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So why is another card needed just for physics?

M

MrX8503

Diamond Member
I feel like the whole physics thing is just another excuse for selling another expensive computer hardware to the consumer.

Is this something that is really needed? It seems like these physx cards are around 200-300, This is how much some people spend on a graphics card.

So why is a seperate card needed and why cant video card advancements handle physics on their own? Or even SLI for that matter.
 
Because the GPUs main purpose is to render a scene. You start making it do physics and it will eat cycles needed for rendering.

10 years ago 3dFX came out with this annoying addin card called the Voodo1 that offloaded rendering from the CPU to the GPU. 10 years ago people debated why we need to spend money on a new addin card that renders 3d when the CPU can do that.

I think 10 years from now we will know why we are paying extra for a PPU. I for one look forward to getting ahold of one and playing titles that take advantage of it.

Right now we have pretty games that are devoid of interaction.
 
Originally posted by: MrX8503
I feel like the whole physics thing is just another excuse for selling another expensive computer hardware to the consumer.

Is this something that is really needed? It seems like these physx cards are around 200-300, This is how much some people spend on a graphics card.

So why is a seperate card needed and why cant video card advancements handle physics on their own? Or even SLI for that matter.
Click to expand...

Because its never a good Idea to take a product thats ment for something else and use it. Why get SLI if your going to sacrifice a card anyways. Why Get a 7900GTX if your going to throwing precious F.E.A.R. and UT07 clock cycles at it.

If the Video manufacturers want to sell their video cards as physics, then they need to remove video driver tyins and rebrand them as Physics card and allow them to use them as standalone products (with even a competitors video card).

Whether or not its really a video card, a discrete card is the way it should go in terms of performance.
 
The physics engine isnt part of the video! All the graphics card does is depict on screen, what the computer is doing.

If you see a swinging rope in game, it isnt some clever graphics effect, its the cpu working hard to accurately calculate how a rope would swing, and the the graphics card displays the output of it.

The physics card would be able to process far more physics information (think big rock slides, or real cloth physics, dust, debris, actual damage to the ground etc) and then pass it to the gpu, just as the cpu is doing now. Its dedicated hardware designed to perform physics calculations, running them far more quickly and efficiently than the cpu, and leaving the cpu to do other things like AI.

It wouldnt surprise me if in a few years time that we didnt just have one big central processor, instead just a load of dedicated ones, GPU, Physics, AI, etc all working together.
 
Simply: Specialisation. Physics Processing requires incredible amounts of internal bandwith and performs simple but intensely repetitive calculations. Specialisation is currently on the way back - these things fluctuate - with AMD recently announcing the possibility of specialist co-processors for Opteron servers.
 
Actually, gpu's can and have been used for general computation, not just drawing graphics. And I would much rather use the idle cycles of my x1900xtx to do physics than spend $250 for a separate card. In fact, I've got a whole second core on my opteron 165 that mostly sits idle while gaimg, I'd like to see it put to good use. I'm not about to spend $250 on a physics card just because Ageia tells me that I NEED a physics card.
 
Originally posted by: munky
Actually, gpu's can and have been used for general computation, not just drawing graphics. And I would much rather use the idle cycles of my x1900xtx to do physics than spend $250 for a separate card. In fact, I've got a whole second core on my opteron 165 that mostly sits idle while gaimg, I'd like to see it put to good use. I'm not about to spend $250 on a physics card just because Ageia tells me that I NEED a physics card.
Click to expand...

What your GPU will do and what this does is not the same thing. Your ATi GPU will do effects physics where this card will do gameworld physics.

And lets be honest, in a game like FEAR, you dont have many spare cycles to do anything. And FEAR is just the beginning on games that will be shader heavy that are coming out this year.
You prepared to spend premium dollars on a GPU to have it perform less than optimally because you want it to perform a job it shouldnt be doing?

I for one would rather plop the 250 bucks down and get a better experience and optimize my system than hope my GPU has spare cycles left over to render particle effect physics.

 
I don't think any game manufacturers will make a game that would require us to have a seperate physics processor. Greatly reduced sales and backlash. Who knows the whole Ageia thing may flop, and even if it doesn't, I'm sure people without it will still be able to play any game out there. Maybe with less impressive physics? I know there may be compatability problems with multiplayer games but they will get around it.

All I know is I can type the word "physics" faster than ever before!!

Edit- Genx87 above this has a good point.
 
Originally posted by: Genx87
Originally posted by: munky
Actually, gpu's can and have been used for general computation, not just drawing graphics. And I would much rather use the idle cycles of my x1900xtx to do physics than spend $250 for a separate card. In fact, I've got a whole second core on my opteron 165 that mostly sits idle while gaimg, I'd like to see it put to good use. I'm not about to spend $250 on a physics card just because Ageia tells me that I NEED a physics card.
Click to expand...

