I realize that there aren't many games that will support PhysX but UT 2007 will. This alone makes it worth it to me and any other games that support it will just be extra. I don't plan on making a purchase immediately so prices may fall even more by the time I get one. I know that the ASUS model comes with GRAW but that is irrelevant to me as I already own the game. I am only looking to know about the quality of the hardware and the performance compared to each other.
PhysX cards are cons... you can even come to imagine on how disappointed I was after seeing the reviews and benchmarks on the card. Too expensive for what it provides, and doesn't have the necessary game support. Until the prices drop on those things, or until some other company provides a competing solution to act as an alternative (hell, if a DirectX like standard were to be released, then that would be awesome) then there's not much point in getting the card. Save your money now and wait until UT2007 does come out, and then splash out on whatever is around to accelerate physics.
I agree. Your system wouldn't even be a candidate for a PhysX card because of your video card. Since the PhysX card calculates for more particles in the game, your video card has to render all of them.
Sorry to say, your Radeon X800XL won't have the power to render all of the new eye-candy. But don't feel too bad - even an X1950XTX Crossfire system probably wouldn't be able to handle all of the extra stuff on-screen.
If you upgraded the video card as well, you might get a better experience. But I'd say wait, you'll get better stuff at lower prices when the applications you want to play with are actually released.
I'm aware that my current video card is lacking and will not be able to handle the extra strain of having to render more particles. I plan to upgrade to a DX10 card upon release. This card was just to hold me over for my new build until they come out.
As I mentioned before, I don't plan to make a purchase right now and I also expect the prices to drop. To those that mentioned that PPU calculations will be calculated on GPU, from what I've seen that option will only be available with a multi-GPU setup, which I don't plan to purchase (unless they are able to put it all on 1 physical board). Spending $500-$600 on one high end GPU is enough, I don't need to spend twice or triple that amount just to calculate physics through a multi-GPU setup. Now, if I'm wrong and a single card can perform the calculations, then I won't purchase a PhysX card. Since no one knows 100% (or at least from what I can see) that a PhysX card will be a waste, I was just looking to get some info on a few different models that I may purchase in the future. The fact that I didn't put "Don't waste your $$$ on a PhysX card" in the poll wasn't a mistake. I'm aware that PhysX cards may be a huge waste, or they may become a worthwhile accessory.
They are worthless at the moment. A graphics card is vastly more powerful than it, and yet because of what it does, it still manages to overload the gfx card. Also, with it being on a PCI-bus, the latency problems are enough to cause graphical lag as the gfx tries to get the necessary data from the PhysX card in order to render in the physics effects. And just to let you know... with ATI's physics solution, you don't have to have two of the same gfx cards in order to achieve crossfire physics. You could have a high end graphics card doing the graphical work, whilst a budget mid-range card could do the physics calculations. That way, the latency problems would be reduced significantly since both cards would be on the PCI-e 16x bus, and you would get all the nice physics you desire.
A PhysX card is a waste now, and maybe Nvidia or ATI will make one in the future or include it in their high end. But all this is like looking at a crystal ball that's cloudy. Nothing can be seen for sure, so no action of any type can acurately be made. And I don't know anyone with a crystal ball for that that matter.
If you want to save some money for a PhysX card that may or may not exist in the future, then its your choice. I think most of us want real stuff that we can plan for.
i normally would ignore this poost except it is a bit different. one thing that needs to be understood is that the OP doesn't seem tro understand that asus and bfg are not PPU makers merely card makers just like gfx cards. the hardware that is used is pretty much the same as it will be the ageia chip and some components which meet their desired specs i would imagine. so basically go with which one is cheapest and has the best customer support and warranty.
then again you could get a brain and not get one at all.
As for justifying having the card, there's not much there yet. Ageia promises something like 100+ physx supporting titles for next year including UT2007. But, with havok FX having no support (no developer wants GPU physics yet), ageia's looking like the way to go untill microsoft creates direct physics if you want hardware physics.
i normally would ignore this poost except it is a bit different. one thing that needs to be understood is that the OP doesn't seem tro understand that asus and bfg are not PPU makers merely card makers just like gfx cards. the hardware that is used is pretty much the same as it will be the ageia chip and some components which meet their desired specs i would imagine. so basically go with which one is cheapest and has the best customer support and warranty.
then again you could get a brain and not get one at all.
First off I realize that ASUS and BFG are just manufacturers of Ageia based cards. I know that the specs are similar but one can be better than the other. For example, the ASUS model seems to have a better HSF thus the reliability may be better. People seem to be replying to this topic as if I'm asking if a PhysX card is worth it and I'm not. I specifically said I was looking into getting one. For all I know they may not be worth a damn in a few months and if so I will not purchase one. The sole purpose of this thread was to find the better of the two cards and nothing more. StrangerStranger you have no right to question my intelligence. If you can't/won't answer my question then I would prefer you follow your own advice and ignore this post.
you should make it more clear in your post then as it looked like that to me. also, i am the only bloody one who took the time to read your post and get what yoiu were actually asking about. be grateful for that.
i actually think i answered your question in that the differences will be so small it aint worth too much consideration.
This guy is unbelievable! everybody is saying the same thing to him: that theres no point in buying a PhysX card. And he's saying which one is cheapest!!!! Go buy anything you like. Throw your money away since you apparently don't need them.
WRONG again hehe, the physics card will NEVER really come out that great simply because the game must be coded with a physics engine, and with the multicore (4 cores and above) like Core 2 duo and AMDs quad core Processor, you can single one core out for physics, one for graphics, one for traditional processing and one for rendering data for the graphics card, so the CPU running at 3GHz will render physics calculations faster than the phsyx card, graphics cards will also not really accel in the physics market, its already happening games being made for the quad core processors, using an entire core for physics, graphics card venbders will realise that physics built into graphics cards are a dumb bet even at best expecially when they have a 3GHz CPU with archetectural point to point interconnects to send physics calcs VERY fast
Current-gen CPUs don't have the floating point processing power for dynamic physics. Unless Quad-cores are given FPU accelerators, then you might as well buy into the GPU physics solution. A gfx card is vastly more powerful than the physx processor, so the point behind PhysX is lost. Sure, you'll have hardly any latency, but the CPU will not be able to cope with the processing. The CPU has to manage system resources, game logic, AI, etc. Even if you dedicate a core entirely to physics processing, the floating point processing power is NOT sufficent to allow such a solution to offer what PhysX offers (even though it still kills the system). GPU solutions only offer graphical physics effects, such as interactive fog and particle effects, things which would be done BETTER if kept within the graphics card architecture. Hell here is a whole pdf on ATI's solution just to give an idea.
Don’t worry about it mate half of this guys in here are all cock heads anyways and they don’t even help you in the quest for the answer that you posted. As you can see most of these retards misread your post and tend to say there opinions about wasting money …..but I tend to think money comes and goes so if you decide to buy one then who care what the tards think. If you were after information about it then you should say so in your post title but then again nobody would have replied because most of them can’t see past there own noses. There just in here to say what they would do not helping you in gaining knowledge about a product.
