CellFactor Tested

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The crew at PCPerspective have posted their impressions of the new CellFactor: Revolution game. The game is scheduled to be released as a free download today and is meant to showcase the power of the AGEIA PhysX cards.

The key in that last paragraph is "until the software really takes off" and you should note that as of today, it still has NOT taken off. What AGEIA is hoping to do today is present their new CellFactor: Revolution title (it is in fact "theirs" now because they bought the developing company as I know it) as a free download to all users, with and without PhysX cards, to show how having the card will benefit gamers.
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Comments
 
This would make a great next [H] enthusiast article. Cellfactor Demo tested with and without Aegia PhysX Accelerator. :)
 
Aelfgeft said:
This would make a great next [H] enthusiast article. Cellfactor Demo tested with and without Aegia PhysX Accelerator. :)
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That has already been done as the demo has been out for quite some time. What is (hopefully) being released today is the full game.
 
I supposed it wouldn't be in their best interest to support GPU physics acceleration :p
 
With dual and quad core CPUs more than enough to process physics in games + new DX10 cards from NVIDIA and ATI that incorporates physics acceleration in their GPUs who the fuck needs another 150-200$ card like AGEIA PhysX for physics acceleration ?

Like their name is saying AGEIA is AGING fast that means nobody needs those cards.


Plus as far as I'm concerned Physics is the last thing I'm looking for in a game.
The game should have:
- great graphics
- great sound
- great feeling
- great action
- great artificial intelligence
- some story
- basic physics like in current games is more than enough

I don't need a game to use all my computer processing power for a thing as useless as physics that's it.

More processing power means more Watts/hours played = more money flying out of my pocket
 
Dual and Quad core may be able to handle the rigid bodies, but once you get into fluids and cloth, they get left far behind.

Look at the economy of it as well. Sure a quad core can handle some physics, but at 800 bucks, you spend more for less capability.
 
To [RCKY] Thor
man you don't get it physics is just about processing power or GFlops.
If we look at the AGEIA PhysX they say it has 22 GFlops instructions/second and 58 GFlops sphere colisions per second.
Now wether you look at it as a 22 GFlops or 58 GFlops PPU it's still small compared to a CPU+GPU combo.

AGEIA PhysX GFlops check on:
http://www.stageselect.com/News/NewsViewer.aspx?newsid=2036&fromint=1

A Core 2 Duo with 2 Cores at 3 GHz scroes about 24 GFlops, an Quad scores about 48 GFlops check on:
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=31836

A GeForce 8800 GTX Ultra has 576 GFlops check on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_8_Series

So if you have a Core 2 Duo or Quad + NVidia 8800 GTX Ultra = aprox 600 GFlops that's at least 10x more processing power than the AGEIA PhysX PPU that means more physics simulations can be done on a CPU+GPU configuration without the need of an AGEIA PhysX procesing card.

How about a Core 2 Quad + 2 x NVidia 8800 GTX Ultra on SLI ? :D that's more than 1.1 TFlops


Read more on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageia_PhysX

The major competitor to the PhysX SDK is the Havok SDK, which is used in more than 150 games, including major titles like Half-Life 2 and Dead Rising.[2]

To compete with the PhysX PPU, Havok FX will be able to take advantage of multi-GPU technology from ATI (CrossFire) and NVIDIA (SLI) using existing cards to accelerate certain physics calculations.[3]

Havok's solution divides the physics simulation into effect and gameplay physics, with effect physics being offloaded (if possible) to the GPU as Shader Model 3.0 instructions and gameplay physics being processed on the CPU as normal. The important distinction between the two are that effect physics do not affect gameplay (dust or small debris from an explosion, for example): the vast majority of physics operations are still performed in software.

GeForce 8 Series supports a new GPU-based newtonian physics acceleration technology named Quantum Effects Technology - which will compete directly with the PhysX PPU hardware. NVIDIA provides a SDK Toolkit for what they call CUDA™ (Compute Unified Device Architecture) technology that offers both a low and high-level API to the GPU.

