How much did PhysX support factor into your purchasing decision?

How much did PhysX support factor into your purchasing decision?

  • PhysX support did not factor in at all.

    Votes: 118 69.0%

  • PhysX support factored very little in the decision.

    Votes: 27 15.8%

  • PhysX support was factored in but I still bought an Ati card.

    Votes: 8 4.7%

  • PhysX support factored in heavily. I bought a Nv card.

    Votes: 13 7.6%

  • PhysX support is required for me to buy a new graphics card.

    Votes: 5 2.9%
  • Total voters
    171
Gorankar

Gorankar

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Jul 19, 2000
Messages
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Just what the title asks. I have been wondering how many people consider it in their actual buying decisions for graphic cards.
 
Definitely factored in for me, because I think it's going to take off with EA backing it. Even though I despise EA with a passion, they will get it the market presence it needs for other, high quality developers to be able to justify implementing it.

Other factors like more frequent driver releases, better/quieter cooling, and increased performance were what drew me to the GTX 260 216-core from a 4870.

I also got it for less than what I paid for my 4870 just 2 months earlier.
 
I'm not going to let it be a deciding factor until there is actually a game I want to play that takes full advantage of it. Buying a video card specifically for Physx at the moment I think is a waste. By the time the actual games start coming out that make use of it, I wouldn't be surprised if the GTX 200 series is a few generations old. It is basically the same thing as DX10.1 being the reason why you bought a 4870. There is only several games that come to my mind that have been patched for it.
 
None. I will factor it when they come out with games that will make me want to factor it. Its been out for years now and the best thing its been in was GRAW... and thats not saying much.
 
pretty well worthless. I am happy with my GTX280 but really I haven't seen anything that would make me buy a card based on PhysX. the effects are kind of cheesy to start with and no one really uses them anyways. Direct X 10.1 would have been more useful, provided it was actually supported
 
It did not effect my decision when I bought my 4870, but I can guarantee you this...if nVidia can get PhysX into a ton more games I will buy nVidia next time without flinching.
 
Don't like poll options, "very little" seems a little small and "heavily" seems a little big.

When i bought my 8800GTS 640mb I bought it expecting to find some extra uses for these general purpose SPs. Turns out they're fantastic at folding, but I was hoping for a little more. Cuda accelerated Havok would be nice.
 
I haven't upgraded my video card yet, but I do plan on going Nvidia so far. PhysX was not at all a consideration when researching, bottom of the priorities.
 
needs a medium option for not buying ati.

i actually knew nothing about physx when i bought my card, but now that i did i am very glad. i'd say if i knew before hand it would've made my decision significantly quicker. i'd say.. 20%?
 
factored very little into my decision. evga and price were the two reasons i went with the 9600gso.

but i guess i can use it as a physx card if i upgrade again.
 
Did not factor at all for me.

Physics on the GPU are just to make the game more pretty, they don't have any real interaction with the game logic, and so they don't really expand what we can do with our games. All we're really doing is just sacraficing graphic effect X with physics powered effect Y, the graphics card can't do these physics calculations for free so it's necessary to tone down the rendering to begin with to maintain a playable frame rate.

Gabe from Valve has spoken on this a fair bit in interviews and alike, it's worth googling that and having a read from a developers perspective, ultimately it will be people like gabe who make the decisions on how to use (or not use) these features.
 
physx is a joke, its not utilized enough for me to warrant spending money on a dedicated card, or an nvidia card. i went from the xfx 8800gts 320mb, to my sapphire dual slot 4850 because the 4850 was such awesome value for money
 
I bought my card (8800GTS320) long before there was even any talk of nVidia acquiring Ageia and offering GPU PhysX. In fact, even Cuda wasn't available to the general public yet.

However, since I got both Cuda and PhysX 'for free' on a card I already have, I have first-hand experience with the technology, and that gives me a different outlook on the situation. If I buy an ATi card next, I will lose functionality that I already have today. And that functionality can lead to pretty impressive effects.
I think people who already have a GeForce with Cuda/PhysX support are less likely to move to ATi and give it up... Conversely, people who have Radeons now, don't really know what they're missing, so they probably don't care for it as much.

I'm quite sure that I'll be buying nVidia again. I'm just waiting for their 55 nm shrink of the GTX260. It should be cheaper than the current model, and also offer higher performance. So that probably puts it well above the Radeon 4870 in terms of bang-for-buck. And I get to keep my Cuda/PhysX too :)
Then again, if the shrink turns out less than spectacular (just like the GTX260 itself, which I skipped, waiting for a better offer), I might skip this generation and perhaps try to ride out my 8800GTS until the DX11 products arrive.
 
Could care less about PhysX. It will NEVER be part of my purchasing decision.
 
lawl...........like that makes a difference in anything other than way older games
 
The vote options are skewed.
I wanted to vote
"PhysX support was factored in so I bought an NVidia card"
but that option was only available for ATI cards.
So I voted
"PhysX support factored in heavily. I bought a Nv card"
:)

Hardware PhysX support is one of the reasons I am not considering getting an ATI card.
 
My next g will probably be a 4870 1GB. If I decide I want PhysX, I will get a stand alone PhysX card for a Whopping $90 or less.

