Nvidia Physics Card Coming Soon!!

[Dan_D]

NVIDIA already announced physics last year with any GPU. I see this as being 3 PCIe slots on a mobo to allow SLI plus 1 GPU for physics.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTAwNSwsLGhlbnRodXNpYXN0

"NVIDIA Physics Card" can easily mean NVIDIA GPU based video card. GPU can be used for physics which would then make it a "Physics Card".

Right. What I would like to see though, is a dedicated card. One that doesn't have monitor ports or anything else that I don't need if I am going to dedicate it to physics. This way you can have your physics processing cheaper without having to fork out $1800 for a three high end GPU solution.

 

[Ozymandias]

Right. What I would like to see though, is a dedicated card. One that doesn't have monitor ports or anything else that I don't need if I am going to dedicate it to physics. This way you can have your physics processing cheaper without having to fork out $1800 for a three high end GPU solution.

But who says you have to buy a third high-end GPU? I doubt you're going to need something like a 7900GTX just to run Havoc's effect physics (or whatever the top nV card is now). They can't possibly engineer the whole physics thing around the expectation that you have three video cards, because that segment of the market is tiny. I'm sure that running three high-end GPUs will net you extra eye-candy, but it might not be worth it either. Especially since this whole PPU thing hasn't really taken off yet...

Hopefully we can get passively cooled variants to keep the noise down too!

 

[DarkUltra]

NVIDIA already announced physics last year with any GPU. I see this as being 3 PCIe slots on a mobo to allow SLI plus 1 GPU for physics.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTAwNSwsLGhlbnRodXNpYXN0

That would be effect-physics then? So much for Scene Interaction and exciting new gameplay.
Data stays on the GPU - no transfer to CPU required
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTE0MjczMzA0M0dNNUU1WXozREdfMl81X2wuanBn

 

[DarkUltra]

you got that right
specially when we are heading for quad core processors

I'm concerned multithreaded games might have a problem with DirectX.

- Games will have no problem using multiple threads as soon as the directx drivers support it ... the problem is that nearly all of the bottleneck is in the directx api which is all very single thread oriented. It'll probably be directx 11 before we really see this problem start to disappear in games.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=196338&cid=16093532

In any case, would you use a Quad Core processor for 3D rendering instead of the GPU? A processor made for physics calculations will still be many times faster, and can do certain things to a games environment a CPU can't even dream of yet.

If it costs too much that is no issue in the future, and since the PPU can't be upgraded as easily as a GPU since it's so locked to the games content we can have them integrated on the motherboard in the future and games can start requiring them.

I hope we go that route instead of the effect-physics with ATI/NVIDIA GPU. Unless ATI/NVIDIA eventually create a PPU with write-back to the CPU for real physics to replace the first-gen GPU-as-PPUs.

 

[nekrosoft13]

http://zeus.asus.com/hq/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=1325&l1=3&l2=11&l3=337

"2 x PCI Express x16 slot, support NVIDIA SLI technology, at full x16, x16 speed(blue and black)
1 x PCI Express x16, at x8 speed(middle)
1 x PCI Express x1
2 x PCI 2.2 "

thats wrong

it should say

2 PCI-E at 16x
1 PCI-E at 8x
and 2 useless PCI, that you can't USE, because asus as always puts them in the worst place!

once you get a sli set up, and the so called PPU, you can't use PCI, one will be blocked off by dual slot card, second will make temps go much higher.

 

[Dan_D]

"2 x PCI Express x16 slot, support NVIDIA SLI technology, at full x16, x16 speed(blue and black)
1 x PCI Express x16, at x8 speed(middle)
1 x PCI Express x1
2 x PCI 2.2 "

thats wrong

it should say

2 PCI-E at 16x
1 PCI-E at 8x
and 2 useless PCI, that you can't USE, because asus as always puts them in the worst place!

once you get a sli set up, and the so called PPU, you can't use PCI, one will be blocked off by dual slot card, second will make temps go much higher.

If you think that layout sucks, try the ABIT AWD9-MAX.

 

[Brent_Justice]

That would be effect-physics then? So much for Scene Interaction and exciting new gameplay.
Data stays on the GPU - no transfer to CPU required
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTE0MjczMzA0M0dNNUU1WXozREdfMl81X2wuanBn

Please Read - http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTA5NywsLGhlbnRodXNpYXN0

This will answer your question. GPUs are capable of effects and gameplay physics, it is up to the software/game developers to utilize it in that way.

 

[Thermite Paste]

Ugh.. I only have one PCI slot free on my shuttle...

 

[dotK]

Sweet, if you buy it now your card will be totally obsolete before a significant number of titles are released that utilize it. Sign me up!

 

[nekrosoft13]

If you think that layout sucks, try the ABIT AWD9-MAX.

i seen it

some of these boards got a horrible layout., one you go dual card you are left with no PCI.

 

[Dan_D]

i seen it

some of these boards got a horrible layout., one you go dual card you are left with no PCI.

