to 0 to 100 over three ticks and the useage will be reported as only 66%.

This happens with multi-threaded software because most real-world workloads are not evenly distributable and there are synchronization points. One thread runs at 100% for a while, finishes first and has to wait for the second one to finish its task. Because the first thread wasn't running at 100% for the whole useage average time block, it is reported as being under 100% load.

This happens on workloads that are "fine-grained". The workloads are typically lots of little tasks that the threads finish quickly as opposed to something like a rendering application where the threads have plenty of work to do for a long time.

If anyone has any specific questions about their CPU useage or framerate send them to be over PM, I'll try to help you understand these results from the perspective of a multi-threaded software engineer.
 
I just went to download the demo but it seems that they have pulled it.
Anywhere else to get it?
 
if there is any truth to this, then it should also be possible to enable PhysX in GRAW. might take a bit more tinkering, but it should be entirely possible especially since GRAW uses less physics calculations than cell factor.
 
THRESHIN said:
if there is any truth to this.
Click to expand...

trust me, there's enougth truth to this, enougth infact for Ageia to take the Cell Factor download link off their website :(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top