Educate me on Physx?

markiz · Mar 29, 2013

I do know, in rough lines, what Physx is, but is it important? Should it affect my buying decision?
I have never played any modern game at max settings, as I have always had underwhelming hardware (laptops). So I have no first hand experience.

I am leaning towards AMD cards, because at every price point I looked at (7850-7870), and at every budget, it always seemed to be the best.
But with 650Ti boost, I see that nvidia can be competitive even for me.

Basically my question is, how important is Physx and how many modern games are utilizing it, and to what extent?

locke9342 · Mar 29, 2013

physx looks really good but not alot of games use it if you plan on playing games lyk borderlands 2 a lot then yes it would be use full

markiz · Mar 30, 2013

Thanks! That bring that story to conclusion for me

Whoever has the best ~200 GPU by the end of the year (hopefully 8000 and 700 will be out by than) gets my money, physx out of the equation.

renz496 · Mar 30, 2013

markiz :

many game use physx but most of them did not use advance gpu accelerated physics callculation in their game. those extra effect from the gpu accelerated stuff only impact your visual and not your gameplay. if dev want to use those gpu accelerated to impact your game play then the game might not run at all with radeon gpu. so physx should not affect your buying decision but to have those extra eye candy (for games that support it) is a plus.

Duke Nucome :

i see many people are saying that everything that can be done by physx can be done on cpu no matter how complex the calculation is. but during PS4 havok demonstration they say the particle calculation was done on gpu. if it can be done on cpu why they need gpu to do that? also when discussing physx people only talking about gpu accelerated feature of the engine while PhysX itself is a full fledged physics engine solution. assuming that the upcoming console will run on amd hardware doesn't mean it will not running physx. maybe there is no gpu accelerated stuff though.

lostgamer_03 · Mar 30, 2013

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STi6rNeYZrY - Video showing some effects from PhysX.

Have a look in the description where PhysX is explained.

You also get TXAA and adaptive vsync with the GTX 650 ti boost, which I for one enjoy a lot in my games.

Get the GTX 650 ti boost, it's the best GPU you can get for your money right now, it's even faster than Radeon 7850 according to Tomshardware. And the best thing is that it is cheaper.

Here is a chart of the value. Where you can see the GTX 650 ti boost is the best you can get for your money atm.

markiz · Mar 30, 2013

lostgamer_03 :

If I were buying right now, I would buy 650TiB. I was just wondering that WHEN I buy, should Physx support be a factor. And while I do appreciate those effects, they don't affect gameplay, so I guess I'll just be looking at highest framerate. If it happens to be nvidia, all the better.

Thanks for clarifying!

lostgamer_03 · Mar 30, 2013

markiz :

Only glad to help. However in my opinion PhysX only should be a factor, when you got 2 similar or almost performing GPUs. Good luck!

bystander · Mar 30, 2013

Duke Nucome :

While it is a marketing tool, it cannot be performed as well on the CPU. That is why many physX games run on the CPU, but with advanced PhysX options that can be turned on, which require the GPU for acceptable performance.

bystander · Mar 30, 2013

Whether they test with high AA and other settings or not, does make a difference in how they perform. However, too often they use too high of settings for comfortable game play. If you are using these cards, you aren't likely running higher than 2x MSAA, in an effort to get good FPS and smooth game play.

How you intend to play does make a difference, and both type of reviews are useful, but one method is not automatically better than the other. I personally feel you should use lower settings until you get both cards playing well, then compare.

lostgamer_03 · Mar 30, 2013

Duke Nucome :

Techpowerup got a 3% in favor for the Radeon 7850 compared to the GTX 650 ti boost, so I think it's pretty legit - As always. And if you don't even believe in Tomshardware, then why are you even here on their forums?

Just to kill your "cripple" theory. The bit-bus on the GTX 650 ti boost is now 192-bit and the memory bandwidth is at 144,2 GB/s while the Radeon 7850 has 153,6 GB/s. So that is no cripple in any way.

Stop your mobojumbo and get realistic. Does it hurt you that Nvidia has a great value product for once? Because every benchmark argues against your fanboy opinion on the matter. :no:

darkspartenwarrior · Mar 30, 2013

PhysX is a worthless marketing trick.

The only game really crippled by not having it is Borderlands 2. Everything else, your CPU can do the same or close to the same thing.

