Nice, good news from the Nvidia corner.

Yeah and how many games can use PhysX? Two?

i think it's nice, but it's still synthetic. It'll likely be like any other new tech introduced into the field... and will take several generations to actually be useful. I'll save my money untill it may or may not be useful... and with only one video card company owning it... i doubt that game developers take full advantage of it... with any luck havoc will either be fast enough, or cheap enough, or easy enough for developers to keep pushing physics based games farther without worrying about hardware... this essentially throws the 3dmark score down the toilet IMO.

It's always the same crap nowadays. You would think that after such a long time the computer industry would realize that it's cohesiveness and standards which create a healthy marketplace. It's cohesiveness of standards that makes possible USB and PCI. How does this apply to this article? Look up how many games have some physics support and how many others fake them. Without software whats the point?
This segment of the economy (computers/software)needs to have a road map as a whole, or else it's just more of the same: Quad core processors with SMT when most programs don't even scale well to 4. Build a SLI/CF rig but drivers don't scale as they should. Best of all the USB 3.0 fiasco.

agreed lopopo, see my statement about form factors using "atx" and "micro atx" as eg's

Like I give a rats a$$ about a 3D mark score. Now how about a review of the new 4850. I am sick of hearing about Nvidia all the time.

I'd be impressed if Nvidia released this 6 months ago instead of the day after the HD4850 smoked the 9800GTX.

Nvidia Smokes! Nvidia Cuda! Nvidia GTX 2XX! wow 3 in a row

some of the game that physx supports:

Game Title Developer Platform
2 Days to Vegas Steel Monkeys PC
Adrenalin 2: Rush Hour Gaijin Entertainment PC
Age of Empires III Distineer Studios PC, Mac
Age of Empires III: The WarChiefs Distineer Studios Mac
Alpha Prime Black Element Software PC
Auto Assault Net Devil PC
Backbreaker Natural Motion TBA
B.A.S.E. Jumping Digital Dimension Development PC
Bet on Soldier: Blackout Saigon Kylotonn Entertainment PC
Bet on Soldier: Blood of Sahara Kylotonn Entertainment PC
Bet on Soldier: Blood Sport Kylotonn Entertainment PC
Beowulf Ubisoft PS3, X360
Bladestorm: The Hundred Years' War Koei PS3, X360
Captain Blood Akella PC, X360
Cellfactor: Combat Training Artifical Studios, Immersion Games PC
Cellfactor: Revolution Artifical Studios, Immersion Games PC
City of Villains Cryptic Studios PC
Crazy Machines II FAKT Software PC
Cryostasis Action Forms PC
Dark Physics The Game Creators PC
Desert Diner Tarsier Studios PC
Dragonshard Atari PC
Dusk 12 Orion PC
Empire Above All IceHill PC
Empire Earth III Mad Dog Software PC
Entropia Universe MindArk PC
Fallen Earth Icarus Studios PC
Fury Auran Games PC
Gears Of War Epic Games PC, X360
Gluk'Oza: Action GFI Russia PC
GooBall Ambrosia software Mac
Gothic 3 Piranha Bytes PC
Gunship Apocalypse FAKT Software PC
Heavy Rain Quantic Dream PC
Hero's Jorney Simutronics PC
Hour of Victory nFusion Interactive X360
Hunt, The Orion PC
Huxley Webzen, Inc PC, X360
Infernal Metropolis Software PC
Inhabited island: Prisoner of Power Orion PC
Joint Task Force Most Wanted Entertainment PC
Kuma\WAR Kuma Reality Games PC
Magic ball 3 Alawar Entertaiment PC
Mass Effect BioWare PC, X360
Medal of Honor: Airborne EA Los Angeles PC, X360
Metro 2033 4A Games PC
Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire BEC PS3
Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia Artificial Studios PC, X360
Monster Truck Maniax Legendo Entertainment PC
Myst Online: URU Live Cyan Worlds PC
Open Fire BlueTorch Studios PC
Paragraph 78 Gaijin Entertainment PC
Pirates of the Burning Sea Flying Lab Software PC
PT Boats: Knights of the Sea Akella PC
Rail Simulator Kuju Entertainment Ltd PC
Red Steel Ubisoft Paris Wii
Rise Of Nations: Rise Of Legends Big Huge Games PC
Roboblitz Naked Sky Entertainment PC, X360
Sacred 2 ASCARON Entertainment PC
Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened Frogwares Game Development Studio PC
Showdown: Scorpion B-COOL Interactive PC
Silverfall Monte Cristo PC
Sovereign Symphony Ceidot Game Studios PC
Sonic and the Secret Rings SEGA Wii
Speedball 2 Kylotonn Entertainment PC
Stalin Subway, The Orion PC
Stoked Rider: Alaska Alien Bongfish Interactive Entertainment PC
Switchball Atomic Elbow PC
Tension Ice-pick Lodge PC
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter GRIN PC, X360
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 GRIN, Ubisoft Paris PC, X360
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas Ubisoft Montreal PC, PS3, X360
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent (multiplayer) Ubisoft Shanghai PC, X360
Tortuga: Two Treasures Ascaron Entertainment PC
Two Worlds Reality Pump PC
Ultra Tubes Eipix PC
Unreal Tournament 3 Epic Games PC, PS3, X360
Unreal Tournament 3: Extreme Physics Mod Epic Games PC
Warfare GFI Russia PC
Warmonger: Operation Downtown Destruction Net Devil PC
W.E.L.L. Online Sibilant Interactive PC
Winterheart's Guild Zelian Games PC, X360
WorldShift Black Sea Studios PC

