Future of PPUs ?

[Gamer X]

What do you think the future of PPUs will look like ? Will they be established as separate
add-on cards or will they be replaced by physics-capable video cards ?

 

[Alaa]

add-on are better..u will be able to use 2 video cards at once with the ppu..thts better

 

[otispunkmeyer]

they'll make it in some form or another i think

GRAW for the PC already has ageia physx support......i can only see more games coming with it.

 

[Munky]

It could be established as a add on card, but only if games put it to good use and convince people that it's worth the additional cost. If for example GRAW with a physx card does not have significantly and noticeably improved physics over the xbox360 version then there would be no reason to buy a separate PPU - not only because it wont improve things much, but also because it would show that similar physics could be done with a multicore cpu. If, on the other hand, the PC version shows mind blowing physics unlike any console version, then it could convince me to buy a physx card. I'd rather not take away from the graphics power of a gpu to do physics, unless the graphics hardware was equipped with additional processing power to do physics calculations at no peformance cost on the graphics side.

 

[Ika]

Once PPUs are established, I believe they will change the game world... if you think about it, there aren't really that many more improvements games can take in the graphics world, and physics would be able to help gameplay much...

 

[Schadenfroh]

Didnt the voodoo 2 have a physics unit on it?

 

[SynthDude2001]

I'm in for "let's wait and see". I'm certainly not excited about having to spend even more money on PC gaming (it's expensive enough as it is). But if it can really have the impact they say it will, really change PC gaming like 3D accelerators did ten years ago, then I guess we've really got no choice and we'll all have one one way or another someday. If it has that kind of impact, I would be more inclined to spend the money - but I'm certainly not going to be an early adopter (being strapped for cash and being in great need of a new video card now doesn't help either).