Ageia PhysX "launched"

[Jasonx82]

I would pcie comes out quickly.. I want one

 

[uzor]

I'm for stand alone physics card myself, but come on, this is very faulty logic.

First, you included a top of the line board with a high price tag. You could also consider that you may upgrade your system before you need physics power, and you would probably already be buying an SLI board, since the only motherboard's you consider are high end.

Second, you put the price of two video cards. Do you not have a video card in your gaming rig right now?

Not so faulty as you might think actually. Right now I have an AGP 6800 series card on an ASRock 939 DUAL SATA2. This board is allowing me to run my AGP card now with a 3800+, and has a PCIe x16 slot as well, such that I could switch to a PCIe card w/o a mobo upgrade. Same thing with a CPU upgrade to AM2 (via CPU add in board custom made for the board). I have quite a bit of upgradeability left in this board save for SLI.

I'm not cheap, but I got this board because it fits my needs right now. If I were to make an upgrade, I wouldn't upgrade to the lowest end example for each category (vid and mobo), but neither would I go for the absolute highest (notice no 512 GTXes listed). As for as listing two video cards, I would need both as I am not going to cripple one video card to try to multitask with physics and graphics both, nor would anyone here, I believe. Also, from everything we have heard, when using two cards, they would need to be in SLI, not mismatched cards from different generations.

If I lowballed the vid cards, I believe it would come out to about $530 for the same board and two 7600GTs, which is still more than double the cost of the PhysX.

All that notwithstanding, I do think that the PhysX card is just plain cooler.

 

[pj-schmidt]

One thing that a lot of people I think have missed is that the GPU physics by Havoc FX is very different from the physics produced by the Ageia PhysX PPU. The Havoc FX GPU effects are an addition to the normal Havok physics effects. The GPU effects are visual only and will consist of such things as wavy grass and certian types of particle effects. These GPU effects are ones that require zero feed back to the CPU. The GPU physics cannot do collision detection for the whole game world, it will not deal with ragdoll effects, it will not deal with destructable structures, because each of these requires a high degree of feedback to the CPU.

For example, the loose garbage that is laying arround in CS:S has its physics simulated by Havoc's normal physics engine. The collision detection and physics simulation is all done on the CPU. The addition of HavocFX will not change this, it will only allow for GPU acceleration of some visual-only type of effects. This means that you could use one of your SLI'd GPU's to produce some physics acceleration and still have a large physics calculation burden on your CPU.

The PhysX PPU will allow for acceleration of all physical effects, not just the visual-only types of effects.

 

[psychoace]

One thing that a lot of people I think have missed is that the GPU physics by Havoc FX is very different from the physics produced by the Ageia PhysX PPU. The Havoc FX GPU effects are an addition to the normal Havok physics effects. The GPU effects are visual only and will consist of such things as wavy grass and certian types of particle effects. These GPU effects are ones that require zero feed back to the CPU. The GPU physics cannot do collision detection for the whole game world, it will not deal with ragdoll effects, it will not deal with destructable structures, because each of these requires a high degree of feedback to the CPU.

For example, the loose garbage that is laying arround in CS:S has its physics simulated by Havoc's normal physics engine. The collision detection and physics simulation is all done on the CPU. The addition of HavocFX will not change this, it will only allow for GPU acceleration of some visual-only type of effects. This means that you could use one of your SLI'd GPU's to produce some physics acceleration and still have a large physics calculation burden on your CPU.

The PhysX PPU will allow for acceleration of all physical effects, not just the visual-only types of effects.

Then how do you explain the garbage scene from the nvidia vortex scene and how the character runs through it? Also if the ppu is using a pci slot and a gpu is using a pcie 8x slot (thinkin sli here) why can only the ppu supposidly communicate with the cpu and not the gpu? Also why would it all you need the gpu to do is determine the physics and then render it all out through the video card seems like actually one less step because the ppu still has to throw everything back at the cpu then to the video card

 

[pj-schmidt]

Then how do you explain the garbage scene from the nvidia vortex scene and how the character runs through it?...

First, in the vortex scene, the objects are being tracked as a particle effect (similar to a gas or a fluid). Havoc calls the particles "Debris Primitives." This is still a physics effect where the interaction of the parts is still only a visual effect that the CPU in unaware of (the apparent interaction is GPU generated.)

Please note that HavocFX only does Effects Physics and not Game Play Physics (Ageia's PPU will do both.) The following quote is from Havoc's web site. Link

What Is The Difference Between Game-Play Physics And Effects physics?

Game-Play Physics affect how a game is played from moment-to-moment, and is generally computed on a computer’s central processing unit (CPU). Physical changes that you cause in the game or that happen to you or around you– like knocking over a box, and then climbing up on it - change what you may want to do in each instant of game play. Both game-play physics and game logic demand instant access and tolerate no detectible latency to preserve the game-play experience. The close proximity between physics, game logic, and memory, defines game play and generally demands that these systems execute together on a game system’s CPU. Effects physics is an emerging domain that promises to deliver an increasing array of visually impressive effects that are based on physical principles – but which place far fewer demands on the game’s logic.

Effects physics – a close cousin to visual effects now computed on GPUs – add to the visual complexity of a game and help increase a player’s immersive experience. As visual phenomena, effects physics need to be convincingly real but do not profoundly affect game play. They can merely fill in the player’s view of the game, creating a richer, more convincing environment- but may not affect the choices a player can make from moment-to-moment.

Effects Physics lacks the complete interactivity that true Game-Play Physics offers. You will notice tha Havoc insists that Game-Play Physics must be done on the CPU. This is because there is no way to do this on the GPU and the only other way to do this type of physics is through a PPU.

...Also if the ppu is using a pci slot and a gpu is using a pcie 8x slot (thinkin sli here) why can only the ppu supposidly communicate with the cpu and not the gpu? Also why would it all you need the gpu to do is determine the physics and then render it all out through the video card seems like actually one less step because the ppu still has to throw everything back at the cpu then to the video card

Secondly, It is not that the GPU doesn't have a "connection" to the CPU, but that it is hard to convert the Shader Model 3 (SM3) data to a form that the CPU can use. The PPU delivers the physics information in a form that is immediatly useable by the CPU, while it requires nearly as much work to convert the SM3 data to a usable form as it would to do the physics processing initially. It is not worth the CPU overhead to convert this data, so it must be directly ported to the screen. You are right, there is one less step when physics are GPU computed and then directly rendered, but this reduces the flexibility of the effects that can be done.

So "Effects physics" are computed on the GPU, but "Game-Play" type of effects cannot be done on the GPU. This is the difference.

I hope that this helps.

 

[ZacharyS]

That was a rather informative post pj, I didn't realize that the Havok/Nvidia stuff was only visual and not actually affecting gameplay. That makes me want the PPU even more, true physics

 

[peacetilence]

250 aint that bad if it really does revolutionize game play. Each gen of video cards adds perhaps 40% performance boost over the last. To put it in perspective 40% equals being able to play at one or two resolutions higher with slighly more AA & AF while still retaining the same FPS as the older card. People pay for entire pc upgrades for such a minor boost (relatively speaking) whichs costs a lot more than 250. Think about it this way, for $250 your pc can now do something that $2500 worth of CPU and video card upgrades could never do.