Aegia Physx cards Cheap!
By
Father Xmas,
Posted on: 2010-07-30 05:03 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
one of the reasons they are so cheap is that Nvidia PhysX is not AGEIA Physx.
Games that support Nvidia physx, such as Mirror's Edge, will only accelerate physics on Nvidia GPU's.
Games that support AGEAI Physx, such as City of Heroes, will not accelerate physics on Nvidia GPU's.
So, basically you bought two cards that only a literal handful of games from 5 and 6 years ago will actually use to process physics.
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Correct. But, I already have Nvidia(which isn't supported), and city of heroes is mostly what I play, so it should work. For the $25, the card is worth that little added vallue. I only got two so I could give one to my buddy if it actually can decrease the load in his system. I got a gtx 470, so either way, I am fine.
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Originally Posted by je_saist
one of the reasons they are so cheap is that Nvidia PhysX is not AGEIA Physx.
Games that support Nvidia physx, such as Mirror's Edge, will only accelerate physics on Nvidia GPU's. Games that support AGEAI Physx, such as City of Heroes, will not accelerate physics on Nvidia GPU's. So, basically you bought two cards that only a literal handful of games from 5 and 6 years ago will actually use to process physics. |
When I was using the ASUS Aegia PhysX card, I was getting lockups in the game whenever I enabled it. So be aware, it could cause instability in the game.
When you get them, and install them, let us know what/if they do any good!
With the 470, the software physx should be covered.
but from my research, the CPU handles most of what those Ageai cards covered.
So, it will also be necessary to monitor CPU load as well as total FPS, to determine if any significant cpu and/or gpu offloading is achieved.
"Games that support AGEAI Physx, such as City of Heroes, will not accelerate physics on Nvidia GPU's.
So, basically you bought two cards that only a literal handful of games from 5 and 6 years ago will actually use to process physics."
LMFAO, this IS A COH FORUM. I don't care if this is the ONLY game the cards work with, if they work!
Especially of interest for older/low-end systems since The Ageai cards are available in PCI! Not only does that make them possibly useful for people still running AGP machines(ati 4650 available at fry's) but also possibly useful for people using motherboards with only one pciex16 slot.
More discussions related to this is
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...ighlight=physx
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=135087
Father Xmas Seems to say that a good multi-core CPU will be just as effective as adding one of these cards, But I'd like DEFINITIVE NUMBERS before I decide.
I found one for sale, for a miserly $15 plus shipping So I may spring for one anyhow.
For those that were there for my "gpu vs IGP" thread... you know I ended up with some pretty low specced hardware. With an Intel e3300, and a g210 video card... the extra off-loading of the CPU with an AGEAI PhysX card may be worth it.
Obviously, a better video card would benefit fps and overall looks... but is it worth keeping one of these endangered cards installed?
Anxiously awaiting an answer :-)
From what I understand what the PhysX card buys you over the current CPU emulation is more packing peanuts, shell casings and debris visible at one time.
The only benchmark I remember seeing was from a long time ago in AnandTech around the time CoV and PhysX first came out. Not sure how relative the performance of a 2.93GHz Core 2 dual core coupled with an nVidia 7950GX2 compares with current CPUs and video cards.
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Not much as the performance and on-screen display of running a PhysX card on single cored Socket 754 and 939 Atlhon64 was pretty much matched by running a duel core 939 Athlon64. Back then City of Heroes didn't default with a renderthread -1 command, and it didn't leverage a multi-processor system by default. The game today does leverage SMP by default, granted with only two threads. |
Originally Posted by Father Xmas
From what I understand what the PhysX card buys you over the current CPU emulation is more packing peanuts, shell casings and debris visible at one time.
The only benchmark I remember seeing was from a long time ago in AnandTech around the time CoV and PhysX first came out. Not sure how relative the performance of a 2.93GHz Core 2 dual core coupled with an nVidia 7950GX2 compares with current CPUs and video cards. |
Now, it's been a while since I actually had an AGEIA PhysX card in hand. I sold mine off... a little bit after I had picked up my AM2 A64 6000. In my own testing back then, at least in CoH, the AGEIA card added pretty much nothing. Same was true with a 939 X2 4000. The PhysX add in card did... nothing. My personal opinion is that this lack of performance boost was largely due to CoH's engine architecture, as one of the Ghost Recon's I had on hand with AGEIA PhysX support did enable some extra fluff with the Physics Processor enabled.
Now, that being said, PhysX cards may still hold some future value. That value being found in OpenCL. We know that Nvidia's not about to release an OpenCL driver for the AGEIA PhysX PPU as Nvidia has been systematically trying to stomp the PPU into a grave since well... they bought AGEIA out.
However, the actual PPU itself is a rather simple chip-design: http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=5492&page=2
It Might be possible to reverse engineer an OpenCL driver for the AGEIA PPU. For games that leverage OpenCL for physics, this would allow them to expose existing PPU's as viable physics processors getting around Nvidia's baby-like mine mine mine attitude and behavior.
