- Nov 11, 2004
- 12,576
- 7
- 81
Over the years we?ve seen the hardware for games develop from being mere novelties on a normal, business-oriented home PC to a full fledged multi-billion dollar industry. As the gaming industry began to separate itself from the rest of the PC world, the same thing happened with the PC hardware needed to run them. Starting with Quake, games started to go from 2D parlor games to the immersive, 3D games we know today. However, CPU?s back then, and even CPU?s now, were not designed to be able to process the calculations common in every game today. A change had to be made. Along game a small company named 3Dfx who decided that the solution was a separate add-in card that would have its own processor, a processor specifically designed to handle graphics calculations. Nearly everyone in the business PC industry thought they were morons for thinking that anyone would pay $300-$400 for a card just so they could make their games prettier, however, history has proved these critics wrong.
Flash forward a couple of years. Creative decides that the sound quality on most motherboards is pretty lacking, especially when it comes to processing sound for games. So they design their own card, built specifically to mix the various sounds produced in games, and providing an unparalleled audio purity. Again people thought they were nuts to think anyone would spend $50-$150 on a card that could only refine sound and unload that process from the CPU. And again, these same critics were wrong.
Let?s move forward to today. Today?s games are making more demands on video cards than any others before them, and come with sound engines that could bring some CPUs to their knees. Both video card makers and sound card makers are rolling in the profits from their so-called ?useless? technologies. But there?s another player coming to the block. Another company is building another add-in card for games that some people are already painting as unneeded. This company is Ageia, and their card is the PhysX, the world?s first dedicated physics processing unit (PPU).
Some of you may ask, "What is the point of a card like that?" Well, for most of you, there?s probably little point. Most of you have a computer system whose 3D performance is limited by the quality of your video card, not your CPU. However, for those of you with the high-end cards like 7800GTXs, you run into a distinct CPU limiting barrier. The reason is that even though video processing is offloaded to the GPU, and sound processing is sent to your sound card, it still has to calculate several other things important in any game. In any game made in the last 5 months, the most stressful part to the CPU is the physics calculations. For example, let?s look at Half-life 2. Remember how your game would drop to low FPS whenever you naded a bunch of barrels? That had nothing to due with the stress on the video card, it was the stress of calculating the physics of that action to the CPU. That?s where the Ageia PhysX PPU fits in. In instances like that, and in any other instance, the calculations needed to animate such an action would go straight to the add-in card, which in turn relieves stress from your CPU. A less stressed CPU can concentrate on other, more minor aspects required to run a game, thus giving you more CPU processing power for you game and eliminating your CPU limiting problem.
Let?s take a look at the technical specifications of this card. Here?s a quick run-down:
? 125 Million Transistors
? 20 Watt Power Consumption
? 128MB GDDR3 RAM
? 130nm process
? $199-249 MSRP
? PCI Interface
The 20 Watt power consumption on the PCI bus means that it will need an auxiliary Molex power connector. Also, the 128MB of RAM serves the same purpose on this card that it does on a graphics card, it keeps relevant information handy and quickly accessible. On a graphics card, this information is usually textures. On the PhysX card, it will be something similar, though related to physics? sort of a type of ?physics textures?.
Ageia will provide the PPU?s to major manufacturers. However, the boards themselves will be built by others, much like how nVidia sells their products. So far, BFG and Asus have both signed agreements to produce these cards. It is designed for the time being to use the older PCI interface, but PCI-E 1x or maybe even 4x cards are planned in the future.
http://hardware.gotfrag.com/portal/story/29946/
If you already have a PhysX card, you can download the driver from here.
Flash forward a couple of years. Creative decides that the sound quality on most motherboards is pretty lacking, especially when it comes to processing sound for games. So they design their own card, built specifically to mix the various sounds produced in games, and providing an unparalleled audio purity. Again people thought they were nuts to think anyone would spend $50-$150 on a card that could only refine sound and unload that process from the CPU. And again, these same critics were wrong.
Let?s move forward to today. Today?s games are making more demands on video cards than any others before them, and come with sound engines that could bring some CPUs to their knees. Both video card makers and sound card makers are rolling in the profits from their so-called ?useless? technologies. But there?s another player coming to the block. Another company is building another add-in card for games that some people are already painting as unneeded. This company is Ageia, and their card is the PhysX, the world?s first dedicated physics processing unit (PPU).
Some of you may ask, "What is the point of a card like that?" Well, for most of you, there?s probably little point. Most of you have a computer system whose 3D performance is limited by the quality of your video card, not your CPU. However, for those of you with the high-end cards like 7800GTXs, you run into a distinct CPU limiting barrier. The reason is that even though video processing is offloaded to the GPU, and sound processing is sent to your sound card, it still has to calculate several other things important in any game. In any game made in the last 5 months, the most stressful part to the CPU is the physics calculations. For example, let?s look at Half-life 2. Remember how your game would drop to low FPS whenever you naded a bunch of barrels? That had nothing to due with the stress on the video card, it was the stress of calculating the physics of that action to the CPU. That?s where the Ageia PhysX PPU fits in. In instances like that, and in any other instance, the calculations needed to animate such an action would go straight to the add-in card, which in turn relieves stress from your CPU. A less stressed CPU can concentrate on other, more minor aspects required to run a game, thus giving you more CPU processing power for you game and eliminating your CPU limiting problem.
Let?s take a look at the technical specifications of this card. Here?s a quick run-down:
? 125 Million Transistors
? 20 Watt Power Consumption
? 128MB GDDR3 RAM
? 130nm process
? $199-249 MSRP
? PCI Interface
The 20 Watt power consumption on the PCI bus means that it will need an auxiliary Molex power connector. Also, the 128MB of RAM serves the same purpose on this card that it does on a graphics card, it keeps relevant information handy and quickly accessible. On a graphics card, this information is usually textures. On the PhysX card, it will be something similar, though related to physics? sort of a type of ?physics textures?.
Ageia will provide the PPU?s to major manufacturers. However, the boards themselves will be built by others, much like how nVidia sells their products. So far, BFG and Asus have both signed agreements to produce these cards. It is designed for the time being to use the older PCI interface, but PCI-E 1x or maybe even 4x cards are planned in the future.
http://hardware.gotfrag.com/portal/story/29946/
If you already have a PhysX card, you can download the driver from here.
Facebook
Twitter