We'll have to see to what extent game developers actually take advantage of this new PPU. It will be, as always, the content that drives the hardware, not the other way around. For $300 (I always love it when they give a range, as if they will actually hit the lower part of the range. If that was the case then they'd say $250 flat out) there better be some substantial improvements in gameplay and graphics, otherwise the device will fail. Also, I'll be interested to see if the PCI bus can handle this and say an Audigy simultaneously, as if it starts to choke then you'll see a lot of people that may have thought about it back off as the cost suddenly includes a new mobo, CPU, and video card at the very least (and RAM on the Intel side)
seriously, how much use is UE3 going to make of these things, given that they will also have to work fine on non-PPU enabled PC? not much!
same goes for dual-cores which are also alleged to be made use of in UE3.
don't get me wrong, i am a long time UEd mapper, and love the engine, and i am a real techie who loves the idea of PPU's and dual-core CPU's, but they simply won't be essential for the coming generation of games. the one after will be a different story, but then you are looking at 2007 with PPU2 and quad-core.
at $249 dollars for a non-essential piece of kit is effing ridiculous! i have just bought a shuttle SN25P which has a spare PCIE 1x slot into which i'd love to stick a PPU, but not until i can get one for less than £100..........
same goes for dual-cores which are also alleged to be made use of in UE3.
don't get me wrong, i am a long time UEd mapper, and love the engine, and i am a real techie who loves the idea of PPU's and dual-core CPU's, but they simply won't be essential for the coming generation of games. the one after will be a different story, but then you are looking at 2007 with PPU2 and quad-core.
at $249 dollars for a non-essential piece of kit is effing ridiculous! i have just bought a shuttle SN25P which has a spare PCIE 1x slot into which i'd love to stick a PPU, but not until i can get one for less than £100..........
Well, the original Voodoo Graphics was "non-essential" and costed over $300 IIRC. People still bought it 
StrangerGuy
Diamond Member
- May 9, 2004
- 8,443
- 124
- 106
This discrete PPU will never take off IMO. Who is going to pay $300 for a PPU just for PC gaming? Are developers even willing code for another piece of hardware 99.9% of users will not have?
Elcs
Diamond Member
- Apr 27, 2002
- 6,278
- 6
- 81
For all we know at the moment, that PPU could be powerful for the time. It could be like the top-of-the-line in its segment. Much like those ATI and Nvidia cards with more abbreviations after the number than you can shake a stick at.. the x850's and 6800U's.
This $250, $300 or however much it costs.. card might be powerful enough to deal with the Physics in games for the next 5-10 years. Unlikely but quite possible as there isnt much depth in the information we have.
This thread is getting like the Console Wars and apparently the PC is going to die.
Putting something down before you've seen what it can do and what it is doing for the end user (yourselves) is pointless.
Although I do agree, $200-$300 USD is a bit steep.
This $250, $300 or however much it costs.. card might be powerful enough to deal with the Physics in games for the next 5-10 years. Unlikely but quite possible as there isnt much depth in the information we have.
This thread is getting like the Console Wars and apparently the PC is going to die.
Putting something down before you've seen what it can do and what it is doing for the end user (yourselves) is pointless.
Although I do agree, $200-$300 USD is a bit steep.
^^
We don't really know what the lifespan on such a card is. If anything, the number of manipulatible objects that they are talking about (~32,000) will probably chug even a 6800U to render it. I for one think that if its something like a sound card, i.e. a one-time buy, I wouldn't mind paying $250 for it assuming that the reviews come out in very good favor of PhysX.
I am personally very intrigued and interested in the whole concept as I think that as much as graphics has improved in games to the point where games do seem more realistic, physics is still fairly backward. The closest was HL2, imo, but even that was quite shortcoming.
My $0.02
EDIT: Spelling errors
hi there is a connector on top of the card (look suspiciously like pci-e x1)
/EDIT
and in the upper right corner ther's a hole for screwing a bracket.....
/EDIT
and in the upper right corner ther's a hole for screwing a bracket.....
I saw that...the pic kinda looks like a photochop, but then again it almost looks like the bracket could be attached to the other side as well and the card flipped "upside down"....interesting if that's the way they're going about doing it (is that even possible?)
Yeah, the pci-e x1 does seem very suspicious. I don't see why it wouldn't work upside down if the bracket works both ways since the mobo doesn't really care about the orientation of the card itself. Although, it might not be an ATX standard. Very good observation kobymu.
Yeah, since the card doesn't have any outputs or anything, flipping it would certainly be possible. What I'm wondering about though is whether having both will cause any sort of problems. (Although like I said, the picture may not even be real)
Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
Well, that's what I meant
you obviously didnt play lego much
Originally posted by: kobymu
Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
Well, that's what I meant
you obviously didnt play lego much
:laugh:
While it's expensive we've also need to aknowledge the fact that Ageia put loads of money into R&D for both software and hardware of this chip.
As soon as there are other rival companies offering the same thing price will drop.
As soon as there are other rival companies offering the same thing price will drop.
until that happens i won't be buying, let's just hop that Ageia can hold on with eff all sales until they decide to retail at sensible prices.
0roo0roo
No Lifer
- Sep 21, 2002
- 64,795
- 84
- 91
well of course the software companies are going to "support it". they supported ifeel force feedback mice for a while... doesn't make a bit of difference if the consumer doesn't care. anyways, isn't the point of the 2nd core of the new cpus to be used for such things anyways?
investors in this company were on crack if they knew about the release price
investors in this company were on crack if they knew about the release price
No. It doesn't belong on the videocard. Mechanics doesn't have anything locally to do with rendering. It would be silly to load the videocard's bus with stuff going in and out, that have nothing to do with the videocard. I'd assume it would mess up interfaces and drivers too.
It would also be silly to tie hardware physics processor and graphics processors together like that. As silly as putting audio on the videocard or the videocard inside the monitor.
We would like to choose and upgrade our videocards independantly from physics card.
You definitely want to keep video and physics separate. With separate interfaces and separate devicedrivers.
The Simulation/Game-world lives as a data model in ram. Software running on the CPU manages this model. This is where the CPU could request computed/recomputed data from the PPU. This results in changes to the data model. The data model is then viewed by the 3D-render engine. This too, lives in ram and is run on the CPU. The 3D-render engine generates, then sends D3D or OGL render commands to the videocard. Only then does the videocard enter the picture. The vidocard only draws the picture. Collisions, movements, whatever, is all inside the world data model in ram. And runs on the CPU.
As I hope you see, the PPU has no business being on the videocard, at all.
While the amount of processing that the PPU will have to do, may be large, this doesn't mean that the amount of communication to/from the PPU will necessarily be great. So we can probably do with PCI and PCI-eX1 to begin with.
Later, MB will maybe feature a bigger PCI-e for this.
The point is that specialized hardware can do this stuff much faster than a general purpose CPU can (even if the Physics code has an entire physical CPU to itself), and the level of complexity they're talking about is very impressive. Of course, as always, we'll see how it works in the real world once it appears, but if they can deliver performance anywhere near what they've described, I think that'll be very exciting. The pricing is definitely too high for the general public though. I will consider buying one, but most people probably won't.
Personally, I don't see physics as important for gaming as graphics, that's why I don't think people will pay graphics-card prices for this...
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