Nvidia SLI physics is a fat pipe dream Eye candy squares up against interactionBy Charlie Demerjian: Tuesday 21 March 2006, 09:12NVIDIA PUT OUT a bunch of slideware about SLI physics the other day, and on the surface it looks pretty neat, Ageia-like physics modelling on cards you already own? Wow, sounds too good to be true, and sadly, that's because it is. It is not an insurmountable problem, and this is a first effort, but when you look at the details some cracks become apparent quite quickly.First up, the good. Nvidia did a good thing here, and pretty much validated the entire Physics Processing Unit (PPU) space with a press release. As I said before, with quad-SLI, it was painfully CPU bound, and GPU performance was ramping vastly faster than CPU performance. Nvidia had to do something with the power, and do it quick. If it didn't, when a budget card can drive your monitor at its max rez, why again would you need a $600 card, much less two? SLI physics is a good way to go, and the APIs (application programme interfaces) have a steep uphill climb on the developer side.The biggest limitation of this approach is the fact that you need to devote a GPU to physics, you can't load balance or split time. This kind of makes sense if you think about the data that is needed by the GPU, do you swap physics data out for textures every one third of a frame? Maybe a 512MB card would have the room, but the majority of cards out there are not quite that memory rich.On the up side, it plays the marketing game to perfection, Nvidia has a roadmap that is coherent, and every time ATI catches up, it raises the bar. It may not have the fastest cards right now, but Nvidia has the only whole package. When the next gen ATI chipsets come out in the near future, this may change. Expect an announcement from ATI soon, and by the time it makes a difference to the end user, both will have products out. The reason I personally am not jumping up and down with joy at this announcement like I did with Ageia is simple, SLI physics does not come close to doing what Ageia does. SLI physics is eye candy at the moment, and not much more while Ageia does the real thing. What am I talking about? Look at what is spun as a strength by Nvidia on slides six and seven ("Traditional Physics" and "Integration of SLI Physics") as shown on Rojakpot. Here lie footnotes, and as the saying goes, lies, damn lies and statistics. The problem is that physics can be two things, eye candy-like particle effects, ripples and visual stunts, or hardcore collision detection, proximity effects like gravity, and other play affecting effects. One is frosting, the other is a V8 engine. The Nvidia slides seem to indicate that the physics data and results in its methodology stay on the cards, and only go out as pretty pictures. This interpretation seems to be backed up by The Tech Report.So, the SLI physics engine can make water fall, ripples move, and rocks from the exploding cliff wall bounce off each other in a way that would be damn near impossible to do on a CPU. It can't however make those things interact with your player, the ripples may look like they are washing over your legs, and the rocks bounce off your shins, but it won't cause in game collisions.The Ageia way of doing things is the 'real deal', it can make things bounce, cars crash, and have the game work with it. The gravity of the asteroid can pull your ship off course at a critical time just before the warp jump in ways that SLI physics, in V1.0 at least, can't.So, the Nvidia approach is smoke and mirrors: pretty, shiny, and ineffectual. The kind of thing you want to do in demos, but not in games. Ageia claims to do it 'right' out of the box, and I think this will pay off in a much greater way for the average gamer. SLI physics is not by any means useless, but I would categorise this release a special effect, not a simulator. Perhaps V2.0 will fix all of this, most likely by the time of the Game Developers Conference 2007.Another problem is the price. Imagine you just bought two high end $400 graphics cards for your SLI rig, and all is happy. Birds are singing, particle effects are particling, and the credit card bills have not hit your mailbox yet. If you enable SLI Physics, you essentially spend $400 on a PPU, but you can always turn it off and use the SLI mode in 'old' SLI fashion. I hear the Ageia card will retail for $250 or so, and it looks to be much more suited to the task, but it can't speed up graphics when not needed.So, do you buy 2x GPUs for $800, a GPU and a PPU for $650, or all three for $1,050? That depends on the games you play, and how much is left in your trust fund. If you play heavy physics games, you are probably better off with the PPU, but the occasional FPS and a lot of RTS games leans towards the SLI of old setup. There are way to many 'ifs' here to say for sure. Aw heck, buy all three and auction the kids off on Ebay to pay for it.The other stumbling block I see for SLI physics is the API. There are two commercial physics APIs of note, Havok and NovodeX. Both were independent commercial entities that you bought to slap into your game engine giving you a more robust solution than you were likely able to code yourself in less time. Both cost a lot of money, at E3 the numbers floating around were in the $250K+ per title range, not a trivial amount even in these days of multi-million dollar games.Developers would pick their poison based on a lot deeper methodsand some madness, then write a cheque. Along comes Ageia and buys NovodeX, and renames it PhysX from the looks of things. Almost a year later, Nvidia hooks up with Havok. Since the installed base of Ageia cards is about zero and the NVidia base is probably in the millions, why would any sane developer pick PhysX?The answer is money. Havok costs more than a good Ferrari for every