PhysX worthless with ATI?

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: apoppin

The keyword is yet. Still it's great that Nvidia took the 1st step and it's free.

i almost changed my mind.

After seeing what they are doing at Nvision with PhysX and 3-D/CUDA ... i think Nvidia has much better than 50-50 chance to make PhysX a standard in gaming

i will give my reasons later .. but i have to head to my regular work for a few hours
- then i have a Nvision08 Wrap-up to write about and a game investigation to post

unlike Anand, color me impressed with Nvision .. and also with where Nvidia is going with PhysX/CUDA/3-D gaming; they are simply extending their TWiiMtB program

Exactly. Except now they're actually offering tangible benefits. Glad you had fun, looks like it was a blast, especially GeForce LAN. Glad to see the NV perimeter detectors didn't xplode your Radeon!

They like talking about my Radeon HD4870x3 system. After all, ASUS and Gigabyte *also* make MBs for AMD graphics so they really helped me decide on my own test system. And the Nvidia employees are beyond cool - it is very much like a family with strict rules. i got to see some cool product coming out that i could not photograph. And i got a lot of info on what is coming. Of course, i have to buy GTX280 and probably GT260+ also so i can fairly compare and review them.

My 4870x2 got here today and is running in my PC right now, although i just have 4870x2 up and running without the other 4870 in Crossfire as i want to bench it by itself, first. i had to "fool" CCC with the alligator clip ground just to get it working

Of course, i didn't participate in Geforce Lan but i did get to meet Ender of Counter Strike fame and his wife who stayed at my hotel; And a whole lot of industry reps and even other tech site owners.

i have a lot of details in my notes on PhysX as i asked about it .. i will review them and let you know

but count me in for Nvision09


oh yeah .. count me in on physX also .. i will be exploring it with Tesla/g80

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Here's the thing taltamir, you can say, ok, physx is worth $10 to me, so I don't mind if I pay $250 for a GTX260, instead of buying a $250 HD4870, which is slightly faster ( let's say $10 worth faster ). But, if there are no games that really support physx, and the HD4870 gives you the exact same gaming experience, with better framerates/more eyecandy, then you LOST $10 worth of performance. It's a gamble. If all things equal, and you tell ppl to get a GTX260 because of physx, instead of a HD4870, you are gambling with THEIR money.

which is why i tell people its a gamble, rather then telling them buy a GTX260. Except for when the 260 was 30$ cheaper then the 4870 due to momentary deals, then I said get the 260 (but that was just cause of the sale).

Another gamble is warranty. There are different classes of warranty. 1 year, 3 years, lifetime, and then the lifetime + extra that is only offered by XFX, eVGA, and BFG. That is also a classic "gamble" feature. It will either be worth 0$, or 200$. Depending on how the dice rolls.

And when I say it is worth 10$ to me, by no means do I say that it should be worth 10$ to everyone. It should be worth less to some, and more to others.

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: sourthings
Every reference to physx in this thread is talking about demos, or online videos giving examples. Or a level of UT3, or two games, one awful, the other so-so. And then allusions to 'coming soon' garbage titles.

Which is all far, far ahead of anything the competition offers. Of course its a horse and carriage/chicken and egg situation, devs will simply not implement features for vaporware or until the tools are available. The difference is GPU PhysX is now a reality when it wasn't only a few months ago

Even less then that... Merely last month the status was "nvidia bought ageia 6 months ago, promised GPU drivers, they are still not available". If I was a developer, I would be hard pressed to be convinced to develop under that condition. (yet they still got some on board, since obviously those games took at least 6 months to get to where they are right now)

What excites me about physX is that there are tech demoes, there are the modded maps for UT3, showing what can be done. There is GRAW... and I am impressed, I see what can be done and now that the drivers are here there is suddenly an installed hardware base.

