Physx Card - Any point

[TheLemming]

A local shop has a BFG branded Ageia Physx card in stock for suprisingly few pennies, am I right in thinking that this is a dead end not worth bothering with supported by vanishingly few games, or does anyone see a worthwhile spend in it?

I'm tempted, but cant convince myself on it and t'internet doesnt seem to offer a consistent answer (what a suprise!)

[TheLemming]

Just to add that unreal 3 engine support appears to be coming any sec. As a result, GoW on PC, UT and the rest of the endless stream produced on the engine would be interesting.

On the other hand its not there yet and otherwise its a £50 paperweight sucking power and adding heat.

NVM pointless thread, sorry...

[Tunku]

I came across one game that used it, can't remember what it was, but my PC was quite happy with the software version the game asked to install.

[Simon.]

In some cases it's been proven that the FPS of a game actually decreases with the use of the card (GRAW).
Also worth mentioning is that Nvidia are planning to allow the use of one of their cards to act as a physics engine as well (has to be an 8800 card as far as I remember) but that's not out just yet.

TBH I wouldn't bother, not much in the way of software that uses it and it really didn't take off too much.

[Taita]

I got one thrown in free on my XPS, the little demo's it come with are nice, but haven't found anything to really use it yet.

[Zod]

dead tech

[Mr_Yogi]

Zod said:

dead tech

what he said

[Simon.]

Funnily enough, it's just been released that Nvidia are buying Ageia. Definitely not worth buying the current version now.

[mackie1]

I'm guessing nVidia will incorporate support for the Ageia API into their drivers and offload some stuff to the GPU. However Havok already does this and is more widely used.

[Mr_Yogi]

mackie1 said:

I'm guessing nVidia will incorporate support for the Ageia API into their drivers and offload some stuff to the GPU. However Havok already does this and is more widely used.

AFAIA Havok has no current support for offloading physcis to a GPU.

[Altrezia]

Havok is just an engine isnt it?

[DucatiGary]

Simon. said:

Funnily enough, it's just been released that Nvidia are buying Ageia. Definitely not worth buying the current version now.

they will use the ageia phisics engine and have their cards drivers work with the ageia instructions.

i would imagine all nv cards will have this capability soon including older cards with driver support.

[Mr_Yogi]

Can't see the point in GPGPU myself, in games you're nearly always GPU limited adding Physics to the GPU workload isn't gonna help unless you have three cards

[bobthemonkey]

Mr_Yogi said:

Can't see the point in GPGPU myself, in games you're nearly always GPU limited adding Physics to the GPU workload isn't gonna help unless you have three cards

I think for the home user you are quite correct. However some video work and modelling stuff has seen noticable gains.