I personally believe that 3 way SLI is stretching it in terms of a typical PC enthusiast, even for a power user or custom PC builder. Right now the driver and software support doesn't warrant such a purchase or ridiculousness. It makes more sense, to me at least, to work on producing a better SINGLE graphics card capable of the same, if not more feats, than multiple ones stringed together in some "ganged" configuration sharing almost the same bus lines. I have to say although I am an avid NVidia fanboy, I have little experience with ATI cards (except for my desktop which is 2 years old and has an ATI radeon XPress 700 card which was "state of the art" at the time). What the future will bring, in terms of SLI, is really a question of who's willing to support such extravagant hardware configurations.

@Techguy911

Any how many of those would you actually play? Compare that to the amount of big titles that have come out since PhysX was introduced. The question is who cares if Nvidia has PhysX support when all of about 20 big name games support it. Unless you like the inflated 3Dmark score.

There is a a whole list of games that use PhysX on Nvidia website including one of my favorites Unreal 3

I like how they don't even tell you what version\year of 3DMark they are talking about.

Techguy911: who plays those games, though (outside of Mass Effect and UT3...both of which I am surprised to see on that list)???

since nvidia and ati are starting to add on physics to their cards. it would be worth it for the programmers to use a physics engine. they're not going to spend time for physics for the 2% of the pc gaming world. this is a good move, tomorrow games will support physics and i love it

i don't even know anyone with a physics card and that's why there's no games that support it.

there will be ati headlines all next week when they release their cards, it seams like toms never wants to post early reviews. because half of them are fake

Couple of things:

1. Is there anyone who really cares about synthetic benchmarks over the real ones? What good does getting a high score in 3DMark is when it doesn't mean much in real games. If these were meaningful, 2900XT would be the king of the hill when it came out.

2. Are you guys sponsored by NVidia? Like many have already posted, 3 out of 5 topics in the Headline section are about NVidia, while 4850 review is nowhere to be found. You know the card is on sale now and it has single handedly brought the price of 9800GTX down by 40% in month and a half? And we are talking about GDDR3 version of the card. What will GDDR5 do? If 4870 better than 4850 as much as 3870 was better than 3850, in a month GTX 260 and 280 will be at least 25% cheaper, if not more (and your recommendation of a $400 card will look very silly).

I am not a fanboy (I own 8800GTS). I am just glad that ATI is back and hopefully can flex its muscles hard enough for NVidia to realize that charging $400+ for a video card is ridiculous. Seems that days of ripping customers off are over.

3. What is up with the red circles on the picture? You guys know that MS Paint is included with your computer?

If only NVidia had allowed XFire to function on their motherboards, maybe ATI would have sided with the Green Team against Intel, and selected PhysX instead of Havoc. Perhaps then the industry would finally start a shift towards a unified standard. With so many developers financially dependent on NVidia's support at this point, however, this now seems less likely than ever.

The lack of a unified standard, is *not a good thing*. Vantage has it's uses, but it is, in the end, a synthetic, and does not always accurately reflect the performance we as end users see in games.

As someone that owns a NVidia based system (NForce 6 motherboard and SLI'd 9 series GPU's)I am very happy to see the promise of built in physics support through CUDA coming to fruition. I am less excited at the lack of a unfied standard that all GPU's can support, however.