If you really want to get into the nitty-gritty, OpenCL based games(of which there are way more than, what, 20?, which is the amount of nvidia physx supported games) and OpenCL based featuers like Global Illumination and others are far more useful than PhysX

lostgamer_03 · Mar 30, 2013

Duke Nucome :

bystander :

LOL I don't think so as my old GTX 460 and 560 are able to run a game like Skyrim with full 8x SUpersample AA to the max with 60fps. The 7850 is substantial stronger than the GTX 560 and 460.

bystander :

7850 is more powerful and you shouldn't lower the settings to make the 650ti look more powerful than it is. The 7850 plays games with a higher level of graphical fidelity at the same or greater framerate than the 650ti plays games when set at a lower graphical fidelity. I chose to buy the 7850 over the 650ti because with the 7850 I can play games with a higher graphical fidelity and higher min framerates and more consistent performance among the vast majority of games both current and older tiles.

Just shows how much you follow the latest technologies. It's not GTX 650 ti, it's GTX 650 ti boost. Which is closer to be a GTX 660 than a GTX 650 ti. Radeon 7850 should be somewhat even when it comes to performance (according to all the benchmarks made), but GTX 650 ti boost is cheaper. The end.

bystander · Mar 30, 2013

Duke Nucome :

I'm sorry, but you misread what you saw. Even if they added SSE instructions to make it perform a lot better on the CPU than they used to perform on the CPU, the massive parallelism that GPU's have is still much faster. If I'm not mistaken, they have already improved a ton recently (I think they included SSE instructions as well as use more cores), which is why some people have been able to kind of play it with advanced PhysX on CPU's, but still not as well as it does on GPU's.

Edit: I have no idea what I typed, but it was incoherent.

swilczak · Mar 30, 2013

lostgamer_03 :

Duke Nucome :

Just shows how much you follow the latest technologies. It's not GTX 650 ti, it's GTX 650 ti boost. Which is closer to be a GTX 660 than a GTX 650 ti. Radeon 7850 should be somewhat even when it comes to performance (according to all the benchmarks made), but GTX 650 ti boost is cheaper. The end.

The 650ti boost is the same price as the 7850 on newegg for now until they release the 1gb version. I think the 7850 is a better deal because of the free games, and the performance difference is not even enough to notice.

renz496 · Mar 31, 2013

Physx is done and will no longer be in games IMO as Havok and Unreal Engine etc is open source and excellent.

since when Havok and Unreal Engine become open source?

If you really want to get into the nitty-gritty, OpenCL based games(of which there are way more than, what, 20?, which is the amount of nvidia physx supported games)

did you mean games with OpenCL features or games with OpenCL physics solution? btw i think you need to recount the game with physx. for starters all unreal engine 3 based game have physx in it.

OpenCL based featuers like Global Illumination and others are far more useful than PhysX

if you say so then havok, bullet or any other physic engine out there must be useless to you and should be removed from games.

Another downfall is that Physx is closed source code and game developers don't want to have to pay extra for something that was already available to them for free as well as the fact that all the new consoles will be running 100% AMD chip sets means the future of game Physics engines will be open source which is better for developers and end users as it frees up monetary resources and time for the game developers to be used to create a better game.

then again why during PS4 demo they run Havok (which is closed source) and not using bullet instead?

I am glad I am now rid of nvidia GPU in my rig as I am sick and tired of all the BS and lies and marketing hype and gimmicks and drivers that are stagnant.

both amd and nvidia keep updating their driver. why did you think that nvidia drivers were stagnant?

huilun02 · Mar 31, 2013

Physx is basically some extra eye candy in some games that you get to see if you use an Nvidia graphics card. Not having Physx is not a problem at all, since all games will run without Physx. If it was anything significant in a game then all conscious AMD card users wouldn't buy that game all.

Rather you should consider other factors like screen resolution, PSU limitation, 3D, overclocking and the buying situation that will narrow down your options to what best suits your needs. Brand loyalty is one thing but needs always precedes wants, and in general you want a product that gets the job done reliably (what use is a better performing card when it has a high failure rate?)

bystander · Mar 31, 2013

Let's clear something up.

