• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Havoc vs. Physx

X

Xerolives

n00b
Joined
Jul 1, 2008
Messages
13
I am very close to buying a new video card. What its coming down too for me personally (After reading all info for Diablo 3) is the physics feature.

Has anyone done any testing between between Havoc Vs. Physics?

Will one end up being standard?

Will batman ever escape this highly escapeable trap?
 
Xerolives said:
I am very close to buying a new video card. What its coming down too for me personally (After reading all info for Diablo 3) is the physics feature.

Has anyone done any testing between between Havoc Vs. Physics?
Click to expand...

Well only physx is GPU accelerated, but I would not hang my hat on any particular GPU merely because of physics support. As yet, I have not seen any quantative real world benchmarks showing that GPU physics is advantageous. Further, there are very few games which take advantage of hardware accelerated physics.

Nice in theory, but we may have to wait another year or two before we can see any real tangible benefits. My view is that this will be a real boon, if when upgrading to a new video card you are able to retain your redundant GPU as a dedicated PPU. To me that makes the most sense, so long as nvidia's horrible motherboard chipsets are not made a superficial requirement for using a second nvidia GPU as a dedicated PPU.
 
Havoc vs Physx is CPU vs GPU physics and has very little if nothing to do with ATI vs Nvidia. ATI should officially support Physx (Cuda) in the near future. I have owned both ATI and Nvidia over the years (current Nvidia, order: MX440, 9500Pro ,9800 Pro, 7900GT, 8800GTS320) and will be getting a new video card soon and it will likely be the 4850 as I just got a 24" LCD and I am getting system crashes with my current card in CSS. I mostly play CSS and BF2 so a 4870 will be overkill and the 4850 should still work fine for BF3.
 
[21CW]killerofall;1032765786 said:
ATI should officially support Physx (Cuda) in the near future.
Click to expand...

Well not really official, its being ported over by a team sponsored by nvidia. ATI have publicly stated that they do not currently see the need for GPU accelerated physics.
 
There is a bigger picture you all fail to see.

If one graphics card supports physx such as the nvidia, then they will get the benefit of physx game titles which are 12 compared to 2 when ageia had the helm.

Ati would not be able to use those physic effects.

Ati on the other hand say they will be working on a gpu accelerated havok physics card. So nvidia wouldn't be able to benefit from the physics effects in havok games ...


vice versa.


Our concerns for CUDA (and PhysX)
While this is all well and good, I have some concerns about PhysX – some of which are related to the recent developments in AMD's camp. After all, AMD has just announced that it plans to support and eventually GPU-accelerate Havok Physics. Now, let's put which API is better aside for one moment because, as a consumer, I really don't care what API is running the in-game physics as long as I can get a similar experience with competing hardware.

Since AMD hasn't announced support for GPU-accelerated PhysX, and by the same token, Nvidia hasn't announced that it's working with Havok to accelerate Havok Physics on GeForce, we're in a bit of an unfortunate situation for gamers. One that reminds me of the days before pervasive 3D graphics APIs, where developers would develop games for certain hardware – and anyone that didn't own that hardware couldn't play the game.

While things aren't going to get that bad in this situation, we're going to have a scenario where, depending on a developer's allegiance (or the amount of money being thrown in the direction of their publisher), you'll probably get a significantly better experience if you've got the 'right' graphics card in your system. By that I'm not referring to the amount of money you've spent on your graphics card, I'm referring to who manufactures it (i.e. AMD or Nvidia).

That's not good for gamers, no matter how nice the physics effects look on the supported hardware – what we need is an industry standard for physics that all hardware vendors support. If that's PhysX or Havok (or both), that's great, as long as every hardware vendor has the opportunity to fully-accelerate the API in much the same way that they do with DirectX and OpenGL.
Click to expand...

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/06/24/nvidia-geforce-gtx-280-architecture-review/6


So my question here is ..... are both hardware capable of doing the physics ? and is it only a matter of driver support ? For example would a new driver of software support mean that either graphics card would be able to support either havok and physx ? Or is this a hardware thing ?
 
Well some games use Havok physics but are physx accelerated, for example GRAW
 
Well, Half-life 3 would use Havok. And physics on GPU doesnt make any sense because the next-gen games will always push the GPU to its limits so there wouldnt be any power left for physics calculations, and btw why would you want to leave those 4 cores idle?
 
So i guess there really isn't a reason to shy away from either graphics card.

Thats good to know.

It would suck if i couldn't enable the option for the ageia and havok physics :X just because my card didn't support it.
 
Honestly physics should be a deciding factor in a purchase. Nvidia's PhysX is just getting off the ground, it won't be another year at least until we see the real support for the platform. The only game when PhysX seems to help performance is UT3, other that you will have to wait. But if you plan on keeping the same video card for many years it may be a consideration.