Why be tied to and Nvidia video card to be able to use PhysX?
 
cyclone3d said:
Why be tied to and Nvidia video card to be able to use PhysX?
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, all cards consume power/create heat even when idle, it depends on your own concerns.
For equivalent performance, ATI's cards use more power and generate more heat so adding another card into the mix as well isnt necessarily the best option.
For a 24/7 machine, more than 1 gfx card is ott.
 
Physx has been hyped since the release of GRAW for the PC, how many years ago????

(A pretty good game BTW)

I could care less about physx, I base my decisions on cost, performance and driver support. ( and my blind loyalty to nvidia:eek::eek: j/k)
 
magoo said:
I could care less about physx, I base my decisions on cost, performance and driver support. ( and my blind loyalty to nvidia:eek::eek: j/k)
Click to expand...

Well, PhysX most definitely is a factor in performance and driver support, I'd say.
 
I think a lot of those poll options are the same.

I factored in PhysX support, knew that it was going nowhere, and bought an ATI card.
 
Scali2 said:
I bought my card (8800GTS320) long before there was even any talk of nVidia acquiring Ageia and offering GPU PhysX. In fact, even Cuda wasn't available to the general public yet.

However, since I got both Cuda and PhysX 'for free' on a card I already have, I have first-hand experience with the technology, and that gives me a different outlook on the situation. If I buy an ATi card next, I will lose functionality that I already have today. And that functionality can lead to pretty impressive effects.
I think people who already have a GeForce with Cuda/PhysX support are less likely to move to ATi and give it up... Conversely, people who have Radeons now, don't really know what they're missing, so they probably don't care for it as much.
Click to expand...

Completely agreed with this post. I thought it was a really nice touch by nVidia to enable PhysX acceleration on 8xxx series cards :)

The whole 'PhysX is going nowhere' and 'PhysX is irrelevant' thing is beginning to sound like the whining of 2D fanboys back when the first '3D' games were coming out. Get over it already. PhysX is useful even outside games (simulations and such), so it won't go away. It's also completely free to use, heavily supported by nVidia (can't say the same of Havok...). Physics have a purpose, they can be a revolution on the scale of 3D graphics, we just need to let things work themselves out.
 
No one is disputing physics improvements in games are important, it is the physx that people are not interested in at the moment.

I wonder if we should have another poll, who knows the difference and the correct use of physx and physics.
 
Elledan said:
Completely agreed with this post. I thought it was a really nice touch by nVidia to enable PhysX acceleration on 8xxx series cards :)

The whole 'PhysX is going nowhere' and 'PhysX is irrelevant' thing is beginning to sound like the whining of 2D fanboys back when the first '3D' games were coming out. Get over it already. PhysX is useful even outside games (simulations and such), so it won't go away. It's also completely free to use, heavily supported by nVidia (can't say the same of Havok...). Physics have a purpose, they can be a revolution on the scale of 3D graphics, we just need to let things work themselves out.
Click to expand...

the point is not that hardware accelerated physics is not a good idea, its that Nvidia is pushing a so so proprietary app that has gone nowhere for several years now, and really doesn't do anything that software can't do. (go see what the force unleashed looks like with havok). Much like DX10.1 it doesn't matter how good it is (and 10.1 is what 10 should have been) if 99% of the games out their do not support it. and it really does not add that much to gameplay. look at that video with mirrors edge. All it really added was curtains. The helicopter was better but but that could have easily been done in software. The exaggerated glass breaking didn't look any more real. in short I would rather they spend the horsepower on better graphics, more AA, and over all game improvements. and as the pole suggest so would the majority of users.

If Nvidia made this an open standard and rather then double edge offer to a competitor I could see it being developed and moving forward. As it stands neither ATI or Intel (and they are coming) are going to support it. And as Nvidia market share is falling a lot of game makers are not going to put all their apples in a Nvidia basket. EA may start adding PhysX to their games but I am betting they are an after effect, like they did in Mirrors edge.
 
Havok is closed, PhysX is closed... They're the same aside from the GPU acceleration for the latter. No difference there. Also, hardware acceleration can do a _lot_ more than pure software can. Until you've seen the true power of physics simulation don't be so quick to call it useless.

And again... game developers CAN NOT add crucial, hyper-realistic physics to games because not every single PC out there is going to have the necessary hardware to display it at any acceptable frame rate. My colleagues and I have gone over this in our discussions before we started work on our current game and we still talk about it from time to time and what it comes down to is that we can not ignore the part of the market which doesn't have PPUs (nVidia GPUs) installed, and thus we have to limit PhysX things mostly to relatively superficial things.

I'm sure PhysX will be opened up in time, just like OpenCL (which nVidia supports). NVidia has everything to gain from public acceptance of PhysX.
 
I mean nvidia has alot to gain from public acceptance but how do the public really benefit from a company like nvidia gaining success in this field.
 
necrophile said:
I mean nvidia has alot to gain from public acceptance but how do the public really benefit from a company like nvidia gaining success in this field.
Click to expand...

Did you miss all those people asking for realistic physics in games? Without someone forcing through a physics API standard, such a thing won't happen any time soon.
 
I give up, again you don't seem interested in the politics of it, there is no point forcing something if it is not in the best interested of the public.

You or others can give other examples of when it has happened but the fact that it has happened before does not make it right,

This whole industry needs to grow up and mature to a point where it is done to drive things forward, not all the destructive competition. Competition should be used to drive things forward not create a stalemate.
 
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