thilanliyan
Lifer
You keep saying this but do you have any actual numbers of how much power the Xenos GPU consumes?
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THQ chooses Nvidia's PhysX technology for better gaming
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You keep saying this but do you have any actual numbers of how much power the Xenos GPU consumes?
Qbah
Diamond Member
I'd say until both ATi and nVidia support something, it won't be widespread (it's the minimum requirement). Because a developer won't create a game that will run on half of the cards on the market only. Now, PhysX adding stuff (like in Mirror's Edge) is nice, but I don't think such a thing will be available in many games anyway. As long as a game is nice and enjoyable without PhysX, why would a developer spend extra time and money on adding anything extra that can be run on selected cards only? The game is fun anyway without it.
Now, I *do* like the things that can be seen on that Mirror's Edge for example. But that's not enough of a reason to change a card, if my old one runs the game as fast but doesn't get those few extra things in a game or two only. Now, if I was buying a new card, sure, that'd be a thing to consider, cause both companies have similarly performing cards and they cost the same (in the US 😛), so why not buy the one that has more things? Though you also consider past experience with a company, noise and warranty probably.
Bottom line is, unless something gets picked up by both side, it just won't fly. People will try to scream their lungs out saying that this is the future and what not, but unless most of the people can use it, it just won't stay.
Now, I *do* like the things that can be seen on that Mirror's Edge for example. But that's not enough of a reason to change a card, if my old one runs the game as fast but doesn't get those few extra things in a game or two only. Now, if I was buying a new card, sure, that'd be a thing to consider, cause both companies have similarly performing cards and they cost the same (in the US 😛), so why not buy the one that has more things? Though you also consider past experience with a company, noise and warranty probably.
Bottom line is, unless something gets picked up by both side, it just won't fly. People will try to scream their lungs out saying that this is the future and what not, but unless most of the people can use it, it just won't stay.
BFG10K
Lifer
Actually it appears Microsoft are to blame. They used ATi's core design but they added extras and oversaw the manufacturing process instead of ATi:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/06/11/ms_xbox_gp/
There are literally dozens of games in development now that will use PhysX for more realistic, less static environments.
Many will be released this year, at least two within the next 60 days.
Given how close the performance is between ATi and NVIDIA cards, just why would people choose to not have the option to use PhysX?
Why would PhysX have anything to do with your buying decisions when you don't own a card that can run PhysX, according to your sig?
Also- no one is saying you should buy games to see PhysX effects, at least I'm not. Heh- I'd never play a game just to see some better effects, unless it was free. (and then I wouldn't spend much time)
The point is that the games you would buy anyway are better with PhysX than without.
For example, I would buy Cryostasis no matter what- I like survival horror games like Doom3 and Dead Space.
Same with UT3. I love the UT games, just playing the bots. So for me it's better to have the option to play those PhysX levels with a bunch of eye candy added than not.
So while Nurien has PhysX, I won't buy it for that, not my thing.
Has anyone seen the Mirror's Edge PhysX trailer?
There's nothing meaningful in that video. Minor visual differences and absolutely zero impact on gameplay. And this is supposed to showcase PhysX?
There's nothing meaningful in that video. Minor visual differences and absolutely zero impact on gameplay. And this is supposed to showcase PhysX?
Mem
Lifer
Actually I own a few Nvidia cards and more then one PC but thats besides the point,what I'm saying is PhysX may or may not be better with games,eitherway its not a factor when I buy a game.
THQ and other companies can choose PhysX or anything else,again it has no bearing on buying games for most gamers at this time,when and if PhysX becomes the standard for ALL then thats a different story.
We buy games to enjoy not because it has a big nvidia logo or PhysX wrighting on the box.
If you watch the side by side, it's a little more obvious what the differences are
Flags, drapes, glass breaking, water fountain, destructable environment, this is all stuff that makes the PhysX version better.
We've been playing with static, unrealistic environments long enough IMO.
In the world I live in, almost nothing is impervious. In the worlds I play in, almost everything is.
That's not "virtual reality" and anything that brings us closer to it is by definition good.
Isn't that exactly what I said? You buy the games you like, but those games are better with PhysX?
What does whether it's a standard "for ALL" have to do with anything? If there are good effects and higher levels of immersion in games people want to play with a specific brand of hardware, people will buy that hardware.
For example, remember the early days of Glide? Not many games at first, but if you were a gamer, you bought a 3dfx card because that was the only way you could run Glide.
Or SLi before Crossfire existed/worked. People bought it to run higher resolutions and levels of AA/AF, and it didn't matter at all ATi didn't have it.
People will buy what gives them the best gaming experience, and they don't really care who sells it to them. (at least they shouldn't)
Again, this is exactly what I said. You should buy the games you like, but you're better off if those games have PhysX effects in them than not.
