AMD's Roy Taylor: PhysX/Cuda doomed?

[Lonbjerg]

HD 7850 runs TR 2013 really nice on ultra. I think there is a problem with the rain effects happering framerates on any rig though.

You are not getting away with ignoring my post.
I'll will keep posting it, until you reply:

So "Ok" is you admitting you were wrong?





You couldn't even if you wanted too...go technical.
All you posts in this trhead shows you have no clue about game physics.

You are clueless about what PhysX/Havok brings to the table.
You are clueless about the difference between scripted physics and dynamic physics.
You are clueless about the PhysX SDK..and I also think you are clueless about the Havok SDK.
You are clueless about the market.

Nice try..."not going technical, "Mr. Expert"...on a tech forum.
That is what we do here!
So put up or shut up.

Show me were havok is better than physics.
Video, code...bring it to the table!




Define serious hardware?
I have a Titan...that is serious hardware.
What hardware do you have, that you call "serious"?
And in what game and what settings does your system tank.

Data...the ONLY thing you never delivered.

And no PM'ing me links to the INQ and Char-LIE isn't data.

So come on "Mr.Expert"...present the data?

 

[3DVagabond]

Except TressFX works on any DX11 GPU.

What would be interesting to see is whether you could run TressFX on your IGP (that all modern CPUs have) with the game running on your "real" GPU. Like PhysX can, but with any old random DX11 GPUs being used.
Which is also why GPU physics should be hardware agnostic.
Nearly everyone here probably has a DX11 GPU sitting in their computer doing little to nothing all day every day, including when they game. If it was possible to offload some calculations to that GPU, it would be great.

That GPU is made by AMD or Intel, and is included in your CPU.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7032/...-gpu-on-the-desktop-radeon-hd-8670d-hd-4600/4
For now they might not be powerhouses, but they will get more powerful over time, and that's why people should care about the future.

Who cares if there are a whole three PhysX games when in 6 months time we will have 2 new consoles with all AMD hardware, and in 12~18 months time we will have IGPs which are faster than low end GPUs of today.
PhysX might not be dead now, but it should be either dead or hardware agnostic in 2 years time.

It's still a brand issue though with those who hate on AMD. The fact that it will run on any DX11 GPU doesn't interest them. They prefer it when AMD hardware is locked out so they can think their preferred brand is superior.

As far as using Intel's iGPU to run it separate from the dGPU, I don't know if it would work or not. AMD hasn't even done that yet with their APU's. It would be nice to make use of the iGPU that's just sitting there for most gamers.

 

[3DVagabond]

I care; though I don't care about consoles... Perhaps we're just different.

PhysX is in the consoles this coming gen same as last. I do appreciate the amount of AMD propaganda that is taking place, I guess with such insanely low margins on the actual hardware they need to make something else of it.

PR is saying AMD cpus will no longer be bad, and AMD gpus will no longer be slower... lol!

You don't think they'll be running it on the GPU in the consoles, do you?

 

[PrincessFrosty]

PhysX won't die until there's a widely adopted replacement, it's a nice little addition to have if you happen to own an Nvidia card but nothing that sways my decisions to purchase.

The problem right now is that GPU physics cannot easily interact with the core game logic, so you can draw lots of lovely smoke particles that just pass straight through things and don't interact with game logic, but you can't write AI who can understand where that smoke is, and avoid it, or use it to calculate visibility etc.

I'm hoping that unifying the system memory with the video memory, which is something on the horizon, will allow for better communication between the GPU and CPU, I don't know much about that because it's early days yet, but the day we can get core game logic interacting with large scale physics simulation is the day we can make those large scale simulations actually part of the gameplay and not just eye candy.

As it stands we can fake large scale physics as mere eye candy to a good approximation right now, HL2 Ep2 and TF2 in the source engine have pre-computed large scale physics destruction which has all the eye candy of large scale Physics and none of the stupid real time processing drawbacks.

