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Ageia PPU Question

Simmonz

Simmonz

2[H]4U
Joined
May 14, 2008
Messages
2,504
I have a GTX 260 in my PC and I was wondering if I would see any improvement in PhysX supported games if I put my old Ageia PPU in the PC and used it to run the PhysX while the GTX 260 handled the gaming. Is this even doable ?
 
Yes it will work. There is a setting in the PhysX control panel where you can select between Ageia PhysX, Geforce PhysX, or No Acceleration.

As to if it would be an improvement or not, that would be hard to say. The Ageia PPU is really not that bad and if your main videocard is already under pretty heavy load (maybe you play at a high res, etc) then I'd say there is potential there. Of course the real benefit would be that you could get an ATI card instead later on and still use the PPU without any nvidia driver headaches and artificial incompatibilities.
 
GotNoRice said:
Yes it will work. There is a setting in the PhysX control panel where you can select between Ageia PhysX, Geforce PhysX, or No Acceleration.

As to if it would be an improvement or not, that would be hard to say. The Ageia PPU is really not that bad and if your main videocard is already under pretty heavy load (maybe you play at a high res, etc) then I'd say there is potential there. Of course the real benefit would be that you could get an ATI card instead later on and still use the PPU without any nvidia driver headaches and artificial incompatibilities.
Click to expand...

The ATI card is on the roadmap for me but I don't have the funds at the moment. I play at 1920*1200 with details maxed out and with AA when possible so I think there is room for benefit when using my old PPU. I think I will pop it in and see it in action and see if some PhysX games show any improvement.
 
GotNoRice said:
Yes it will work. There is a setting in the PhysX control panel where you can select between Ageia PhysX, Geforce PhysX, or No Acceleration.
Click to expand...

I have the PPU installed properly but in the Nvidia control panel under PhysX my only options are on and off. Is the option to set it to use the dedicated PPU somewhere else ?
 
Nenu said:
The PPU isnt supported by NVidia any more.
You will need older drivers to get it to function but sadly games like Batman AA need newer drivers.
You can hack the drivers to get a few newer games to work but its downhill from now on.
More info
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=105857
Click to expand...

I have the latest PhysX drivers installed along with the latest GPU drivers for my 260 and so far all is well as far as it showing up. I managed to find the option to use the dedicated PPU in the options. I will be trying this out on Cryostasis shortly, figure I will throw it right to the wolves and see how she does.
 
Nenu said:
Interesting...
Click to expand...

I haven't played any games yet, so it could still crap out. I have the demo to Cryostasis downloading and I will download the demo to Batman AA after I play Cryostasis. I will be looking for two things:

1. any improvement from using a PPU + my 260
2. If there are any problems due to me using an Ageia card as a PPU
 
For what its worth...
I tried an 8800GT + GTX260 on Batman and got approx 50% increase in framerate with the 8800 doing PhysX.
Running a C2D at 4.1GHz, that may be significant for PhysX with second cards.
Then I took the 8800GT out and found the game runs admirably any way with all details on max, max PhysX at 1080p on a GTX260 clocked 15%.
Using a little AA doesnt affect framerate much.
 
The Cryostasis test failed but not entirely due to PhysX. I turned PhysX off and the game still gave me a black screen when I tried to run the demo, wouldn't even get to the main menu. I think it may not like Windows 7, I'm going back to Vista soon anyway.
 
Well a little update:

Darkest of Days and Batman AA both run just fine, the only bad news is I didn't notice any increased FPS due to the dedicated PPU.
 
Sweet.
It goes against everything I've read recently on the PPU.
Perhaps NVidia had a change of heart.
Shame about the framerate though but at least it works :)
 
Nenu said:
Sweet.
It goes against everything I've read recently on the PPU.
Perhaps NVidia had a change of heart.
Shame about the framerate though but at least it works :)
Click to expand...

I did furthur testing and here are the results:

Darkest of days with GTX 260 and no PPU:

Min: 7FPS
Max: 43 FPS
AVG: 12 FPS

Darkest of Days with GTX 260 + PPU:

Min: 2 FPS
Max: 10 FPS
AVG: 6 FPS

Batman AA with GTX 260 and no PPU:

Min: 17
Max: 60 FPS
AVG: 28 FPS

Batman AA with GTX 260 and PPU

Min: 8
Max: 61
AVG: 29

So the games run better with the GTX 260 doing the PhysX, which seems weird to me. Could be Nvidia's way of stomping out those with the old dedicated PPUs.
 
I don't believe the PPU is supported anymore. It was when Nvidia first bought Physx but on recent drivers you no longer have the option to choose PPU. Even on games that originally had hardware support (like UT3) you can no longer get any of the Physx effects using the PPU. I'm probably just gonna chuck mine seeing as I can't even use it anymore (not like it was ever really doing all that much anyway).
 
cybereality said:
I don't believe the PPU is supported anymore. It was when Nvidia first bought Physx but on recent drivers you no longer have the option to choose PPU. Even on games that originally had hardware support (like UT3) you can no longer get any of the Physx effects using the PPU. I'm probably just gonna chuck mine seeing as I can't even use it anymore (not like it was ever really doing all that much anyway).
Click to expand...

Well your wrong. I have the option in the Nvidia options to use my Ageia PPU to do physics. They have just gimped it some way in the drivers so that it doesn't work, but ti does show up as an option.
 
Atech said:
Not really:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1376657

The PPU is (today) only usefull for older titles that don't play well GPU-physics.
Click to expand...

QFT!!! It is sad. I really had high hopes for the PPU back in the day. But it was $199 wasted on my part. The only game I ever used for the PPU is UT3. The newer games that are out are really coded for the GPU, and not the Ageia Card. I think Nvidia borked the Ageia PPU with the new drivers.
 
Simmonz said:
Well a little update:

Darkest of Days and Batman AA both run just fine, the only bad news is I didn't notice any increased FPS due to the dedicated PPU.
Click to expand...

And you're not supposed too. A PPU is not an accelerator. Why can't anyone understand this?
 
maleficarus said:
And you're not supposed too. A PPU is not an accelerator. Why can't anyone understand this?
Click to expand...

A PPU or hardware PhysX acceleration in general only gives the impression of slowing some games down because the trend has been to enable a bunch of extra physics particles, etc in games when hardware PhysX is enabled.

Assuming that the PhysX content is the same, it will typically be faster accelerated in hardware (PPU or GPU) over the CPU.

While GPU and to a lesser extent PPU PhysX is extremely powerful, the original intent of PhysX back when it was Ageia was a bit more broad. They were very focused on keeping PhysX cross platform and optimizing it as much as possible. Back then software PhysX alone was capable of maxing out all 4 cores of a Quad Core processor! Funny how it magically lost that ability once nVidia acquired PhysX...
 
GotNoRice said:
A PPU or hardware PhysX acceleration in general only gives the impression of slowing some games down because the trend has been to enable a bunch of extra physics particles, etc in games when hardware PhysX is enabled.

Assuming that the PhysX content is the same, it will typically be faster accelerated in hardware (PPU or GPU) over the CPU.

While GPU and to a lesser extent PPU PhysX is extremely powerful, the original intent of PhysX back when it was Ageia was a bit more broad. They were very focused on keeping PhysX cross platform and optimizing it as much as possible. Back then software PhysX alone was capable of maxing out all 4 cores of a Quad Core processor! Funny how it magically lost that ability once nVidia acquired PhysX...
Click to expand...

really? what games? i know for sure ut3 with physx doesn't really use much more than a dual core, and that was pre-nvidia.
 
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