Blu ray won against a coalition of microsoft + everyone else. Back by Sony alone, by itself against all the giants. There were several factors here, but one of the major ones was that each PS3 sold was also a blu ray player, this sort of "free feature" bundled into another product by a company creates an instant user base. People were not willing to buy the PPU, I was not willing to buy a PPU. But suddenly I have one, and my 8800GTS 512MB I gave mybrother is one too. This creates the customer base out of thin air.
A developer now has potentially 90 million people who can run their game without buying extra hardware.

 

[MarcVenice]

Don't flame me just yet, but sourthings has 'one' point, worth considering, IF nvidia's physx turns out to be a big hit ( which I in all honesty hope it does ), then my prediction on this is that ATI will follow suit. ATI will NOT just sit idle, and tell their customers, sorry guys, no physics for you, tough luck. If physx really does become a big deal, ATI will most likely cooperate with nvidia, to some extent, so that physics can also run on ATI videocards. Maybe they'll run worse on ATI videocards, or perhaps better, that's pure speculation. But it has been shown that ATI cards can run physx.

Perhaps that's a more interesting point to discuss. I'm done arguing wether physx is a selling point or not, Taltamir agreed to some extent with me, and that's enough. Let's just discuss the tech at hand, and what will happen if nvidia's Physx is adopted by more then just a handfull of developers, in just a handfull of games. What if next Empire: Total War sports physx where during navy battles ships will take REAL physx damage, and sink accordingly if they get hit below the waterline, or if a mast falls down, and then crushes some soldiers, and tangles with another ships mast. Big what if of course, but these things COULD happen, and I hope they do. How will ATI respond? I think, that physx could be the same thing as with directx 10, nvidia had it, and it took AMD a long time to bring out a directx10 videocard, and a shitty one at that. But, this does mean Nvidia rly has to push it, push it hard, keep enhancing physx performance, and perhaps even subsidise studios, with programmers from nvidia.

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: sourthings

Originally posted by: chizow

I can find reviews refuting all these claims just as easily as you can find ones that support them.

I've only found a couple of reviews, and sure, the GTX 280 is faster overall, also more expensive.

http://www.hothardware.com/Art...MD-Back-On-Top/?page=6

Depending on how well the Radeon HD 4870 X2 CrossFireX configuration scaled, it too was one of the fastest multi-GPU configurations available, but a pair or trio of GeForce GTX 280 cards were faster in a few instances.

http://www.driverheaven.net/re...?reviewid=609&pageid=5

 

[Janooo]

Originally posted by: sourthings

Originally posted by: chizow

And when price and performance are similar a sensible consumer will look at other features like PhysX, whether you consider them pointless or not is irrelevant.

4870 is faster than GTX260, similar price, 4870 is 80-85% of a GTX280, sometimes faster, $150 cheaper. 4870X2 is faster than GTX280, in many cases, faster than GTX280 SLI. 4870X2 CF is generally faster than GTX280 Tri-Sli and is $200 or so cheaper and doesn't require the usage of a horrible nvidia motherboard.

About the only answer ATI does not have to NV's lineup is a something equal to GTX280, they either have something with close to it's performance, or more. The former is cheaper, the latter more expensive.

Have your PhysX, it's a revolution! It will change gaming as we know it. I'll revisit this happily six months from now, when the glorious PhysX has revolutionized the gaming market and no one is buying ATI cards anymore because every game is using PhysX and ATI has no hardware physics to speak off....

:roll:

4850X2 will fit the description.

 

[hohyss]

I am the original OP and it was a... PAIN reading

through reading 11 pages of hot heated debates. But it was worth it.



Beginning seemed a bit dramatic as people from both sides clashed

and chopped each others on the face and became drenched with each others blood.

getting smacked to death, Boss battles ( moderators ? ), advent of extremists and

finally an armistice. phew... intense reading indeed.



In the end, now we all know about the pros and cons of physx as well as dx10.1.

VERY INTERESTING and Mutually beneficial.



I can request to close this thread but I really dont mind leaving it open

so more beneficial discussion can be done in the future.