Another Nail in AGEIA Physx Coffin?

[kabacha]

Remember AGEIA boasting you would need a Physx card to truely play this game as you saw in the videos? and that normal PCs without the card cant do all the fancy stuff?

well look here: http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/play-CellFactor-demo-PhysX-PPU-ftopict185393.html


First Download the demo: http://ageia.com/physx_in_action/cellfactor.html

and listen to instructions:



Edit the shortcut (right click it, choose properties, go to shortcut and then target) by adding "EnablePhysX=false" at the end. This is case sensitive.

The CellFactor High Graphics shortcut target should read:

"X:Cellfactor DemoSystemGameCellFactor.exe" FullScreen=true FullScreenWidth=1024 FullScreenHeight=768 HDREnabled=true DropShadows=true MaxLowRezDropShadows=20 MaxHighRezDropShadows=4 StaticShadow=true EnablePhysX=false

Note that the X is the drive you installed it on, typically "C".

The CellFactor Low Graphics shortcut target should read:

"X:Cellfactor DemoSystemGameCellFactor.exe" FullScreen=true FullScreenWidth=800 FullScreenHeight=600 AnisotropyLevel=1 HDREnabled=false DropShadows=false MaxLowRezDropShadows=0 MaxHighRezDropShadows=0 StaticShadow=false EnablePhysX=false

Again, the X is the drive letter of the drive you installed it on.

I thought this was a cool thing to pass on to everyone. I've tested it and the game actually runs well on my system. It's also cool to know that you DO NOT need a PhysX processor, whereas Ageia tells us that we do.




And you get the SAME results as the AGEIA card..... :|

[kabacha]

sorry i couldnt edit my message, here is a screenshot of CELL factor without PPU

http://img378.imageshack.us/img378/6992/withoutppuboomunder1280x102413.jpg


Here is a screenshot of Cell Factor with PPU

http://img378.imageshack.us/img378/9347/withppuboomunder1280x102415fps.jpg

[one]

Remember AGEIA boasting you would need a Physx card to truely play this game as you saw in the videos? and that normal PCs without the card cant do all the fancy stuff?

well look here: http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/play-CellFactor-demo-PhysX-PPU-ftopict185393.html
And you get the SAME results as the AGEIA card..... :|I browsed that link and it seems no one there has an AGEIA card to test while ranting AGEIA suxxors. It's rather moroninc to believe the CellFactor developers are happy to release a game that requires PhysX to run which can be sold only to PhysX owners :roll: Also see the upper right corner of the screenshots you posted, if it's the fps number at 13/15 fps it is not running well contrary to what the tomshardware forum poster claims.

[Acert93]

I believe Cell Factor is coming to the consoles (recently saw it on a 360 list) and is also being sponsored by Ageia. Anyhow PhysX will continue getting criticism until they get a number of games out that work well with their hardware and reputable sites do some indepth reviews. Until then we need to weed through a lot of (mis)information and determine what is accurate and what is not...

[hughJ]

Would be best to go check the hardforums, there's a thread there with people whom actually own the hardware, doing benchmarks with and without it.

[Pottsey]

“And you get the SAME results as the AGEIA card..... ”
Not from what I was reading. Lots of the effects are turned off without the AGEIA card. Even the screen shots dont look the same to me.

[Demirug]

“And you get the SAME results as the AGEIA card..... ”
Not from what I was reading. Lots of the effects are turned off without the AGEIA card. Even the screen shots dont look the same to me.

The API/Driver version that the Cell Factor demo use (a special build) doesn’t support fluids in software modus. But if you run Cell Factor in PPU mode it makes use of fluids. I am not sure how heavy this usage is but this should be one of the reasons for the difference.

[Pottsey]

I also heard the tearing cloth is only available with the PPU. Is there anything else missing without a PPU?

[Cartoon Corpse]

im still getting one. and one day you'll be sorry. very sorry. very very sorry. so so so sorry. when the archeologists find my remains...and the PPU...and i go on world tour as the missing link.

[Maintank]

13-15fps? Well this may be the ammunition Ageia needs to show the difference between letting a CPU do the work and a PPU.

The video's I saw were clearly running at higher than 15 fps.

[karlotta]

dumbass review... them guys need to lay off the breweskis when they put a artical up.... this is a 5 out 50. on the 50 being the best...

[Chalnoth]

We appologize for the inconvienience, CellFactor: Combat Training isn't available for download right now. Please check back soon.
Heh. I wonder if the info posted in this thread has anything to do with that? :roll:

[pakotlar]

I really hope that Ageia has a solution to mask latency issues for transferring physics hits over PCI. Maybe the solution will viable if they are able to do this? Does anyone here have experience with this sort of thing? Chalnoth?

[Chalnoth]

I really hope that Ageia has a solution to mask latency issues for transferring physics hits over PCI. Maybe the solution will viable if they are able to do this? Does anyone here have experience with this sort of thing? Chalnoth?
Well, no experience at all here. But just thinking logically, I think that hiding the latency from the physics calculations is basically going to be a game engine issue, no matter what method you select for calculating the physics (as long as it's a multithreaded method).

