Tiger Woods Out...Until August!
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#12
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Author:
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Anonymous at 04:17pm 03/21/2006
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They need to just start tacking these PPU's onto the high end
graphics cards where price isn't an issue. This will allow them to
eventually become mainstream necessities for high end games. This is
the only way they will get broad consumer support because people
already resist graphic card upgrades and choose to complain about
the game programming instead. People generally won't refuse the
purchase of one expensive component but will refuse multiple
expensive "non-necessity" components.
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#11
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Author:
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Anonymous at 03:26pm 03/21/2006
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Response to #8:
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From a pure hardware standpoint, yes. From a developer standpoint
the answer is a resounding no. Havok is counting on sm 3.0 cards
and dual core procs to be there to run their physics api. Safe bet
there. Ageia is counting on a large number of people buying and
installing dedicated cards for one game, UT2007. I know I will get
one because I'm a geek and a UT fan, but I think I will be the
minority. I think many developers will stay away because the user
base for the Havok solution will be exponentially larger than it
will ever be for the Ageia PhysX card and most developers simply
won't have the time and resources to support both. I hope I'm wrong
though because the dedicated hardware should actually perform much
better. Oh well even if I pay $300 for a card that only accelerates
UT3 engine games I will be happy but the average customer won't.
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#10
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Author:
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Yareach at 10:27am 03/21/2006
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Response to #9:
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Look at the X1900XT(X). It has 3x as many Pixel Shader ALUs (the
part of the GPU that would work on physics) and yet does not have 3x
the performance. In many cases no gain, and at the extreme in the
60% range.
That means most of those ALUs are idle. This may change with DX10
with more unified/pooled resources, but as far as the X1900XT/X1600
are concerned they have a lot of unused ALUs that could be used
right now for physics.
As for the older GPY piggy back idea -- I like that. Of course they
probably would angle you toward a) a multi-core GPU, i.e. SLI on a
board or b) use your old GPU in the box and use it as a dedicated
physics chip.
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#9
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Author:
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Egglick at 05:31am 03/21/2006
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I still don't know how much I like the idea of GPU's calculating
physics. Sure, they might be good at it because of their design,
but if the GPU has enough spare power to be able to calculate
physics in addition to rendering graphics, then that means that I
could instead increase my resolution or graphics settings.
Sacrificing graphics power for physics power is not a tradeoff that
I'd like to make.
If ATI and NVidia were smart, they'd start piggybacking lesser GPUs
onto their videocards, and dub them "dedicated physics
co-processors". They could either have their own smaller
amount of memory, or share memory with the GPU.
Obviously that would only make sense with the higher end graphics
cards.
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#7
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darthv72 at 03:44pm 03/20/2006
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This reminds me of what 3dfx did with T/L in the V3/4/5 series.
Because they didnt have the actual hardware for transform and
lighting, they used a tweak in the driver to off load those
calculations to the cpu. They refered to it as geometry hardware
assist (or something to that nature). It allowed games that required
hardware t/l to actually run on a voodoo card at a reduced
performance of a real hw based card. Now the tables have turned and
yet 3dfx tech is still in use. Instead of the cpu getting the extra
work, the gpu (or spare gpu) will take up the slack. Using a
software patch and appropriate card it basically does what 3dfx had
done years ago (from a different point of view).
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#6
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Author:
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Yareach at 01:22pm 03/20/2006
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Response to #2:
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I guess the point is this: If the Physic calculations bring you down
to 5 fps because the CPU is too slow, what is the point of the GPU
rendering 100 fps? It is a form of load balancing in a single card
solution and making better use of the hardware.
Basically it is a way to remove bottlenecks. True, graphic
resolution may be impacted at times, but the goal would be to find
the best middle ground. The problem with dedicated solutions of
course is it is either an on off solution and cannot aid in other
places in the pipeline. If your CPU/PPU are clipping away at 100fps,
but your GPU sucks and is at 10fps there is as problem--you wont
exceed 10fps.
So it is a turn off to use a GPU for these tasks in a single card
solution, but the alternative--nice graphics at 10fps is not good
either! Some gamers are strictly on a budget, e.g. a $150 for
gaming, period. Striking a compromise between physics and graphics
on a single card solution is another reason I like the GPU offering.
It scales to many gamers needs on both the high end AND low end, and
when you play non-Physics heavy games you don't lose any money
sitting idly in your case.
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#4
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Author:
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DigitalDivine at 01:14pm 03/20/2006
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Comment:
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I see independant specialized hardware to allow faster calculations
graphics cards are morphing into what the cpus are today, jack of
all trades, master of none. sure cpus can calculate 3d images... not
very fast though.
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#3
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Author:
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Anonymous at 01:04pm 03/20/2006
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Response to #2:
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He's got a point there...
However, it might work out that in any SLI configuration, the
wasted/unused GPU time works with the physics sim. Now that would
be intriguing.
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#2
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Author:
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Goofus Maximus at 12:33pm 03/20/2006
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Comment:
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My question is, while the card is doing all these physics
calculations through Shader Model 3, what will the shaders be doing,
and vice-versa? I don't want to see 10k colliding bodies... at 12
frames per second.
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