Graphics and PhysX

[Albereth]

Any views on the PhysX cards? Would it be worthwhile and what would support it. My brother did mention that his graphics card sw complained that there wasn't one in his machine - I'll follow up with him on that one.

And nVidia has made noises regarding the 8-series cards that'll be along for Vista - well they have DirectX 10 support. Does this mean the 7900s will be coming down?

The ASUS 7900GT got quite a reasonable review in a recent mag. A lot better than the one in last month's PC Format (or was it NAG). They thought the Gainward Bliss 7900GTX was the business, but this has a bang for the buck ok.

[Ruslan74]

the Physx cards are still in their first-gen incarnation but will improve later one and hopefully as well drop in price. If you can find it google for the Cell Factor video which shows off the Physx card best.

GRAW has support for the Physx card as well as various other games which you can find more info on here.

The current issue with some of the games is that the extra detail which the card induces in the game has a negative impact on the overall performance coz the GFX card has extra work to with the additional polygons of the effects.

ATI has another Physx equivalent in which a low X series card coupled in Crossfire mode with another ATI card can perform the same tasks as the Physx card. Thats still early Alpha but it does give us gamers another solution to look out for.

[SlappY]

I would hold off on any vid card upgrades till this vista has done its rounds. DirectX 10 changes so dramatically the way 3D graphics is done the hardware is gonna be different. My 7800GT is gonna have to do the trick till the DX10's are out

[Brawler]

Any views on the PhysX cards? Would it be worthwhile and what would support it. My brother did mention that his graphics card sw complained that there wasn't one in his machine - I'll follow up with him on that one.

The ASUS 7900GT got quite a reasonable review in a recent mag. A lot better than the one in last month's PC Format (or was it NAG). They thought the Gainward Bliss 7900GTX was the business, but this has a bang for the buck ok.

I read somewhere that you can use a 'old' radeon X600 as a physics card, aparantly it actually works 3 times better than the ageia @ half the price.

A got a Gainward Bliss 7900GT, it is superb.

[Ruslan74]

yip, ATI still has to release the drivers for that to work and gather support in games for it too.

[doobiwan]

Saw something today, I think it was at theinquirer.net, but apparently the "graphics" Physics on current hardware is pretty C@rp, it an emulation type thing, not proper physics.

Only when Directx10 hardware comes out will they be capable of doing proper Physics.

[Ruslan74]

its all software emulation and not proper hardware coded... kinda like we see the Havok engine in games at the moment.

now if they could only cut down the price for the dang Physx cards to give it a bash....