x1600 For Physx?

[HYST3R]

I noticed that in the article, http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/07/19/is_ageias_physx_failing/ they mentioned the use of an ATI x1600 for physx calculations. i was wondering if,

1)are they running that card as a dedicated physx processor or just an extra card in s crossfire set up?

2)How do you set up a x1600 for physx calculations?

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

1)are they running that card as a dedicated physx processor or just an extra card in s crossfire set up?

They are running that card as a dedicated physics processor, and when not doing that it can be used for extending multi-monitor support, however it cannot be used as a part of Crossfire in that case (where it's one X1600 with two X1900s, or any similar mis-matched series cards, also triple card Xfire isn't supported yet, so even if it were 3 X1900s it wouldn't be in Xfire)

2)How do you set up a x1600 for physx calculations?[/quote]

It can't do PhysX calculations, but it can do physics calculations when told to do so by either add on software (which would be the case if Havok did this alone with HavokFX) or with wider support from the promised M$ DirectPhysics support in some future version of DirectX.

But for now, there's nothing that uses it commercially, pretty much proof of concept.

 

[HYST3R]

thx for the reply, but im a lil confused by your post.

what i was trying to say with the Xfire thing was, are they using a crossfire set up i.e. 2 x 1900xt's (dongled) with an extra x1600 (not in crossfire) for physx?

or is it some other kind of set up.

1 x1600 and 1 x1900 ? no crossfire.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

thx for the reply, but im a lil confused by your post.

what i was trying to say with the Xfire thing was, are they using a crossfire set up i.e. 2 x 1900xt's (dongled) with an extra x1600 (not in crossfire) for physx?

Yes the X1900s are in Xfire, but the way you say 'extra card in crossfire setup' implies that the x1600 has someting to do with that, and they are completely seperate things.

or is it some other kind of set up.

1 x1600 and 1 x1900 ? no crossfire.

You can do that too.
The whole point is you have A+B+C

A and B can be crossfired or not depending on your preferences, with C doing the physics.

So you can have;

(A+B) + C in a crossfire setup.

A + B + C in a multimonitor + Physics setup (still not mentioned by ATi whether you can assigned phsyics on the fly so you may be able to Chose X1900 to do physics and X1600 to do 3 or 4th monitor support.

A + C /or/ A +B , where there's single monitor setup without Xfire, and the you have one or the other of the lower cards do physics.

You could even do that while there was another card in the rig. Let's say A is an X1900XTX, B is and X1900Xfire but not being used, and C is an X1600. Then you'd want A to do the single monitor rendering because it has the most stock power, then you could chose either the X1900Xfire or X1600 to do the phsyics depending on whether you felt you needed the extra oomph or not, and whether you might wnat to save a little power consumption if you didn't need it.

So there's a bunch of possible implementations, however we still don't know from ATi (at least I haven't seen infor from them about it) whether you be allow to have one card do the graphics and then have the other two card in Xfire to render the phsyics. This would've been important for people who currently own say two X1600s or X1800GTOs in Xfire, but wen they get the replacement R600, they'd still like to find a use for them (since hopefully the R600 will be more compeling than those 2 GTOs).

There's still a ways to go on the information side, hopefully by the time the next gen start selling we'll be in a better position for people to know what to do with their left-over cards.

 

[Vinny]

You seem to be up to date on this stuff GGA, so I might as well ask you this: any idea of that ATI RD600 chipset for the Core 2 will support multiple GPUs w/ 1 as a dedicated PPU?

 

[ipwnzu]

the whole point of the third pci-e x16 slot is for an i-dont-want-to-render-today graphics card. at least thats how i understand it. this extra piece of hardware is for "extra" things like physics calculations or tv output or avivo stuff. i dont think ati ever mentioned using more than 2 slots for crossfire graphics... if they did i think the third card (while still following the "all gpus identical" rule) could possiblly help by doing full-screen pixel shading at a less precise... umm... thing... so that it relieves them of some pixel shading work, but still has as much graphics work to do as each of the other two cards... but isnt pushed so hard that it actually has to slow them down.

i dunno. ati, so far as i have read, only ever said 2 slots for crossfire and an extra slot for physics. they also said the only requirement for a physics card is that its a radeon x1000 series or whatever will come later. i think they said x1600 or later but i dont remember details D:

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

You seem to be up to date on this stuff GGA, so I might as well ask you this: any idea of that ATI RD600 chipset for the Core 2 will support multiple GPUs w/ 1 as a dedicated PPU?

Well according to the InQ (yes they are a rumour mill basically, but we're talking about unanounced/finalized products), there will be the option of 3 PEG 16X slots (running 16 + 8 + 8 I would suspect);
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=32915

And supposedly it won't matter about whether it's an Intel or ATi or Via or nV MoBo because it will simply access the card like it would for multi-monitor or as if it were a raid controller in a 1-8X slot.

Of course much of this has yet to be seen, so alot of it is rumour and speculation, and of course everyone reserves the right to change their mind at the last minute .

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

the whole point of the third pci-e x16 slot is for an i-dont-want-to-render-today graphics card. at least thats how i understand it. this extra piece of hardware is for "extra" things like physics calculations or tv output or avivo stuff. i dont think ati ever mentioned using more than 2 slots for crossfire graphics... if they did i think the third card (while still following the "all gpus identical" rule) could possiblly help by doing full-screen pixel shading at a less precise... umm... thing... so that it relieves them of some pixel shading work, but still has as much graphics work to do as each of the other two cards... but isnt pushed so hard that it actually has to slow them down.

Actually ATi has mentioned using more than one in the past and not limiting it to just 2 either (especially after the Quad SLi gefuffle at Xmas time), but even at launch they mentioned the 'future possibilities' of the super tiling method wich is already being used by Evans an Sutherland for 32 simultaneous VPUs, all of which would render their grids at the best of their ability (within the usual Xfire guidelines). SO the potential for 3 X1900s doing supertiling is a potential option, but it's not anything they'd focus on unti they know it works well enough to launch, but that wouldn't keep a site like HKePC from trying (heck they treid AGP + PCIe Xfire).

i dunno. ati, so far as i have read, only ever said 2 slots for crossfire and an extra slot for physics. they also said the only requirement for a physics card is that its a radeon x1000 series or whatever will come later. i think they said x1600 or later but i dont remember details D:

They mentioned X1600 in their launch material but had previously mentioned X1300, and Havok had mentioned even integrated graphics chips. We disucssed this at the time, and the feeling I got was that they omitted the X1300 because of PR reasons, what's the point in mentioning the X1300 is only 85% as fast as the PPU (even if it's 30% the price) when you can show off the ~200% performance of the X1600.

I'm sure that the average user is more interested in the X1300 option/potential, but of course the hard core enthusiasts salivate at the 200% and 900% numbers and ATi would rather generate buzz around being better, not that they realy mean anything until games ship that can put some substance to those etherial numbers. And really being a 'good value' doesn't really do much to help promote was is essentially vapourware for the next little while.