Ageia's PhysX whats the deal?

[ste2425]

I first saw it when i installed my HD2600 xt an read up about PhysX and its meant to be a dedicated card that will just handle the Physics (spelt right?) of a game making them more realistic and giving you a better gaming experience whilst taking that load of the gpu. The posts ive read etc are a bit dated and i carn't find any recent news so whats the deal with it? why's Ageia's PhysX installed on my comp when i dont have a seperate card? Did they utilise it into graphics cards and it came with my HD2600 xt?

cheers ste

 

[xu^]

PhysX drivers do come with nVidia drivers now as nVidia 8xxx and higher cards can also be used as a PhysX card ,but not ATI afaik.

Some games also install the PhysX drivers when u install the game ,UT3 for one ,even if you don't have a actual PhysX card.

 

[D4S4]

Physx card itself is a piece of hardware that you can ignore. It's processor is fixed function hardware and can only animate large number of objects but it can't simulate their real behavior, for example take a metal pipe: it can animate couple of thousand metal pipes bending, but ONLY on predefined points of bending. It can't simulate where the pipe should get bent, it'll always get bent at the same point(s).

If you really want physx support, get an nVidia gfx card. On gfx cards physx engine should be able to evolve and get rid of limitations i mentioned above.

 

[ste2425]

i was just wondering why my rig has it installed as i dont own ut3 or a nvidia card

 

[D4S4]

because the government said so. XD

i guess all of the physical effects go thru the physx engine so it needs to be installed to enable any in-game physical effects, perhaps you have ghost recon or something else installed that requires physx driver... anyways, it won't hurt your rig...

 

[ste2425]

actually speaking of that i have ghost recon advanced warfighter two lol great game well if it makes games better then ill leave it haha just saw it on my installed prgrams n thought oooo whats that

 

[EiSFX]

Ya for whatever game you have installed it installed the physx driver along with it and also the physx driver does have a software mode when a physx card isent detected it will run the physx through software mode

 

[lemonadesoda]

PhysX was a great concept, but with a poor implementation and limited scope. Result = fail. Oh yes, and RIP.

 

[xu^]

its no coincidence u say its a FAIL when you have an ATI card...

If you believe it's R.I.P then fine ,just don't try to convince every1 else its a failure because in the months to come i think you will find out you are much mistaken.

Now PhysX is free with all later nvidia cards i think we will start to see a hell of a lot of games coming out in the nxt year or two that do support it,if PhysX had remained only with Agiea then you could of been right, but now things will change ,remember game development time is very long and it will take time before we see developers making use of PhysX ,but they will imo suddenly all appear at once.

 

[DarkMatter]

its no coincidence u say its a FAIL when you have an ATI card...

If you believe it's R.I.P then fine ,just don't try to convince every1 else its a failure because in the months to come i think you will find out you are much mistaken.

Now PhysX is free with all later nvidia cards i think we will start to see a hell of a lot of games coming out in the nxt year or two that do support it,if PhysX had remained only with Agiea then you could of been right, but now things will change ,remember game development time is very long and it will take time before we see developers making use of PhysX ,but they will imo suddenly all appear at once.

+1

 

[lemonadesoda]

its no coincidence u say its a FAIL when you have an ATI card...

Dont get your knickers in a twist! Apologies if my comment wasnt clear, but my comment was based on the OP's question: Ageia's PhysX, ie. HARDWARE and SOFTWARE combination, not nVidia's CUDA based PhysX HARDWARE and SOFTWARE on SOFTWARE combination. Did you know that it is *now* officially called NVIDIA PhysX?

Personally, I think nVidia's CUDA is top dollar. I'm a buyer.

In case you hadnt already noticed, Ageia is already dead. RIP.

 

[tnt23]

i just bought a ati 4870 512 meg which is ok i guess...does it mean that with for the same $$$ on a nvidia card, i d have better gfx or performance in ghost recon for example ?

 

[DarkMatter]

Dont get your knickers in a twist! Apologies if my comment wasnt clear, but my comment was based on the OP's question: Ageia's PhysX, ie. HARDWARE and SOFTWARE combination, not nVidia's CUDA based PhysX HARDWARE and SOFTWARE on SOFTWARE combination. Did you know that it is *now* officially called NVIDIA PhysX?

Personally, I think nVidia's CUDA is top dollar. I'm a buyer.

In case you hadnt already noticed, Ageia is already dead. RIP.

You have to admit your post was not clear at all.

- First of all you said PhysX, not Ageia PhysX. Under Nvidia it continues being PhysX.

- PhysX software is exactly the same it was. The compiler and hardware have changed, but it always was software on software (middleware API). The software can run in software mode or hardware mode. The hardware mode uses an API that can be compiled to many platforms, including PhysX card, Nvidia GPU and even the PS3's Cell porcessor I think.

- Ageia is as RIP as Ati.

 

[Binge]

i just bought a ati 4870 512 meg which is ok i guess...does it mean that with for the same $$$ on a nvidia card, i d have better gfx or performance in ghost recon for example ?

no

 

[Wile E]

no

Wrong. You get better gfx in Physx supported titles to the tune of more realistic explosions, cloth movement, etc., etc. It definitely makes a difference. Tho, not many current titles support Physx. And ATI has DX10.1 whereas NV doesn't so, realistically, it doesn't make a difference overall, only in the supported titles.

 

[philbrown23]

i gots me a physics card, they can be had cheap, and games like crysis and warhead, they will help stuff out alot.

 

[Wile E]

i gots me a physics card, they can be had cheap, and games like crysis and warhead, they will help stuff out alot.

Crysis and Warhead do not support Physx. There should be no difference what so ever.

