I have seen the future....

[Razor1]

Originally Posted by shadow001

Doesn't that largely depend on what the developers have settled on the minimum configuration that's required to run their game though,as it's in their interest to make their game run on the maximum amount of system configurations possible,in order to potentially increase sales of their game,and i personally haven't seen any game yet released even listing an i7 processor even as their recommended system setup to run a particular game optimally...At least not yet.

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/cpu/ar...2009-4-p2.html

They also stated quad core systems showed similiar gains, hyperthreading doesn't give the same performance benefits as a second CPU, so the 8 threads well not that great lets say more like 5 to 6 threads total.

The most i've seen as recommended specifications is a Quad core processor with no hyperthreading ablilities being mentioned at all,so we have yet to see exactly just how well would a CPU with 8 threads actually handle it,at least publically,and people should be informed about it and then make a decision if they want a physics card or not.

Look above hyperthreading is a solution that isn't ideal to the problem

That one would also be nice to know if current Nvidia GPU's can actually outperform the ageia physics processor for physics calculations,and not dropping support without even thinking twice about it,and i don't need to tell you the bad impression that left for those that did buy those physics cards,which weren't that cheap at the time,and everybody called it a gimmick then,and now you're telling me it's supposed to be considered otherwise because Nvidia bought the company?....I don't think so.

A 9600gt does well against the Ageia card, and the 9600gt at launch costed more then $100 less then Ageia top end which both those are fairly competitive.

If they're so confident that their current GPU's can outperform that ageia physics processor,then prove it in actual benchmarks to show people why they dropped support for it....Put that information out in the open,rather than playing this cloak and dagger crap and just saying it's better to use the GPU for it and that's the end of it.

Look around there are benchmarks out there.

Like i said,it's been out for 2 years,there's maybe 10 games using GPU physics right now,and i've seen the differences both with and without GPU physics with some games,and it's not a night and day difference anyhow,at least for now.

It takes time we will see in the future, Dx11 games there is only 2 so what, ya still buy the hardware right?

[shadow001]

Originally Posted by Razor1

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/cpu/ar...2009-4-p2.html

They also stated quad core systems showed similiar gains, hyperthreading doesn't give the same performance benefits as a second CPU, so the 8 threads well not that great lets say more like 5 to 6 threads total.



Look above hyperthreading is a solution that isn't ideal to the problem



A 9600gt does well against the Ageia card, and the 9600gt at launch costed more then $100 less then Ageia top end which both those are fairly competitive.



Look around there are benchmarks out there.



It takes time we will see in the future, Dx11 games there is only 2 so what, ya still buy the hardware right?

I'm talking about the physics calculations alone,not entire programs here,and i'll look to see if there's any benchmark results comparing the Ageia card versus an Nvidia GPU on physics workloads exclusively.


As for DX11 games,there's Dirt 2,aliens versus predator,battleforge,battlefield bad company 2 and a couple of others,but like i stated before,the main reason i bought them is for the triple display support in games,for where there are already close to 30 games in the supported list,it doesn't require developer support,and the cards have only been out 6 months on the market,compared to 2 years for GPU physX.


You were saying?...

[Toss3]

Originally Posted by Razor1

It takes time we will see in the future, Dx11 games there is only 2 so what, ya still buy the hardware right?

Posted the benchmarks above, but wanted to comment on this little snippet. DX11 is as worthless as physx until people of both camps can run it.

[SirPauly]

Originally Posted by Toss3

This is how nvidia markets it and the reason why they don't let ATi users run nvidia cards along with their GPU. They sell it to people who think that one GPU is enough. Nowhere does it say that "to enjoy the full benefits of PhysX nvidia recommends running a second card alongside the 400$ you just purchased" on the box. A gpu+cpu setup is always going to be a better option than just one GPU doing everything.

