Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
eurin said:I'm for stand alone physics card myself, but come on, this is very faulty logic.
First, you included a top of the line board with a high price tag. You could also consider that you may upgrade your system before you need physics power, and you would probably already be buying an SLI board, since the only motherboard's you consider are high end.
Second, you put the price of two video cards. Do you not have a video card in your gaming rig right now?
pj-schmidt said:One thing that a lot of people I think have missed is that the GPU physics by Havoc FX is very different from the physics produced by the Ageia PhysX PPU. The Havoc FX GPU effects are an addition to the normal Havok physics effects. The GPU effects are visual only and will consist of such things as wavy grass and certian types of particle effects. These GPU effects are ones that require zero feed back to the CPU. The GPU physics cannot do collision detection for the whole game world, it will not deal with ragdoll effects, it will not deal with destructable structures, because each of these requires a high degree of feedback to the CPU.
For example, the loose garbage that is laying arround in CS:S has its physics simulated by Havoc's normal physics engine. The collision detection and physics simulation is all done on the CPU. The addition of HavocFX will not change this, it will only allow for GPU acceleration of some visual-only type of effects. This means that you could use one of your SLI'd GPU's to produce some physics acceleration and still have a large physics calculation burden on your CPU.
The PhysX PPU will allow for acceleration of all physical effects, not just the visual-only types of effects.
psychoace said:Then how do you explain the garbage scene from the nvidia vortex scene and how the character runs through it?...
Havoc FAQ said:What Is The Difference Between Game-Play Physics And Effects physics?
Game-Play Physics affect how a game is played from moment-to-moment, and is generally computed on a computers central processing unit (CPU). Physical changes that you cause in the game or that happen to you or around you like knocking over a box, and then climbing up on it - change what you may want to do in each instant of game play. Both game-play physics and game logic demand instant access and tolerate no detectible latency to preserve the game-play experience. The close proximity between physics, game logic, and memory, defines game play and generally demands that these systems execute together on a game systems CPU. Effects physics is an emerging domain that promises to deliver an increasing array of visually impressive effects that are based on physical principles but which place far fewer demands on the games logic.
Effects physics a close cousin to visual effects now computed on GPUs add to the visual complexity of a game and help increase a players immersive experience. As visual phenomena, effects physics need to be convincingly real but do not profoundly affect game play. They can merely fill in the players view of the game, creating a richer, more convincing environment- but may not affect the choices a player can make from moment-to-moment.
psychoace said:...Also if the ppu is using a pci slot and a gpu is using a pcie 8x slot (thinkin sli here) why can only the ppu supposidly communicate with the cpu and not the gpu? Also why would it all you need the gpu to do is determine the physics and then render it all out through the video card seems like actually one less step because the ppu still has to throw everything back at the cpu then to the video card