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NVIDIA PhysX Pack @ Elite Bastards
DailyTech's roundup of hardware reviews from around the web for Thursday

NVIDIA PhysX Pack
@ Elite Bastards
@ Driver Heaven
@ Hot Hardware
@ The Tech Report
@ Techgage

Notebooks
HP 2133 Ultra Portable Netbook @ TechwareLabs

Desktops
HP Touchsmart all in one Desktop @ LogicTV

Motherboards
AMD 790GX Chipset @ AMD Zone
Gigabyte EP45-DQ6 Motherboard @ Bjorn3D
GIGABYTE EP45-DS3R Motherboard @ Virtual-Hideout

Memory
Compustocx CSX DIABLO3-2000-2GB-KIT @ Hardwareoverclock Austria

Video
Sapphire HD 4850 TOXIC in Crossfire @ TweakTown
Radeon HD 4850 Toxic 512MB @ Phoronix
Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 @ ASE Labs

Cases
Cooler Master CSX Medusa Cosmos Chassis @ TweakTown

Cooling
Sunbeamtech Core Contact Freezer @ XSReviews
Scythe Shuriken CPU Cooler @ Mikhailtech

Power Supplies
In Win Power Man Commander 1200w Power Supply @ High Tech Reviews

Storage
Corsair Flash Voyager Mini @ Rbmods
Vantec NexStar 3i External Hard Drive Enclosure @ ThinkComputers.org

Consumer Electronics
Canon EOS 1000D Digital SLR @ Trusted Reviews

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physics on gpu
By nosfe on 8/7/2008 1:14:35 PM , Rating: 1
i don't quite see the benefit of it really, i mean, the bottleneck at over 1024 resolutions is the gpu so why make it do even more work?

now, in the future, yes, maybe, but for now I'd say its more of a marketing stunt than anything useful for most of us




RE: physics on gpu
By AmbroseAthan on 8/7/2008 1:20:48 PM , Rating: 3
The main point some of the articles pointed out: a second GPU could be used for Physics.

So if you had a 280GTX as your primary GPU, and an older 9800 card you replaced with the 280, the 9800 could become your PPU. This would work with SLI & non-SLI motherboards.


RE: physics on gpu
By mmntech on 8/7/2008 1:35:43 PM , Rating: 2
Wasn't that ATI's plan. Have two cards in Crossfire and a third handling physics. Then again, that system isn't much different than Ageia's original concept of the PPU card. I'm not a computer programmer but I still think physics would be better (easier) done in CPU than GPU with better multithreading/multicore support for games. Aren't CPUs better at solving mathematical problems? I could be totally wrong but it seems to work with software driven physics used in the Xbox 360 and PS3.

The idea of physics in game hasn't really changed much since the PhysX was originally announced. It just makes explosions prettier. Call me back when driving and flight sims start supporting it.


RE: physics on gpu
By MrBlastman on 8/7/2008 1:46:20 PM , Rating: 3
With Multi-Core processors becoming increasingly more common, the Physx add-in card was destined to be a dinosaur barely after it was released. It just makes more sense to do the physics processing with one of those extra cores on the CPU or the GPU.

As far as performance is concerned, do not underplay the power of the GPU. Nvidia has stated that the GPU outperforms a CPU by a huge multiplier (something on the order of >10x) faster than your average multi-core CPU.

Weather this is marketing BS or not remains to be seen. Marketers are brilliant "statisticians" as is any good Executive... I wonder what the statistical probability of a Marketer coming up with a new statistic per waking second is?... Statistically speaking of course ;)

I'm excited about these new drivers but I wish Nvidia would better spend their time fixing their most recent drivers and their support of DX 6 and 7 applications. I guess I shot myself in the foot a while back stating they had excellent drivers. Now all of a sudden what goes around has come around. oh well.


RE: physics on gpu
By 306maxi on 8/7/2008 1:47:49 PM , Rating: 2
Plus there's the fact that if you're playing an online multiplayer game and you have a physics card or a GPU devoted to physics and the other guy doesn't then what the heck happens?

For someone that upgrades GPU's every year like a lot of enthusiasts this is great. But for those who build a new PC every 3 or 4 years the cost of an additional graphics card is going to be a little steep merely to play it "The way it's meant to be played®"


RE: physics on gpu
By Suomynona on 8/7/2008 2:03:02 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Plus there's the fact that if you're playing an online multiplayer game and you have a physics card or a GPU devoted to physics and the other guy doesn't then what the heck happens?