PhysX - is a physics engine used in at least 300 or more games. Most the time PhysX is performed on the CPU, just like any other physics engine. This is a list of a lot of them (there are several pages): http://www.giantbomb.com/physx/3015-1923/games/

GPU Accelerated PhysX - is a special case of PhysX which uses an Nvidia GPU to perform more advanced effects that is usually too much work for a CPU. There are only about 20-30 GPU accelerated PhysX games. http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/physx/pc-games

renz496 · Mar 31, 2013

darkspartenwarrior · Mar 31, 2013

renz496 :

All games based on UE3 have CPU ACCELERATED PHYSX, that's a totally different animal from Nvidia's BS Marketing "PhysX".

You obviously have no idea what you are talking about, I know CPU accelerated PhysX is very useful, I'm just saying Nvidia PhysX is a gimmick

As for my OpenCL comment, I meant that the features brought by AMD's superior OpenCL are far more important than Nvidia's PhysX, I'm not saying CPU PhysX is useless

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/PhysX/pc-games

^Count, it's like 20 games. 4-5 are well known games.

renz496 · Mar 31, 2013

^ PhysX as a whole was owned by nvidia. they got the right to the tech when they acquire Aegia. you think i don't know what i'm talking about? like i said in my earlier post when talking about PhysX people only talking gpu accelerated feature of the engine. well you might want to blame that on nvidia because nvidia are the one heavily promoting gpu accelerated physics though in actuality it was a constant battle between ati and nvidia when it comes to gpu accelerated physics are concerned. people are so focus about gpu accelerated PhysX they forgot that PhysX is a full physics engine like other physics engine such as Havok.

bystander · Mar 31, 2013

You do realize that OpenCL is not an AMD physics engine. Both companies have OpenCL, and OpenCL is an open standard throughout the industry.

PhysX is also used in over 300 games. 20-30 of which has GPU acceleration options. OpenCL has not likely reached those numbers yet either.

Mousemonkey · Mar 31, 2013

Duke Nucome :

renz496 :

nvidia took a chance and rolled the dice when they acquired the then company that was going under called ageia. Now nvidia is trying to paint a sinking ship and recoup their losses because Physx is a complete and utter fail for the company.

renz496 :

Yes

renz496 :

What the problem is when a corporation try's to use dirty marketing tricks to sell an inferior technology's like Physx that it used to try and sell more nvidia product. The proper way to do Physics is like what AMD is doing with the "TressFX" Physics engine in that it works on any hardware configuration and gamer is left out in the cold no matter what their personal brand loyalty might be nvidia or AMD Radeon HD you will still achieve a top notch gameplay experience with all the bells and whistles without the artificial crippling of framerate.

renz496 :

? AMD has/had there own GPU Physics engine ?

renz496 :

The only thing special about GPU accelerated Physx is that if you choose not to run an nvidia card you are SOL. That's not special in a good way that's special in a retarded way and it is not a +1 for nividia it is a -1 for the whole PC gaming industry. I should have also said "Proprietary" not closed source in that other post.

Looks to me like you either don't know the whole story or don't understand what you you think you know. The so called dirty marketing as you put it came about because AMD said they didn't want to use Nvidia's PhysX, how is that dirty marketing from Nvidia?

darkspartenwarrior · Mar 31, 2013

renz496 :

That's what I said, I said CPU accelerated physX was useful but Nvidia's version is a gimmick.

Mousemonkey · Mar 31, 2013

Duke Nucome :

Mousemonkey :

Duke Nucome :

Looks to me like you either don't know the whole story or don't understand what you you think you know. The so called dirty marketing as you put it came about because AMD said they didn't want to use Nvidia's PhysX, how is that dirty marketing from Nvidia?

The dirty marketing behind nvidias Physx is because they try and whore it out and make a mantra out of things that not only already have been done but are old news. Extra Goo splatters here and there in Boarderlands2 is not an achievement that only nvidia can make possible.

In your opinion what is the future of nvidia physx being that AMD has a lock on every console. Does this mean that SSE CPU Physx is the future for nvidia or does this mean that nvidia will try and crippled AMD hardware again in some way or for both on the PC and Consoles ?

I am not against Physx but I am against proprietary.[/quotemsg]

There is a lot in this world that is going to upset you then! :lol:

bystander · Mar 31, 2013

darkspartenwarrior :

CPU accelerated PhysX IS Nvidia's version.

And while I do hope OpenCL/DirectCompute becomes the industry standard, it is not yet. As far as TressFX, hopefully it gets traction, but as far as I'm aware, it only adds nice looking hair. I assume they plan to expand its use.

Educate me on Physx?

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