Yep. I could live without an add in sound board if need be, but what if physics cards take off in the next six months? Then what? Not much you can do unless they come out with some PCIe cards you can sandwich in between the two PEG slots.

 

[RaphaelVinceti]

You could always watercool and use ALL of your expansion slots. You could build a fairly cheap GPU watercooling system.

 

[HOCP4ME]

First, I'm sure that it's a slot for a physics GPU and not an NVIDIA PPU. NVIDIA already makes GPUs. A GPU can do physics just as well as a PPU. So there is absolutely no reason why they should develop a standalone PPU. They can just reprogram the chips that they already have. But with this board, you will be able to have GPU physics and SLI at the same time.

Second, that's the worst board design I've ever seen. Put double-slot cards in each of those slots and that leaves you with NO PCI or PCI-E slots! I understand that the physics card doesn't have to be double-slot, but that still only leaves you with one PCI slot! People complain that with a PPU, you only have one free PCI slot. Well, with this board, you still will have only one free PCI slot!

Third, I wouldn't mind if this became the standard instead of AGEIA. Since a GPU can do physics just like a PPU. But they would have to fix the board design, and the price of the board plus the price of the physics card would have to be lower than the price of PPU.

Fourth, I see that people are still insisting that accelerated physics can be done on a CPU. People, what do you think is doing your physics right now? That's right, your CPU! Want to see have much an extra core would help? Take the number of boxes in your game and add 80%. That's the number of boxes a dual-core physics game can do. And I doubt it's anywhere near the 30,000 of a PPU/GPU.

 

[J-Mag]

Like Blade Runner, I feel that Apocolypse Now is a good movie, but not the great movie everyone seems to think it is. I don't remember it that well and I don't really care to see it again anytime soon. Niether of them qualify in the top 10 movies of all time in my book.

Really, I think Blade Runner is easily one of the best movies made in the 80's.

Anyway for vietnam era movies the only other one that compete for top position would be Full Metal Jacket, which they don't even have a damn widescreen version on dvd... So I would say Apocolypse is the best vietnam movie in widescreen you can buy.

Edit: FMJ, is out on HD DVD in widescreen (not like anyone has a player though...)

Yep. I could live without an add in sound board if need be, but what if physics cards take off in the next six months? Then what? Not much you can do unless they come out with some PCIe cards you can sandwich in between the two PEG slots.

Well we are talking about GPU Physics then of course we will see PCI-E, thats obvious. Anyway even if you were referring only to Ageia's solution, the PCI-E ability is there, the only thing holding it back is market viability. This problem would evaporate when demand picks up in your scenario of "taking off".

 

[rarxb]

They need to release a software solution to turn my extra 7800gtx into something usefull. 2x7950gx2 + 7800gtx=Hot or for those who have a 7950gx2 and an older card 7300-7800 that would become usefull.

 

[moto316]

They need to release a software solution to turn my extra 7800gtx into something usefull. 2x7950gx2 + 7800gtx=Hot or for those who have a 7950gx2 and an older card 7300-7800 that would become usefull.

yes this is what i was just about to say, they should develop some drivers so that we can take advantage of our old video cards as physics cards

 

[Dan_D]

yes this is what i was just about to say, they should develop some drivers so that we can take advantage of our old video cards as physics cards

Fortunately, ATi is, so an extra X1950XTX will be nice for physics.

 

[AOM]

Hell back in the old days we used to have slots taken up with a video card, modem, sound card, network card, and in many cases a drive controller card.

Two video cards, a physics card, and possibly a sound card isn't that bad. Though it is true the modern video cards do take up a lot of space.

The real difference is how much trouble it used to be. Configuring COM ports, and IRQ's was a huge pain in the ass. Not to mention setting up sound cards in DOS was NO fun.

Wow do I remember the IRQ conflicts of the old days that you don't have now. Just imagine Voodoo2 SLI, 56kmodem,sound card,controller card,ethernet card ...slots all full ...conflicts out the arse ...almost as bad once I went to AGP ..just one less vid card.

I do agree about the duel slot coolers taking up lots of room as well though I usually pull the cooler and water cool but it still takes up a bracket slot in your case .

 

[merlin704]

Please tell me you have seen Apocalypse Now...please. I can't have someone with my name who doesn't recognize it.

"If I say it's safe to surf this beach, it's safe to surf this beach."

"You smell that? Do you smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for twelve hours. When it was all over I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like - victory."

 

[Dan_D]

Wow do I remember the IRQ conflicts of the old days that you don't have now. Just imagine Voodoo2 SLI, 56kmodem,sound card,controller card,ethernet card ...slots all full ...conflicts out the arse ...almost as bad once I went to AGP ..just one less vid card.

I do agree about the duel slot coolers taking up lots of room as well though I usually pull the cooler and water cool but it still takes up a bracket slot in your case .

Well in the AGP days, I had a FireGL AGP 1000, two Voodoo 2 12MB cards in SLi, 56K modem, SCSI card and a DXR 2 DVD Decoder card.

Talk about a pain in the ass to get working.