What your GPU will do and what this does is not the same thing. Your ATi GPU will do effects physics where this card will do gameworld physics.

And lets be honest, in a game like FEAR, you dont have many spare cycles to do anything.
You prepared to spend premium dollars on a GPU to have it perform less than optimally because you want it to perform a job it shouldnt be doing?
Click to expand...

My GPU also has 8 vertex shaders that barely break a sweat in any game - those can be used for physics calculations. And my second cpu core is still twiddling its thumbs. My point is that games do not even have enpough physics load to fully take advantage of existing hardware, why should I buy additional physics hardware?
 
Originally posted by: munky
Originally posted by: Genx87
Originally posted by: munky
Actually, gpu's can and have been used for general computation, not just drawing graphics. And I would much rather use the idle cycles of my x1900xtx to do physics than spend $250 for a separate card. In fact, I've got a whole second core on my opteron 165 that mostly sits idle while gaimg, I'd like to see it put to good use. I'm not about to spend $250 on a physics card just because Ageia tells me that I NEED a physics card.
Click to expand...

What your GPU will do and what this does is not the same thing. Your ATi GPU will do effects physics where this card will do gameworld physics.

And lets be honest, in a game like FEAR, you dont have many spare cycles to do anything.
You prepared to spend premium dollars on a GPU to have it perform less than optimally because you want it to perform a job it shouldnt be doing?
Click to expand...

My GPU also has 8 vertex shaders that barely break a sweat in any game - those can be used for physics calculations. And my second cpu core is still twiddling its thumbs. My point is that games do not even have enpough physics load to fully take advantage of existing hardware, why should I buy additional physics hardware?
Click to expand...


I agree if there arent any games out there that take advantage why bother? But it is the old chicken before the egg argument. Did you feel the same way when you saw a voodo1 in action? Without the voodo1 no games at that time would do anything but have the CPU render. But without game support who wants to buy a voodoo1?

I think your dream of a second CPU somehow filling the role of a dedicated PPU is a pipe and using the vertex shaders may be feasible now, you dont know if it will be in 12 months and what resources it will take away from shaders.

It is coming and this will be an exciting time for game design. If you dont want to jump on board nobody is forcing you to. But in 2 years when games have much more interaction you may want to.
 
Originally posted by: munky
Originally posted by: Genx87
Originally posted by: munky
Actually, gpu's can and have been used for general computation, not just drawing graphics. And I would much rather use the idle cycles of my x1900xtx to do physics than spend $250 for a separate card. In fact, I've got a whole second core on my opteron 165 that mostly sits idle while gaimg, I'd like to see it put to good use. I'm not about to spend $250 on a physics card just because Ageia tells me that I NEED a physics card.
Click to expand...

What your GPU will do and what this does is not the same thing. Your ATi GPU will do effects physics where this card will do gameworld physics.

And lets be honest, in a game like FEAR, you dont have many spare cycles to do anything.
You prepared to spend premium dollars on a GPU to have it perform less than optimally because you want it to perform a job it shouldnt be doing?
Click to expand...

My GPU also has 8 vertex shaders that barely break a sweat in any game - those can be used for physics calculations. And my second cpu core is still twiddling its thumbs. My point is that games do not even have enpough physics load to fully take advantage of existing hardware, why should I buy additional physics hardware?
Click to expand...

Not to start a argument or anything but how do you know that the 8 vertex shaders are not being used? Infact no one does except ATI, unless you have some program which I do not know about.

I for one would much rather spend 250$ on a decent midranged card and 200$ on a PPU then a 450-550$ GPU. I play at lower resolutions due to my monitor and I am not planning on upgrading my monitor every year. This will allow more fluid gameplay and a better gaming experience for me and quite a few other people. This will allow games to use my PPU and lay off my already taxed GPU and not force me to frieking upgrade every 6 months.

In addition to your second core which is probably a AMD dual core the second core with newer games will offload the sound and network if playing multiplayer games. So I doubt our CPU's will just be sitting their.
 
Originally posted by: Zstream
Originally posted by: munky
Originally posted by: Genx87
Originally posted by: munky
Actually, gpu's can and have been used for general computation, not just drawing graphics. And I would much rather use the idle cycles of my x1900xtx to do physics than spend $250 for a separate card. In fact, I've got a whole second core on my opteron 165 that mostly sits idle while gaimg, I'd like to see it put to good use. I'm not about to spend $250 on a physics card just because Ageia tells me that I NEED a physics card.
Click to expand...

What your GPU will do and what this does is not the same thing. Your ATi GPU will do effects physics where this card will do gameworld physics.