Mem
Lifer
Most gamers I know hate to choose sides and like to use ATi as well as Nvidia cards,I know I do,as a gamer I would hate to be forced to go one side,standard for ALL is an important factor for a lot of gamers,obviously all those die hard and paid Nvidia users don't see that.
Gamers like choices without restrictions,standard for all is important.
There are no "sides", only products with features to choose.
What exactly does a person buying a card that supports PhysX "lose"? If they don't lose anything, what does it matter if they only have one choice that offers a feature?
Many of the big development firms are signing up for PhysX, and there are many titles coming.
If Ageia had put together this kind of support for PhysX, there would be an Ageia add on card in my box.
What would you say about PhysX if neither NVIDIA nor ATi offered it? If it was a stand alone card from Agiea still?
If you still think "It's bad, the only good features are ones everyone has so everyone has an equal shot at your dollars" we're going to have to agree to disagree.
Here's a good analogy:
If GM invents a truck suspension that makes the truck ride 300% smoother, I'm not going to post on the truck forums "This is crap! I won't support this until Ford and Chrysler have it too, I don't want to be limited to only GM trucks!".
Market differentiation is what business is about, and as end users, the gaming experience should be all that matters to us.
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i still wouldn't have it. i didn't buy it when physx WAS a standalone card, and i won't buy it now. there actually is a cost to it. nvidia RD will now have to devote even less time to their crappy drivers and put some more into developing that crap.
BTW, a NIC provides better gameplay from a standalone card, why dont u have one? if i were you i'd get one soon...
Qbah
Diamond Member
Buying a card with extra features that may or may not be used, cause they're not a universal standard is not the problem. Recommending a card because it has PhysX is a problem - putting a recommendation for a card because it uses something that is only supported by nVidia and is not something widely used. See the clear distinction? You can buy Radeons cheaper where I live. They are as fast and as reliable (more imo) as nVidia cards. And cheaper. But we're being told to buy nVidia cards cause they can do PhysX, something hardly used right now. And something hardly game defining from the previews we got so far.
I've seen the side-by-side. There isn't that much of a difference, and none of it applies to gameplay! It's just eye-candy fluff and hardly makes any progress towards a 'realistic environment'. I don't think I would even notice some of the stuff while I'm playing.
I don't know what games you've been playing but there are plenty of non-static game environments out there that don't use PhysX.
This is thread is going down the same drain that the majority of video threads do: e-penis wars over useless shit.
There wasn't much reason to buy a stand alone PhysX card back then- no dev support.
This is the second time in this thread you've tried to derail it with assertions about NVIDIA drivers, so let's discuss that topic here">http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2259746&enterthread=y</a> and not violate TOS by posting off topic!
I don't know what NICs have to do with PhysX either, but if I was an online gamer I'd own one if what you say is true.
In any case, so we've gotten down to "I won't support or buy PhysX until ATi has it" for you, and that's fine.
That's where we differ though, because if ATi made a stand alone PhysX card, it would be in my box.
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Again from the AT article:
Feel free to parse that yourself if you're really interested. Power draw was cut 30-50% between revisions and almost 20% under load just from shrinking the GPU.
The first quote is by an analyst from Gartner and clearly inaccurate. MS commissioned ATI to design the chip, the only bits they added to it was their logo because they bought the design, probably in an attempt to avoid any fixed licensing and pricing issues like with the original Xbox. You really think MS with its limited hardware experience was able to design the world's first unified shader GPU? So yes, Microsoft assumed culpability as they technically owned the chip, but they surely did not design it.
Glanced over and jumped around quite a bit....
Again, do you have a DX10 part + Vista or a Sound Blaster? Is DX10 being stifled despite 70-80% of gaming machines not supporting DX10? Is EAX being stifled despite 10-20% market share of Creative Sound Cards?
And even if it is just eye-candy, its going to be more visually stunning than anything offered on the PC since DX9. And yes, developers have shown time and time again that they are willing to put in the latest features if that will make their game better and differentiate it from the competition.
Again, you need to read-up more on the cross-portability of all the standards being discussed. Or just read my summary again. All this tin foil hat uncertainty and disinformation isn't doing anyone any good.
Like 9800GTs or $50 9600GSOs? Even the GTX 260 is falling close to that upper $150 range. The Steam survey shows some 60%+ is still using 1280x1024 or lower for their primary display and in that case a 9800GT should still be plenty for both GPU and PhysX acceleration.
MS will provide the standard but that will not eliminate the need for front-end SDKs and toolkits. And Intel? They don't even have a GPU, their answer for highly parallel is going to be 20-something Pentium 1 class CPUs in Larrabee.....they don't even mention it anymore in their discussions of high-end graphics and both Nvidia and AMD have completely dismissed them as competition in the discrete GPU market.