game, Ageia gives away PhysX for free now. In a time when game companies are popping like zits, they need every dollar they can get. If you ship eight titles in a year, that is potentially $2 million+ in savings, no strings attached. Do you fork over the cash and have your game run potentially better on a small slice of Nvidia cards, or pocket the cash and hope for Ageia cards to come out?If you are running the games in old school software only physics mode, there is no difference in performance, so for 98% or more of the people out there, the decision the developers make is academic. Said devevelopers know this, and their corporate masters will most likely look to the dollars not going out the door to Havok. Because of this, I think SLI physics has an uphill climb.If it sounds like I am down on SLI physics, I kind of am for now, but only for now. What is being billed as a huge advance in physics looks to be more of an advance in physics based eye candy, not the real deal. It costs a GPU, and no one seems to be talking about the performance hit that will cause.On the up side, the might of Nvidia stepped in and slapped the collective consciousness of the couch-class gamer with a new buzzword, physics. Soon everyone will be wanting it, needing it, and bragging about it. The outlook for Ageia went from "they do what?" to "Oh, that is cool", faster than you can say Powerpoint.Until the next major revision of SLI physics, I find it hard to get excited about the prospect. It is neat, but that is about as far as I would go. I would go the dual GPU route and buy an Ageia card if you care about performance. That said, Nvidia never sits still for long, and when the next version debuts, pay very close attention.
Dell uses Ageia physics chip for gaming machine We are a gaming company now, tooBy INQUIRER staff: Wednesday 22 March 2006, 14:12HARDWARE giant Dell said it is taking orders on what it describes as an ultra-high performance games machine which will use the Agea PhysX processor.It previewed the XPS 600 Renegade desktop at CES in January and said the machine is available now in limited quantities and including a 30-inch monitor at a price only $70 short of $10,000.It is also cranking up the Pentium 965 Extreme Edition to 4.26GHz, with dedicated support for the overclocking community.However, Dell will also offer these machines with quad SLI options. µ
Physics on the GPU revealed: Part II Clarifications and explanationsBy Charlie Demerjian: Monday 27 March 2006, 13:40THE OTHER DAY I pondered the meaning of the whole physics on the GPU idea, and came to a bunch of conclusions. The general concepts were more or less correct, but there were several details that I didn't know, and a few things that were just plain off. The things you learn when you are briefed.Lets start out by saying that the Havok FX product is not an NVidia technology, it is made by Havok, a physics middleware company. While the mind may boggle at the coincidence between the company name and the product name, it is by no means an Nvidia exclusive. Havok FX will run on any DX9 or greater card that has the horsepower to pull it off without hammering the frame rate of the game. It will even work on ATI cards, eventually, but nothing has been officially announced yet.This brings us to point two, and one that I am told will be corrected in the NVidia slides, the physics engine does not need a dedicated GPU, it can be shared with graphics. Again, on todays cards, this may not be the brightest idea in the world, but that will change as GPU power advances. That darn word 'or' in the last slide here.The last thing is a bit more nebulous, and it has to do with where the data is kept, where the calculations are done, and what is sent back and forth. If you look at the above link, the second and third slides make it seem like they don't want to send info back and forth. This is indeed the case, but it looks to be engineered that way vs a creative spin on a bad thing.There are two types of game physics that can be broken down into somewhat vague categories like effects and game physics. Game physics are things like collisions, interactions and the things you normally think of as 'physics'. The effects are particle systems, fluids, and other shiny but not really user interactive bits.According to a friend who understands such thing and the arcane math behind them, the shiny bits are well suited for the kind of math that GPUs excel at. The 'hard' stuff isn't all that well suited to GPU style math. Neither side really needs to talk to the other in a meaningful way, hence the breakdown. Can you do one side on the other? Sure. Does it make sense? Not so much. So the separation is real, and there are sensible reasons to do so, think of it as two physics engines to solve two problems, each with unique needs and math.I stand by my earlier conclusions that the Ageia way, basically a single chip that does both well, is better than the Havok FX route, at least for now. At some nebulous point in the future when GPU power is plentiful, and you can dedicate half of your graphics performance without having to drop the rez of you game, then I would say save the $250 on the PPU and go the software on the GPU route. Until then, the software route is a tough sell in the bang for the buck stakes.Looking at he way Havok implemented this product, it definitely makes more sense with the details filled in. Having the option of dong things on the GPU for 'free' is not a bad deal for the end user. As it stands now though, Havok FX isn't going to set the world on fire, it is mainly a tool for devs to get their feet wet and experiment. In a year or two, when there are mature products from both the Havok and Ageia camps, well, then we can decide which is better. Maybe it will be clear, but I would bet that by then, things will still be pretty muddy.
