AGEIA physics cards, due in december?

[Rakeesh]

This is coming from the inquirer though, so take it with a grain of salt.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=26868

Meanwhile, an up and coming MMO is planned to take advantage of this card:

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/051011/sftu110.html?.v=23

Also, some chess game (!?) is planned to use it as well:

http://www.digitalproducer.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=35196

I am curious why they don't make this card available in PCI-E form. PCI-E 1x has like twice the bandwidth of regular PCI (in BOTH directions,) and the interface has a much smaller footprint.

[emailthatguy]

i spoke w/ the ageia guys at the ign live event this past weekend. they are saying december as well. although i gotta say only one of the guys there seemed to know anything. the other two that were at that booth were completley clueless

[Reaper106]

I remember reading that it would be out in time for the holidays. If memory serves me, it was a write up from PC Gamer. I for one cant wait to get ahold of this card, a step in the right direction for the gaming world.:)

[Redeemed]

Yeah, I second that reaper. I plan to run one in my next rig. I also remember reading that with the announcement and release of this card that we'd also so a TON of games that supported it. Wonder what those games COULD be (F.E.A.R., Quake4, HL2 Aftermath, ect.)?

Imagine five years from now- PhysX SLi!!! :D :D :D [end sarcasm]

[J-Mag]

Anandtech says the PPU has been delayed though:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2574

I contacted the PR rep for Aegia about the delay and she replied with a short sweet email

"No, where did you hear this?"

[Redeemed]

Hm... so maybe there won't be a delay. Again, good news. If AGEIA can get this out WITHOUT a paper launch, it'd be a pretty impressive start.

[PeterJensen]

Hmm do the game need to be coded to use this?

[Zeta]

Yes.

[slick]

NOES! Make PCI-E x1 so I can actually use that slot for something!

[Redeemed]

^^^ I concur that we need a PCI-E version. Currently the only item using the PCI-E interface is gffx cards. Isn't it about time we see some other components using this interface?

[slick]

Good news. :D

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=140

The image of this card shows both PCI and PCI Express support on the same card, though we are told by AGEIA that this won't be a retail feature but it is included on the developer cards for their testing purposes only. The first release of the PPU cards are going to be in PCI form with PCI Express versions coming in 2006 when the additional bandwidth or demand requires.

[Redeemed]

That was an interesting article. I, for one, intend to drop the PhysX card in my new rig once I can get it. Guess I'll be a poineer, right? ;) :D

[superklye]

I don't have any room on my board for one. :( I've got the x1 PCIe slot, but it's between my 6800GTs and I'll be damned if I'm going to put a card in there.

I have 2 PCI slots, the bottom one houses my SoundBlaster and the one above it is just too close to the bottom GT for comfort.

This sucks! :(

[slick]

Yeah, I have one open PCI slot, but it'll be between the graphics card and network card, and since the graphics card will most likely end up being an X1300Pro untill the nVidia next-gen midrange comes out (if/when it does) the last thing I'll need on that 600mhz heat monger will be constricted airflow. Luckily I have an PCIe x1 behind the PCIe x16. :D That means I'll have to wait for PCIe though... :(

[emailthatguy]

my concern is when i talked to the ageia guys on saturday they didnt have any details on promotions, retail distribution, sales commitments, or anything like that yet still insist december is the month for cards in retail. by now, they should have a pre order promotion going dont you think? wheres the marketting if they think this thing is going to succeed past the 10% of pc gamers that actually frequent news sites like the people here do?


whats even scarier is 2 of the 3 guys at the ageia booth i talked to had no idea bfg was signed to sell cards, nor did those same 2 know anything about them buying that other physics engine recently

[Rakeesh]

Personally I don't have any idea how they expect to sell these cards in december. Not a single game that will be out then actually supports them.

I think physics cards will have to phase their way in, kinda like graphics cards did. First games started coming out that had support for proprietary APIs that only worked with certain brands of 3D cards. Then came games that had patches or alternate binaries come out way after the fact that allowed optional hardware acceleration for graphics (e.g. glquake) which sold the initial line of more "standardized" (as opposed to proprietary) graphics cards which were only for the very high end gamers.

Then games started coming out that came with multiple internal renderers. E.g. HL1 and Quake2 which had a software mode and one, two, three, or even four (opengl, direct3d, glide, or s3 metal) hardware accelerated modes.

Then after that, pretty much everybody owned a graphics card, and games like quake3 came around that had no software mode at all.

Thank god the graphics card industry developed this way. I hope the physics card industry develops that way as well. So far the sound card industry hasn't; we are still in the proprietary age where one company owns the rights to all of the major sound API's and can denie their competitors access to these willy nilly, and thus all soundcards suck and in many cases are overpriced.

I think we can thank teh carmack for the graphics card industry being healthy though. Had he not pushed the graphics card industry into supporting opengl for gaming applications, the video card market would probably be a few years behind what it is now.