Always thought nVidia simply offered PhysX to try to differentiate themselves from their competitors and to offer value for their customers. If one doesn't like it or can't find the right balance - they can disable it. Or they can try to find the right balance if they choose to with a single GPU or invest into a PhysX discrete card. For someone like me, used my dated 8800 GT which was collecting dust as a paper weight -- reborn to offer a bit more gaming. Sure, would like to see more compelling content, GPU phyX to be ported to OpenCL, but while I wait for more maturity and idealism, can enjoy some content now while costing me nothing extra. Think it is neat to see a dated GPU be used to improve gaming - sure wish I could do that with a dated CPU.

[shadow001]

Originally Posted by Toss3

Posted the benchmarks above, but wanted to comment on this little snippet. DX11 is as worthless as physx until people of both camps can run it.

Hence why i bought the cards primarily for triple display gaming,of which there are almost 30 games officially supported and the list keeps growing with every driver release.


I'm fully aware that the DX11 advantage is still a small one even in the few games that are starting to use some of it's features,as the gains in overall graphics quality are minimal....The one that's sticks out more here is aliens versus predator with it's use of higher levels of tesselation.

[Toss3]

Originally Posted by SirPauly

Always thought nVidia simply offered PhysX to try to differentiate themselves from their competitors and to offer value for their customers. If one doesn't like it or can't find the right balance - they can disable it.

This is all well and fine as long as it doesn't affect owners of other brands. PhysX does; if a developer chooses to support gpu accelerated PhysX it means less effects for users not running Nvidia hardware, effects that are there in other games and don't require a dedicated physics processor. Take Mirror's Edge as an example - lots of objects are removed from the game when PhysX is turned off, like glass shards, flags, dust etc.. These effects were there in games like Red faction and Max Payne a very long time ago. So how come they suddenly became too much to handle for a CPU? Batman suffers from the same adverse effect.

Or they can try to find the right balance if they choose to with a single GPU or invest into a PhysX discrete card. For someone like me, used my dated 8800 GT which was collecting dust as a paper weight -- reborn to offer a bit more gaming. Sure, would like to see more compelling content, GPU phyX to be ported to OpenCL, but while I wait for more maturity and idealism, can enjoy some content now while costing me nothing extra. Think it is neat to see a dated GPU be used to improve gaming - sure wish I could do that with a dated CPU.

I had an 8800GTS prior to the 5850 I have now, but due to nvidia's aggressive marketing it became nothing more than a paper-weight. It's not like I'm trying to run PhysX on an ATI card - I'm trying to run it on a card that has PhysX-support written on its box! Nowhere does it say that this support is limited to you running only nvidia hardware. Retarded move on nvidia's part and only hurts the consumer as did the move to drop support for Ageia's PPUs.

[shadow001]

Now that i looked at Toss's mirrors edge results,it just doesn't add up overall,as the Ageia card is right in the middle between the results using a 9600GT for physics,and using a 9800GT card for the same,as there's only about a 5 Fps difference for the top 3 setups for both minimum and average FPS results,so that begs at least 2 questions:


1:Why drop support for Ageia's card if it's still performing very nicely overall,with more than high enough FPS values for smooth gameplay?.

2:The amount of shaders available on a 9600GT card is 64 shaders,which is what's used to calculate the physics,while there's 128 shaders for the 9800GTX cards,so it has more floating point power available to process the physics calculations much faster,yet the overall FPS is only about 5 FPS faster than using the 9600GT card for physics,and 2 FPS faster than using the supposedly outdated Ageia physics card,in both minimum and average FPS.


And switching to higher resolutions and graphics settings only puts more pressure on the graphics portion of the overall workload,not the physics calculations,which should remain the same regardless,so in the end,did Nvidia end the Ageia's physics processor lifespan much earlier than it really had to?,at least when viewing the mirrors edge results?....Does the physics workload need to be much higher than what's used in mirrors edge,before the Ageia physics card would bog down overall performance too much and become umplayable...It looks like Nvidia terminated that products usable life span way too early from here.

[Toss3]

Originally Posted by shadow001

Now that i looked at Toss's mirrors edge results,it just doesn't add up overall,as the Ageia card is right in the middle between the results using a 9600GT for physics,and using a 9800GT card for the same,as there's only about a 2~3 Fps difference for the top 3 setups,so that begs at least 2 questions:


1:Why drop support for Ageia's card if it's still performing very nicely overall,with more than high enough FPS values for smooth gameplay.

