Physics Processing Unit

C

CeeBee

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Saw this at Inter Computers in Pta yesterday,
At first I thought... odd looking graphics card, no plugs on the side to plug in your graphix card, then I saw its actually a PCI Physics processing card, to enhance gameplay, take some work off the CPU & GPU.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=274

Any of you guys have one, hows the gaming improvement?
The gameplay screenshots with enhanced graphics look quite enticing....
Wonder if it will be such an improvement to be: middle range graphics card + physics card => better than high end GPU??

"ASUS PhysX P1 Card powered by AGEIA PhysX processor, things don't just look real, and they act real and feel real. Prepare to be shocked by stunning massively destructible buildings and landscapes; explosions that cause collateral damage; lifelike characters with spectacular new weapons; realistic smoke, fog and oozing fluids are all now possible with the ASUS PhysX P1!
Brings your PC gaming experience to a new dimension with never before seen physics effects "
 
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this product failed to launch - no games that support it. Rather get a better GPU
 
I see it is still quite expensive too... R2900-R3000 at various SA online shops...
 
Yeah, complete waste of cash. A game needs to support it for it to do anything and very, very few do. There were some nasty comparisons as well where games performed better without it. Just never gained any momentum thank god. Thats all we need, another expensive card to add to our machines and upgrade every 18 months.
 
Basically "GPGPU" killed physics processors. GPU's can do the same sort of calculations, they just need the capability, which if I'm not mistaken the x1900 and most dx10 cards now have.
 
DOOMIE61 said:
yeah if you have a 8800 GTS OR GTX there is not reason for it as they already have one
Click to expand...
Well, not entirely true. Like the ATI cards, NVIDIA scrapped the GPU and took the 'stream procesing' route (Think CPU). The good old 'GPU' is now a software layer, which means they can transform the 8800 / X2900 into a PPU via drivers.

This articled explains it pretty well:
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTA3OSwsLGhlbnRodXNpYXN0

Though the age of the PPU is not here yet. Maybe the new Unreal Engine 3.0 might kick start it though.

EDIT: Here is a nice article regarding Streamed Processing
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060918-7763.html
 
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