AGEIA PhysX available

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Looks like the AGEIA PhysX cardstaring to become available!!

 

Some interesting vids on how it raises the immersion bar: AGEIA PhysX footage

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AGEIA PhysX Launch - GDC Event Coverage

 

"With no direct competitor, AGEIA's discrete PPU card largely shoulders the burden of lobbying developers and consumers for advanced physics in games. Here, it is impossible to not notice some blatant similarities between this situation and the same situation seen by 3dfx and other GPU vendors in the days when a "3D accelerator" was unheard of. With the visual and performance advancements brought to the table by these discrete graphics cards, 3dfx managed to change the way games looked and ultimately made a more immersive gaming environment. Today, the mere thought of not having a discrete graphics card seems insane as that hardware is now a critical piece of the foundation for a solid gaming platform. AGEIA is eager to follow in the same footsteps as 3dfx as they attempt to make the discrete physics processor an equally critical piece of that foundation. In the same manner graphics cards change the way a game will look, the PPU will ultimately change the way the game looks and feels as well, resulting in a much richer gaming experience."

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Game Developers Conference 2006 - Physics and Gaming

 

"There was no shortage of news and announcements from AGEIA during the last week or so as our email in box can no doubt vouch for. As both a software and hardware company, AGEIA has been hard at work giving away their PhysX API in hopes of building a large software base with which to market and sell their hardware PPU.

 

These software announcements have varying implications depending on the amount of integration that each game developer plans for their title. Using just the software API, but not integrating the hardware hooks to improve physics performance won’t sell physics cards. Games such as Unreal Tournament 2007, Rise of Nations, Vanguard and Ghost Recon round up the announcements made this week at GDC."

[ParoxysM]

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I'll be on the fence for one of these til a game comes out that uses it. As I recall, the amount of transistors they use for this card is in the neighborhood of what they use for the top-end video cards. Looks like the cards will be out individually for sale in May 06.

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AnandTech Exclusive: ASUS Debuts AGEIA PhysX Hardware

 

"There are quite a few things to note about this architecture. Even without knowing all the ins and outs, it is quite obvious that this chip will be a force to be reckoned with in the physics realm. A graphics card, even with a 512-bit internal bus running at core speed, has less than 350 Gb/sec internal bandwidth. There are also lots of restrictions on the way data moves around in a GPU. For instance, there is no way for a pixel shader to read a value, change it, and write it back to the same spot in local RAM. There are ways to deal with this when tackling physics, but making highly efficient use of nearly 6 times the internal bandwidth for the task at hand is a huge plus."