And lets be honest, in a game like FEAR, you dont have many spare cycles to do anything.
You prepared to spend premium dollars on a GPU to have it perform less than optimally because you want it to perform a job it shouldnt be doing?
Click to expand...

My GPU also has 8 vertex shaders that barely break a sweat in any game - those can be used for physics calculations. And my second cpu core is still twiddling its thumbs. My point is that games do not even have enpough physics load to fully take advantage of existing hardware, why should I buy additional physics hardware?
Click to expand...

Not to start a argument or anything but how do you know that the 8 vertex shaders are not being used? Infact no one does except ATI, unless you have some program which I do not know about.

I for one would much rather spend 250$ on a decent midranged card and 200$ on a PPU then a 450-550$ GPU. I play at lower resolutions due to my monitor and I am not planning on upgrading my monitor every year. This will allow more fluid gameplay and a better gaming experience for me and quite a few other people. This will allow games to use my PPU and lay off my already taxed GPU and not force me to frieking upgrade every 6 months.

In addition to your second core which is probably a AMD dual core the second core with newer games will offload the sound and network if playing multiplayer games. So I doubt our CPU's will just be sitting their.
Click to expand...

I know vertex shaders don't do much work in actual games because not only do I do some 3d programming from time to time, but I've also examined some shaders used in games and demos. Most often, the vertex shaders are only used to set up the apropriate data for the pixel shaders, and the pixel shaders do the grunt work. For example, if you have Chronicles of Riddick installed, you can just look at their shaders using notepad.
 
I think vertex shaders were used more in the past. They're cheaper than pixel shaders because there are fewer vertices than pixels right?
 
Originally posted by: Genx87

Right now we have pretty games that are devoid of interaction.
Click to expand...

Agree...it sometimes feels like game worlds are made of styrofoam. Weightless and rigid.
 
Do any current games even take advantage of this?

When the first game that shows me a significant advantage to having a PPU board in my rig, that's when I'll get one.
 
Ati's version sounds interesting if it's accurate. It supposedly lets you use any 2 unmatched video cards to have one do 3d and one do physics. Taking my old video card and demoting it to physics card seems reasonable to me. Hopefully nvidia impliments that too since that would be a good option for my 6800gs when I upgrade. If you've got a full sli setup the ability to balance between 3d accelerating and physics acceleration has some potential too.
 
gabe newell on nvidia's physics... (http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200603/N06.0324.2249.59492.htm)

GI: I think you guys have one of the best physics setups in gaming, and with things like Aegia and what Havok is doing with NVidia, how will you implement that in Half-Life?

Newell: There are a couple of different issues going on there. With our physics, the player can collide with objects. This is a good thing. The stuff that is being shown by NVidia right now, the latencies are too high. Their physics is essentially to make prettier pictures. It?s like you can have a bunch of different things bouncing around so long as they don?t actually touch anything that matters. If you don?t actually have to read the data out ? if your AI system ever needed to know about whether or not one of those objects had collided with something else it would run slower by running on the GPU than having it run on the main CPU. So physics that matter is different than physics that makes pretty pictures.

The presentation quality is fine. I think we went through a round of that with graphics acceleration. It wasn?t until it enabled different types of games, games that involve the game logic being able to ascertain the state of the physics system I think that that?s the really important long term direction from everybody. So having pretty explosions is cool, but you stop seeing it pretty quickly. You only see the stuff that actually matters. There?s still a lot of work to be able to figure out how to get an order of magnitude or two orders of magnitude improvement in that kind of physics. That?ll be a big challenge for everybody.
Click to expand...
 
Haven't read any of the threads except the OPs.

Basically, if we followed your advice, we would never have had 3d acceleraters. But we do... I should say, why did we need a GPU if the CPU could handle it? Well, obviously because the CPU wasn't efficient at those tasks. A new one was required to take things to a new level.

You think a PPU is an excuse to make more money, your are wrong, completely wrong. You and people with your thinking are the reason that computing isn't moving along even faster. Embrace the PPU, it is the future.
 
When read the OP, I also felt that PPUs were going to fail .. as it doesn't make sense to have a dedicated card for physics. But after reading the rest of the comments, and after thinking a bit about it, I must say that I can already understand the need for a physics card.

Our games are bound to go the 'more realism' way .. and currently, the biggest stumbling block for them is accurately representing physics. And perhaps, just like graphics 10 years ago, the reason why current games are so poor in physics is because there is not enough processing power for the same or perhaps there are not enough standards (read APIs) to calculate physics.

So, I think it makes sense to have some sort of dedication for physics .. be it a card, a chip (on the graphics card or the motherboard) or a Directx API.
 
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