Had to register jst to respond to this thread! ;>
1. no game out yet to show the power of the PhysX card
2. the game in this article had limited support for the PPU, they just slapped it in and added debris etc.
3. there will be a long time before a game comes that REALY uses the power of the PPU in a awesome and good way except added debris and bigger explosions etc.
4. Clipping is what the game devs program into the game, a PPU cant remove clipping or realy do anything unless its programed into the game, so the ones that think all a PPU can do is add some debri because thats all we seen will change their minds once a game realy use the card to the max comes.
5. the card takes of math loads, AI, physics, objects being deformable and dynamic, is what the card is designed to do, a CPU (even the fastest ones today) cannot match the computing power of a PhysX card, they are built different and are realy more different then some seems to think. if game developers learn to use this computing power in the right way except just adding debris in the last second before release the load of the system will be drasticly reduced.
6. there are several ways to utelize teh card, more eyecandy that ofcourse stresses your grafix card more, or realy smart AI never before possible, or games that havent even been tested yet as computers have to many bottlenecks. lighting calculations, AI, objects, dynamic stuff, pretty mutch anything that uses big math calculations that would normaly make any CPU die(yes even the future quad cores). a CPU cannot be compared to a real physics specific device in calculation power.
alot of ppl dont realy understand what it can be used for, game developers are the ones that hails this card more then anyone, as it can allow them to do so mutch more then whats possible today. gamers ofcourse wants value for their cash! i cant disagree with that! 😀 they did release the card wrong and with to little support, but their a small company and doesnt have the money that the giants have, they probably released it because they had no shoice to wait any longer. the giants are helping out a bit though as they wants this card to make it, they know what it can do for gaming and most of the big titles comming will have support. how mutch they utelize the card remains to be seen though.. im sure hoping they use the card unlike the game in this article ^^ thats whats missing, a game that realy uses the card so ppl can understand it aint a GFX card or a pci CPU, its a very powerfull card that calculates math and thats the biggest bottleneck in computers today as CPUs arent designed for it in the same way. Mhz/memmory etc doesnt matter and cant be compares with CPUs as the designs are extremely different and their made for 2 different things, a CPU is a general processor, you can compare it with a car and a top fuel race car. the car you drive to work in, the top fuel you race in ;> they work kinda the same way but under the hood theres more difference than meets the eye, nobody sane would bother driving a top fuel to work every day, it wasnt designed for it, and a normal volvo aint something you use to race top fuel with.. might have been a bad example lol! ppl might not get it..
the article was good, however i felt the article makers and basicly most ppl dont understand the job a PPU is designed for. its not designed to just add a little more debri to games, that was just **** support the game devs made. I realy hope a games comes that uses the card fully, only then would ppl stop being sceptical and see what it was realy meant to do. basicly noone seems to know what its made to do, and the article was kinda bad in that sence as they didnt realy sound like they knew what it could do either except for more debri. mostly complaints of a small company trying to let game developers get more power to play with ^^ once the game devs knows how to use the card, and the card starts to show what its capable of the story will turn around imo.
untill then dont buy it unless you want to help Aegia basicly.
the ATI, Nvidia stuff.. a GPU is better at these calculations then a CPU, but it doesnt come close to PhysX.. it would help but be pretty mutch more useless and require upgrades every few months as the cards get more powerfull, with a PhysX you wont have to upgrade as the potential power is more then enough for a couple of years ^^ IF game devs start using the card.. using the card to max require alot more programing in games, a reason why it will take a long time before we get to see what the card can do, or should i say feel what the card can do? as it aint eyecandy this card is built for ^^ its game realism, having stuff happening in games that would happen in real life, crash a jet plane in a forest and watch realistic fire burn down the trees and every single part of the plane, ground, trees etc act fully realistic at the crash! that requires looaads of programing so again its up to the game devs to show the power they can bring out of the card. a CPU would fry trying to attempt sutch a thing, a GPU would be able to show the grafix of it, but the calculations would only be doable on a PhysX. with that said you need a hardcore grafix card to enable the eyecandy of a fully realistic plane crash, and a good CPU, in combination with the PPU, thats why they referr it as the 3rd weel in the circle. however it depends on the game devs and how they utelize the card, they can make a hardcore FPS game and only use the card for extreme realistic AI, objects etc, in that case no added eyecandy so it would reduce system load, on the other hand some game devs may deside to make a hardcore game with explosions everywhere and tons of textures flying around = added GFX work, it may reduce performance, but the purpous then was to add to the game play.
its up to the game devs to show the cards power and how it can be used, be it for extreme realism and calculations or extra eyecandy that loads your GPU even more is up to them. as said it requires lots of programing time so wait until some game dev spends the time to explore it. as for the first PhysX game with support for it, the support stinks and ppl thinks this is what the card does, so the card gets dissed because a game used it to add a bit more debri.. and article makers dont realy help as they say the card is meant to improe performance, thats not true it depends on how the game devs use the card. most will use it to add eyecandy, others will use it for AI, both are different with system load and ofcourse more textures impacts the system performance but then the card was used for gameplay and game experience, not releaving calculations from the system but adding more calculations for game play purpouses.