It's no different than if you're running at two different resolutions, or if you have AA enabled and he doesn't. It's just an extra feature with a higher level of detail.


RE: physics on gpu
By 306maxi on 8/7/2008 3:49:48 PM , Rating: 2
Not really. Physics is supposed to mean that your environment responds in the way it should do. IE you shoot at a wall with a tank and the wall blows up the way it should and behaves like it should. Now what happens when you don't have the card to run the physics yet I do? I take your point that at the moment it's all eye candy but in the near future it's going to be about how your surroundings react to you which means you'll have fully destructable scenery.


RE: physics on gpu
By sviola on 8/7/2008 4:30:41 PM , Rating: 2
Probably, the cpu of the one that doesn't have will process it. Thus he will have a drop on fps and he gets killed by you, who has a better machine...


RE: physics on gpu
By 306maxi on 8/7/2008 5:43:50 PM , Rating: 2
Which gets back to my original point. This will create a class system on multiplayer games. If this is done badly I think this is really bad news for PC gaming and will be a big help for consoles who don't really have the issue of different hardware configurations (HDD'less 360's aside)


RE: physics on gpu
By gunzac21 on 8/7/2008 8:22:32 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
This will create a class system on multiplayer games.

This already exists. The people with the shitty comp turn down res or turn off AA to get better fps. Some play at 60fps
has the advantage of someone playing at 30fps in counterstrike(which at times can seem like it uses no physics).
The same will be done for physics (they might just have to turn down their detail a bit more).


RE: physics on gpu
By SlyNine on 8/8/2008 1:08:28 AM , Rating: 2
It's crazy you think this is new ( or at least you give me that impression). Its kind of like a Nascar race. The cars all have restriction plates and so on. Mean while the PC is an open class race, where Geo's can take on Vipers.

Its up to the developer to make it scalable. Some times they set it up where if you cannot run DX10, you have to play in a DX9 game.

Sometimes they just have base hardware, they program it for a lower spec system.

One thing you need to remember though, Ping is commonly considered more important then FPS and it changes just as much on a console then it does on a PC.

There is NEVER an even playing field, be it a bigger screen, better speakers, less lag, or in PC's a faster system.


RE: physics on gpu
By StevoLincolnite on 8/8/2008 8:24:09 AM , Rating: 2
Perhaps When hosting a Server the Physics "Details" will be set to a level that majority of systems could handle.


RE: physics on gpu
By 306maxi on 8/9/2008 4:34:50 AM , Rating: 2
The NASCAR analogy isn't the best.

The point you miss is that physics directly affects the game that someone is playing. Say I have a beastly system which can handle millions of physics calculations a second and I see my enemy standing under a tree and shoot off a large branch to crush him, my system will calculate this fine. But he's on a low spec machine so he'll never see or hear the branch coming. So he's really playing a different game to me.

Ping, better graphics, bigger speakers, better mouse and so on. It doesn't really matter. Everyone experiences the same game, it's just that it might not be as pretty, loud or responsive. But with graphics they end up playing a different game and that's not going to be fun. Like I said before, this needs to be addressed properly or people will be pushed even more towards consoles where they know that they only need to pay x amount of dollars/pounds/euros to get the same experience as every other person that owns that console.


RE: physics on gpu
By Aloonatic on 8/8/2008 4:43:21 AM , Rating: 1
Welcome to ultra-mega-FPS-2009 v1.2.002 lobby, please choose your server for on-line fun and gloating

Server for those with Phsyx enabled 280 GTX SLi: 4 players on-line

Servers for everyone else: 257,129 players on-line


RE: physics on gpu
By gramboh on 8/7/2008 4:40:53 PM , Rating: 2
Every online MP game I've seen does physics (ragdolls, explosions) client side and handles them in a way that does not affect gameplay. I think it is too much data/overhead for the server to handle, and also the connection speeds might be an issue.


RE: physics on gpu
By DeepBlue1975 on 8/7/2008 2:15:23 PM , Rating: 2
CPUs are general purpose, fully programmable processors, they can do everything a in a PC but they are not optimized to do any particular task better than the others. In fact actual CPUs are not optimized to be highly parallel.

