Exclusive: ASUS Debuts AGEIA PhysX Hardware
by Derek Wilson on May 5, 2006 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
ASUS PhysX Card
It's not as dramatic as a 7900 GTX or an X1900 XTX, but here it is in all its glory. We welcome the new ASUS PhysX card to the fold:
The chip and the RAM are under the heatsink/fan, and there really isn't that much else going on here. The slot cover on the card has AGEIA PhysX written on it, and there's a 4-pin Molex connector on the back of the card for power. We're happy to report that the fan doesn't make much noise and the card doesn't get very warm (especially when compared to GPUs).
We did have an occasional issue when installing the card after the drivers were already installed: after we powered up the system the first time, we couldn't use the AGEIA hardware until we hard powered our system and then booted up again. This didn't happen every time we installed the card, but it did happen more than once. This is probably not a big deal and could easily be an issue with the fact that we are using early software and early hardware. Other than that, everything seemed to work great in the two pieces of software it's currently possible to test.
Our test system is setup similarly to our graphics test systems, with the addition of a low speed CPU. We were curious to find out if the PhysX card helps out slower processors more than fast CPUs, so we set our FX-57 to a 9X multiplier to simulate an Opteron 144. Otherwise, the test bed is the same as we've used for recent GPU reviews:
AMD Athlon 64 FX-57
AMD Opteron 144 (simulated)
ASUS NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 Motherboard
2GB OCZ DDR RAM
ATI Radeon X1900 XTX
ASUS PhysX PPU
Windows XP SP2
OCZ PowerStream 600W PSU
Now let's see how the card actually performs in practice.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
101 Comments
View All Comments
Clauzii - Monday, May 8, 2006 - link
Youre right.. have to wait and see what happens whith drivers/PCIe then...Hypernova - Friday, May 5, 2006 - link
They should have waited for cellfactor's release as a launch line up for aegia. First impression is important and the glued on approach of GRAW is nothing but negative publicity for aegia. Not everyone knows that physx was nothing more of a patched addon to havok in GRAW and will think that this is how the cards will turn out.If you can't do it right then don't do it at all. GRAW's implementation was a complete failure, even for a first generation product.
segagenesis - Friday, May 5, 2006 - link
As much as I would want to give them the benefit of the doubt... With what you say its that simple really. Most gamers (at least ones I know?) want worry free performance, and if spending extra money on hardware results in worse performance then this product will be short lived.I watched the non-game PhysX demos and they looked really damn cool, but they really should have worked on making a PCI-E version from the start... boards with PCI slots are already becoming dated, and those that have 16x slots for graphics have at least the small 1x slot!
nullpointerus - Friday, May 5, 2006 - link
I wouldn't say it was a complete failure. IMO the benchmarks were quite disappointing, and this was compounded by the lack of effects configurability in the game, but the videos were quite compelling. If you look at the dumpster (?), you can see that not only does the lid blow off but it bends and crumples. If we see more than just canned animations in better games (Cell Factor?), then this $300 should be worth its cost to high-end gamers. I'd say Aegia is off to a rough start, not an implosion.DerekWilson - Friday, May 5, 2006 - link
There are quite a few other things PhysX does in the game as well -- though they all are kinda "tacked on" as well. You noticed the lid of the dumpster which only pops open undersoftware. In hardware it is a seperate object that can go flying around depending on the explosion. The same is true of car doors and other similar parts -- under software they'll just pop open, but with hardware they go flying if hit right.It is also interesting to add that the explosions and such are scripted under software, but much of it becomes physically simulated under hardware. While this fact is kinda interesting, it really doesn't matter to the gamer in this title. But for other games that make more extensive use of the hardware, it could be quite useful.
nullpointerus - Friday, May 5, 2006 - link
That should be very cool. I was playing F.E.A.R. recently and decided to rake my SMG over a bunch of glass panes in an "office" level. Initially, it looked and sounded good because I have the settings cranked up reasonably high, but then I noticed all the glass panes were breaking in exactly the same way. Rather disappointing...DigitalFreak - Friday, May 5, 2006 - link
... may use the Gamebryo engine, but it uses Havok for physics.Bull Dog - Friday, May 5, 2006 - link
You are correct and I noticed that the first time I read the article.DerekWilson - Friday, May 5, 2006 - link
Sorry if what I said wasn't clear enough -- I'll add that Oblivion uses Havok.peternelson - Friday, May 5, 2006 - link
In your introduction you might have mentioned there are TWO partners for bringing this technology to market: Asus and BFG Tech.
Both have shipping boards. I wonder if they perform identically or if there is some difference.
I agree that PCI could be a bottleneck, but I'm more concerned that putting a lot of traffic on the pci bus will impair my OTHER pci devices.
PCIE x1 would have been much more sensible. I hope that they won't need a respin to add pcie functionality but fear this may be the case.
I agree Cellfactor looks more heavy use of physics so may make the difference with/without PPU more noticeable/measurable.
I also wonder how much the memory size on the Physx board matters? Maybe a second gen board could double that to 256. I'm also interested in whether PPU could be given some abstraction layer and programmed to do non-physics useful calculations as is being done on graphics cards now. This might speed its adoption.
I agree with the post that in volume, this kind of chip could find its way onto 3d graphics cards for gaming. As BFG make GPU cards, they might move that direction.