[Skrying]

Someone did the same thing, but does have a PPU, at [H] forums. They're results generally show'd that you got similair performance, but where minus a few effects. Which they noted was not very noticable.

Fraknly, the PPU will fail...... big time. It adds nothing but fluff, and it will only offer fluff until one appears in lots of gaming systems. Which I believe will never happen.

[Geo]

Fraknly, the PPU will fail...... big time. It adds nothing but fluff, and it will only offer fluff until one appears in lots of gaming systems. Which I believe will never happen.

I've actually been thinking they went at this from the wrong direction --that they would have been better off to let the gpu boys create a software base for it, then try to come in later with a value-add higher-performance add-on if they could deliver one.

[Cartoon Corpse]

kinda risky i guess. takes years to develop a game, if a few devs started now, your talking years before the card could be truely exploited...given these first efforts (hopefully) do not fully exploit it's capabilities.

by that time many gamers are moving into newer technologies...mboards, etc. certainly there won't be a PCI (old style) slot years down the road.

perhaps the PCI version doesn't have a chance, since these early efforts don't appear to have much added value.

[_xxx_]

They removed the download.

[AlStrong]

what is really the big deal about having a software solution available for proper comparison? :roll: They sure as heck aren't helping themselves with these closed-tests.

[Chalnoth]

what is really the big deal about having a software solution available for proper comparison? :roll: They sure as heck aren't helping themselves with these closed-tests.
I'm not understanding that myself. If they really want to show the benefits, there needs to be a huge performance increase from using the hardware, even when comparing against a competitor's software physics API.

[Richard]

I'm not understanding that myself. If they really want to show the benefits, there needs to be a huge performance increase from using the hardware, even when comparing against a competitor's software physics API.

I would settle for same performance but a lot of complex physics objects myself (not just better particles).

But I agree with your view if many different games were already using Novodex so early adopters could see a reasonably increase in performance across the board right now. I'm sure I'm not the only one that reinstalls older games to test how my newly purchased hardware is paying for itself.

[Chalnoth]

Well, obviously we can't expect older games to make use of physics hardware, but don't you think it'd be a tremendous boon for the company if there was a game where you could run insanely-good physics with or without the hardware, but only with the hardware was it playable? I mean, all that the current demos seem to be telling us is that those with high-end CPU's might be able to do just as well, possibly for similar marginal cost to buying a PPU, but with much broader improvements.

[oddfellow]

I read a preview of this hardware in CustomPC magazine.
they tested with the Cell Factor demo and were amazed at how slowly it ran.

Their observations are quite amusing: The test pc was a 2.8G AthlonFX with an X1900XTX, 2GB of system ram and a PhysX ppu.
They had to disable HDR and run at 800x600 to get useable frame rates, however, the demo would dip well below 10fps whenever a large physics event occured, which is quite surprising considering the card is supposed to be a hardware physics accelerator!

Overall, from what I've heard and read, PhysX seems to be a complete non starter.

[_xxx_]

Probably we'll talk about this card one day as the physics deccelerator (just like S3 Virge was known as gfx deccelerator) :lol:

[_xxx_]

Just noticed that the cards cost some 260€ around here, the BFG one even has no games bundled. They must be totally crazy :???:

[Cartoon Corpse]

sad really, i had high hopes. maybe they'll turn it around. i'll wait to get one till Gothic3 i guess (first game i know of, and want, that's supposed to use it), then see how it's doing at that time.

spose there is a quandary about what you get from the card v not having one (game unplayable without it?...doubt devs will go for that)

[_xxx_]

I think that their only chance to survive is to market their whole software stuff which seems to be quite good. They already have it running on pretty much every platform including the two big consoles if I got it right. That's something they indeed can sell for good money. Also a much easier way to go IMHO. Special cards for physics will die as soon as the programmers get a better grasp of multi-CPU environments, which will be in pretty much every midrange machine produced this year onwards.

[IgnorancePersonified]

Mr Wasson has a look. (http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q2/physx/index.x?pg=8)

[Cartoon Corpse]

i'd get one, if it meant squeezing more headroom out of my dual core for a multithreaded game. (as opposed to having to get a new cpu).

i wonder if that's the direction the market is headed?

of course im assuming a boost here as well (which, so far, doesn't look to be necessarily true)

[Tahir2]

What is a better buy, a £200 PPU or £200 extra spent on CPU or another gfx card?

Almost everyone is choosing CPU or gfx cards at the moment... the only people who are interested in the PPU are the ones that are already running SLI and have a beefy dual core CPU.

With the advent of ATI/NVIDIA and Havok GPU Physics acceleration Ageia will fail in the PC market but in some respects have already been successful in the console market (X360 and PS3) with their development tools and API.

[Geo]

Well, the PR department is giving each other high-fives in the office today anyway:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,200456,00.html

[Cartoon Corpse]

i think gothic3 is using it. plus i think it's gonna be multi-threaded. so im looking out for that one. see how driver updates and whatnot improve on what we're currently seeing.

though the gothic3 guys said it was just eye candy, no tactical advantage, or game changing experience to use one or not.