I think in all likelihood the push for better multi-core coding due to the next console generation will give us a good step up in multi-threaded engine performance, and that combined with ever growing CPU architecture towards more cores gives us a better chance of seeing realtime large scale physics on the CPU. And again, not just eye candy but something that can interact with core game logic, Ghostbusters was a brilliant example of Physics done right on a CPU, the characters AI could dynamically path find through an environment littered with real time physics enabled objects - it's this kind of interactivity which will likely drive large scale physics as important to games.

CUDA is pretty awesome, I don't see that going away.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

You don't think they'll be running it on the GPU in the consoles, do you?

You don't think they are now, do you? ()

 

[3DVagabond]

You don't think they are now, do you? ()

Well then, why did you bring it up?

 

[Lonyo]

I care; though I don't care about consoles... Perhaps we're just different.

PhysX is in the consoles this coming gen same as last. I do appreciate the amount of AMD propaganda that is taking place, I guess with such insanely low margins on the actual hardware they need to make something else of it.

PR is saying AMD cpus will no longer be bad, and AMD gpus will no longer be slower... lol!

You don't have to care about consoles to recognise that they have a massive impact on gaming and software development/direction...

I have an Xbox 360 and a PS3, don't play on either of them, don't really care about either of them, but that doesn't mean I'm blind to the impact consoles have on PC gaming.
Next gen consoles support OpenCL and effectively DirectCompute (although the PS4 might lack the software side, but the hardware supports it).
Neither supports CUDA.

Most people might think that will influence the things that game developers do when making cross platform games, which most games are.
It doesn't matter that PhysX on next gen consoles will be the same as PhysX on current gen consoles, that's PhysX's problem. OpenCL and DC on next gen consoles won't be the same as on current gen consoles.

100% of new GPUs support OpenCL (discrete + IGP). 100% of new high end consoles will support OpenCL.

20% or something of new GPUs will support CUDA.

 

[Lonbjerg]

PhysX won't die until there's a widely adopted replacement, it's a nice little addition to have if you happen to own an Nvidia card but nothing that sways my decisions to purchase.

The problem right now is that GPU physics cannot easily interact with the core game logic, so you can draw lots of lovely smoke particles that just pass straight through things and don't interact with game logic, but you can't write AI who can understand where that smoke is, and avoid it, or use it to calculate visibility etc.

I'm hoping that unifying the system memory with the video memory, which is something on the horizon, will allow for better communication between the GPU and CPU, I don't know much about that because it's early days yet, but the day we can get core game logic interacting with large scale physics simulation is the day we can make those large scale simulations actually part of the gameplay and not just eye candy.

As it stands we can fake large scale physics as mere eye candy to a good approximation right now, HL2 Ep2 and TF2 in the source engine have pre-computed large scale physics destruction which has all the eye candy of large scale Physics and none of the stupid real time processing drawbacks.

I think in all likelihood the push for better multi-core coding due to the next console generation will give us a good step up in multi-threaded engine performance, and that combined with ever growing CPU architecture towards more cores gives us a better chance of seeing realtime large scale physics on the CPU. And again, not just eye candy but something that can interact with core game logic, Ghostbusters was a brilliant example of Physics done right on a CPU, the characters AI could dynamically path find through an environment littered with real time physics enabled objects - it's this kind of interactivity which will likely drive large scale physics as important to games.

CUDA is pretty awesome, I don't see that going away.

Google: APEX...tier 1 +2 GPU physics.

So sad to see lack of knowlegede leading the way with the posters against PhysX.

 

[Lonbjerg]

You don't have to care about consoles to recognise that they have a massive impact on gaming and software development/direction...

I have an Xbox 360 and a PS3, don't play on either of them, don't really care about either of them, but that doesn't mean I'm blind to the impact consoles have on PC gaming.
Next gen consoles support OpenCL and effectively DirectCompute (although the PS4 might lack the software side, but the hardware supports it).
Neither supports CUDA.

Most people might think that will influence the things that game developers do when making cross platform games, which most games are.
It doesn't matter that PhysX on next gen consoles will be the same as PhysX on current gen consoles, that's PhysX's problem. OpenCL and DC on next gen consoles won't be the same as on current gen consoles.

