Hey, does anyone know if Ageia is going to be making a PPU for the PCI-X bus? I mean... I went to their website and there really isn't a lot of info on... well anything. I also googled this and my results weren't much better. Any/all input is always welcome.
To my knowledge there very few games that takes advantage of PhysX cards. Too few for many people to drop $$$ for it.
It's a PCI card and I don't think it is worth it. But it's your money, not mine so if you want one then don't let me stop you. Supposedly more games will support it the future, by then the price should come down too.
Are there different board configurations available such as increased memory or PCI-Express?
At this point, every AGEIA PhysX Accelerator is configured as a PCI 2.1 add-in board with 128MB GDDR3. The PCI interface is more than adequate for handling complex physics calculations, so changing the design to PCI Express would be simply to address slot availability on the motherboard, not to enhance raw performance.
AGEIA has no plans at this time to create a retail PCI Express product or to introduce additional memory configurations. Some system integrators do offer a PCI Express 1x version of the PhysX Accelerator as a part of a new system configuration.
Lol, I'm not much of a gamer... I'm looking at it for like lab work with a lot of physics calculations and such. Haven't found a lot of benchies, but if they make it in a PCI-X, not PCI-e, interface and it has a noticeable performance increase with more professional work then I might consider it, but for now.. my only PCI slot belongs to my soundcard.
Oh, and btw, I was talking about PCI-X not PCI express... two different busses dude...
Why? What good could come of it?
Ageia offers a gamer product and PCI-X is hardly something found on gaming mainboards. A product on that basis would be catered to the professional users that have almost no use for Ageias cards anyway. It makes no sense to offer such a product.
PhysX is not specifically a gamer product. Ageia originally pitched it at the gamer market because they are the ones who are likely to spend money on it. Ageia have been trying to get into physics co-processing work for some time.
The specialised PPUs would be ideal for all kinds of things like, say, wind tunnel calculations.
Ageia isn't having a great deal of success getting them adopted, though, the current trend is for HPCs because they're "sexy", and hence the relatively simple PPUs aren't being bought. Time will tell.
The reason there isn't a PCI-X board is that there's no need for one when a PCI bus transfers all the data that's required!
I was gonna get it for my XSI Softimage which has features that can take advantage of the PhysX PPU, only they haven't shown any benchmarks. I was just looking into whether or not it was worthwhile because I can't afford to get like a Quadro FX5600 or 4600 right now, that's really it. The only reason I was looking for it on the PCI-X bus was because I have no PCI slots left and my mobo only has a PCI-X 100 and 133 slot open, but if I remember correctly the bus would run down to the speed of the PPU... which might slow down my RAID controller. Hopefully this explains my madness... lol.
To mkaibear:
As i said, there is no need of Ageias offering in the professional space. Most heavy floating points calculations are done by clusters and now even Nvidia offers something better with it´s CUDA project.
It is important to note that once you enter the professional space you enter a different price segment too. If the software needed for the calculations costs 20.000$ or more per license you can bet that the corporation won´t go cheap on the machine running it. Or if one of the Users sitting at it costs 10K$ a month, skimping on the hardware is a bad idea. And in that price segment there are way better solutions than ageias 200$ physix card.
Maybe for small companies or independent developers/scientists, but that´s a market that can use PCIe or even a cheap PCI product. Most workstations do have enough PCI slots to accomodate a single Card if it is needed.
And as you said, there is no benefit to move to another interface unless they manage to saturate the PCI bus. Once they do that, they enter the playing field of the big boys and i highly doubt that Ageia can hold their own competing with those already competing in that market. Heck, they can barely keep standing in the desktop market.
Quote :
he only reason I was looking for it on the PCI-X bus was because I have no PCI slots left and my mobo only has a PCI-X 100 and 133 slot open, but if I remember correctly the bus would run down to the speed of the PPU... which might slow down my RAID controller. Hopefully this explains my madness
That´s what i thought, but i wasn´t sure whether you were really using any of your PCI-X slots or not. Plugging that PCI card into a PCI-X slot can slow the other one down. Yet, as i have read, there are boards that connect their different PCI-X slots independent (using different channels) from each other to prevent them from slowing down. You should check your mainboard and see if you´re lucky.
Actually, there would be a basis for Ageia to sell to researchers, etc - for specialised tasks it's a lot faster and an *awful* lot cheaper than HPCs. However, money is going into HPCs at the moment because they are sexier - and if your average university chancellor or managing director is going to be spending money on hardware, they like to get big racks of boxes. Gives them something to look at.
I'm not sure they'll be around long enough to make a PCI-X version of that wonderful card. How many people do you know that are buying those things today? Well, I don't know ANYONE who has one nor do I know anyone planning to purchase one... kinda hard to stay in business when you have one product that nobody wants.
Actually, there would be a basis for Ageia to sell to researchers, etc - for specialised tasks it's a lot faster and an *awful* lot cheaper than HPCs. However, money is going into HPCs at the moment because they are sexier - and if your average university chancellor or managing director is going to be spending money on hardware, they like to get big racks of boxes. Gives them something to look at.
You´re probably right, but that´s beside the point. Ageia offers a hardware solution but they have to penetrate the software market too and that´s just not happening. They haven´t even manged to really establish their hardware. Which manager in his right mind would buy a solution that might just vanish within the next 5 years, a solution with unknown reliability and compatibility. Imagine Nvidia and/or AMD coming up with their physic solution. All the software and hardware tailored for it would be worthless once they mess it up - not to mention the people trained for the software etc. The market Ageia is in is not really stable and they can´t offer stability themself like other (larger) corporations can. Buying an IBM numbers cruncher to do the calculations might be slower or not, but it is highly unlikely that IBM will stop selling or supporting within the next ten years.
That´s what you pay for in the professional segment. Reliability and stability.
In addition the customer base for those specialised tasks is probably not interesting enough for Ageia to start working in that field. After they made their first card they stopped doing anything apart from some lousy marketing. If they are not even willing to invest into the mainstream gamer market, they can´t seriously think about going into some specialised niche market.
Yeah, I get what you're saying, and it kinda does make sense. Now I do know someone with a PhysX card, but that's because he was stupid and read on the box of some game that it "ran better" with the PPU. Well, it didn't really do anything except lower his fps and now he's pissed. He's also thinking about getting one of those gaming NIC, which I told him not to since it's a HUGE waste of money, but that's just the kind of person he is. Yarg, well, looks like I'll just have to wait and see. If not, then my other PCI-X channel is going to an HD video capture card.
Probably not the most helpful post but i suspect you are out of luck for PCI-X accelerators. I think new boards will use PCI-E from this point on. Workstation motherboards, CELL development boards, ATI and nvidia 'stream processors' are all using PCI-E.
Lol, I wasn't dead-set on getting it. Just a little curious to see if it would be worth it for more professional work ya know? I mean... I just dropped about $5k on a dual-xeon WS and I'm not exactly in the mood to spend a lot of cash right now. Just... investigating ya know?
