BFG AGEIA PhysX PCI card

[OVerLoRDI]

I know now that NVIDIA owns PhysX they let you do it on the 8 series and higher cards, but what about the old AGEIA PCI cards do they work for modern PhysX? Reason I'm asking is I found a place that has them on close out for 30 dollars. If they still can be used I might pick it up.

 

[alcoholbob]

Remember though, from the firingsquad benchmarks, the Ageia PPU is a huge bottleneck. 4850, 4870, 8800GT, 9800GTX all had the same framerate with the Ageia PPU (~35fps) but when nvidia driver physx was enabled (and ppu removed), the 9800GTX shot up to 45fps.

If you get a PPU, you might almost WANT to hope physx remains mostly a low-level gimmick or the Ageia PPU won't be able to handle it.

 

[Zap]

At this point you may as well look for a sale on a lower end graphics card. PhysX needs a minimum of 32 stream processors and 256MB RAM. The benefit is that you can use a graphics card for other stuff besides PhysX. The drawback is it will require a PCIe x16 slot (or open ended x4) and more power.

 

[toyota]

Originally posted by: Zap
At this point you may as well look for a sale on a lower end graphics card. PhysX needs a minimum of 32 stream processors and 256MB RAM. The benefit is that you can use a graphics card for other stuff besides PhysX. The drawback is it will require a PCIe x16 slot (or open ended x4) and more power.

well realistically, I would say a 9600gt and possibly even a 9800gt should be considered the lowest cards to be used for physx. I fooled around with using my 8600gt 256mb and in most cases it was worse than having the gtx260 do both graphics and physx.

 

[nonameo]

Originally posted by: Zap
At this point you may as well look for a sale on a lower end graphics card. PhysX needs a minimum of 32 stream processors and 256MB RAM. The benefit is that you can use a graphics card for other stuff besides PhysX. The drawback is it will require a PCIe x16 slot (or open ended x4) and more power.

hmm? I thought nvidia physx disabled itself if any non-nvidia cards were detected on the system. Am I understanding this wrong?

 

[dflynchimp]

from what I understand the driver support for the Ageia ppu is drying up, and newer games will require a newer set of drivers that's incompatible with the old Ageia card. This pretty much locks PhysX on newer games into Nvidia hardware, unless some generous soul decides to crack the PhysX code and port it over to ATI hardware. That of course would not be an easy undertaking.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: OVerLoRDI
I know now that NVIDIA owns PhysX they let you do it on the 8 series and higher cards, but what about the old AGEIA PCI cards do they work for modern PhysX?

They were obsolete when they were shipping new.

 

[T2k]

Originally posted by: nonameo

Originally posted by: Zap
At this point you may as well look for a sale on a lower end graphics card. PhysX needs a minimum of 32 stream processors and 256MB RAM. The benefit is that you can use a graphics card for other stuff besides PhysX. The drawback is it will require a PCIe x16 slot (or open ended x4) and more power.

hmm? I thought nvidia physx disabled itself if any non-nvidia cards were detected on the system. Am I understanding this wrong?

Yes, you are wrong. I think this only true if you use some newer, NV-supplied drivers.

 

[T2k]

Originally posted by: dflynchimp
from what I understand the driver support for the Ageia ppu is drying up, and newer games will require a newer set of drivers that's incompatible with the old Ageia card.

Nonsense. Any new game that comes with newer drivers just installs fine including PhysX driver updates.

PS: most of these are Gamebryo, UE3-based games.