100% of new GPUs support OpenCL (discrete + IGP). 100% of new high end consoles will support OpenCL.

20% or something of new GPUs will support CUDA.

Did you just limp IGP's (which includes "APU's") in to the GPU catagory?

 

[PrincessFrosty]

I have nothing against PhysX other than it's proprietary and the CPU resolver they have is diabolically bad, very likely intentionally bad.

My comments are more about current limitations of any GPU physics and aren't specific to PhysX, not sure why you'd think that, other than being on the defensive automatically.

 

[NTMBK]

Did you just limp IGP's (which includes "APU's") in to the GPU catagory?

Looks like it, yes. Which is correct.

Also, no need for the sarcastic quotes on APUs.

 

[Lonbjerg]

I have nothing against PhysX other than it's proprietary and the CPU resolver they have is diabolically bad, very likely intentionally bad.

My comments are more about current limitations of any GPU physics and aren't specific to PhysX, not sure why you'd think that, other than being on the defensive automatically.

You post is false, it's not complicated past PhysX SDK 3.0 and APEX 1.2 to do tier 1 +2 physics on the GPU.

 

[Lonbjerg]

Looks like it, yes. Which is correct.

Also, no need for the sarcastic quotes on APUs.

"APU" is just PR FUD for IGP's..so I will keep using those brackets...we already have the acronym IGP...no need to add another to decribe the same freaking thing.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Well then, why did you bring it up?

Because it didn't make a difference before, why would it now?

 

[BallaTheFeared]

-snip-

Go any of that kool-aid for the rest of us?

 

[3DVagabond]

Because it didn't make a difference before, why would it now?

Exactly. It won't make any difference that it's there. It won't make it (GPU PhysX) find more acceptance in the next gen of PC games. Face it, unless nVidia does the coding and pays the devs. they don't use GPU PhysX. Nothing is likely to change. OpenCL though, which will run on everyone's hardware (CPU and GPU) wasn't in last gen consoles and it will be in the next gen. without any particular vendor pushing it. That makes it far more likely to be adopted in future games.

 

[Lonbjerg]

Exactly. It won't make any difference that it's there. It won't make it (GPU PhysX) find more acceptance in the next gen of PC games. Face it, unless nVidia does the coding and pays the devs. they don't use GPU PhysX. Nothing is likely to change. OpenCL though, which will run on everyone's hardware (CPU and GPU) wasn't in last gen consoles and it will be in the next gen. without any particular vendor pushing it. That makes it far more likely to be adopted in future games.

You tlak like there is CPU Physx and GPU PhysX.
There isn't.
There is PhysX.

The only limitation there is in applying effects...is the low powerpoerformance of CPU' in physics.

Want MORE...only one viable option....Lock the calclutions to the GPU...or get a n00b whine from people not understanding IT and enables FULL settings on none CUDA GPU system...and get 0.5 FPS..

So I hav to ask you directly:
Why do you insist on calling it GPU-PhysX?

It's PhysX....plain and simple.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Exactly. It won't make any difference that it's there. It won't make it (GPU PhysX) find more acceptance in the next gen of PC games. Face it, unless nVidia does the coding and pays the devs. they don't use GPU PhysX. Nothing is likely to change. OpenCL though, which will run on everyone's hardware (CPU and GPU) wasn't in last gen consoles and it will be in the next gen. without any particular vendor pushing it. That makes it far more likely to be adopted in future games.

Face it, you took what I said to another who used the fact that AMD was in the next consoles and spun it up so you could post that.

Yes OpenCL will save us from Nvidia and CUDA/PhysX.

Still waiting, how long has OpenCL been around, and how many Physics API's have been created from it?

 

[Lonbjerg]

Face it, you took what I said to another who used the fact that AMD was in the next consoles and spun it up so you could post that.

Yes OpenCL will save us from Nvidia and CUDA/PhysX.

Still waiting, how long has OpenCL been around, and how many Physics API's have been created from it?

