Ageia physics card's mad sale

[<<Hybrid>>]

http://boot.lv/images/1147876955-2673-card2.jpg

Few months ago if somebody would mention something like physics card, most of us would just laught and could never believe that thing like that will ever be used for gaming PC's systems.

What proves it is people's very big interest about this new toy. Overcloclers.co.uk, one of biggest computer e-shops in UK has revealed that over 10 Aegia physics cards are sold everyday.
Probably for someone that will look like that that's actually not alot, but keep in mind that this is only the beginning and the prices as usual are a bit higher than expect. More of these cards will be sold with release of UT 2007, becouse exactly this game is promosing us to be the very first game to show off Ageia's features fully. The more newest PC games will use Ageia, the more interest it will gain.

In case if you didnt saw this card before wich's duties is to increase the speed of physics calculating, nothing is lost. More info you can find in my next post...

[<<Hybrid>>]

First time hear about this card?

ok...
To fully feel the possibilitioes of very detailed and realistic PC game, all these years as inreplaceable ingredient for PC was a video card.
The company AGEIA is promising to give us something totally new, announced as Physics Processing Unit (PPU), or simply - physics card, that promises visibly upgrade the speed of physic's calculation. Will few years later component like this be a inreplacable as video card? :)

Few weeks ago nVidia came up with SLI Physics feature, that can calculate a good piece of SLI's graphic processor's gigantic power. AEGIA is one step in totaly new territory, by announcing the very first PPU in the world, wich's main and the only duty is to calculate physics for video card. So games can be more powerfull. For both SLI and PPU there is pluses and minuses, and thats why there will be a bit of competition between nVIdia and AGEIA.

http://img.boot.lv/PPU.jpg

so, what exactly does this PPU seen in picture? It will not be anything more than a helper for centralprocessor for mathematic calculations. Realistic physics nowadays requires very hughe calculations for each frame. For example lets take complicated explosion, that mehanicly interacts with every little peace around it in virtual world, making our game lag a bit, becouse processor alone can not handle all the calculations in that moment. That's why AGEIA developed this solution to void these problems and bring PC games in the next level.

The very first physics cards will use old good PCI format and will be providen with 128MB GDDR3 memory. In time beeing they will release PCI-E versions as well, becouse PCI format is getting older and being replaced by new features all the time.

The company is very sure that their PPU will hardly increase frame rate for things like:

* explosions that just throws everything around like mad and even hurts our hero.
* Geometricly complicated system of our heros will be able to move even more realistic
* Shots of weapons will interact with virtual world even more realistic
* more intensive and more natural effects of the fog
* unbelievable realistic disortion of liquids depending on their physic characteristics
* More complicated and natural waving hero's dress

I could continue talking on the features it will give, but the most problem yet is becouse these cards will not be so popular immediately and not everyone will have them straight away. So nobody knows if game developers will risk their time on developing features for game that can be handled only by few PCs around the world.

Translated by me from www.boot.lv
p.s if information like this will make good interest for you guys i will try to translate some more impressive news someday.

[NastyDawg]

Here's some more info on them, not sure just how great it will be. Like you said its just the start of the cards and only a few games are out for them. I will have to see more reviews and games before I run out and buy one.

http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2751

[<<Hybrid>>]

wait a min,, so there is some games developped for it allready? as i understood it will be fully released with UT2k7 (as mentioned before)

well,, anyway's thats the problem,, the developpers will be waiting for you to buy that card, but you will be waiting for them to develop the game first... its one big LOL :D

[NastyDawg]

[QUOTE=<<Hybrid>>]wait a min,, so there is some games developped for it allready? as i understood it will be fully released with UT2k7 (as mentioned before)

yes, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, there is a video I saw some were showing the diff, between with and without the card, If I could only remember were I saw it.

[ME BIGGD01]

CoUgH---Gimmick and a load of crap. There is no reason those cards can not be built on todays video cards. With the prices of video cards today if they expect people to pay another 200-300 bucks to see more particles of dust or explosions they are flat wrong. I am sure they will have a few that buy it just to have it but like SLI and crossfire, it is a waste of money.

It's all hype:down:

[FUS1ON]

Interesting read.

BTW Nvidia did not invent SLI, in 1998 3DFX had it for use with it's Voodoo cards. Back in those days if you had 2 Voodoo II cards SLI'd, you had the shiznit! Quake 1 on Glide pwn'd!
http://www.pcmech.com/show/internal/817/

[JIMINATOR]

10 cards a day is peanuts, ati & nvidia probably sell that many every second.

I see no reason to buy the card right now, or even this year.

both nvidia and ati are developing apis that will allow a second video card to be used as a PPU. Additionally microsoft is planning to incorporate the physics functionality in a later version of directx. when that happens game programmers will write to the api and it will work with either the ageia card or the spare video card. before that happens, game company will either have to code for one or the other, or if they feel like blowing wads of cash, for both, or neither as is most likely. there also are no comparisons available to really show what the ppu can do say compared to a gpu. certainly the physics are nice, but if you are paying $300 for this specialized card and a $100 gpu will be able to do the same, then that probably would not make you very happy.

in short, if you buy the card now, you are likely to be screvving yourself. later this year will bring cheaper hardware, better options and more games.

[MassacreAL]

well, for 100$ you wont buy kick-ass card. important thing is that if this Phys card for 300$ is more ass kicking than normal card for 300$. sorry if i overlooked something important in this thread, but cant find it

[JIMINATOR]

no, i don't think you understood. there are no benchmarks to compare what a $100 gpu will do against a $300 ppu. until that happens you can't say which will outperform the other. i will say though that the video card makers have been doing their thing for the past 10 years, whereas the physics card has no track record.

[<<Hybrid>>]

ahh well. Maybe they will get cheaper in time being, you never know.
See, particles same as sprites are actually 2d images that renders with no problem, but there is alot of other crap that lessers our FPS.. mostly hight count of poly, hight count of multiple textures for 1 model and offcourse physics them self. So while graphics card and processor does the renders, this card can calculate all the physics, so this whole thing actually nearly doubles the speed. IMO

[JIMINATOR]

nice theory, the reality is that for the cpu to physicsify everything that it then has to hand off to the ppu, it is a performance hit compared to having no physics except for the player and a few boxes where everything else is permanent walls. don't get me wrong, it will be great when it comes out and is fully supported, just that time is not now.

[<<Hybrid>>]

ah yeah, definately not. thats why i said, that develpoers will be unsure to support it if nobody has them.. hardware are allways expensive at start point. and i guess yeah its not needed yet, we will see if they will get cheaper and prove themselves.
From different angle,, competition with nVidia or ATI. well, heh those guys won't just stand aside and look beautifull. They wil ldefinately make something much better, and people will buy trusted hardware. So,, dunno dunno. in this case, that will be flawless defeat for AGEIA

[EXEcution]

I agree with the fact that right now there aren't enough games that support this technology. Honestly most developers would probably settle for the Havok physics engine instead of writing tons of code to create their own. And Havok runs fine on the GPU afaik.

But come 2007, with Vista and DierctX 10, several developers may begin to explore other options in order for their games to run smoothly. I bet one of these options is going to entail cutting the GPU some slack and using another we'll say xPU since we don't know if physics are the future of gaming.

A good example is taking a look at the new Crytech engine. I doubt that most gamers will be able to run Crysis with all of the fancy graphics turned on and still get a steady >=60 framerate.