 

[Hayder_Master]

Wrong. You get better gfx in Physx supported titles to the tune of more realistic explosions, cloth movement, etc., etc. It definitely makes a difference. Tho, not many current titles support Physx. And ATI has DX10.1 whereas NV doesn't so, realistically, it doesn't make a difference overall, only in the supported titles.

agree with wile E , and better if you got some good new card like 4670 , 4830 , or 4850 that's good card's in low price

 

[lemonadesoda]

- Ageia is as RIP as Ati.

LOL

Ageia "hardware" is no longer made. Their PPU is RIP. The brand name Ageia is over.

ATI has been bought by AMD. The GPUs are still being made and being developed further. Perhaps you missed that! LOL. The brand name "ATi Radeon" lives on.

 

[DarkMatter]

LOL

Ageia "hardware" is no longer made. Their PPU is RIP. The brand name Ageia is over.

ATI has been bought by AMD. The GPUs are still being made and being developed further. Perhaps you missed that! LOL. The brand name "ATi Radeon" lives on.

LOL.

Well if you think that a brand, a CEO and a pair of high ranked administratives make a company, then yes it's RIP. What was branded PhysX was and IS the software anyway, so it continues alive.

If on the other hand you think a company is it's workers, it's minds and the people leading them (as project leaders, etc.), and the infrastructure that help them, then NO it's not RIP at all. Everything is as it was when they were Ageia, intact.

Personally I couldn't care less about the brand names. The team behind PhysX software is exactly the same, organized in the same manner, and the hardware team is helping Nvidia engineers to make GeForces more PhysX capable. The hardware never was a big deal anyway, just a bunch of parallel processors, it was the instruction set what mattered and still persists.

Also on a different level (what was) Ageia, the PhysX team has as much independence to do whatever they want as Ati inside AMD. If not more, much more. Think about this, Ati always focused on high-end cards, they did release superb lower end cards, but the focus was on the high-end, just as Nvidia. They were bought and suddenly (next card) their focus is mainstream products, just the same strategy AMD was following. For me the focus is another thing that makes a company: in this case Ageia is much more alive than Ati.

All in all, Ageia is still as alive as Ati.

 

[lemonadesoda]

Credit deserved for a good argument.

 

[ste2425]

how come this turned out to be an arguement between nvida n ati?

 

[DarkMatter]

how come this turned out to be an arguement between nvida n ati?

It's not an argument between Nvidia and Ati. I mentioned Ati because it's the first example of an acquired company that came to my mind, that at the same time continues being the same company according to the principles I mentioned above.

Why Nvidia was mentioned is obvious, they own Ageia right now.

Everything that Ageia envisioned about physics in games continues under Nvidia's hood now. Instead of Ageia PPU, you can use Nvidia's GPUs right now, so it's much better for customers and of course developers because they have a much wider audience if they decide to make heavy use of PhysX. I'm sure many developers want to implement much better physics but with the lack of raw power present in CPUs that was impossible. Ageia PPU didn't change this too much because the installed base was ridiculously small (150.000 shipped AFAIK, how much bought? IMO not even a fraction of that). I was so because there were no games using it and was too expensive for a proof of concept. Ageia's PPU failed as a product, but as I said above, Ageia the company or their overall product, PhysX, didn't. I hear PhysX is the most utiliced physics API right now, more than Havok, and this adoption had to happen before Nvidia acquired them, otherwise there wouldn't be more than 50 titles coming soon, in months. Most of them probably before Christmas.

I hope this helps anwering your question much better than our previous posts.

 

[Solaris17]

Physx card itself is a piece of hardware that you can ignore. It's processor is fixed function hardware and can only animate large number of objects but it can't simulate their real behavior, for example take a metal pipe: it can animate couple of thousand metal pipes bending, but ONLY on predefined points of bending. It can't simulate where the pipe should get bent, it'll always get bent at the same point(s).

If you really want physx support, get an nVidia gfx card. On gfx cards physx engine should be able to evolve and get rid of limitations i mentioned above.

were did you get that info? phyx cards will process whatever the driver tells them too. if a pipe is ment to bent here ere and here it will do that if you die and play the level again it will bend their their and their i does not process at fixed points...a physx card doesnt remember were a pipe is supposed to bend..thats like saying a graphics card is a fixed peice of hardware and 3d is all it will do.....games differ an so does physx if you play a game and every time the pipe bends in the same spot thats what the game is telling it to do...when i run 3dmark with my physx card and take it out and run it with my nvidia card..flags move the same way..so do waves and boulders because the physx code was programmed to do something spacfic. and saying nvdias physx support is better and the engine will evolve than ill just assume you got slightely confised with yourself when typing becaus nvidia makes the drivers for ageia physx cards now...dedicated ppu's will do the same thing as a geforce card the drivers arent going to tell a geforce card anything diffirent than a ppu that woul be like the drivers telling an 8400GS to calculate diff than a 9800GT ludicris as for the physx engine evolving due to nvidias R&D money physx probably will however its an engine ....software..has nothing to do with hadware a ppu and an nvidia crd will render physix the same a ppu doesnt hve the ability to decide were it wants to bend something drivers give it a command it calculates it and sends it back then the card renders it it all depends on software i something happens the same way over and over its the games fault not the GPU and if on a diffirent game things change but the ppu does it diffirent that is inconclusive in a well coed physx proram nothing will be the same thats what physx is the only thing you cn compare...MAYBE is framerate...thats it

/rant

 

[Solaris17]

Crysis and Warhead do not support Physx. There should be no difference what so ever.

that is untrue i noticed tad bit of a framerate jump in non phsx supported games but i bealive thats because beore you instll the drivers it shows up as "pci memory" so even if physx isnt used it might use the memory on the card thats the only thing i could think of that would boost performance in non physx titles