Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (
More info?)
"John Lewis" <john.dsl@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:431cc396.16547545@news.verizon.net...
>
http://ageia.vnewscenter.com/press.jsp?id=1125064384975
>
> However, the $64 question will be:- Which games will support
> the card ??
The next Unreal Tournament game will support it, for sure, and it's likely
any future Unreal-based games will as well. Several other companies have
said they will support it (after all, Ageia is also a software solution that
can run on a CPU). It looks like support might be comparable to Creative's
EAX.
It will remain to be seen if a PCI solution is really what customers
should buy, though. Obviously, PCI Express slots are not common on
motherboards (outside of the graphics slot and maybe a useless network card
slot- most graphics cards now days don't fit within one slot), so Ageia
doesn't have alot of choice- they have to get it to work with regular PCI.
The regular PCI bus may face bandwith issues, especially if the number of
voices in games are increased (the X-Fi supports over 120 hardware voices,
whereas the original Live only supported about 16, the Audigy about 64-
realisticly, 64 is probably more than enough, and most games don't use more
than 16-32 at most), and this is combined with a physics card on the same
bus, though Ageia claims that the PCI bus will be adequate. Even a
soundcard and a hard drive, and a lousy chipset driver, can create problems
on a PCI bus, even with otherwise good hardware.