Hopefuly AGEIA doesn't do to the physics card industry what creative has done to the sound card industry.

[sytaylor]

Personally I don't have any idea how they expect to sell these cards in december. Not a single game that will be out then actually supports them.

It is kinda creating a market where currently there isn't one. For that reason I can't imagine buying this thing until there was software that used and more importantly needed it. The math to calculate a given environment's movement is pretty intense if we want "realism" as apposed to the approximate realism we have now. For 3d/clipping type things it could be handy too, so charachters have weight, and can jump within human proportions. Who knows, maybe walking in an FPS, will seem more like walking one day...

The uses are many and varied, but I get the feeling this is 2 years too early.

[jAkUp]

I think the biggest thing that the Ageia card will be able to do, is with rendering water, with real time fluid dynamics. Block it? It will flow a different path. I think that is amazing, and will be the next step into more immersive environments.

Also, imagine a fully destructable building, each brick able to crumble, and collapse the building. Impossible? I think not.

With that being said, I hope they ship a PCIe card sooner than later, I have a 4x slot open, just waiting for it. However, I have 0 available PCI slots. Perhaps they should consider an external version? ;)

[Rakeesh]

Also, imagine a fully destructable building, each brick able to crumble, and collapse the building. Impossible? I think not.

Well, the physics calculations may go over ok, but the polygon rendering may be a completely different story :D

[Gnu_Raiz]

With that being said, I hope they ship a PCIe card sooner than later, I have a 4x slot open, just waiting for it. However, I have 0 available PCI slots. Perhaps they should consider an external version? ;)

I agree, but you can thank Creative, others for not bringing out a PCI-E sound card. If they had a decent PCI-E sound card then we would not need to worry about filling out all the PCI slots. As most people I know that is the most used device for the PCI slot.

Gnu_Raiz

[J-Mag]

I agree, but you can thank Creative, others for not bringing out a PCI-E sound card. If they had a decent PCI-E sound card then we would not need to worry about filling out all the PCI slots. As most people I know that is the most used device for the PCI slot.


Creative had a press release a while back stating on how it is inherently difficult to create a sound card on the PCI-E bus. I doubt you will see one anytime soon.

[Q]

I remember that press release and they said it was due to latency issues.

Isn't that one of the biggest issues with the PCI bus right now second only to bandwidth? I would have thought the designers would have addressed that issue in the PCIE Spec.

And I'm sure they have. I don't trust anything Creative says about anything. They are the definition of a hype marketing machine.

[Redeemed]

my concern is when i talked to the ageia guys on saturday they didnt have any details on promotions, retail distribution, sales commitments, or anything like that yet still insist december is the month for cards in retail. by now, they should have a pre order promotion going dont you think? wheres the marketting if they think this thing is going to succeed past the 10% of pc gamers that actually frequent news sites like the people here do?


whats even scarier is 2 of the 3 guys at the ageia booth i talked to had no idea bfg was signed to sell cards, nor did those same 2 know anything about them buying that other physics engine recently



Dude, that was THREE guys. Not every employee at AGEIA knows all that is going on. The engineers probably know next to nothing about the marketing campaigns, the guys whom test the hardware probably don't know much about the marketing aspect or the financial aspect, the financial advisers probably don't even know how the cards work, etc. You MIGHT have been talking to the wrong AGEIA employees at the wrong time. Atleast, we can all HOPE that.

As for games, when word of the PPU first came about it "promised" that there would be titles that supported the PPU. FUlly supported it? Probably not, but alteast we could see added effects to games such as HL2 or FarCry like realtime dust or fog. Remember in the beginning of FarCry, you have to go through that tunnel and it collapses JUST after you get through it? (think the VERY beginning of the game). Now imagine realtime dust there adding to the realism. How about HL2 towards the end of NovaProspekt were you have to jump into the ruined building while that metal machine is trying to crush it? Imagine the realtime dust and such there. These kind of frills could probably be added to most any current game via a patch or such.

I anticipate the PhysX card, can't wait to get one.

[Rakeesh]

Creative had a press release a while back stating on how it is inherently difficult to create a sound card on the PCI-E bus. I doubt you will see one anytime soon.

If Nvidia went ahead with their soundstorm in a non-integrated form, they would probably make a PCI-express card since I think it fulfills their bandwidth requirements, whereas PCI doesn't.

Creative had the same issues when going from ISA to PCI. There is nothing preventing them from moving over, it just means that they have to change a lot of the elements of their design. They are lazy and they don't want to do that, and since there isn't any competition they don't really have to.

[Redeemed]

Well, there is talk of Soundstorm coming back, atleast.

I've always wondered why nVidia dropped Soundstorm. Might they have feared competing with Creative? Maybe they wanted to rack in more dough before they tried competing in Creative's market.

I for one hope to see Soundstorm again, and SOON.