Good New for those of us with the power of 2

[sackynut]

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTAwNSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/03/20/nvidia_sli_forphysics/

both article basically have the same info, but the first one is much longer and more detailed.

This is good news for those who blew an extra 200-300$ on a second card!! Especially because it will just require a driver update. woot! Though, I dont understand how much this will help with current games, only new games that would have INTENSE physics. because the physics in my games run fine on my current single core processer. and if you have a dual core processer, there would be no need for sli physics. discuss.

[LoD]

Re: Good New for those of us with the power of 2

Parallelism is the future of computing for the next few years. Single core yesterday, dual core today and quad core tomorrow (aka mid 2007).

Because of that, the dedicated physics processors are going to be still born and never really catch on IMO. In addition to CPU's, graphics GPU's will begin to transition to multicore designs and hopefully circumcede the entire SLI dual slot issues we have today.

I think in regards to those articles that its a no brainer for nvidia and ATI to adopt physics processing on their video cards, but the funny thing is they are doing it by taking out/diminishing the raw video potential of their cards. Chalk up $1000 for SLI and have $500 of it go to the video card, and the other half becomes a glorified physics processor.

Seems too cutting edge for me. Personally i am waiting for multicore graphics cards, so that SLI will happen on chip, hopefully then they can have an onboard physics processor as well. A tricore video card, dual core geforce chip plus a third physics unit, something of that nature would be very nice.

Right now ATI and Nvidia are relishing the prospect of dual card designs, because it means double the profit from the high end... instead of someone buying the absolute fastest for $500 they get $1000 in sales. But its going to be short lived in my mind, look at the power requirements of modern GPU's, and the quad SLI garbage nvidia is producing. Requires 800-1k watt power supplies!!! Holy crap batman! Since BTX died and because CPU's have dropped their thermal limits i feel video cards will hit a wall pretty soon.

Just like Intel and AMD they will overcome that obstacle with dual and multicore designs, and thats when iI think physics processing will take off. It might be on the video card, or might be on the CPU, but as chip designers throw more and more cores at us, I'm sure some of them will be taking on specific roles like physics etc....

[PBAsydney]

Re: Good New for those of us with the power of 2

I can't even afford half a card of those some of you have 2 of...

[imported_Wreck]

Re: Good New for those of us with the power of 2

ATI's position in this:

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=1414

[BoloMarkXXX]

Re: Good New for those of us with the power of 2

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1359

Drivers for the AGEIA PhysX card are now available for dnload.

[sackynut]

Re: Good New for those of us with the power of 2

the physx processer is a great idea, but with this new SLi physics and Ati's version, it wont last long. the physx is a separate processer that goes into the PCI slot. personally, Im glad I have SLi because I only have two PCI slots, one of them is being used and the other is right below my second gfx card...so dont think that will be happenening anytime soon. Im sure that for my next mobo it will have 3 pci slots.

[Sir. MatDef]

Re: Good New for those of us with the power of 2

I personally think this is going to be a half assed response to the physx card. I bought two cards to play everything at 1600x1200 with all eye candy on max, not some semi-physics thing. There's no way a sli setup will be able to pump out the physics info compared to a dedicated card. The way I see it, this is like using a cpu for graphics, ie it's not what its intended for and won't work half as good as dedicated solution.