Release date for PPU yet?

V

videogamer323

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 31, 2003
Messages
384
Just wanted to know if there was an official release date for the Ageia PhysX card. I know its in quarter 4 of this year.

Know anywhere to pre-order? ;)

thanks
 
no official release date, dont know of anywhere to preorder (definitely not somewhere respectable I can tell you that).

They will be out in time for the holidays is what we have been told over and over again though.
 
whats gonna support it by then? nothing right?
you guys go ahead and buy a whole bunch, and drive prices down so the rest of us late adopters can get one sometime next year when stuffs out that can use it

:)
 
WRONG Steel Chicken!

FutureMark has licensed the technology. There's lots of people that will buy it JUST to have a better Phys-2006 score than anyone else :)
 
tremor said:
WRONG Steel Chicken!

FutureMark has licensed the technology. There's lots of people that will buy it JUST to have a better Phys-2006 score than anyone else :)
Click to expand...

Im sorry, but benchmarking e-penis contest people don't concern me :)
 
Talked to the Ageia CEO last week at the Warfactory LAN in St Louis. IIRC he seemed to indicate that it will be out for this christmas season, and will ship at the same time, or with games that support it. He said it has been ready for quite some time, but they have been sitting on it so as not to release it without game support.
 
Games that will support it, (that i know of)
These Three WILL support PhysX
Huxley (MMOFPS from Webzen.. due out next summer)
Quake 4
Unreal 2007 (or whatever it is called)

supposedly a patch for doom 3 will release to support it..
same with HL2 (not confirmed... rumors.. dont hold me to it)

There are quite a few other games that supposedly will be supporting it.. I think Shattered Union may as well, but i am unsure..
 
qbackin said:
:rolleyes: Right. Judging by your sig, you love your e-penis.
Click to expand...

Dont be a fucking asshole.
This is a computer hardware site, isn't it? Do you see me posting in my sig my benchmarks or other useless bullshit? I also happen to be active in the automotive forum, and never once have I gotten into "my shit is better than yours" argument with people, so fuck off, turd.
 
So will this technology breath new life into athlon xp systems? Seeing how the PPU takes massive load of the cpu for physics work I would think it should provide a decent boost in performance right? Ofcourse im talking about games that support the PPU.
 
Steel Chicken said:
Dont be a fucking asshole.
This is a computer hardware site, isn't it? Do you see me posting in my sig my benchmarks or other useless bullshit? I also happen to be active in the automotive forum, and never once have I gotten into "my shit is better than yours" argument with people, so fuck off, turd.
Click to expand...


Awww! Did wittle Steel Chicken say teh big bad F-word? He must be a big boy! Now I wespect him!


... :rolleyes:
 
Guess what people! Not everyone with great hardware is a benchmark whore. And there's no reason for people to be inflammatory. Jeez!
 
Steel Chicken said:
Dont be a fucking asshole.
This is a computer hardware site, isn't it? Do you see me posting in my sig my benchmarks or other useless bullshit? I also happen to be active in the automotive forum, and never once have I gotten into "my shit is better than yours" argument with people, so fuck off, turd.
Click to expand...

Jeebus get the man a tissue :p



Or tampon
 
Chips are ready, add-in cards from BFG and Asus (IIRC) will be first between 249 and 299.
 
[RCKY] Thor said:
Chips are ready, add-in cards from BFG and Asus (IIRC) will be first between 249 and 299.
Click to expand...
what do you mean by add-in cards? like pci card(isnt that what they all will be?)? are there going to be mobos with this onboard?
 
i doubt we will see onboard PPU systems.. ever.. considering the PPU is designed to take the Load OFF of the cpu.. rather than add to it..intergrated anything normally puts a larger load on the cpu than add in cards. I suppose they could.. but i doubt it..
 
qbackin said:
Right. Judging by your sig, you love your e-penis.
Click to expand...

Steel Chicken said:
Dont be a fucking asshole.
This is a computer hardware site, isn't it? Do you see me posting in my sig my benchmarks or other useless bullshit? I also happen to be active in the automotive forum, and never once have I gotten into "my shit is better than yours" argument with people, so fuck off, turd.
Click to expand...

I thought it was a complement.... did I misread it? =P
 
there is no way in hell im going to pay $300 dollars for a freaking PPU card, im sorry. Id rather put that into the video card and cpu funds.
 
Big Fat Duck said:
there is no way in hell im going to pay $300 dollars for a freaking PPU card, im sorry. Id rather put that into the video card and cpu funds.
Click to expand...


and 5 years down the road you're going to be whining about not being able to play current games.
 