+5 years and 1 game that simulates hair...I can se why CUDA/APEX/PhysX is in danger now...oh wait

Edit:
CUDA is what enables NVIDIA to get new feaures out in the HPC market before OpenCL...as long a the HPC World loves CUDA...nothing CUDA related will go away.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

I think he's making a distinction between use cases of PhysX on the CPU or GPU.

One important point here is that while "It's PhysX....plain and simple." is true, because the feature set of PhysX on the CPU and GPU is identical, the performance issues of one piece of hardware over the other gives what is a practical equivalent of different feature sets.

I agree with 3DVagabond, consoles (much to my dislike) have driven PC game development direction for the last generation and so the capability of the consoles will largely decide what we see in the PC space, unless the console bubble bursts. We only see really decent support from PhysX where Nvidia has worked closely with devs to showcase it, it's just not used in the wild outside of Nvidias influence to any significant degree.

 

[Lonbjerg]

I think he's making a distinction between use cases of PhysX on the CPU or GPU.

One important point here is that while "It's PhysX....plain and simple." is true, because the feature set of PhysX on the CPU and GPU is identical, the performance issues of one piece of hardware over the other gives what is a practical equivalent of different feature sets.

I agree with 3DVagabond, consoles (much to my dislike) have driven PC game development direction for the last generation and so the capability of the consoles will largely decide what we see in the PC space, unless the console bubble bursts. We only see really decent support from PhysX where Nvidia has worked closely with devs to showcase it, it's just not used in the wild outside of Nvidias influence to any significant degree.

So that is why we will get at least 7 new games using PhysX to sucjha degree that the CPU cannot keep up this year? ^^

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Same discussion new thread, PhysX is still here and there still no real alternative.

I guess that's the problem with AMD/OpenCL you just have to wait around until someone else does something for you.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

So that is why we will get at least 7 new games using PhysX to sucjha degree that the CPU cannot keep up this year? ^^

Yep, of the hundreds or probably more likely, thousands, of games released a small handful will have so called "GPU PhysX" support, it has always been small potatoes and nothing about it's growth over time suggests it will ever be more significant.

 

[NIGELG]

So niche it still gets AAA titles...your "logic" is funny

How many alternatives PGU phyiscs are out there?
I'll give you a hint:
It's 0%...even if AMD wants to play along:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfrM973spw0

They just don't have anything to show...other than TressFX.

Make no mistake...GPU physics isn't dying...it's just that NVIDIA got a ~5 years lead on the competition.

And AAA titles not happy with old-days scripted physics...only have one place to go.

I'll enjoy the new games with FULL PhysX...others will just whine....offering NO alternative ^^

You have not given me the ratio of games released with pHYSx to those released without...maybe because 3 games divided by thousands of PC games or hundreds is pitifully low for some thing that is supposed to be so great.You ned to Google the meaning of 'niche'.....And I suggest that you try using a spell checker if you cannot spell properly because your posts are painful to decipher.

No, who ultimately decides are the devs by using it or not. So far they don't use OpenCL GPU-physics.

If the customers demand it,the developers will use it.I see no demand for it except a few Nvidia diehards.Same with Open GL physics.....the majority simply does not care....yet.

Yep, of the hundreds or probably more likely, thousands, of games released a small handful will have so called "GPU PhysX" support, it has always been small potatoes and nothing about it's growth over time suggests it will ever be more significant.

Yes.

 

[3DVagabond]

You tlak like there is CPU Physx and GPU PhysX.
There isn't.
There is PhysX.

The only limitation there is in applying effects...is the low powerpoerformance of CPU' in physics.

Want MORE...only one viable option....Lock the calclutions to the GPU...or get a n00b whine from people not understanding IT and enables FULL settings on none CUDA GPU system...and get 0.5 FPS..

So I hav to ask you directly:
Why do you insist on calling it GPU-PhysX?

It's PhysX....plain and simple.

We are talking next gen consoles. There is going to be no PhysX running on the GPU. Whether or not it could, is irrelevant.