Recommended PPU?

Matthew Kane

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Hi to all...cause my old PPU died out from overheating...my budget now is $350 AUD and can anyone recommend any good PPU's out there within or my budge above to me?

Any recommendations will be great! Thnx:p
 
Could you elaborate a bit on how your PPU died from overheating? They seem pretty rugged in that regard, mine had some cables get snagged which stopped the fan from spinning and it worked for over a week as the fan was locked in place until the fan eventually burnt itself up - but the card itself was never damaged.

At this point, with PhysX being ported to CUDA, if you have an nVidia 8 series card or better I'd honestly wait and see how that plays out. No one really knows at this point how PhysX is going to perform under CUDA on a Geforce card directly against a dedicated PPU, but it would save you some money and a PCI slot.

Beyond that there should be plenty of deals going for PPU's on the used market.
 
Yup. I don't own a PPU but are the physics really more realistic? From reviews, it appears fake after a while.
 
Could you elaborate a bit on how your PPU died from overheating? They seem pretty rugged in that regard, mine had some cables get snagged which stopped the fan from spinning and it worked for over a week as the fan was locked in place until the fan eventually burnt itself up - but the card itself was never damaged.

At this point, with PhysX being ported to CUDA, if you have an nVidia 8 series card or better I'd honestly wait and see how that plays out. No one really knows at this point how PhysX is going to perform under CUDA on a Geforce card directly against a dedicated PPU, but it would save you some money and a PCI slot.

Beyond that there should be plenty of deals going for PPU's on the used market.

Mine got overheated in a way similar to yours, but mine died while I was cleaning out my PC, I was supposed to pull off an extra fan sitting next to the gfx and ppu, but instead I pulled the ppu connector instead, leaving it in a furnace 1 week...It was 1 week later...I was playing Warmonger Downtown Destruction..something had gone wrong...bcoz the game needs a ppu to play it, otherwise its not playable...next second...a smell was coming out of the case grills...opened it up....and to find the nearby plastics melted a bit that was around the shroud of the fan!
 
I see. I'll check videos on Warmonger Downtown Destruction to see if it's any more realistic.
 
PPU offers more Physics a CPU can handle 2 years ago.
Now its'time for PPU2. the next generation. Wich will never see the light of day. GPGPU takes it over.
So the next PPU Wich will be a flavor of a GT200 from nV in july.
For PPU It's may 2006 it came out it's june 2006 I got two.
So it's time to replace them to something Heavier in Physics.

I wonder if G8x or higher support GameplayPhysX to out of the box.
HavokFX didnot.

So end this year get interresting how it all folds out to the gamer.
 
For PPU It's may 2006 it came out it's june 2006 I got two.
So it's time to replace them to something Heavier in Physics.

So it's from 2006, so what? Throwing that out there and arbitrarily using that fact to imply that its dated technology is pretty silly. 8800GTX and Core2Quad were also introduced that year; I suppose that is also now dated technology by your standards?
 
None, Nvidia is working on using cuda to conver the ageia ppu calls, to there graphics cards. Since nvidia bought ageia. So there isnt really no point to buy a ppu any more. becuase of that.

Just wait til nvidia get done with ageia to cuda project. Yes, the 8800 seried does, Nvidia even said that 8800 series besides the 9800 series would support the agiea to cuda thing there working on.
 
I wonder if G8x or higher support GameplayPhysX to out of the box.
HavokFX didnot.

Yes, they're porting the full PhysX API to Cuda. So it can do everything the PPU or the CPU could do under PhysX.
This cannot be compared to HavokFX which was just a hack based on DX9 shaders. Cuda is a very powerful programming language, far more advanced than DX9 shaders, as is the hardware that it's running on. G80 is really 'designed for GPGPU'.
 
What exactly is HavokFX? I see some of my games support that function, but what exactly is it? Is it another type of Physics procession unit like Ageia ?
 
HavokFX was an addition to the Havok physics library, which could do some 'eyecandy' physics effects (mostly particles and things) by using the GPU.
As far as I know it was never actually finished and released, and now that Intel owns Havok, I doubt it ever will.

A lot of people mistake PhysX on Cuda for being just 'eyecandy' physics aswell, because it's also run on a GPU, but this is not the case.
 
I'm just glad my "old" 8800 is being worked with and not thrown in some dusbin.
 
So it's from 2006, so what? Throwing that out there and arbitrarily using that fact to imply that its dated technology is pretty silly. 8800GTX and Core2Quad were also introduced that year; I suppose that is also now dated technology by your standards?

Yes it its. Lokin forward for HD4870(X2) and the 9900
PPU produkt cycle would be 2 years claimed in 2006 by ageia. Well its time isn't it.
GPU produkt cycle is different and they are also close on a change.

it's currently time to wait a month or two to buy your new PC or upgrade.

I have 8600GT to be replace by something that can drive a new HDCP enable monitor. My 19" TFT 25ms is dated.

But I'am going first for a FullHD TV for my PS3 end May

ALso with this unified shaders. Would Physics be part of this unified shader stuf.
So Game load of shader requierment at run time can be adjusten on needs between Geo vertex pixel and Physics shader use on the fly. In that case a GT200 1TFlop for rendering and phsyics would be nice. If PhysX doesn't support ATI chips.
Where in the time wenn There are game that can take GT200 to it's knees(maybe good ol'Crysis) I could buy a midrange GT200 flavor chip pure for dedicated PhysX.
 
Yes, the PhysX routines should be running alongside the other shaders on the unified architecture. nVidia's latest architecture is quite sophisticated that way. Cuda doesn't fully take advantage of it yet, but no doubt they optimize it for PhysX.
 
Guys all I wanted in this thread was help me look for a good ppu card within or the budget I mentioned...I didn't want to know about Cuda technology and etc and all this other PPU technology stuff....<No Offense though but don't go off topic!:p:p
 
I don't really understand your question.
There is (or actually was) only one PPU, and that is the one made by Ageia (so all cards use the same chip... generally cheaper is better... although some may have better coolers and that sort of thing, but you can figure that out for yourself, right?).
Ageia has since been acquired by nVidia, and they stopped production and development of the PPU. So you can only buy old stock at this point.
However, as mentioned, nVidia will add Cuda support to the Ageia PhysX library, so that their GPUs can act as a PPU.

So, that's the story of PPUs in a nutshell. Why ask 'what PPU'? There has only ever been one, and there is not going to be another one, no point in discussing it. However, since GPUs can be used as PPUs in the near future, getting a PPU now might not be a good investment. So that's the more relevant question: 'Get a PPU or wait for Cuda?'
 
That's true. Factor in the time needed for the game to use the nv phyx too! I know of BFG and asus selling PPU. Is that true?
 
Games don't need to be modified. If they were using PhysX before, they will automatically work on nVidia GPUs now. nVidia simply adds the support at driver level, transparent to the game. The game doesn't even know if it's running on a PPU or GPU.
So basically games that support nVidia PhysX with Cuda are already on the market.
 
Hi to all...cause my old PPU died out from overheating...my budget now is $350 AUD and can anyone recommend any good PPU's out there within or my budge above to me?

Any recommendations will be great! Thnx:p

I would get a BFG you can pick them up for around 89.99 USD...
 
like I've seen some atm with 128MB up to 256MB...Does the memory matter? My old one was a 128MB it was a BFG one I got off one of my mates....So any idea?? Also Nvidia is going to incorporate CUDA technology....and their GPU's also acts as a PPU...what series of nvidia graphics card have this feature.....I heard the 9800GTX and 9800GX2 have these features..is this true???

Does higher specs make a difference?
 
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