That being said, I have read all I care to about CUDA, or NVidia's laughable claim that the CPU is "dead technology". I hope to see at least some sort of nod towards ATI's major accomplishment sometime next week when I check the site. I am dissappointed that the most exciting thing since the 8800GT to hit mainstream gaming gets launched by the Red Team this week and 2/5 stories continue to feature NVidia propaganda (the GTX280 review not withstanding, I very much enjoyed the review of that card).

I am confused, The game physics library (dll) for most games come from Ageia. The hardware version like physics processor, also come from Ageia.

Nvidia bought Ageia, right?
AMD bought ATI right?

So when it comes down to physics in gameplay, this article sounds like AMD is leader in physics in gameplay. How is this posible when Nvidia owns Ageia? Who's the sucker here? Wake-up people.

IS there a reason why AMD miraculously has leadership in physics in gameplay? AMD only bought ATI. What's the matter with you pc gamers? Where's your brains? Duh, did you crash it in oblivion? Again?

The article should start with a rephrase bold font saying "once again, Nvidia take great leadership in physics in gameplay showing everyone how AMD is playing catchup yet again..."

Hey, I love AMD, I love AMD cpu, but AMD did not buy Ageia. Period. Any question?

this article has me confused - i think i miss read it. does the new gpu logic make the cpu faster in 3dmark06? wow - my bad - no ones perfect!

Call me crazy but from what I have seen the 4850 in most cases edges out the 9800 GTX, and the 4850 is beaten out by the GTX 260. So if this 9800 GTX+ is in fact slightly faster than the 4850 does it not encroach upon the GTX 260 by a very close margin, for what would be roughly half the price? If in fact true this would make me as a potential customer call into the question the worthiness of the 260 as a viable product.

It is much cheaper to buy xbox 360 or PS3. While Console games are taking over the shaft space in game store, 1 GTX 280 = 1 xbox 360 arcade + PS3 40G + Wii.

ya i agree the power usage is less too - smaller case and smaller psu

HHC = newbie--->console vs pc is inmaterial and newbie knows you can not play crysis on and xbox of ps or wii. try a good mmp with an xbox you get pwn'd - so go back the rock and the console under it! lol!

The way I see it is:
- there are lots of games with PhysX BUT
- only few are hit titles
- and even those few will run more than fine on 9800GTX+ anyway

So what's the point of playing? Those 2-3 special levels in UT3? That's DEMO as much as I'm concerned. So unless it's a game like Crysis that has 25fps when maxed out, and with Physx it's got 35+ - I'm not falling for it.

As much as I've heared, only few games even work with Physx right now (Cellfactor and UT3), and others just don't recognize it. So it's either going to take a lot more deevlopment time for nVidia drivers, or a lot of patching of existing games.

Soooo... currently, and in near future - this is usless. And in a year or two when it becomes important enough, we'll all be buying new cards anyway for 2x-4x performance that 9800GTX offers now.

Yes HHC while I must admit console gaming is defiantly on the rise and as somebody who owns a PS3 (bought it for Blu-Ray) and knows many people with 360's console gaming cannot compare to PC gaming at least from a graphical standpoint. Yes many of the games are good and some downright great but due to low texture sizes and complete lack of AA they just look bad. Yes the PS3 and Xbox360 are the bleeding edge Hi-def console gaming machines but when it comes right down to it they are basically running the med-low equivalent of a PC game and up scaling the output.

LuxZg I am forced to completely agree with you on that point, and it saddens me to do so, not having anything against you but it leaves a sour feeling not seeing any real improvements from team green. This newest series of cards is indeed impressive from a purely engineering prospective but I truly did expect far greater things. I really hope the persons over at ATI can pick up the slack, even if they don’t deliver a top performer I am generally pleased by the performance improvements made over their previous generations.

physx never did that much - all this is a bench mark thing - we all remember nvidia is bench mark cheater from years ago!

the 4850 looks really good i think amd and nvidia will be close then the 4870 and 4870x2 come out

wow big mistake, this was the quote I was responding to and thank you Tom's for not providing an edit button like every other site:

Care to play Vantage multiplayer? with CUDA support guys? hehehehe it Smokes ur pc

i think Nvidia owns the Headlines the same way they own/influence most of our games...its sad...

9800GTX+ is like 8800GT rev.3.