GPUs on the other side are highly optimized, hugely parallel units specifically designed to process large quantities of vectors and perspective calculations while working with a lot of memory traffic.

Physics calculations are based on vectors and to do particle effects and other complex calculations involving lots of large vectors at the same time, a GPU is vastly better suited for the job than any quad core CPU you can get today.
Larrabee could change that by being a highly parallel design that is also as fully programmable as any CPU (unlike GPUs which are programmable by these days, but not nearly as flexible as a CPU)


RE: physics on gpu
By Suomynona on 8/7/2008 2:00:55 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah, I hope they get the multi-card implementation done soon. The best part is being able to use an older card (well, at least an older 8- or 9-series card) as a dedicated physics processor. And it even works on Intel motherboards, which finally validates a stupid motherboard purchase I made two years ago...


RE: physics on gpu
By Dribble on 8/8/2008 6:19:06 AM , Rating: 2
That already works with the current drivers:
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/nvidia_geforce...
See 8800GT graphics with 9600GT physics.


PhysX is for effects
By mfed3 on 8/7/2008 9:20:08 PM , Rating: 2
The problem is that all of this stuff is not game changing, and runs only on the client as eye candy. Most of these games that will feature the PhysX middleware will be running Unreal 3 engine, which does all of its server calcs on the CPU, leaving PhysX effects to run on the client.

To the average user this means that physics enabled objects like ragdolls and dismembered bodies LOOK DIFFERENT on every single person's computer, based on how fast they are. Some people can even turn these effects off to increase framerate, or hide gore.

Until we are doing this stuff server side and sending the position of these interactive actors for gameplay purposes, this truly isnt anything special just yet. Lets see it happen!




RE: PhysX is for effects
By Flunk on 8/7/2008 10:09:55 PM , Rating: 2
Still nice to have for nothing if you already own a Nvidia graphics card. Also a feature should you be thinking of buying one.


RE: PhysX is for effects
By mfed3 on 8/7/2008 10:50:28 PM , Rating: 2
True story, I've just always wanted server side physics for everything in Unreal. This is probably the answer in the future.


RE: PhysX is for effects
By SlyNine on 8/8/2008 1:16:56 AM , Rating: 2
Yes if all these games are multiplayer and all you play is multiplayer, Then the reasons you gave as to why its not game changing works. But in a single player game you dont have those problems.

However mostly its still not game changing, because they are not going to develope for just one venders card, when you have to have 2 in the first place to make it valid and they would be leaving alot of people out in the cold.

But I would like to see what a GPU turned PPU is able to do. Could it handle all the physics in Crysis, Could it handle things like clothing movment in sports games, How about realistic physics like in Flight Simulator.


SLI
By FITCamaro on 8/7/2008 3:35:45 PM , Rating: 2
Why are there no reviews of two cards in SLI?




RE: SLI
By Dribble on 8/8/2008 6:15:37 AM , Rating: 2
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/nvidia_geforce...

Still missing the test I want to see - ati graphics and nvidia physics.


RE: SLI
By FITCamaro on 8/8/2008 12:44:31 PM , Rating: 2
Read the page. They didn't turn on SLI mode for the test. They used multi-GPU mode.


2 Brands of Gaming PC?
By Aloonatic on 8/8/2008 5:11:33 AM , Rating: 2
This all looks good but....

Assuming ATI bring out something very similar in the near future, are we headed down a path where the game writers have to write and we have to buy different versions of the same game depending on whether we have an ATI card or a NVIDIA card (or two)?

It looks like this could really come into it's own when the SLi on non identical cards arrives. Allowing people to upgrade their primary graphics card and then use (rather than simply throwing/giving away) their old graphics card to process physics.

Just how easy will developers find programming for these cards however? The Cell processor used in the PS3 caused (and probably still is causing) a fair few problems and one of th e reasons (I seem to recall) for the inclusion of Cell in the PS3 was to better handle physics calculations.




By Landiepete on 8/8/2008 7:32:09 AM , Rating: 2
Ah ! This must be because MickeySoft has closed a havoc licencing deal. Or vice versa.

Peter R.




"I f***ing cannot play Halo 2 multiplayer. I cannot do it." -- Bungie Technical Lead Chris Butcher









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