Colin Posted August 18, 2006 Share Posted August 18, 2006 It was said by many that using a PPU card by Ageia slowed game play and caused Frame rate loss, it was also said at the time it was the fault of the game maker Grin. How ever since release more tests have been done by vaious groups. Below is a quote from one such online group PC Perspective, this is what they had to say at release. Final Thoughts We only had a brief time with the AGEIA PhysX processor system for now, so we didn't have enough time to "review" the card or technology completely, and it would be too early to finalize our opinions on anything based on this short look. In Ghost Recon, the differences between having a PhysX card and not having one are not as dramatic as I had first hoped they would be. Honestly, it would be a hard sell to most users to ask them to pay as much as $250 extra for a product that performs only what we saw here. And now they say this. Conclusions Ghost Recon Summary The most important title for AGEIA’s current success, Ghost Recon performance need to be evaluated. From the time my initial testing was complete until publication, much on this subject from AGEIA, NVIDIA and Havok has been published by various websites. First, Havok published an email claiming that the majority of the game engine for Ghost Recon uses the Havok physics engine, not the Novodex/PhysX engine. Also, since they had seen the same performance decreases with the PPU installed as we did, they did some testing with the help of NVIDIA that showed the GPU has more than enough additional power for the extra physical objects that the PhysX code adds and that the GPU is not responsible for any frame rate slowdowns. Therefore, the AGEIA PhysX driver and hardware are responsible for the slowdown. I hypothesized this as well, and it seems to make sense. However, just yesterday, AGEIA released a new driver revision for the PhysX card that would address the issue. To quote the email: "We appreciate feedback from the gamer community and based partly on comments like the one above, we have identified an area in our driver where fine tuning positively impacts frame rate. We made an adjustment quickly and delivered it in a new driver (2.4.3) which is available for download at ageia.com today." They seem to be admitting that the performance WAS lower but they found the problem and it was addressed. This sounds a lot like the GPU wars for the past 3+ years, doesn’t it? The end result remains the same from our perspective though – the AGEIA PhysX provides some additional effects and interaction without much (or any if the driver fix will work) decrease in performance. As you can see a far more detailed description, after a proper evaluation of the hardware and software. If you read these 2 seperat articles the differences are clear. http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=244&a...xpert&pid=9 This type of tech is looking forward and Grin was not afraid to use it, in time as both hardware and software become better, all games including this one will become much better. I myself dont have one but use a BFG GeForce 7950 GX2 1024MB GDDR3 which does a great job. If you are thinking of buying one dont be put off by so called in depth tests and conclusions. Better I feel to talk to some one here who is actually using one in the game of your choice. At least you stand a good chance of getting first hand feed back. Most people with a bit of common know, new hardware takes time to tweak and so does the software, dont be ruled by online conclusions as such. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
}PW{ Postal Posted August 18, 2006 Share Posted August 18, 2006 (edited) I own a BFG Physx card and can say that it dont show any FPS loss on my game. Its actualy kind of funny cause recently i had a electrical storm take out my 2 onboard ethernet ports so i was forced to pull the physx card out to put in a Ethernet card. I have no more pci slots open so im kinda stuck till i get another motherboard. Well i noticed a big difference in the physics when i was forced to pull it out...lol I hadnt really noticed how much it did untill then...lol I have some time though cause there is a bug with GRAW and the Physx card as of now so i wasnt gonna use it till next patch. Oh...and the prices of the Physx cards are coming down too. Edited August 18, 2006 by }PW{ Postal Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocky Posted August 18, 2006 Share Posted August 18, 2006 Latest version is up to v2.5. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zulater Posted August 18, 2006 Share Posted August 18, 2006 the biggest problem is people with sli and a sound card. There is just physically no more room to be had. If it were made for the PCIE x1 I could use it but I have no more pci slots that aren't covered up. also with the dual core cpus becoming more prominant and quad cores on the horison the extra power the cpu will have can be dedicated to physics as well. It will be interesting to see what happens in the future. I think it can be a good idea and I firmly believe having the video cards do physics is asinine as they struggle at times to do graphics well espically on the lower end cards. Motherboard redesign is despirately needed to give room for more cards and adequate cooling though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreyHaired Posted August 18, 2006 Share Posted August 18, 2006 Motherboard redesign is despirately needed to give room for more cards and adequate cooling though. that design has been made. mobos with 3 slots for graphics are