yes you can set affinity, i do, but i have come to the realization that it works about as good as a a P4 with hyper threading(C2D), and is as good as a P4 in multitasking! my 4400 is much better multitasking and setting affinity... And i concur on the 3gz..? As for the "feeling", well i think it has to do with the mem controller( lack of,C2D) and DDR2. Back on topic, a phys card would be great if cost and effects are worth it..duh, I dont see devs doing much codeing for cpu effects like you will get with Ageias...?
GRAW2's Ageia Island video
- Thread starter John Reynolds
- Start date
I see where you're coming from but I agree with Dooby's remark. It looked pretty much like a cheap Hollywood movie where they explode "buildings" made of balsa wood props.
In fact, what most impressed me were the trees and grass waving with the wind. Made those scenes come alive for me.
I'm still not convinced my a discrete Physics solution. Until AGEIA shows some clever fluids and cloth I'm still banking on a CPU solution. OTOH, at least PhysX is here. Weren't we supposed to have ATI/NVIDIA physics on a 3rd 16xPCIe slot already?
What? I have to strongly disagree here. Having used a P4 3.2 with HT and now use a C2D E6600 (2.4Ghz) I can tell that while in single core applications and games performance is nearly the same, when using multicore apps (WinRAR) and games (Quake 4) the performance difference is huge. It's like night and day. I used to be quite happy with my P4 HT in Windows multitasking between, say, Visual Studio and Paint Shop Pro but C2D is miles better at general multitasking too.
Not many CPU companies throwing money at devs to do this.
Similarly, don't you remember when AMD got CryTek to release the 64-bit "WITH BETTER TEXTURES!!!" version of FarCry? I think AGEIA could be following the same model here. Have developers put in exclusive features that could be done in software. Oh and related to the above, I tried that PhysX tech demo that came with their drivers on my P4 HT and it did run slow; on my C2D however, that thing runs silky smooth. Granted it's not overly complex and it's not doing much else either but AGEIA saw fit to use it as a benchmark scene.Fantastic, I may buy a PhysX PPU but feel to lazy to open the PC up and install the card. Was UE3 one of the engines having support for PhysX cards?
Unreal Engine 3 is being very heavily licensed, so the total # of titles in the future that support PhysX will be higher (assuming the licensee doesn't strip that code out). High enough to justify a $100+ additional add-in? Depends on the user; if BioShock, for example, made good use of the hardware I'd buy a board in a heartbeat.
That said, with the advent of multi-cores and the lack of a popular AAA title supporting PhysX, I do think AGEIA has missed their market window.
i may of missed something but i dont think physx support is standard for the Unreal Engine 3, only UT3.
using Ageia's benchmark, Phys-X is 1300% faster than Core2 @ 3.6ghz, running Ageia's physics SDK.
For Unreal3 engine, Phys-X API is integrated, like it is in SC: Double Agent, and RainbowSix Vegas.
Note, however, that although these games feature Ageia SDK use for physics rendering(and install Ageia driver upon installation), this is not software that runs on Phys-X card...like how some games(HL2) makes use of Havoc Physics engine.
BTW, MY Asus card has 256mb of ram onboard, by the number and type of memory IC's located on it. The ram itself is underclocked(333mhzx2), but direct form Ageia, the current chip's memory controller is not physically able to address more than 128mb.
I really think they have 64-bit memory control, and tehn becasue of yeild issues or something, they moved it to 32-bit.
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I got a Q6600 2.4Ghz running @ 3Ghz. I got it to run at 3.2Ghz but it runs hot then. 3Ghz runs cool.
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I think the only chance physx has to succeed (and what they need to do) is what just happened with sound cards in Vista.
There needs to be a standard api, so that from the dev point of view, there's no difference between programming for quad core or physx card. As a software provider, they'd want gpus to be supported too, but since they're just trying to sell physics cards I could see them leaving that out. In the early days of video cards, games were identicle in software rendering or hardware accelerated, except hardware accelerated was faster. Eventually this gave way to superficial changes (better filtering, color depth, and such), but it took a while before video cards were being used to do things that couldn't be done in any form on the cpu.
There needs to be a standard api, so that from the dev point of view, there's no difference between programming for quad core or physx card. As a software provider, they'd want gpus to be supported too, but since they're just trying to sell physics cards I could see them leaving that out. In the early days of video cards, games were identicle in software rendering or hardware accelerated, except hardware accelerated was faster. Eventually this gave way to superficial changes (better filtering, color depth, and such), but it took a while before video cards were being used to do things that couldn't be done in any form on the cpu.
PhysX has NO chance to succeed whatsoever. Whoever thinks different is dreaming a pipe dream.
First, they have nothing extra over several other competitors (NV and ATI come to mind). The HW sucks. The performance sucks. The product placement/marketing model sucks and on and on. And on top of that, even the crappiest GFX card will do physics nowadays, with new multicore CPU's around the corner which will also have no need for the physics HW-accelerator (or in this particular case deccelerator) at all.
Their ONLY chance for them to survive is as a pure software provider, think Havok and such. And there they'll face several tough players which can eat them for breakfast as well.
I see no future there.
First, they have nothing extra over several other competitors (NV and ATI come to mind). The HW sucks. The performance sucks. The product placement/marketing model sucks and on and on. And on top of that, even the crappiest GFX card will do physics nowadays, with new multicore CPU's around the corner which will also have no need for the physics HW-accelerator (or in this particular case deccelerator) at all.
Their ONLY chance for them to survive is as a pure software provider, think Havok and such. And there they'll face several tough players which can eat them for breakfast as well.
I see no future there.
Short of Microsoft coming out and announcing an official physics api (and thus giving physx the official blessing almost, as well as leaving ati and nvidia a bit out of it as there physics plans aren't as developed and limited to those with sli/crossfire systems), yeah, they're doomed.
Still, they do have unreal engine support, so if they can just hang on for a while and figure out a way to make money off their engine (charge for multi core support and make the phsyx hardware support mandatory) then maybe they'd have a chance. Unreal sold a lot of voodoo cards back in the day, and it had a software renderer, if physx reveals itself as the best way to play unreal engine games (big if) then unreal could do the same for it.
They have competitors? I see no other HW.. not even into 2008 do i see "competitors" So how does there HW suck? ect?. If they can make a buck, they will be around as a niche product... no need to be so shrill..
The HW sucks because there's no "killer app" for it. Who they're competing with is Intel with inexpensive quad-core cpus, AMD who will have inexpensive quad-core cpus plus GPUs, and Nvidia who have GPUs. All of which are equally capable of providing a physics experience.
The environmental destruction was pretty neat, as was the destruction of buildings. A lot of the buildings, though, looked like a template of an explosion, meaning it looked like the exact same particles being blown up. It also looked like a lot of the explosions were highly exaggerated. As if a grenade is going to topple down your house. Also why even showcase player physics anymore? It's virtually old hat now, seeing as every game has implemented similar physics. I haven't seen many changes in that area in quite some time, a lot of the physics between games look entirely too similar. The physics in Crysis also look like they upstage these, and as far as I can tell Crysis doesn't even take advantage of Ageia.
The first house exploding when the gas tank beside it exploded (near the beginning of the video) didn't look real. The house sort of just crumbles downward but I would've expected more flying debris going outward from the direction of the blast.
I loved the way the trees and plants swayed in the wind though.
I loved the way the trees and plants swayed in the wind though.
The main problem with the AEGIA hardware is, that you have to move the whole scene twice across the slow PCi buss, and have to process it twice as well. That's where quad cores with improved vector support (SSE4) and DX10 GPUs (geometry shaders) will score big time.
No they wer'nt