Because this way they can sell additional cards to previous PPU owners.

2:The amount of shaders available on a 9600GT card is 64 shaders,which is what's used to calculate the physics,while there's 112 to 128 shaders for the 9800GT/GTX cards,so it has more floating point power available to process the physics calculations much faster,yet the overall FPS is only about 5 FPS faster than using the 9600GT card for physics,and 2 FPS faster than using the supposedly outdated Ageia physics card,in both minimum and average FPS.

I don't think you can derive how well gpu-x calculates physics based on a benchmark limited by fps.

And switching to higher resolutions and graphics settings only puts more pressure on the graphics portion of the overall workload,not the physics calculations,which should remain the same regardless,so in the end,did Nvidia end the Ageia's physics processor lifespan much earlier than it really had to?,at least when viewing the mirrors edge results?....It looks like it.

I don't get why they dropped support for it. It still works with the same hack as the one for ati+physx though.

[XMAN52373]

Originally Posted by shadow001

1:Why drop support for Ageia's card if it's still performing very nicely overall,with more than high enough FPS values for smooth gameplay?.

2:The amount of shaders available on a 9600GT card is 64 shaders,which is what's used to calculate the physics,while there's 128 shaders for the 9800GTX cards,so it has more floating point power available to process the physics calculations much faster,yet the overall FPS is only about 5 FPS faster than using the 9600GT card for physics,and 2 FPS faster than using the supposedly outdated Ageia physics card,in both minimum and average FPS.

1. Propably because they are not making Ageia based cards since they bought them and are working towards increasing the load to which PhysX is used on furture games which would render the Ageia PPU useless.

2. The 9600GT is a very very effienct deigned GPU chip. The performance in games of it is about equal to teh 8800GTS(G80 96SP) card and 2 in SLI are about equal to a GTX260, 128SP vs 192 or 216, take your pick.

[shadow001]

Originally Posted by Toss3

Because this way they can sell additional cards to previous PPU owners.

Yup...Good old fashion greed.

I don't think you can derive how well gpu-x calculates physics based on a benchmark limited by fps.

And what limiting Fps in the first place?....I mean,if we need to use a faster CPU to get even higher Fps results,so that there's more physics calculations to be handled regardless of the option you pick,it kinda defeats the purpose of using it in the first place,since one of the marketing angles used for GPU physics is not having to buy the fastest CPU possible,since the the GPU is taking over the physics calculations,leaving less work for the CPU anyhow.


It's one of the grey areas regarding the issue to say the least.

[shadow001]

Originally Posted by XMAN52373

1. Propably because they are not making Ageia based cards since they bought them and are working towards increasing the load to which PhysX is used on furture games which would render the Ageia PPU useless.

2. The 9600GT is a very very effienct deigned GPU chip. The performance in games of it is about equal to teh 8800GTS(G80 96SP) card and 2 in SLI are about equal to a GTX260, 128SP vs 192 or 216, take your pick.

Still,they're comparing it to a 9800GTX + card,which not only has 128 shaders,but they also run at a higher clock speed,so it's probably more than 2X the floating point math ability regardless.


As for the future game argument and using even heavier physics workloads which the Ageia chip couldn't handle it,i'd say show me first once those games are released and let me decide for myself thanks....

[Toss3]

Originally Posted by shadow001

And what limiting Fps in the first place?....I mean,if we need to use a faster CPU to get even higher Fps results,so that there's more physics calculations to be handled regardless of the option you pick,it kinda defeats the purpose of using it in the first place,since one of the marketing angles used for GPU physics is not having to buy the fastest CPU possible,since the the GPU is taking over the physics calculations,leaving less work for the CPU anyhow.

It's one of the grey areas regarding the issue to say the least.

What I meant is that the GPU is limiting the FPS in that benchmark, not the CPU. A dedicated PhysX processor is always going to be limited by the GPU, not the other way around. You'd have to use a benchmark like fluidmark to properly compare the performance between the Ageia PPU, 9600 and 9800.