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This has probably been said before but...

J

jubrany

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 21, 2005
Messages
340
With multicore processors just around the corner, will there be any point of having a dedicated PPU?

I think the answer is no... it's just one more thing to generate heat and kill airflow in a case, and drive up the cost of building a gaming machine.
 
I'll save you a little grief and ask the gremlins to lay off the "PPU is far faster than any CPU" arguement. It is true, but that isn't the point in my opinion.

In my opinion, because the barrier of entry for the PPU is so high ($250 and a valuable PCI slot as well as no support), they either should have released a lower power version (which would be cheaper), a PCI-E version (make use of those slots), or a combination of both.

Until that happens, why not just take advantage of the extra power we've got (multicore CPUs). The dual/quad core processors may not be able to realistically roll 100,000 boulders down a hill, but I think they'll be more than sufficient to show people the benefits of realistic physics to the point that people will consider a physics addin card.
 
At the moment, it's too early to say whether the PPU will actually make a difference in gameplay. Right now it isn't worth getting a PPU, only future titles will show whether or not it is a worthwhile investment.

The question isn't whether the PPU is better at physics than a CPU. The answer to that is yes. The question is if there is enough of a reason to get one, and currently the answer is no.
 
We can utillize the extra cores in CPUs for physics. But utillizing a PPU provides us with (much) more processing power.

So, it's either less money and less physics, or more money and more physics at this point. Hopefully that will change as prices go down for the PPU.

Basically running physics on a two-core CPU is like running graphics on a two-pipeline GPU. It's better than one, but nowhere near the power of 48.

But it depens on what gamers want. Physics will come one way or another. Do we want low-power physics on our CPUs, or are we willing to pay for high-powered physics from a PPU? The GPU solution from Havok falls in between these two.
 
jubrany said:
With multicore processors just around the corner, will there be any point of having a dedicated PPU?
Click to expand...
With multicore processors just around the corner, will there be any point of having a dedicated GPU?
 
LuminaryJanitor said:
With multicore processors just around the corner, will there be any point of having a dedicated GPU?
Click to expand...
Of course not. I cannot wait to go back to Wolfenstein like graphics!
 
LuminaryJanitor said:
With multicore processors just around the corner, will there be any point of having a dedicated GPU?
Click to expand...

Obvious but simple truth FTW.

With multicore processors just around the corner, will there be any point of having a dedicated sound card?
With multicore processors just around the corner, will there be any point of having a dedicated RAID controller?

Make it stop!
 
I don't think it's worth spending $200 on a physics card when the extra cores in the CPU can be used for doing that. Seriously, is there a point to a PPU? I know I won't even be a potential customer
 
I don't see much point in one myself. Outside of it adding extra eye candy, it would serve me no real purpose. Especially seeing that Im mostly into online FPS'ers & more worried about kicking someones ass rather than having all the fancy physics going on XD. The idea however is kool, but that lies another problem with me. I do prefer to have a Top Notch Sound card so I can take full advantage of my & Speaker setup & a PCI Based Nic. Which in a sli system, leaves no room for anything else. I could swap out the NIC & put a PPU card there but I've saw some heavy Frame hits when using the onboard NIC for some odd reason in a few newer games. My PCI NIC has served me well for a very long time now & havn't decicded to ditch it just yet. I do have 1 PCI Express 1X slot located above my 16X slots that is completly empty. If it so happens that many newer games that come out makes excellent use of a PPU card. Then I would drope the funds to get a PCI-E 1X NIC To free up a PCI lot for the PPU card. Would be even better if PPU cards began to take full advantage of the PCI-E 1X slot ^^.

-DarkLegacy
 
Dual core CPU's are a blessing for multi-tasking, but for gaming, blah. I can set the affinity for Half-Life 2 to CPU 0 (That forces it to run on only one of the two CPU's) and gameplay is no slower than if I let it have both CPU's. I'm not sure if the load time is affected, but framerate stay's solid in the 160 range. This is due to the 7900GS more than the T2500 CPU.

Dedicated graphics let us move from games like Wolf 3D and Doom to true 3D games like Quake and Unreal. Now, we have the Doom3 and Source game engines that mimic physics, and they do a very good job...but in 1993 I played Doom for the first time, and I couldn't believe the view from the tower windows where you grab the armor at the beginning of the game. The things that are good today, will be "crappy old junk" in 13 years.

I see NVidia and ATI stepping up with PPU cores built into graphics cards in the future. For now, I've seen the Ageia PsysX card in action. In Ghost Recon, it really does add an extra element of realism that is way cool, but not worth the extra cost in my opinion. It just makes tanks blow up more cooler. ;)
 
JBavousett said:
Dedicated graphics let us move from games like Wolf 3D and Doom to true 3D games like Quake and Unreal.
Click to expand...
To be fair, games came a lot further than Doom without 3D acceleration. Even games like Half-Life and UT could be pretty decent under software rendering.
 
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