PhysX card to be released soon. What's your take?

[cdxx]

So with the release of the first PhysX card right around the corner I wanted to get a pulse on how many people are gonna try to get their hands on one.

Dateline: 5/4/2006

BFG Technologies’ Physics Cards Powered by Ageia PhysX to be Available in North America, Europe, Japan, Korea and Australia at Leading e-tail Websites May 9, 2006

Lake Forest, IL – ( May 4, 2006 )– BFG Technologies Inc., the leading U.S.-based supplier of advanced 3D graphics cards and other PC enthusiast products, announced today that the BFG physics accelerator add-in cards powered by AGEIA PhysX will be available at leading e-tail websites on May 9, 2006. The AGEIA PhysX processor is the first and only physics processor enabling a totally new class of PC gaming with dynamic motion and extreme physical interaction.

“The only way to bring the next evolution of PC gaming to the masses is by giving the masses access to the technology across the world,” said Shane Vance, executive vice president of sales at BFG Technologies, Inc. “We have worked diligently over the past few months with our strategic e-tail partners to have ready on May 9, 2006, the ability to sell one of the most anticipated PC hardware products since the dawn of 3D graphic cards. BFG PhysX cards will be widely available at premier locations around the globe.””

Backed by BFG’s innovative Lifetime Warranty and world class 24/7 technical support, the BFG PhysX Accelerator card will be a PCI bus system solution with 128-bit 128MB GDDR3 on board memory with an AGEIA PhysX chip that is capable of approximately 533,000 max collisions per second; 58 GFLOPS sphere-sphere collisions per second; and 22 billion instructions per second. These dedicated BFG PhysX add-in card features will lead gamers worldwide to massively destructible buildings and landscapes; explosions that cause collateral damage; lifelike characters with spectacular new weapons; realistic smoke, fog and oozing fluids. For a more detailed look at the BFG PhysX card log-on to http://www.bfgtech.com/physx

BFG PhysX Accelerator cards can be found for sale on May 9, 2006 at the following leading e-tail and system builder websites:

Many OEM's will be releasing their own flavors hopefully some cheaper than the expected $300

[Thrik]

Definitely too early to be buying this type of technology in my opinion.

This doesn't fill me with confidence either.

[csharp]

not gonna buy one for a little while.. Not many games support it, so it is just a waste of money (at start).. And i think that after year, when they are more fame (;D) they are allso better and cheaper.. so i answered NO

[Kedhrin]

after playing cell factor i can tell you it's worth it.

just trust me on that.

[cdxx]

yeah the HD video i downloaded left my mouth salivating. I just don't know if I can justify spending 300 bones for a card that will most likely be outdated with a newer version within a year or so ( all speculation of course).

i hear they almost have volumentric water effects down. I wonder if the current card will support it when they figure it out or if its gonna be a newer chipset.

[Squirrelly]

Possibly, when more games that appeal to me take advantage of it, and after the price has gone down quite a bit.

[Izuno]

i think eventually gaming rigs will feature specific physics calculating processors similar to when 3D accelerator cards came out in the 90's.

Eventually, how many slots are computers going to have to support sound cards, GPUs, physics cards and who knows what?

I suppose there might be value in having an all-in-one graphics gard that as a specific processor just for physics, as clearly physics calculations are related to graphics.

The market could unfold several ways, but eventually I do believe there will be physics specific processors somewhere inside the computer, unless future CPUs and GPUs can be optimized to carry the load and still gave the same performance as a specialized "Physics Processing Unit".

PPU!!!!

[KungFuSquirrel]

it's like laser noises, ppu ppu ppu!

No interest on my part. Integrated into a console or other hardware later, sure. Last thing I want is another multi-hundred dollar peripheral.

[cdxx]

in case anyone haven't seen some of the vids here are a few links:

Check out the game demo vids.

http://physx.ageia.com/footage.html

These are more tech demos, kinda weak inho but still cool.

http://www.ageia.com/downloads/physx_av ... ulders.wmv

http://www.ageia.com/downloads/physx_ca ... sh_fog.wmv

[Mazy]

I'll wait until they intergrate them into the graphics cards. Having to get another extra seperate card will never catch on I reckon, not unless they start getting some massive developer support.

[Zacker]

I don't see much reason to spend a lot of money on something which most games are designed to run without.

[Izuno]

I don't see much reason to spend a lot of money on something which most games are designed to run without.

Some people said the same was true about 3D cards years ago, so don't rule out physics cards.

However, there has to be some market conditions for the physics cards to take a foothold...mainly the acceptance of having slots for the cards, which right now isn't that big of a deal but for some gamers with a lot of crap in their systems already it could be. Then there are the game devs...do they have the same incentive to write physics code to use a PPU the way they had incentive to write 3D graphics code for the early GPUs? For 3D graphics, the benefit was obvious as it opened a new world of gaming like never before. For physics, is the potential as big? That's the heart of the matter. If someone comes up witih amazing gameplay that requires such a card, and if that gameplay or derivations of it are used in every game like 3D is now used in almost every game, then yeah, this PPU idea will take off, either as stand alone cards or more likely Nvidia or ATI buys them up and integrates the tech into GPU cards, then in long run all 3D GPU makers will have integrated PPU cores on their cards. (Doesn't rule out standalone PPUs, though)

So let's get to the heart of the debate: what will PPUs allow for that are currenty not possible?

[Furyo]

I'm confident this will be the new "thing to get" in about a year as next gen comes around, much like the new sound cards from Creative that have their own CPU to lessen the load on yours, but the first generation of any technology really is only for the "early adopters" (there's a reason they're called that way you know) and I'm not gonna fork that much money on those just yet.

And to answer Izuno's question, I think they'll just allow for better performance by lessening the load on your main hardware. I don't think their existence will allow for new things. Now games developers may very well say "Physics card required for advanced settings" and they may also choose not to allow players to enable advanced settings if they don't have a PPU, but that'd just be so their game isn't displayed with less than say 30 FPS. But the fact would still be that advanced settings can be handled by the comp without the PPU. Unplayable yes, but feasible.

[Kedhrin]

yeah i'd definitely wait to buy one. wait til they learn their lesson from the version that will be a complete fuck up (and that's not being harsh, that's just part of making history). they'll iterate on it a few times, then it'll become industry standard.

what I want is AI processing though.

[ReNo]

Why bother? When graphics jumped over to GPUs, AI started getting a far more significant portion of the CPU to use. If physics is shifted off too (and it seems it almost certainly will be - either through these dedicated PPU cards, or by using graphics cards) then AI will get an even larger claim. The CPU will essentially just be for game logic and AI