This scenario probably won't happen for one very good reason: http://www.x.org/docs/AMD/ :: http://intellinuxgraphics.org/
The hardware data to write a driver, be it an OpenGL graphics driver or an OpenCL computational driver, is pretty much available for most AMD GPU's and Intel GPA's that are on the market. Why go through the work of reverse engineering a chip that actually didn't sell that well... when lots more gamers are more likely have an AMD / ATi graphics card on hand or in the Processor, or a Intel Graphics Accelerator on the mainboard or in the processor?
So, I got the cards in the mail today and installed. Did a few tests with some tree leaves and such. I saw minimal improvement in the amount of particles in Heroes and Villains outside. I saw maybe a 5-10 framerate improvement, but at 60-70 something, who's counting. After a little running around with my Gravity controller(best for gathering leaves and such), I decided to do a safeguard. Inside the mish was not much of anything going on, as heroes don't destroy much in those, so I went villain. I did a mayhem on my gravity dom this time. From what I gather, Physx just puts more stuff inside something, so when it blows up, you get more boom. In vans, it put boxes in the vans, and in cars it put more "car parts". In little boxes, it put random fluff. It didn't cause any particles to persist that would not have persisted with max particles on anyway.
Overall, for 20 bucks, if you want that little extra, it's a good deal. However, had I paid $200+ for one of these cards to play heroes, I would have been EXTREMELY disappointed to almost the point of having a personal vendetta against the creator for even thinking it was worth $200.
The images below are the opposite corners of the same parking lot. In both pictures the debris is from two vans only. The top is with max physics with Aegia Physx disabled and the bottom is with the card enabled. Sorry about the image quality, photobucket was jacking up. In the top picture the van has door pieces and such, but in the bottom picture, there are actually more things that came out of it. There were a couple boxes, some computer screens, and even a file cabinet or two. So with the card enabled, actual extra items are coded into the game, not just extra random pieces.
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I was under the impression that PhysX was the way those particles interacted and moved with the environment, making it more "life-like". Having a dedicated card was supposed to make this processing more efficient to increase the framerate. Whether or not it meant more particles came out of exploded objects when the option was turned on in-game, is a different story. That feels like it's more about the option itself being turned on, not what the card is actually creating. Like you said, we already have an option for max particle, and it still wont exceed that.|
Originally Posted by Live_Wyre
From what I gather, Physx just puts more stuff inside something, so when it blows up, you get more boom. In vans, it put boxes in the vans, and in cars it put more "car parts". In little boxes, it put random fluff. It didn't cause any particles to persist that would not have persisted with max particles on anyway.
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I could be wrong. I really don't know. I've never had the right card to be able to enable it in-game to compare, but I already see tons of debris come out of objects. It's likely the card is simply making the explosion look more realistic to you, and you are paying attention to it more to try to find a difference that you are now noticing how much extra crap is on the ground. lol
Either way, I'm glad you are happy with your purchase and that you did see a slight increase in performance. If it was worth it to you, that's all that matters, and it might even convince others to do the same.
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For CoH/CoV, I don't think it is maxing out the potential for the card. It is SUPPOSED to create accurate physics, more ragdoll, and the like. To me the explosions didn't look any different, just the stuff that came out. For the other couple games that support it, I have no doubt that it makes explosions more realistic, and flashier coupled with a good GPU. I don't think City of Heroes spent much time in the explosion aspect, and the ragdolling was added in the game anyway. These two things plus the fact that particles and such already existed in the game take away from some of the main selling points of the card. It doesn't make hurricane look like a real hurricane or steamy mist look more misty. They were coded to look different. Other games may not have had the max particle setting or realistic ragdolling, just like not all games take advantage of full SLi capabilities. If they aren't built for it, it doesn't matter what hardware you throw at it. Like I said, $20-yes, $200-definitive no.
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Originally Posted by Master-Blade
I was under the impression that PhysX was the way those particles interacted and moved with the environment, making it more "life-like". Having a dedicated card was supposed to make this processing more efficient to increase the framerate. Whether or not it meant more particles came out of exploded objects when the option was turned on in-game, is a different story. That feels like it's more about the option itself being turned on, not what the card is actually creating. Like you said, we already have an option for max particle, and it still wont exceed that.
I could be wrong. I really don't know. I've never had the right card to be able to enable it in-game to compare, but I already see tons of debris come out of objects. It's likely the card is simply making the explosion look more realistic to you, and you are paying attention to it more to try to find a difference that you are now noticing how much extra crap is on the ground. lol Either way, I'm glad you are happy with your purchase and that you did see a slight increase in performance. If it was worth it to you, that's all that matters, and it might even convince others to do the same. |
I know they don't do much for the game overall, but now they are reasonable. I just picked up 2 with expedited shipping from amazon for $58. just putting the word out, since NVidia Physx does even less for the game overall. Don't know about drivers and such, but for 50 bucks, I'll try.