Have a link to that? Genuinely curious.
I think all of your comments to-date on the subject would dispute that whether intentional or not. As for comparisons to the PPU, clearly you can make the distinction that PhysX is well beyond that right? I mean, expensive $100-200 add-in card for 3-5 games that few bought vs. 100 million+ Nvidia GPUs almost overnight.
Yes and that's certainly going to be a concern if titles are PC ports but its also going to be less of a concern if devs have access to the SDK from the start of development. I'm quite sure older games with software back-end solvers will not be retrofitted with PhysX, that just won't happen given the nature of the gaming industry. But if the tools are accessible at the start, the difference in cost to implement GPU PhysX will be much more palatable. Still, in the big picture you have to realize the next generation consoles will most likely integrate hardware physics acceleration, so the PC would make the perfect test platform and devs would benefit from the experience now.
I didn't mean you were pushing AMD's agenda knowingly, just that your viewpoint was the same as what AMD is pushing. PhysX is evil because 100% of the market doesn't have access to it, but hardware physics will be great once DX11 gives it to everyone for free. My problem is that AMD is saying what they're saying for very different reasons than what they're saying in public, and ultimately it will hurt the adoption rate of hardware physics in the short-term even when they know its something they want going forward.
Actually I'd say this means they're looking at hardware PhysX as many of their studios (Relic) have been using software physics for years (Havok). While this announcement on its own isn't all too exciting, taken with all of the other recent announcements (2k/EA), it clearly shows devs and major publishers are interested in the technology.
Yes I'm sure most here are familiar with that video, but here's a better illustration of the differences:
Mirror's Edge Side-by-Side
While you can claim minor visual differences and absolutely zero impact on gameplay, there is no question that the PhysX version of the game will be significantly better than the one without.
There's entire websites like TweakGuides that give excellent tips on how to improve IQ and still, applying all of them for a particular game would pale in comparison to the enhancements provided by PhysX.
thilanliyan
Lifer
Jasper was a GPU + memory shrink so it wasn't all due to the GPU:
http://gear.ign.com/articles/826/826652p1.html
And you have no idea what percent of the total load is from the GPU so you have no idea how hot it actually runs.
Also, that still doesn't answer who was actually responsible for the inadequate cooling. Obviously MS approved the ATI design. There's no way MS would have used their design if they didn't think they could cool it.
Well its obvious you're not interested enough to do your own research, so this is the last time I'm going to feed it to you since this is already OT. The move to Jasper was only a GPU shrink of those 3 components, the shrinks to the CPU and eDRAM already came with the move from Xenon to Falcon.
AT article
360Rev CPU GPU eDRAM
Xenon 90nm 90nm 90nm
Falcon 65nm 80nm 80nm
Jasper 65nm 65nm 80nm
While inadequate cooling certainly contributed to the issue, the cause is still undoubtedly the excessively hot GPU as a cooler running GPU might not have resulted in the GPU melting away the solder and physically dismembering the chip from the board. This is all well-documented in the links I provided that also give the failure rates, as techs in the RMA departments were describing what they were seeing with RROD machines.
Now compare this to the Nvidia problems. Are you assigning blame to the notebook makers, or the GPU maker?
cmdrdredd
Lifer
I'm glad an opinion makes you so vile and works you up so feverishly. I mean wow...good job.
Seriously, the Wii was NOT marketed to gamers. It's marketed to kids and non-gamers. Those who wouldn't play GTA, Quake Wars, Half-Life, Halo, and just about every other game that has been really popular in the last year or two. There is a very high percentage of gamers, the ones who are building PCs for gaming who would rather have a 360 or a PS3 than a Wii. I am one of those people. You have to understand, the Wii by my standards is old technology. It doesn't use my TV's native HD resolution, it doesn't have any of the games I want like Gears of War 2, GTA, Metal Gear Solid, Fallout 3, or Left 4 dead etc. It's online play is a joke. So I don't want it and it is my firm opinion that waving my arms around for some "virtual sports" game is a pathetic way to spend time. If I want to play a game I'll sit down, grab a drink and relax. If I want to be active, I'll go out and play football or something.
From my perspective, games should always move forward graphically. If a game released today could be done 5 years ago I wonder what the point is. That's how I am. That's why I think Physx is a good idea. It offers visual immersion that you don't have with any other API at the current time. Havok sure, but since Physx is GPU accelerated it offers the ability to do more than Havok. I don't think physx is necessary for a good game, but then I still think The Legend of Zelda is a good game with 2D sprites.
Andrew1990
Banned
I dont know about you guys. but that mirrors edge PhysX Video looked pretty cool. Since I already bought a PhysX enabled card, I am glad some games are supporting the feature. I didnt buy the card for PhysX but if game developers do throw a few extras in for us I for one am glad.
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