Exclusive: ASUS Debuts AGEIA PhysX Hardware
by Derek Wilson on May 5, 2006 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
Ideally, we would have a few more games to test in order to get a better understanding of what developers are doing with the hardware. We'd also love a little more flexibility in how the software we test handles hardware usage and physics detail. For example, what sort of performance can be had using multithreaded physics calculations on dual-core or multi-core systems? Can a high-end CPU even handle the same level of physics detail as with the PhysX card, or has GRAW downgraded the complexity of the software calculations for a reason? It would also be very helpful if we could dig up some low level technical detail on the hardware. Unfortunately, you can't always get what you want.For now, the tests we've run here are quite impressive in terms of visuals, but we can't say for certain whether or not the PPU contributes substantially to the quality. From what GRAW has shown us, and from the list of titles on the horizon, it is clear that developers are taking an interest in this new PPU phenomenon. We are quite happy to see more interactivity and higher levels of realism make their way into games, and we commend AGEIA for their role in speeding up this process.
The added realism and immersion of playing Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter with hardware physics is a huge success in this gamer's opinion. Granted, the improved visuals aren't the holy grail of game physics, but this is an excellent first step. In a fast fire fight with bullets streaming by, helicopters raining destruction from the heavens, and grenades tearing up the streets, the experience is just that much more hair raising with a PPU plugged in.
If every game out right now supported some type of physics enhancement with a PPU under the hood, it would be easy to recommend it to anyone who wants higher image quality than the most expensive CPU and GPU can currently offer. For now, one or two games aren't going get a recommendation for spending the requisite $300, especially when we don't know the extent of what other developers are doing. For those with money to burn, it's certainly a great part to play with. Whether it actually becomes worth the price of admission will remain to be seen. We are hopefully optimistic having seen these first fruits, especially considering how much more can be done.
Obviously, there's going to be some question of whether or not the PPU will catch on and stay around for the long haul. Luckily, software developers need not worry. AGEIA has worked very hard to do everything right, and we think they're on the right track. Their PhysX SDK is an excellent software physics solution its own right - Sony is shipping it with every PS3 development console, and there are XBox 360 games around with the PhysX SDK powering them as well. Even if the hardware totally fails to gain acceptance, games can still fall back to a software solution. Unfortunately, it's still up to developers to provide the option for modifying physics quality under software as well as hardware, as GRAW demonstrates.
As of now, the PhysX SDK has been adopted by engines such as: UnrealEngine3 (Unreal Tournament 2007), Reality Engine (Cell Factor), and Gamebryo (recently used for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, though Havok is implimented in lieu of PhysX support). This type of developer penetration is good to see, and it will hopefully provide a compelling upgrade argument to consumers in the next 6-12 months.
We are still an incredibly long way off from seeing games that require the PhysX PPU, but it's not outside the realm of possibility. With such easy access to the PhysX SDK for developers, there has got to be some pressure now for those one to two year timeframe products to get in as many beyond-the-cutting-edge features as possible. Personally, I'm hoping the AGEIA PhysX hardware support will make it onto the list. If AGEIA is able to prove their worth on the console middleware side, we may end up seeing a PPU in XBox3 and PS4 down the line as well. There were plenty of skeptics that doubted the PhysX PPU would ever make it out the door, but having passed that milestone, who knows how far they'll go?
We're still a little skeptical about how much the PhysX card is actually doing that couldn't be done on a CPU -- especially a dual core CPU. Hopefully this isn't the first "physics decellerator", rather like the first S3 Virge 3D chip was more of a step sideways for 3D than a true enhancement. The promise of high quality physics acceleration is still there, but we can't say for certain at this point how much faster a PhysX card really makes things - after all, we've only seen one shipping title, and it may simply be a matter of making better optimizations to the PhysX code. With E3 on the horizon and more games coming out "real soon now", rest assured that we will have continuing coverage of AGEIA and the PhysX PPU.
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Magnadoodle - Friday, May 5, 2006 - link
Actually, if you look at this statement by Havok: http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle.asp?se..."> (Already linked)They also arrive at the conclusion that it is not a GPU bottleneck.
Furthermore, the only thing the PPU seems to do in GRAW is render a couple of particles, while not improving or accelerating *at all* the processing of physics. This particle effect could have been processed very well by a GPU.