Ruffy said:
and 5 years down the road you're going to be whining about not being able to play current games.
Click to expand...

if that is the case im going to just get a freaking console, computer costs to play games with everything enabled is just too much already
 
Big Fat Duck said:
there is no way in hell im going to pay $300 dollars for a freaking PPU card, im sorry. Id rather put that into the video card and cpu funds.
Click to expand...


So you'd rather go from 4x AF to 8x AF, than to have realistic explosions, building crumbling realistically, terrain deformation, cloth physics and any number of other game improvements?
 
One thing I am wondering about is if dual core cpus are going to steal some of the thunder from this. It is well documented that current games are not multithreaded so the second core on dual core cpus is just sitting there keeping the case warm.

If you can write code to send the physics to a dedicated PPU why couldn't you send it to the second core? I would think that the adoption rate on dual core is going to be far higher and have a wider audience than a PPU. (In the next few years all cpus will be dual core and it is common knowlege that multi core CPUs are in the works.) Just kind of make sense to me. A full A64 core should be able to do some decent physics if that is basicly all you ask it to do.
 
cause i think 1 ppu can process more physics than like 40 cpu's or something like that. <-- not really accurate thought i read that some where tho
 
a dedicated phsyics processor (a PPU), can handle thousands of indepent objects, as opposided to a couple hundred on a single processor. Besides.. most of those with dual cores have all of their background programs running on the second core, while the game they are currently playing is the only thing on the 1st core.
 
Obi_Kwiet said:
So you'd rather go from 4x AF to 8x AF, than to have realistic explosions, building crumbling realistically, terrain deformation, cloth physics and any number of other game improvements?
Click to expand...

Its a processor, that would have to be coded into the game by the programmer. If anything you will just see an insane amount of whatever physical object can be reproduced easily without affecting gameplay. Like millions of sparks when shooting metal etc.

Cloth can be done on your processor just fine, the ppu may be able to add more interaction points, but even then each point would require another triangle on the graphics card (much like each spark would require more gpu work)

As for buildings breaking realistically I doubt that you will ever see that, more than likely they will break similar to how the crytek tech demo displayed (each wall falls like a physics object) and perhaps more so like each board in the wall will come apart. (but that would affect gameplay and wouldnt fly in multiplayer) To have things deform (wood splinter, concrete crumble etc) that has to be coded by the game programmer. Sticking a new cpu into your computer doesnt magically make windows xp, why would anyone think simple putting a ppu in their computer will make their games ultra realistic.

I can tell you there will be alot of people complaining after the physics cards come out by people who expect this kind of detail to magically happen.
 
Granted.. but those things can be made easier by development tools. Kinda like the porting tool XNA that microsoft uses to port games between the X-box and Computers.. Ageia im sure considered that, and probably has released development tools to game devs to streamline that process. And no, techinicly it doesnt have to add additional polygons to things for phsyics, since most things in game (aside from sparks, which, i will grant, would have to have additional polygons) are made up of quite afew polygons. The physics card can just render the movement of each polygon, on, say, a flag as it ripples in the wind.Even in a flat object there are numerous polygons, more than enough for the ppu to use to make it ripple, without the use of additional polygons. And the PPU can render thousands of OBJECTS, note, i didnt say polygons. Meaning it can take thousands of thousand + count polygon objects.. if the CPU tried to do that, you would be going nowhere in game..
 
gabe is already whining about how hard it is to code multi-threaded games.. It will be a real, real good time before games actually utilize the ppu to its' full extent
 
How will this technology work?

Will it be in a form of a second card that is connected to your existing card like in Crossfire? Or is it a feature that will be added to new graphics cards onboard? Or will it be software based? How?
 
Lord of Shadows said:
Its a processor, that would have to be coded into the game by the programmer. If anything you will just see an insane amount of whatever physical object can be reproduced easily without affecting gameplay. Like millions of sparks when shooting metal etc.

Cloth can be done on your processor just fine, the ppu may be able to add more interaction points, but even then each point would require another triangle on the graphics card (much like each spark would require more gpu work)

As for buildings breaking realistically I doubt that you will ever see that, more than likely they will break similar to how the crytek tech demo displayed (each wall falls like a physics object) and perhaps more so like each board in the wall will come apart. (but that would affect gameplay and wouldnt fly in multiplayer) To have things deform (wood splinter, concrete crumble etc) that has to be coded by the game programmer. Sticking a new cpu into your computer doesnt magically make windows xp, why would anyone think simple putting a ppu in their computer will make their games ultra realistic.

I can tell you there will be alot of people complaining after the physics cards come out by people who expect this kind of detail to magically happen.
Click to expand...