on the way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zulater Posted August 18, 2006 Share Posted August 18, 2006 Motherboard redesign is despirately needed to give room for more cards and adequate cooling though. that design has been made. mobos with 3 slots for graphics are on the way. but they still don't give room for more than 1 pci slot. if you want to run a sound card and a physics card with a top of the line graphics card tough luck because the heatsink covers a pci slot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreyHaired Posted August 18, 2006 Share Posted August 18, 2006 I haven't seen any details of those new boards yet = ATI RD600 only know they come with 3 pci-e slots. Nvidia is said to stick to two pci-e slots until further. There's a nice SLI board on the way though: "For the Republic of Gamers" LED all over the place http://kortlink.dk/amdzone/2wyk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zulater Posted August 18, 2006 Share Posted August 18, 2006 This would give you access to 2 pci slots and 1 pcie 1x slot. the bottom pci slot and the pcie4x slot will be covered by the heatsinks though. Headed in the right direction at least. much better than the current setups where you only get 1 pci slot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAbbi_74 Posted August 18, 2006 Share Posted August 18, 2006 They could say all they wanted about the 2.4.3 driver, but I know that was the driver version I had installed when I had the PPU in my rig, and it was still quite the laggy beast. Sure, the visual stuff was improved considerably in many cases (try watching the Embassy blow with a PPU...), but not worth the reduction in playability on a marginal system. Spend your money on processors and GPUs first. Then if you're made of cash, plop down $300 more for the PPU that only works for like 3 or 4 titles so far... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
viiiper Posted August 20, 2006 Share Posted August 20, 2006 They could say all they wanted about the 2.4.3 driver, but I know that was the driver version I had installed when I had the PPU in my rig, and it was still quite the laggy beast. Sure, the visual stuff was improved considerably in many cases (try watching the Embassy blow with a PPU...), but not worth the reduction in playability on a marginal system. Spend your money on processors and GPUs first. Then if you're made of cash, plop down $300 more for the PPU that only works for like 3 or 4 titles so far... Rabbi, The 2.5 Drivers are a big improvement, try your ppu back in your pc. viii Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
th33f. Posted August 20, 2006 Share Posted August 20, 2006 I haven't seen any details of those new boards yet = ATI RD600 only know they come with 3 pci-e slots. Nvidia is said to stick to two pci-e slots until further. There's a nice SLI board on the way though: "For the Republic of Gamers" LED all over the place http://kortlink.dk/amdzone/2wyk that third one could be used for physics apparently! supposedly, any x1k card could handle that. http://www.ati.com/technology/crossfire/physics/index.html just gotta wait for some reviews comparing the performance to an Ageia chip... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jsonedecker Posted August 20, 2006 Share Posted August 20, 2006 I'm not sure about the performance in GRAW specifically, but the 2.5 drivers are a HUGE improvment. We do benchmarking tools for Ageia since their 2.4.3 release and many things have been identified and worked through. Give them a try. -John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rossiski Posted August 21, 2006 Share Posted August 21, 2006 Motherboard redesign is despirately needed to give room for more cards and adequate cooling though. that design has been made. mobos with 3 slots for graphics are on the way. but they still don't give room for more than 1 pci slot. if you want to run a sound card and a physics card with a top of the line graphics card tough luck because the heatsink covers a pci slot. Agreed. Everything is too close together with today's boards. A 7900GTX takes up two PCI bays, eliminating the usage of the other slots. Anyone using SLi or Crossfire and a PPU? Which board are you using? Which cards? This is the last thing that's keeping me from investing in a PPU. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAbbi_74 Posted August 21, 2006 Share Posted August 21, 2006 They could say all they wanted about the 2.4.3 driver, but I know that was the driver version I had installed when I had the PPU in my rig, and it was still quite the laggy beast. Sure, the visual stuff was improved considerably in many cases (try watching the Embassy blow with a PPU...), but not worth the reduction in playability on a marginal system. Spend your money on processors and GPUs first. Then if you're made of cash, plop down $300 more for the PPU that only works for like 3 or 4 titles so far... Rabbi, The 2.5 Drivers are a big improvement, try your ppu back in your pc. viii Bummer that I took it back to BestBuy and got my money back, which I then spent on a Athlon 64 X2 4200+ and a second XFX GeForce 6800GT (now on SLI) via Ebay. Maybe after I redeploy from some faraway Middle East destination, and have a few less bills than I do now, I can drop the cash on one. By then there should be a few more titles out running the PhysX cards. I'll be building another FrankenRig then too, so it would make sense to give it a second try... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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