IMO, PhysX is better than Havok. However Havok has been around a long time and lots of games use it so its more mature. But PhysX can run (and scale) with different configurations of CPU, GPU and PPU so I consider it the more advanced technology. Although I also think the proprietary physics engine used on Crysis blows both PhysX and Havok away.
 
Well, Half-life 3 would use Havok. And physics on GPU doesnt make any sense because the next-gen games will always push the GPU to its limits so there wouldnt be any power left for physics calculations, and btw why would you want to leave those 4 cores idle?
Click to expand...

What about us with the "low" resolutions of 1680x1050? What would stop us from buying a top of the line card and running it at 1680x1050 resolution, and using the rest of the power from the GPU for physics?

The new games won't use all the horsepower at those lower resolutions! :) That leaves plenty left for my lovely physics... Until I upgrade to a 24" or 30" monitor. Or throwing in a second card when the new generation comes out and prices drop on the older gen...
 
The bottom line is it's too early to pick a card using physics as a reference. Until DX implements physics in an api, physics is irrelevant for choosing video cards. The only exception would be that you have a specific implementation on either platform that you must have.
 
So many of you seem to be confusing the use of a particular physics API with hardware acceleration of that API.

The PhysX API does the same physics modeling whether hardware accelerated or not. A game author must/should choose a physics API which they like, and implement the game. The API must be installed on the gamer's PC (like PhysX) and will use hardware acceleration if available - otherwise it uses CPU. If the gamer doesn't have hardware acceleration, AND has insufficient CPU, they'll need to start turning the physics down to maintain acceptable fps. If they lack hardware acceleration, but have lots of CPU, then they probably won't notice a difference in gameplay.

Saying things like you can't have physics at all without CUDA is wrong. If, however, PhysX has hardware support and Havok does not, that may sway the API choice made by the game authors. If NV is the only vendor to have hardware acceleration, and owns PhysX, and more vendors are starting to use PhysX (notice all the 'ifs'), THEN more gamers would be likely to buy NV hardware in order to gain acceleration.

NV is not directly trying to get the end consumer to buy more cards by offering PhysX in hardware because almost no CURRENT titles support it. They are trying to attract more game developers to use PhysX which will INDIRECTLY cause end consumers to buy NV cards. NVidia and ATI are businesses - period - complete with grey haired executives. So many people here think that they exist to please fanboys. They exist to make money. There are far fewer game developers than game players, but the game developers drive the players habits. If they lock developers in to some special technology benefit exclusive to them, they've effectively locked up the consumer audience regardless of fanboys, evangelists or naysayers.

If ATI implements PhysX, PhysX will still become more popular with developers, but NV won't have exclusive card sales. NV will still benefit on the frontend from more developers using PhysX, however. (assuming they make some money from the authors when games are coded using PhysX) regardless of whether the gamer plays the game on ATI or NV.

If ATI implements a hardware acceleration of Havok, for discussion, then we have a showdown between physics APIs. Which API do developers choose? That will drive card sales of either brand. Joe Gamer isn't going to buy ATI because "Havok is better" if no game developers have implemented their games with Havok (beta vs. VHS, HD-DVD vs. bluray).

IMO we, the consumers, are better off if all available physics engines have acceleration in both hardware platforms. Then we won't have one brand twice as fast as the other depending on title - flip flopping with each game release. I don't want to have to buy both and switch from a red to a green card depending on what game I'm about to play, thanks.
 
http://bbs.expreview.com/thread-13313-1-1.html

http://files.filefront.com/physx+demo+videos+4gamerrar/;11140821;/fileinfo.html

http://stream.4gamer.net/2008b/20080719_CJ2008_nv1.wmv

http://stream.4gamer.net/2008b/20080719_CJ2008_nv2.wmv

http://stream.4gamer.net/2008b/20080719_CJ2008_nv3.wmv

http://stream.4gamer.net/2008b/20080719_CJ2008_nv4.wmv

http://stream.4gamer.net/2008b/20080719_CJ2008_nv5.wmv

It seems very stronger
victory.gif
lol.gif
 
 
Ur_Mom said:
What about us with the "low" resolutions of 1680x1050? What would stop us from buying a top of the line card and running it at 1680x1050 resolution, and using the rest of the power from the GPU for physics?

The new games won't use all the horsepower at those lower resolutions! :) That leaves plenty left for my lovely physics... Until I upgrade to a 24" or 30" monitor. Or throwing in a second card when the new generation comes out and prices drop on the older gen...
Click to expand...

If you run at that "low" resolution, then use the GPU power and enable AA and AF. Then use one of your 4 CPU cores to calculate physics. ;)
 
Dont worry, no mainstream game is going to support an API you can't run on a mainstream video card, and if they do, it won't rely on it GPU support it will simply use the CPU.

Chose which card is best irrelevant of Physics support, you'll get the best product for you.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top