oh well im done, dont buy this card until you know and seen what it can do, and that will take time, and even mroe time considering its a small company, but the big ones are helping them out and seems to believe in them so i will too ^^ just give it time and let game developers use the card to show what they can realy do with it. the games will be amazing once they start taking the extra time to utelize the card, but sadly development time = money, so again it will take some time.. ^^
just wait and see, sorry for the spelling and gramar but atleast you didnt hear me try saying it ;> that would sound bad... xD hope some stops thinking the card automaticly does magic stuff without game devs putting the time to program it... (remove clippings etc..)
edit: oh and Havok! if they make that engine have hardware support for PhysX, that engine would do what it does except it wouldnt load your CPU of GFX card with the calculations and it would become 100 times more powerfull and speed of calculations would be amazing, it would load the PhysX card and thats what the card is for. the card aint a stand alone upgrade, it needs the code and calculations to be usefull, dump havok stuff on PhysX and they can evolve that engine and add 100 times more realism and calculations with the same impact as the original engine would have on your system. THAT is what the card is for ^^ i hope some understands it a bit better now, tried to explain it as good as i could. go and make Havok dump the calculations on PhysX instead of your GPU, CPU and memmory and they can rule the world of game engines 😀 no software, cpu clogging, bandwith usage, memmory usage, just pure hardware! remember 3D cards debu? well its kinda like that but for calculations, calculations are done by drivers, game code, api etc and its loaded onto the CPU, uses lots of memmory and system resources that is used for tons of other stuff, add hardware that takes over and your game engine becomes 100 times more powerfull as you can do ALOT more stuff then you could before and it wouldnt impact system performance or resources as the card takes over 😀 but that is if the card is used that way by game devs, game engines. if its used to put more stuff, explosions, textures etc in games that you couldnt because of other bottlenecks expect GFX, and other resources to have more work with the added eyecandy.. and lol @ rendering comment by the guy above.. proves how little ppl know about this ;> it adds load to the system if used that way, it removes load from the system if used that way, its up to the game developers and Havok is the perfect thing that could be used with PhysX and realy show what it can do and why it was made, ask the devs that made Havok how it would allow them to do more stuff by loading the PhysX instead of the system resources ^^ they need to be creative to make an engine that works well with the other limited resources, with that creativity and PhysX system resources can be spared, engine speeded up, more stuff can be added to the engine that doesnt impact the rest of the system, the rest of the system resources will be free so the hardware specs for running the game would drop dramaticly etc.. all ahrdware specs would drop in all games if they made game engines use PhysX, and having a engine like Havok utelizing PhysX to the max the limits game devs have had in making physics, AI, and all that stuff would be released and they could do magic to games ^^ the huge amount of AI would make for some dmn good games! physics would get a boost and realism like computer generated movies but in real time(no not the gfx.. but movements, flows, things that require calculation power, true realistic lipsyncs, true hair movements, cloth, fluids, grass, clouds, cars with real mass feelings and impacts that feels real etc. the list is endless and those things are computed on a very limited CPU, using memmory and system resources when they dont need to use anything of them, except GFX card, realistic water sprays, waterfalls, cloth use grafic, but wont use the limited CPU or memmory and the power at wich calculations could be done would realy improve 100eds of times... so dont confuse things and wait for the power to be used ^^ Havok is the perfect way to show what the cards can do to releave stress, bottlenecks, basicly completely removing bandwith problems witch limits AI to be simplified, dynamics, real liquids etc etc.. showing off PhysX with some extra debri particles is the biggest flunk ever xD its like taking the most powerfull GFX card today and play a 2D game on it thats 10 years old, except its about calculations, physics etc and not grafix.
edit2: think about it, in FPS games when bodies fall, how realistic do they fall? with resources freed animations could improve greatly and how a guys arm reacts and flexes or even breaks of at animated movie quality(loads GFX but as said resources freed, GFX cards would become way more powerfull and could realy display grafix is sutch detail when unloaded from most of the useless stuff they do today) and with the great grafix comes great physics in watching that arm break like it was real, helmets on soldiers falling in battle would deform realisticly as a tank drives over them, the bodies would fall realisticly and not like they do today. a raindrop falling on a leaf could make the leaf move realisticly and behave naturaly, with grafix improving PhysX helps the grafix by not letting system resources be used and bandwith used by the grafix to be occupied. the realism that can be achived if the game developers put the time into it is almost unreal 😀 i want leafs to be real, i want rain to move stuff and wind forces to be realistic and blow stuff away realisticly if the mass/force is big enough to actualy do it. a huge storm moving windows, cars, trucks, blowing of roofs, even making the leafs and small objects swirl and move realisticly at the same time as tiny raindrops hitting tiny stuff as leafs makes the stuff react exactly realistic and even if the leaf is hit in the air by a raindrop it would react realistic. that is the PPU potential, that is impossible with GFX cards or CPUs, it works together with them but they cant calculate that stuff. i sure hope ppl reads this 2nd edit to try and picture how a game could be and everything in it could be.
but as said dont buy one yet >.< let the game devs make a game engine that uses the hardware and not just patch the engine to add debri and useless stuff.. that game engine is Havok... 😀 someone make it happen!
/ragger in a volvo
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