ATI/AMD offers a similar SDK for their ATI-based GPUs and that SDK and technology is called CTM™ (Close to Metal™) which provides a hardware interface thin (thin hardware interface). AMD has also announced the AMD Stream Processor product line (combining a CPU and a GPU technology on one chip).
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No, I get it perfectly. Ageia has shown that the PPU is much more efficient at the cloth and fluids calculations than a CPU. The PhysX SDK is multithreaded, go ahead and give it a try, see which one works better.

Let's not forget that background process, operating system, AI, sound for some, and general coordination are all running on the CPU as well. Oh yeah, and the quad core costs around 800 bucks, while a lower CPU and a physics card comes in around 300ish.

Now for the GPU physics, which AFAIK still aren't available in a game (making this somewhat moot), on a single card you have to balance graphics capability and physics capability. No shipping products makes this hard to quantify, but I have a feeling it will make a significant impact in what you can run graphically to handle the same level of physics. Ok, so I'll just get two video cards, and use one to run physics! Except that you could do the same with a card that costs a third of a new 8800, and have access to games and software that is already shipping.
 
Rabid Badger said:
The game is free? Anyone know if I should even bother trying to play it without a PPU?
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It runs horribly without a PPU. I'm getting ~15fps on an Athlon X2 @ 2.8GHz and 6800GTO at 1024x768. I'll try it on my Conroe + 7600GT later but I don't expect it to be that much better.

It makes sense that the game is free. It's unsalable with such poor performance and PhysX cards have a negligibly small installed base.
 
pxc said:
It runs horribly without a PPU. I'm getting ~15fps on an Athlon X2 @ 2.8GHz and 6800GTO at 1024x768. I'll try it on my Conroe + 7600GT later but I don't expect it to be that much better.

It makes sense that the game is free. It's unsalable with such poor performance and PhysX cards have a negligibly small installed base.
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Hey.....read the release notes where it says system requirements :wink: That 2 GB of ram is no joke....crank down your texture resolution and you'll get significantly better performance
 
[RCKY] Thor wrote:
Oh yeah, and the quad core costs around 800 bucks, while a lower CPU and a physics card comes in around 300ish.
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Actually u can buy a Core 2 Quad for as low as 528 $
http://www.pricegrabber.com/p__Intel_Core_2_Quad_Q6600_Processor,__31693422
Actual web sources are relating that at the launch of AMD Barcelona Quad Core, Intel will cut prices of Quad cores at about 266$ in Q3 of this year.
http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/12011
Anyway it won't be to long until quad-cores will go mainstream.


[RCKY] Thor wrote:
Now for the GPU physics, which AFAIK still aren't available in a game (making this somewhat moot), on a single card you have to balance graphics capability and physics capability. No shipping products makes this hard to quantify, but I have a feeling it will make a significant impact in what you can run graphically to handle the same level of physics. Ok, so I'll just get two video cards, and use one to run physics! Except that you could do the same with a card that costs a third of a new 8800, and have access to games and software that is already shipping.
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Regarding the physics on a GPU you don't need to buy 2 NVidia 8800 because 1 has already enough processing power to handle both the graphics and physics acceleration, as I described above an Core 2 Duo or Quad + Nvidia 8800 has aprox 600 GFlops thats more than 10x the processing power of the AGEIA PhysX, if you think that's not enough to handle physics then think again.


As far as supporting the AGEIA PhysX in games the support is on par with the demand meaning that since there is less to no demand for PhysX cards there is no demand for games that support AGEIA PhysX engine.
 
As far as supporting the AGEIA PhysX in games the support is on par with the demand meaning that since there is less to no demand for PhysX cards there is less to no demand to develop games that support the AGEIA PhysX engine.
 
