Can anyone name a single game that supports a physics card?

Today is April 17th 2006 and Dell is already proudly offering an AGEIA® PhysX® Physics Accelerator as a $249 upgrade on their XPS line... will ANY game support this card today? $249 sounds like a lot to pay for ZERO instant gratification.

Anyone?

i know that ghost recon game for the 360 supports it. i think theres another 2 but not sure. im not in favour of it until it can be proven it is better than ATI's or even havics fx solution.

The Xbox360 has an aegea physics card built in...?

nah it must be the pc version they show. either that or it does have one in it. i wasn't sure if it was released on the pc or not, still ain't

Ghost recon 3, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory w/ patch update.
Cod2 w/ patch update. It is only a matter of time before most games will support the phsysix process.

I think they are using Bet On Soldier to demo some stuff on that card. That game is out now. not that anyone cares... reviews were not so good. Does anyone here play/has played it?

i have to say this, you forgot ATI and intel. can i ask what made you miss them out? it is getting on my wick people thinking they can dictate who's cool and who ain't. sorry to harp on but i'm already arguing this thing in another thread where people think the race is between havoc's FX/nvidia and AGeia without mentioing ATI and now it seems intel is rubbish too is it. AMD beats intel in games, but you have to remember physics ain't gaming, it raw calculations.

good point man, and if physics was offloaded just to another cpu core I would bet that the intel chips would favor much better if you could benchmark just that aspect... Of course I think that the GPU will do better than any cpu, and w/ that you are also right that ati has much more calc power in that regard than Nv...

Until we see games doing it beyond demos we will have to see...

A normal CPU would stand absolute zero chance at matching a specialized floating point processor such as a GPU or a PPU for physics processing. Most current physics in games is done in software. It is the physics equivalent of rendering your graphics in DOOM 3 or whatnot... IN SOFTWARE MODE.

These physics processors are on the order of HUNDREDS of times faster for such calculations than a multipurpose processor such as a CPU. There is absolutely no comparison. A $250 PPU would decimate any $1500 multipurpose CPU in any floating point benchmarks. On an order of magnitudes.

What I'm trying to say is: No, Intel doesn't stand a Chance.

And to the person that said Intel is better for raw calculations, that isnt True, The A64/K8 Architecture has better floating point performance than Netburst(P4/Pentium D).

i think we all know about the cpu's but i am sure intel can beat it at encoding and what, they rely on pure maths i thought. i may be wrong. oh and please link me to the independant review or otherwise which gives me numbers on the Ageia chip's performance.

Great statement. Why the push for physics when HT and MultiCore have not even been OPTIMIZED for full usage. To be honest with you, I'm sure physics is a great new thing, but until I see companies like Intel and AMD optomizing their Chips with OpenGL, Direct3d, Havok etc... I really don't see a need for this, I actually see this as a marketing gimmick or Niche Sales. Wasn't being sold before so lets sell it....kind of mentality.

You might have this backwards... Encoding relies on clockspeed.

AMD will kick Intel's butt at floating point calculations, not clockspeed... AMDs do alot more calculations per clock, thats why Athlon64's always beat the snot out of Intels when benched with Sciencemark. Physics simulations favor AMD.

Alot of games use HAVOK physics calculations already, who knows, this might be part of why AMD's are so good at gaming in the first place...


On a side note, I think it's inevitavle that PhysX will be the premier physics engine as time goes on... it's free, and havok costs a sizable amount of cash. If PhysX is any good, the developers will eat it up...

not sure... was not "logged in" to be able to see whatever you had linked.

i found what i was talking about though here. It was at firing squad... from a week or so ago, I remember different graphs, but either it was different before archiving or I really did first read it on another site. You'll get the idea of what i was saying though.

ye thats the one i tried to post. didn't quite work i think. it is relative to a 1600xt so that explains why the x1800 and x1900 cores do so well. it is only for one type of interaction but is a good example.

regardless of the dates there has been nothing new released by Ageia about the capabilities of their card. oh and if you can find it ATI's SDK for using their architecture it is free if you can find it. the one on their website seems to relate to gfx.

cleeve sorry if i got that wrong, doesn't encoding rely on maths. i've never bothered with reading up on it.

I hear ya on that one. For me to spend $250 just to plug something useless into my 'puter, seems a little...um...flaky.

But hey, Ageia has some nifty marketing demo's that MIGHT work with the card

Personally, if there was widespread support for this technology, I'd have no problem getting the card, given that Ageia's partners were selling the "high-end" version for >$200. However, presently, the price is too high, but it never seems to stop the early adopters from spending their disposable income on something silly.

right, I thought you were talking about a more specific thing like there was already a kit that enabled physics in games... I had seen links about that sdk, but figured that I code all day at work, and like to enjoy my hardware w/ minimal work on my part at home. I will wait for teh devs to work it into their games first...

so now i get to look forward to shelling out an additional $300 for something that my processor should be able to take care of? while i'm an advocate for the advancement of technology, i feel this "physics card" is more of a lateral step than a forward one.

the main problem for a gfx card note not the gpu, is that you need to be able to tell the gpu what happening in the game. since gfx cards are used to one way traffic they can't do this at the moment. the only way it could work at present is if the cpu relayed the info. AFAIK it would only take a simple adjustment to how the cards are made and then there would be no difference between the Ageia card and a gfx card.

you didnt read a word i wrote did you.

read that last article i posted: ati is saying the exact opposite of what you said; that they are more powerful than physX chip but less efficient. They are just so much more powerful that efficiency is not a drain on performance 'cause they have calcs to spare.

gpu is specialized for graphics, and based on what ati and Nv are saying the physX is simply a more specialized type of "gpu" (if you wnat to think that way)

Ati says one thing, Aegea says another.

Seriously, it's kind of hard to take at face value, they kind of have a vested interest in their point of view, don't you think?

I'll say it again; until there are two physical solutions to compare, all we have to eat is everybody's corporate spin.

you don't need a PPU to tell it where things are. it is only a processor. it is the memory which reports back info. alos what is being said is that you don't need a PPU at all. i don't wan't any added cost because ATI/nvidia are licensing the rights to use the chip.

hmm i'd rather get another gfx card cause then when you play a game which doesn't require physics or not all the GPU to be used you still get the extra gfx card for gfx.

I agree man, with the ati/Nv option you at least have an "extra" card that is useful for more than just the 1 or 2 games that are worth having.

Overall, I am very curious/excited to see where everyone (companies) is at when the dust settles and we see what we need for the next batch of wicked games. Of course I hope that the ati solution works if only to remove a need to buy another card in the short term...

physics in graphics are more for interaction of rendered objects. afaik this does not apply at all w/ vista as it renders windows and such but they do not "bump" into each other or any interaction like that.

basically, answer is no. no smoother at all.

I am not so sure about the physics cards becoming that commonplace either, we are in a position less like the video card genesis (1996, birth of 3d) and more like the beta/vhs war (late 70's i think...).

big diff is that all players are not fighting w/ similar weapons like '96, but w/ differing ideas like the beta bash.

just my thoughts, but I think we will have a winner, just not guarranteed to be physX.