Ageia physics card questions.

[ZeGermans]

Hey, I got a question about that upcoming physics card. Will physics decoding support be sorta like EAX, as in, the game has to be specifically programmed for it or else it won't be used, or will it be more like your everyday video card, were any game will work on any video card without special programming and stuff?

Second part is, is it reasonable to assume that, if proprietary, software support will more or less become standard in most games, like EAX has?

And finally, assuming you have a physics intensive gaming like HL2, how much CPU load could be freed up with such a card? Thanks in advance.

 

[biostud]

The game needs to support the PhysX, but I think that some of the current games will be patced to supprt it.

Probably.

HL2 would be peanuts for such a card. I would think the HL-2 physics engine is very simple compared to what the PhysX can run. I have absolutely no idea of how much CPU power would be freed, maybe around 20% max.

 

[RaiderJ]

If you had the CPU do the work that the PPU is doing, you would swamp the CPU. That's because the PPU is vastly different than the CPU, and performs strictly physics calculations. It's not a matter of freeing CPU load (for the most part), but enabling extra effects, similiar to EAX for sound.

I think if a couple big names support the PPU AND the games supporting it are MUCH better than the non-PPU counterparts, you'll see much more adoption in the development community.