A CPU can handle about 200 physics abjects. A PPU can handle more than 30,000.
 
The apocalypse will begin when the Fata1ity version of the PPU is released, which can handle 30,001 abjects.
 
LstOfTheBrunnenG said:
The apocalypse will begin when the Fata1ity version of the PPU is released, which can handle 30,001 abjects.
Click to expand...

LOL delivering the end-user the most 'extreme' way to play games :D I wonder if it will also incoporate 'BulletProof Technology'...
 
RaphaelVinceti said:
The physics card can just render the movement of each polygon, on, say, a flag as it ripples in the wind.Even in a flat object there are numerous polygons
Click to expand...

Most flags are 2d animating textures that mimic the movement of a flag with a series of images, requiring two triangles to form a square to project the texture onto. In order to have a cloth flag, it would *have* to be 3d and require substantially more triangles. (lets say 8 triangles to keep thing simple) Each vertex in the flag would react to other objects by recieving force and distributing that force to the other verticies to simulate cloth. And it might have some flag waving code so the vertices move back and forth like a flag would when nothing is acting on it. Now this flag that was two triangles and a couple of textures in memory is now 8 triangles and has code constantly running to simulate the waving effects we all expect flags to have.
 
Big Fat Duck said:
gabe is already whining about how hard it is to code multi-threaded games.. It will be a real, real good time before games actually utilize the ppu to its' full extent
Click to expand...
he won't have to code any multithreading support. as long as he's using Aegeia's physics engine / SDK, the threading of physics will be transparent. The good thing about this engine is that it still works for people without PPUs
 
Zinn said:
he won't have to code any multithreading support. as long as he's using Aegeia's physics engine / SDK, the threading of physics will be transparent. The good thing about this engine is that it still works for people without PPUs
Click to expand...
and he wasn't bitching about multi-threading the way you're used to thinking about it. if the OP was referring to the interview I think he is, then Gabe was bitching specifically about how Sony is handling multi-threading via the Cell processor.

And, from both a computer hardware implementation and a computer software programming standpoint, I think he's right. Not only does Sony require multi-threading for the Cell, they require the hand-offs and such to be handled in such a particular and special manner, that back-porting to standard single CPU systems is virtually impossible.

With Cell, sony is blurring the line between "multi-threading" and "multi-CPU"
 
I just can't see there being a big enough market to keep this company afloat unless they do integrate on motherboards or video cards. $300 is pretty expensive for most people. The people that shell out for a 7800GTX SLI/FX57 type system might buy them, but not most of us. Devs wont bother to code for something that 1% of the community owns.

That would be like them telling people that Game X is SLI only. If you don't have a $1000+ worth of video cards in your system, don't bother to buy.

It's gotta get a lot cheaper or it's doomed.

 
Not that I'm terribly knowledgeable in physics programming, but I think a lot of people are overlooking Aegis' SDK. Any 3d game must have physics programmed in, creating a physics engine. Aegis is handing a game developer that wants to use it a physics engine. Not only is it your standard physics engine, but it also supports PPU's. A lot of people are making this out like Aegis is handing people hardware and telling game developers to develop physics engines for it. Yes, programmers will still need to write physics for it, but they would if they used a custom engine, the havok engine, or Aegis' engine. Difference is Aegis' would have support for a whole bunch of objects.

Also, again, I'm no programming genius, but I'm not sure saying programmers would need to specifically write code for each object is fair. Look at graphics, do programmers write specifically where every pixel goes? I'd imagine similar techniques as are used in graphics processing could be used in physics development. For example, you write an 'Explosion' effect. This effect would take an object a break it into a specified variable's number of pieces. The trajectories of these pieces would be calculated of the physics card through a combination of mass and velocity of the striking object, and the mass (and possibly velocity) of the object being hit. You can then apply this one 'Explosion' function to hundreds of different explosions. That's far different, and far easier, than people saying programmers need to write this code so specifically.

Maybe I'm just not seeing how it is such a massive amount more work to add this in. A robust engine should be able to scale up for effects like this. Is it more work? Definately. Is making a 3d game more work than a 2d one...?

To me, PPU's are an evolutionary step, just like 3d. Assuming our end goal is to have as realistic as possible games, you would require something like this. Regardless of how good a video card is, it still can't replicate any kind realistic physics, and neither can current processors.

Sure, you could never buy a PPU and wait for CPU's to handle the load. Meanwhile, for the next 15 years you'll be waiting for processors to be able to match what a PPU can do now. I'll hopefully be enjoying a more realistic gaming experience, courtesy of a PPU.

Astaroth

Edit: Whole 'correct punctuation' thing doesn't always work at 3am. :(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top