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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Clauzii - Thursday, May 11, 2006 - link
ASUS PhysX P1:Processor Type: AGEIA PhysX
Bus Techonology: 32-bit PCI 3.0 Interface
Memory Interface: 128-bit GDDR3 memory architecture
Memory Capacity: 128 MByte
Memory Bandwidth: 12 GBytes/sec.
Effective Memory Data Rate: 733 MHz
Peak Instruction Bandwidth: 20 Billion Instructions/sec
Sphere-Sphere collision/sec: 530 Million max
Convex-Convex(Complex) collisions/sec.: 533,000 max
jkay6969 - Monday, May 8, 2006 - link
I have read all your posts with great interest, I feel that some very good points are being made, so here's my 2 cents worth ;-)I believe the 'IDEA' of having a dedicated PPU in your increasingly expensive monster rig is highly appealing, even intoxicating and I believe this 'IDEA' coupled with some clever marketing will ensure a good number of highly overpriced, or at least expensive, sales of this mystical technology in it's current (ineficient) form.
For some, the fact that it's expensive and also holds such high promises will ensure it's place as a 'Must have' component for the legions of early adopters. The brilliant idea of launching them through Alienware, Falcon Northwest and the top of the line Dell XPS600 systems was a stroke of marketing genius as this adds to the allure of owning one when they finally launch to the retail market...If it's good enough for a system most of us can never afford but covet none the less it's damn well good enough for my 'monster RIG'. This arrangement will allow the almost guaranteed sales of the first wave of cards on the market. I have noticed that some UK online retailers have already started taking pre-launch orders for the £218 OEM 128MB version I just have to woner how many of these pre-orders have actually been sold?
The concept of a dedicated PPU is quite simply phenominal, We spend plenty of money upgrading our GPU's, CPU's and quite recently Creative have brought us the first true APU (X-Fi series) that it makes sense for there to be a dedicated PPU and berhaps even an AiPU to follow.
The question is, will these products actually benefit us to the value of their cost?
I would say that a GPU, or in fact up to 4 GPU's running over PCIe x32 (2xPCIe x16 channels) become increasingly less value for money the more GPU's added to the equation. i.e. a 7900GTX 512MB at £440 is great bang for the buck compared to Quad SLI 7900GTX 512MB at over £1000. The framerates in the Quad machine are not 4x the single GPU. Perhaps this is where GPU's could trully be considered worthy of nVidia or ATI's Physics SLI load balancing concept. SLI GPU's are not working flat out 100% of the time...Due to the extremely high bandwidth of Dual PCIe x16 ports there should be a reasonable amount of bandwidth to spare on Physics calculations, perhaps more if Dual PCIe x32 (or even quad x16) Motherboards inevitably turn up. I am not saying that GPU's are more efficient than a DEDICATED and designed for PPU, just that if ATI and nVidia decided the market showed enough potential, they could simply 'design in' or add PPU functionality to their GPU cores or GFX cards. This would allow them to tap into the extra bandwidth PCIe x16 affords.
The Ageis PhysX PPU in it's current form runs over the PCI bus, a comparitively Narrow bandwicth bus, and MUST communicate with the GPU in order for it to render the extra particles and objects in any scene. This in my mind would create a Bottleneck as it would only be able to communicate at the bandwidth and speed afforded by the Narrow bandwidth and slower PCI bus. The slowest path governs the speed of even the fastest...This would mean that adding a dedicated PPU, even a very fast and efficient one, would be severely limited by the bus it was running over. This phenomenon is displayed in all the real world benchmarks I have seen of the Ageis PhysX PPU to date, The framerates actually DROP when the PPU is enabled.
To counter this, I believe, Ageis through ASUS, BFG and any other manufacturing partner they sign up with will have to release products designed for the PCIe bus. I believe this is what Ageis knows as the early manufacturing samples were able to be installed in the PCI bus as well as the PCIe bus (although not at the same time ;-) ). I believe the PCI bus was chosen for launch due to the very high installed user base of PCI motherboards, every standard PC I know of that would want a PPU in their system. I belive this is a mistake, as the users most likely to purchase this part in the 'Premium price' period would likely have PCIe in their system, or at least would be willing to shell out an extra £50-£140 for the privelage. Although I could be completely wrong in this as it may allow for some 'Double Selling' as when they release the new and improved PCIe version, the early adopters will be forced to buy into it again at a premium price.
