What the s***? Whos gonna buy it when it costs almost as much as a pretty decent primary video card? Are prices better at other places, or is it expected to come down, or what?

Course so far there aren't even any games around that use it worth giving a crap about, suppose theres not alot of point in thinking about prices till there are.

Seriously though, $500 for a pci card that you can use for s*** all. I could buy so much other useful stuff with that.[/grumble]

well it is the first EVER physics card at least for consumers

with the $469 I would rather upgrade to one of these bad boys:
ASUS EN7950GX2/2PHT/1G Video Card

Product Details
Graphics Engine: GeForce 7950*2
Video Memory: 1Ghz DDR3
Engine Clock: 500 MHz
Memory Clock: 1.2 GHz (600Hmz DDR3)
RAMDAC: 400MHz
Bus Standard: PCI-Express
Memory Interface: 512-bit
Max Resolution: 2560 x 1600
HDCP: Support Yes

ASUS EN7950GX2/2PHT/1G Video Card

Physics cards aren't very useful at the moment.

Firstly, I don't think you can use it in online play. Say the server is using the card to perform collision detection, etc. There is a -massive- amount of data generated (all objects in motion, their direction, etc), which the server then has to pass to every client. Not very practical, even with broadband. Hence you see games like CS performing tricks with client-side ragdolls, etc .. which isn't actually doing anything useful but giving the impression some sort of physics simulation is going on.

So in my opinion, it will either be used for single-player games only, or for online games merely used for eye-candy such as generating waterfalls and graphical client-side explosions which don't affect the map or anything else.

With this price-tag, I can't see game developers making this card a requirement for their titles, hence it would be very difficult at this stage for the cards to take off.

Remember, Video cards don't calculate physics, CPU’s do.




I think

last edited by Lynx at 12:02:25 09/Jun/06

the game engine generates co-ordinates for each polygon in the CPU and then passes that to the video card.. the physx card just helps adjusting the location and movement of said polygons before the cpu generates object parameters. so in short.. single player or multiplayer.. it won't care. the cards assist with physics in the game.. not add the ability. there are a couple games coming shortly that are SMP(multiple cpu) enabled so that one processes game engine and a 2nd processes physics which will make the physx cards an expensive item when buying a decent dual core processor in the first place is cheaper and gives you better overall performance in pretty much everything :]

Remember, Video cards don't calculate physics, CPU’s do.

Well it really comes down to what you define as 'physics'.

If it's termed as collision detection, then graphics cards don't do any physics calulations. On the other hand, graphics cards can 'physically' simulate things like water through the use of vertex and fragment shaders, but this is limited to merely deforming the -surface- of an object only (for say, a wave effect).

Hence my definition of physics simulation would be simulating and modifying the positions of objects, not just their surfaces vertices. So no, from this point of view, graphics cards generally don't do physics simulations. They can if you want them to (look up GPGPU in google), but then you can't render graphics with them anymore :P

Remember, Video cards don't calculate physics, CPU’s do.

That depends who you listen to - nVidia, or ATI.

I’m talking about gravity, wind effects and various other forces, bullet trajectory, ragdolls other structures with joins/bones.

I’ll consider physics like refraction and reflection, radiosity, shaders and deforming/morph, “special effects”.

refraction and reflection, radiosity, shaders

^ I'd call them lighting

I imagine that deforming and morphing would be polgon based an thus fall under the physics category
I'm more interested in nVidia's new Dual GPU cards.

Course so far there aren't even any games around that use it worth giving a crap about, suppose theres not alot of point in thinking about prices till there are.

Pretty much summed it up right there, until all the mainstream games are programmed to make use of these cards they are a giant waste of money right. You would be far better to spend it on a better videocard.

I would like to point out some of the fine print about nVidia’s solution:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/havok-fx-gdc-2006.html

They state that the physics that their card will be calculating will be purely for special effects. Notice how they talk about the “Havok FX” engine, not the Havok engine.

ATI have taken a slightly different tact but ultimately it is also designed to run on the Havok FX engine, making the game look prettier and only effecting client side calculations.

The 'boundless gaming' experience is created by combining the rendering horsepower of two ATI graphics cards with a third devoted to modelling the environment.

Motherf***ing 3 of them? I don’t think so jim.

So is the AGEIA card also going to do gameplay physics or will it also be relegated to client side special effects? I haven’t read much to indicate either way.

I imagine that deforming and morphing would be polgon based an thus fall under the physics category

Read my previous post.

Deforming/morphing is SURFACE based, not object-based. All you can do is change the position vectors of vertices in a primitive (a surface) in a simple way. For example, pass a vertex's X and Z coordinates to the sine function, and use the returned values to generate a Y (or height) coordinate to simulate simple water. You don't need a physics card for something similar to this.