ArchAngel21CW said:
Hey.....read the release notes where it says system requirements :wink: That 2 GB of ram is no joke....crank down your texture resolution and you'll get significantly better performance
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:p that makes my points even worse.
 
Played CF at QuakeCon last year.. Had the highest score for the first day.. Won a PhysX card..

Hopefully the bots have gotten smarted because I would just Psi-Jump to the top of the crane and snipe till I ran out of ammo, jump down and psi-Push till I got killed.. Was me vs 10 Bots.. Was originally gonna be a LAN of 6 but the server coding was fuckered up and wouldnt work.. Great way to start off the demo day..

Overall, game wasnt too bad.. Decent LAN game.. with a lot of people its nothing but shit flying everywhere..
 
And yet physics on the GPU with Havok FX is for effects only. Havok standard is still limited to the CPU only.

Cost of implementing Havok interactive physics+cost of implementing havok FX=a lot more cash for the devs (somewhere north of $100,000 ), especially considering just one of them costs more than the complete physx package, which runs both on hardware and software, allowing devs to scale the physics level to meet the user's system.



Havok has still yet to demonstrate deformable meshes and softbodies in real time, things that we will see with Warmonger running on the UE3 engine.

http://file.4gamer.net/movie/GDC_2007/gdc2007warmonger.zip <--watch for the deformable car


and some SDK vids of the relevant features:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CsoxCEVHEuQ
http://youtube.com/watch?v=gMQDPLcqt8s
http://youtube.com/watch?v=5Ht_FZYeUlQ&mode=related&search=
http://youtube.com/watch?v=u27T-i7OWyI&mode=related&search=



As far as support goes, there is plenty coming out on the UE3 engine very soon, and many other studios picking it up. Full feature set, single scalable solution for PC, X360 and PS3 for cheaper must mean something to them.
 
Evil Juggalo said:
Played CF at QuakeCon last year.. Had the highest score for the first day.. Won a PhysX card..

Hopefully the bots have gotten smarted because I would just Psi-Jump to the top of the crane and snipe till I ran out of ammo, jump down and psi-Push till I got killed.. Was me vs 10 Bots.. Was originally gonna be a LAN of 6 but the server coding was fuckered up and wouldnt work.. Great way to start off the demo day..

Overall, game wasnt too bad.. Decent LAN game.. with a lot of people its nothing but shit flying everywhere..
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Was CellFactor: Combat Training at qcon, this is Cellfactor:Revolution. A lot has changed since then.
 
pxc said:
:p that makes my points even worse.
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Oh don't worry, I'm sure even with your texture resolution reduced, your game will still suck with your specs. But, it'll reduce the choppiness from HDD lag like in BF2, etc. Your notable FPS will probably still be low. Was just trying to help you out.....
 
Memory didn't seem to be the problem. Both cores were pegged at 90%+. The bottleneck was the engine, not the amount of memory.
 
[RCKY] Thor;1031029789 said:
Was CellFactor: Combat Training at qcon, this is Cellfactor:Revolution. A lot has changed since then.
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Downloaded and played "Full" version..
Lets see,
-We got 2 new characters (The chick kinda sux, only Psi, Guardian is fav)
-3 new levels (Perhaps cool? Dunno.. Sold my Physx card.. and they dont work in laptops :-P )
-and it has a Menu instead of being run with a .bat


no.. not much has changed..

- The bots are still accurate as hell even on easy
- You have more functions than fingers (Made easier with my Nostromo n32)
- no new weapons
- and you run slow as hell (Except Guardian)


For some reason, when I went DOWN to 800x600 from 1024x768 my performance decreased, so I turned down the details to 75% and it got even SLOWER.. wtf? So I cut it from 6 bots to 2.. and it got EVEN SLOWER!
I was running 27fps originally and it dropped to 11
 
Doesn't seem to work on XP 64.
Anywho, I was just curious to see if it's anything cept a publicity stunt....
 
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