Do you feel physics processors, like PhysX, have a future market?

Not the new GeForce 7950 :P 800 dollars later though..

Usless, the video cards will become stronger and stronger. These will give what a 4 more fps increase? Kind of pointless if you ask me. I think there will be a video card with these features inside or something along those lines.

lol

From what I read about it and considering what is out there already, Some of the newer games will give it as an optional or require it, but not all of them will need it. That's my opinion anyway. And if and when it grows, it will probably cost you an arm and a leg just to get it.

"People shelling out more for a vid card then for the CPU"

I think both can't be really compared 1:1 as the video card has, for example, lot's of memory on the card etc. However, there's something behind it... in most of today's games, the bottleneck is the video card and not the CPU. There is a reason for this: When you design a game, you want it to be able to run on a lot of PCs, also older ones. You usually have a lot of options for the graphics, so if you have a bad video card, you can tune your settings. But if you have an outdated CPU, there are usually not much, if any, options.
Means the workload of the GPU can be adjusted whereas a CPU always gets the same work to do, whether it's a top-notch or a rather old one. The top CPU's have a lot of power left that could be used for physics. The problem is that physics were not an option. Now they are, means the whole thing gets more scaleable towards the CPU, which is imo a step forward (both for users of older and highend systems).

Well, I don't believe PhysX card will be a hit because they have nearly no use in multiplayer games. It'd be cool if you could destroy something and it burst in hundreds of pieces that you can use again. But all these pieces would need bandwith to be synchronized between clients... which is not really available. Means PhysX cards will only be useful for effects that are not relevant to the gameplay (ragdolls, small stuff, particles etc). Which doesn't make it interesting for me to buy.

ti's just a processor on a pci card.

It's as gimmick as TV monitors.

Options two and three are the same.

Not really. But either way, having one now, I don't think they're all that useful.

Whats the point when you have dual and eventually multi-core processors

The dedicated physics processors will eventually benefit all games, methinks, but will be optional and not required.

Sort of like a sound card, methinks.

This will become especially true with the UE3 because of native support for the processors.

I'm more curious as to if we'll be able to get some of those cards that can do ray-traced images in almost realtime.

physics cards no but a physics processor on a video card yes

Physics are a minor aspect of many games, and probably not worth their own processor, unless you do crazy things like exploding an object in 10,000 debris or like that termite gun in Hellgate London. I'd rather see an AI processor, because AI is useful in all games. I mean, who really cares about ragdoll physics? Would any game be worse if falling debris were a little less realistic? The Gran Turismo series was eventually sunk by lacking AI, has any game ever failed because you can't knock over a chair?

Nvidia and ATI are developing their own solutions, so i think a Standalone-Card only for Physics will be useless

i liketo think this would be a fad & can see how most people would think it would be... but the same was said about OGL hardware acceleration ~10 years ago & look where we are now. People shelling out more for a vid card then for the CPU (heck, even nvidia said 3dfx was crazy for charing 300+ for a GPU back then).

@Silent_Killer01, will-lee: There are a huge number of issues when you consider letting the video card manufacturers add this functionality on to their cards rather than having a dedicated card.

1. Tests have shown that pushing the physics calculations onto the GPU isn't much faster than pure CPU
2. We want video card manufacturers to focuse on the video aspect, not anything else.
3. Sending a ton of physics data back and forth over the same bus that grahpics is using will only bring us closer to the cieling on PCI-X faster.

@BrotherLaz: An AI processor isn't terribly useful because AI code is hardly specialized and includes a lot of general-purpose instructions, which makes it perfect for multi-core, but not so much for dedicated. Physics code works especially well because a processor can be designed to do very specific calculations.

I think that a physics card is a good idea, but it will only benefit a few gamers.

Also a dedicated physics card will allow the cpu to do much more for ai.

The only problem with ai is that it is not intelligent. It does the checks you told it to, then does the calculations you told it to, then it does the tasks you told it to for that calculations answer. If you don't tell it what to do it won't do it.

yup

ambershee wrote: Not really. But either way, having one now, I don't think they're all that useful.

I'm in YOUR boat, buddeh!

cheeseyballs wrote: Usless, the video cards will become stronger and stronger. These will give what a 4 more fps increase? Kind of pointless if you ask me. I think there will be a video card with these features inside or something along those lines.

That's not true. CellFactor running in software mode gets a few frames faster on a PhysX card, but that's with cloth and fluid disabled. Try running it in software with fluid and cloth and any CPU on the market will get maxed out.

I do think we can figure on seeing them getting incorporated into motherboards maybe in 5-10 years, but right now they're not much use, and i just don't see people going crazy for them.

physic cards or processers will be worth it. Physics are EXTREAMLY TAXING to render/calculate

to much, to late, bring on the video card based ones, and i'll be happy, but physx wont be my cuppa coffe,

i dunno actually... for realism games like Flight sims and "The sims"( just an example) it might be worthwhile, but for others like RTS and fragfests it seems to me like an excessive and undesired luxury.