This leads me neatly onto the price. I understand that Ageis, quite rightly, are handing out the PhysX SDK freely, this is to allow maximum compatibilty and support in the shortest period of time. This does however mean that the end user, who purchases the card in the beginning will have to pay the full price for the card...£218 for the 128MB OEM version. As time goes by and more units are sold, the installed userbase of the PPU will grow and the balance will shift, Ageis will be able to start charging the developers to use their 'must have' Hardware Physics support in their games/software and this will subsidise the cost of the card to the end user, therefore making them even more affordable to the masses and therefore making it a much more 'Must Have' for the developers. This will take several generations of the PPU before we feel the full impact of this I believe.
If ATI and nVidia are smart, they can capitalise on their high installed initial userbase and properly market the idea of Hardware physics for free with their SLI physics, they may be able to throw a spanner in the works for Agies while they attempt to attain market share. This may benefit the consumer, although it may also knock Agies out of the running depending on how effective ATI and nVidias driver based solution first appears. It could also prompt a swift buy out from either ATI or nVidia like nvidia did with 3DFX.
Using the CPU for Physics, even on a multicore CPU, in my opinion is not the way forward. The CPU is not designed for physics calculations, and from what I hear they are not (comparitively) very efficient at performing these calculations. A dedicated solution will always be better in the long run. This will free up the CPU to run the OS and also for Ai calculations and well as antivirus, firewall, background applications and generally keeping the entire system secure and stable. Multicore will be a blessing for PC's and consoles, but not for such a specific and difficult (for a CPU) task.
"Deep breath" ;-)
So there you have it, My thoughts on the PPU situation as it stands now and into the future. Right now I will not be buying into the dream, but simply keeping the dream alive by closely watching how it develops until such a time as I believe the 'Right Time' comes. £218 for an unproven, generally unsupported, and possibly seriously flawed incarnation of the PPU dream is not in my opinion The Right Time, Yet ;-)
JKay6969
DeathBooger - Monday, May 8, 2006 - link
The Cellfactor demo is available on Ageia's website now. If you try to play it with out a PhysX card you get an error message. However, the demo includes a game editor. If you open the editor, you can open up the demo level and it allows you to play the game with out the PhysX card. You can't play with bots in the editor, nor can you see cloth or fluid dynamics. Everything else is present, it's like playing the game normally otherwise. I was able to play the game inside the editor with no performance problems. I have a dual core AMD with a single X1900XT and 2GB of RAM. CPU usage does go up to 80% when playing the game and blowing up things and whatnot, but it's a smooth experience with no noticable slow down. Graphics-wise, everything is present inside the editor, including dynamic lighting and normal mapping.If Ageia wanted to show people how well the PPU works and is needed in a game like Cellfactor, they should have allowed you to play the game normally with out a PhysX card. Since they didn't do that, it makes me think it's not actually needed.
AnnihilatorX - Sunday, May 7, 2006 - link
People don't want another separate card mainly becuase of slot problem. But if the card uses PCIX1, which I bet most people with new motherboard doesn't have anything at that slot, it doesn't make it unfavourable.Since as mentioned, heat and noise of the card is low
hellcats - Saturday, May 6, 2006 - link
If Aegia really want to spur additional support for their PPU card then they should develop a lower-level API than Novodex. Something similar to OpenGL or DirectX for graphics cards. This would encourage other middleware developers to support the PPU for the "heavy lifting". Then Havok and other physics middleware developers would be working with Ageia and not against them. The current situation is as if Nvidia were to provide a proprietary game engine as the only way to access the power of the GPU. Then only the game companies that would agree to support this engine would get graphics accleration.Walter Williams - Sunday, May 7, 2006 - link
Microsoft is currently working on a physics API that will be like their DirectX but for physics.DerekWilson - Sunday, May 7, 2006 - link
additionally, AGEIA is working with Havok to try to get them to include support for the PhysX hardware in their product.when we spoke with AGEIA about it, we learned that its more important to them to get software support than to create an SDK business. they want PhysX acceleration in Havok very much. but Havok is doing pretty well on its own at the moment and are being a little more cautious about getting involved.
as is generally the case, small companies don't like to have their success tied up in the success of other small companies. Havok needs to decided if the ROI is worth it for them at this point, while there wouldn't really be a downside for AGEIA to let them include support.
Celestion - Saturday, May 6, 2006 - link
If the 360 doesn't have the the PhysX chip in it, what can PhsyX SDK be used for?JarredWalton - Saturday, May 6, 2006 - link
A software SDK (Software Development Kit) is a set of libraries that people can use. So rather than write their own physics routines, they can use PhysX. Just like they can use Havok. The way we understand it, if done properly the PhysX libraries can run on either the CPU or the PPU, though the CPU should be slower. Right now, we don't have any 100% identical comparison other than AGEIA's test app, which doesn't really appear complex enough to be truly indicative of maximum performance potential.Celestion - Sunday, May 7, 2006 - link
Thanks