Dell’s Rolls Royce gaming machine sells out At $9,930 you probably were not expecting thisBy Nick Farrell: Monday 27 March 2006, 20:43TINMAN Dell has finally got around to releasing the XPS 600 Renegade gaming PC which hit the shops for nearly $10,000 green backs and has disappeared as fast as it arrived, as we noticed last week.Dell only released a few of the expensive beasts and according to Gear, it has already sold them all.The Renegade had a factory over-clocked 4.26 GHz Pentium 965 Extreme Edition CPU and the first quad SLI configuration of four GeForce 7800s.The sell out is a little surprising given the fact that Nvidia s has released its quad SLI technology and 5.46 GHz over-clocked machines were ten a penny at CeBIT.MO< Although Dell said that the Renegade was limited edition, it didn’t say how many it actually made either. If they only made a few hundred then it is not surprising they have sold out. But then again that wouldn’t have been worth the advertising and marketing that Dell released it with. The press release only went out a few days ago. It isn’t clear if Dell are going to make any more, you can oogle the the machine here. It reminds me of one of those souped up Mac trucks.
Captain Blood uses Ageia PhysX chip Ageia strikes games deals plusBy INQUIRER staff: Friday 07 April 2006, 08:49AGEIA said that it has signed deals at the Russian Developers Conference for games makers to use the Ageia PhysX chips.It signed a publisher wide licence with Russian firm Akella in future games including Captain Blood.It signed a deal with Ukraine firm Abyss Lights Studio in its Abyss Lights: Frozen Systems game.It signed a deal with Buka Entertainment to use Ageia in its 100+ strong games portfolio.It signed a deal with Noviy Disk to use Ageia in a game the Russian publisher is developing.
Retail Ageia PhysX card available BFG sits at OverclockersBy Fuad Abazovic: Monday 10 April 2006, 08:46WE didn't expect any AGEIA cards before May, as Asus told us we'd have to wait for May to get them. But AGEIA's other exclusive partner BFG actually has PhysX cards in retail already. BFG is shipping the Ageia PhysX Accelerator - OEM (GX-021-BG) and you can buy this piece of marchitecture for £193.82 including VAT.You only get a card for this money but it is still huge progress. The retail version is listed but still not available and it will cost slightly more, £217.32 including VAT. We don't know what could you possibly do with this PhysX card as you won't be able to find any kind of content, at least not yet but you could always claim that you had one of the first ones. If you are a marchitecture freak and you want one of them, you can hope that you will have a few cool demos on the driver CD and go and buy this card.
Ageia PhysX cards pulled from retail OEMs only - Overclockers jumped the gunBy Fuad Abazovic: Tuesday 11 April 2006, 09:53 WE were informed that shortly after we posted a story, here, to the effect that Ageia PhysX cards were already on sale, Overclockers was asked to take the link to the retail card down. The cards are now back on pre-order. At this point, PhysX cards are available for OEMs and System integrators only and we know that BFG is selling to a lot of companies such as Alienware, NW Falcon and probably Rahul's Voodoo PC. BFG will sell some cards to system integrators in the UK as well, as it wants a piece of that market too. But it seems that you will have to wait at last another month for a retail PhysX card. Ageia is fighting a game with content providers and cannot launch a card without some cool content inside. Major titles supporting cool Physics are still not here, but this should change in a next few months. We are sure that there will be a lot of PhysX fuzz at the babe-free E3.