I absolutely don't think that any game, including UE3, will run better with an PhysX Card in the near future. The main reason for this is the today's power of CPUs - while AI and networking stay about the same, GPUs are the bottlenecks normally making the CPU even more attractive regarding physics. I'd prefer a CPU extension for physics calculations (although graphics cards with a PPU sound good, too), but not a physics card for 300 bucks which brings down your graphics card due to new effects. That's just the wrong way.

WTF there are over 100+ games that support PhysX, how is that a handfull?? And Unreal 3 engine supports PhysX so pretty much every big title of the nextgen is going to support it...

I just want to note alot of people say it could be added on to a graphix card or into a multicore processor. In that case you would still get a definitly, as the poll asked about using the processors themselves and not having seperate cards. Either way, it is a yes. To people who say it isn't important or just stupid, why not go back to using sprites instead of models? I mean, it doesn't affect gameplay, but it adds alot of strain to graphics cards ext. It is just an undersired luxury.

Eitherway, they will be added, but I have to agree with they will most likely be incorporated into something else. I say mix it with the sound card, which is mostly a waste of space for the little processing it does. And no, faster CPU's won't matter, their is a difference between having a CPU able to calculate it and and processor desgined and wired to calculate it.

For now, it will still take quite a while until PPUs are as common as other components. Especially regarding multiplayer games: You can't just put hundreds of boxes on top of another and expect everyone to have a PPU available in case someone shoots the boxes. Players without a PPU would have a serious disadvantage there so in multiplayer PPUs are far away from being useful, except to minimize the load on the CPU if you have a weak one, but you could buy a better CPU which would result in the overall system performance to be increased - you can't achieve this with a PPU. But of what use is a physics card if your GPU / CPU can't keep up anyway? You'd need a high end system to really enjoy the benefits of a PPU. But who can afford it?

It's not that a physics processor makes games run faster immediately as it was with the introduction of 3dfx voodoo for example, because developers just started to include physics (and for now CPUs are quite capable of managing it) and there's no common interface. There are far too much obstacles for now for PPUs really being useful.

I'm getting a Phys X in my next PC I think I should just get one its only a drop in the bucket for a full cost of a great PC

I have heard that japanese have made a material, that is superconductive at the temperature of 0 degrees Celsium.
Why can't Intel and AMD throw all their money to buy this stuff and make processors running at GREAT speeds.
Materials in the state os superconductiviness do not produce heat, and it means, that with simple cooling we can overclock our processors many times without any huge temperature gains.
I don't get it, why isn't this happening now.
If we get these processors, we wont need any s**t like videocards, sound cards, PhysX, cuz the processor will be like superman.
Of course we can also equip the videocards with these processors, but thats another story...

DebilZ:
Don't be a fool and inform yourself before posting what could be possible in the far away future.

Voodoo cards changed the games, why not PhysX? The only problem is the costm theyre about ?170 - about as much as a top graphics card - who would want to pay double when the effect so far is only on one game?

scratch:
This information comes from my physics teacher and is 1 year old, so keep informed and don't be a fool yourself due to lack of information.

Its not worth paying $800 for a GFX card, unless you get these physics capabilities with it, IMO. I currently have a 2 year old 6800GT 256mb, and was thinking about upgrading it - but concluded that it ultimately wasn't worth it, I can run any game released now on high detail on my 17" LCD.
When Unreal 3 and Crysis come along, it may be quite different. But thats not until 2007 and Vista's DX10, anyway.

Oblivion has some pretty good physics, probably the best I have seen in a game to date.

Well according to a lot of top developers (including Johnny Carmack) AI is just a waste of processor speed and scripted sequences are more fun anyway. I myself agree with BrotherLaz (who (...wants to see an AI processor, because AI is useful in all games"), but seeing as how many games with fancy scripted sequences on top of braindead AI (I'm looking at you Call of Duty) are getting rewarded with good reviews, it doesn't look like the industry is heading down that path.

As for physics cards, I really just don't see hyper real physics adding much to games. If you can fake it and still look cool while using up only minimal power, ala HL2 and Doom3, then who really cares? But then again, that's just about the same argument for people who favor scripted sequences over real AI :/.

PPUs will die off what will happen is you will have a Mutil-Core CPU if you can get a CPU with like 7 or 8 cores to work with windows (Such as Sony's
Cell processor) you won't need a PPU.

srry for the double post but DebilZ the marieral is super conductave AT 0 DEGREES CELCIUS that is when water FREEZES how in hell are you going to cool your PC to that temperature?