I guess Anandtech didn't notice that the physics were exactly the same, thus pointing out the somewhat elicit nature of better physics.
DerekWilson - Friday, May 5, 2006 - link
The havok guys did miss a few things pointed out earlier in the comments. Some destructable objects do break off into real persistant objects under PhysX -- like the dumpster lid and car doors. Also, the debris in the explosions is physically simulated rather than scripted. While I certainly agree that the end effect in these cases has no impact on "goodness", it is actually doing something.I'll certainly agree that "better physics" is kind of strange to think about. But it is really similar to how older games used to do 3D with canned animations. More realtime simulation opened up opportunities to do so many amazing things that just couldn't be done otherwise. This should extend well to physics.
Also, regardless of how (or how efficiently) the developers did it, there's no denying that the game feels better with the hardware accelerated aspects. Whether they could have done the same thing on the CPU or GPU, they didn't.
I'd still love to find a way to test the performance of this thing running the hardware physics on the CPU.
JumpyBL - Saturday, May 6, 2006 - link
I see these same effects without PhysX.
DerekWilson - Saturday, May 6, 2006 - link
When I play it without the PhysX hardware, doors just seem to pop open -- not fly off ... though I haven't exhaustively blown up every object -- there could be some cases where these types of things happen in software as well.JumpyBL - Saturday, May 6, 2006 - link
Shoot up the tires, car doors, etc enough and they come off. Same with the garbage can lid, throw a nade, it'll blow right off the container, all without a PPU.Fenixgoon - Friday, May 5, 2006 - link
how is the game going to "feel better" with a PPU when it slams your framerate down from buttery smooth to choppy? sorry, i'll take the FPS over any degree of better simulated physics, ESPECIALLY on a budget PC. i mean, look at the numbers! opteron minimum fps at 8x6 was 46, and with the PPU hardware it dropped to 12 - over a 75% decrease!!DerekWilson - Friday, May 5, 2006 - link
Note that the min framerate is much lower than the average -- with the majority of frames rolling along at average framerates, one or two frames that drop to an instantaneous 12-17fps isn't going to make the game feel choppy. The benchmark was fairly short, so even outliers have an impact on the average -- futher going to show that these minimum fps are not anything to worry about. At the same time, they aren't desierable either.Also, I would certainly not recommend this part to anyone but the hardcore enthusiast right now. People with slow graphics cards and processors would benefit much more by upgrading one or the other. In these early stages with little software support, the PPU will really only look attractive to people who already have very powerful systems and want something else to expand the capabilities.
if you watch the videos, there's no noticable choppiness in the motion of the explosion. and I can say from gameplay experience that there's no noticeable mouse lag when things are exploding either. thus, with the added visual effects, it feels better. certainly a subjective analysis, but I hope that explains how I could get that impression.
mongo lloyd - Friday, May 5, 2006 - link
You must be joking. Watching the videos, the PhysX one is WAY choppier compared to the software one. The PhysX video even halts for a split second, in a way that's more than noticeable; it's downright terrible.And the graphics/effect of the extra debris? Negligible. I've seen more videos from this game (for example: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=245">http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=245 ) and the extra stuff with PhysX in this game is just not impressive or a big deal, and in some cases it's actually worse (like the URINATING walls and ground when shooting them). It's not realistic, it's not fun, not particularly cool, and it's slow.
Clauzii - Friday, May 5, 2006 - link
I also think thats why we see such a massive FPS drop. We are trying to render, say, 100 times as many objects now?DerekWilson - Friday, May 5, 2006 - link
I was hoping we made this clear in the article ...While there is certainly more for the GPU to do, the numbers under a CPU limited configuration (800x600 with lower quality settings) we see a very low minimum framerate and a much lower average when compared to software physics.
The drop in performance is much much less signficant when we look at a GPU limited configuration -- if all those object were bottlenecking on the graphics card, then giving them high quality textures and rendering them at a much higher resolution would show a bigger impact on performance.
Tie that in with the fact that both the CPU and GPU limited configurations turn out the same minimum framerate and we really can conclude that the bottleneck is somewhere other than the GPU.
It becomes more difficult to determin whether the bottleneck is at the CPU (game/driver/api overhead) or the PPU (pci bus/object generation/actual physics).