PhysX’s Big Break? Unreal Tournament 3 PhysX Performance
by Ryan Smith on December 14, 2007 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Closing Thoughts
Wrapping things up, we’re reminded again of AGEIA’s prowess at producing technical demos. Like the free CellFactor: Revolution and Warmonger games, these maps serve more as a demo of what developers can do with the PhysX hardware than anything else. But AGEIA is also closer to getting the PhysX PPU used in enough important games that it becomes something more than a piece of tech demo hardware.
The performance improvements offered by the PhysX PPU with AGEIA’s maps are substantial, which is where we would expect them to be, but CTF-Tornado also offers an interesting path for AGEIA to go down that we haven’t seen them go down yet. Out of the PhysX titles we’ve looked at so far, the addition of the PPU either adds performance-harming eye-candy (GRAW), effectively meaningless eye-candy (City of Heroes), or a game uses physics so heavily that it’ll never be a mass-market AAA title because it’s unplayable without the PPU (CellFactor).
We’ve been wondering if and when someone would produce a work using the PPU that showcases the PPU as a way to improve performance without the lack of said PPU killing performance, and we’ve found that work in CTF-Tornado. Perhaps it’s not an otherwise remarkable map, but we think AGEIA would certainly have an easier time selling the PPU if there were more games that could be playable with or without a PPU, while the PPU offered a tangible benefit.
Unreal Tournament 3 as measured by its stock maps however is not that game. There’s an interesting performance boost in what we believe are a fraction of the total maps, but it’s practically academic. The possible performance boost doesn’t occur in enough maps or occur as a big enough boost to clearly justify installing a PhysX PPU; either way the game is going to be completely playable. But it’s a start.
Unfortunately we find ourselves once again sitting on the fence when it comes to deciding if the PhysX PPU is a worthwhile piece of hardware or a dud. AGEIA continues to show us just enough in the way of games and performance that we can’t write it off, but we still don’t have the killer app that justifies the PPU either. It once again boils down to a matter of throwing it a new computer along with the kitchen sink, or playing exactly the right combination of games and enjoying exactly the right combination of eye-candy, that the PPU becomes worth it.
At the very least, AGEIA and its partners have brought down the price on PhysX cards from their heavy introductory prices. At least through the end of the year, AGEIA has BFG selling their PhysX card for $99, making the part a more practical purchase. This doesn’t change our fence-sitting position on the matter, but it does help to keep the PPU viable for now and keeps us from writing it off after so few games in the last year and a half.
Looking forward, it seems like it’s a matter of time however until AGEIA and its partners release a new PhysX PPU and cards based on said PPU. We’ve heard the rumors of a new, far more powerful part in production, and we know from AGEIA’s developer efforts that they intend to stay in the game a while longer yet. Coupled with the interesting situation on CTF-Lighthouse of being PPU limited, a new PhysX PPU seems imminent. When, how much, and how that will go over with still such few PhysX-supporting games out there remains to be seen. Now may not be the best time to throw in the kitchen sink however if AGEIA intends to release a new PhysX product within the next few months.
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madgonad - Friday, December 14, 2007 - link
If most of the games arriving are enabled with this technology at a minimum it would give an equivalent boost of going from dual to quad core on regular maps using 2nd order physics. For games/maps using 1st order physics it would actually allow you to play them. For a $100 part (I have seen priced at $149) that might make sense if you have room in the case and PCIe 1x cards become available as a working product.For most of us, you know, people that build/buy a PC under a budget, this may or may not make sense. A physics processor may fall into the category of sound card since Vista and Realtek has taken great strides in making the previously mandatory sound card irrelevant. They might provide a couple "nice to have" features and slightly improve performance, but that money might be better spent on Crossfire or a faster CPU or better RAM or a mirrored hard disk.
The physics card is going to have to earn a place and this article does support that ability.
Heck, if it allows players to chew up the scenery I am all for it!
kilkennycat - Friday, December 14, 2007 - link
nVidia's upcoming dual-function next-gen silicon fully supporting either GPU or GPGPU functionality will finally kill PhysX. Wonder why the 780i chipset supports 3 PCIe16 slots and PCIe2.0? Think 2 GPUs in SLI dedicated to graphics and one GPU functioning as a GPGPU for bleeding-edge gaming. And for the less than bleeding-edge gaming, quad-core computation of bulk physics in combo with spare GPU horsepower for particle-effects will do quite nicely.Ryan Smith - Friday, December 14, 2007 - link
The funny thing is that at this time last year I'd agree with you, but now I'm not so sure.GPU physics has been a bust so far. ATI/NVIDIA made a bunch of noise when AGEIA announced their PPU, but HavokFX never came through and there is no other off-the-shelf solution that can do second-order physics, never mind first-order physics. It always seems like GPU physics in games is just around the corner and it never happens, and I'm not convinced that this misdirection from the GPU manufacturers is unintentional.
I keep hearing conflicting stories about when we'll get real GPU physics. Now the story is that things will finally be put in order forcefully by Microsoft in DirectX11, which is still years away (MS is still working on delivering DX10.1). This would coincide with some improvements in GPU threading that would help GPUs deal with the split workload, so it's very possible this is the case. Then again, both ATI and NVIDIA are finally delivering mature versions of their GPGPU programing environments (CUDA/CTM) which would allow someone to write a physics package at a lower level than shaders. I'm not aware of anyone working on this for games, though.
In the mean time the PPU does exist, and we expect we'll be seeing a far more powerful version fairly soon.
The 780i isn't the only chipset that supports 3 PCIe x16 slots either. I can show you some boards that came through here in 2005 that had the same support, for the exact same reason. Furthermore NVIDIA has a poor track record of supporting >2 GPUs in a system at once anyhow.
NickelPlate - Friday, December 14, 2007 - link
Let's hope so. The last thing PC gaming needs right now is another hardware requirement on the box.Martins - Friday, December 14, 2007 - link
So we don't need another Hardware requirement on the Box? In the form of a PPU that is $99 now and that as shown that can be faster them a $400+ dual core right? But you are not against the use of 3 or more GPU's and a new board if you want physics hardware acceleration, just do the math and see who gives us the best bung for ours money.NickelPlate - Friday, December 14, 2007 - link
I'm not saying their isn't a performance benefit. But the fact is PC gaming has slowly been taking the backseat to consoles over many years, mostly because it's getting more complicated and expensive for the average user. It's already depressing enough for most people to buy a high end graphics card only to have it chug on new games within years time. What's going to happen when they need a PPU upgrade every year also? Another $100? More? That's probably for the cheap ones. No doubt high end PPU cards will be end up costing hundreds.goku - Monday, December 17, 2007 - link
No, I think the problem is, pc gaming and well gaming in itself hasn't offered much innovation in a long time. A PPU would add a great amount of depth that is so sorely needed in today's games. What's the point of a high resolution tree if all you can do is cut it down in the same way as any other tree? Or how about driving a beautifully rendered car, but when you crash it, the damage is the same EVERYTIME.rykerabel - Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - link
wyrdI bought a physix just to put my money into encouraging some decent physics in the future.
I don't care which company succedes, i just want better physics period.
ChronoReverse - Friday, December 14, 2007 - link
Where are you getting this $400 dual core? Quad cores start at $279 now and dual cores can be had for less than $75 (soon even lower when the dual core Celerons come out).michal1980 - Friday, December 14, 2007 - link
I find that your statement of pc's not needed more new hardware just flat wrong.read the dailytech thread about display port. People are throughing themselves at a new port hand over fist. Those same people what physic's hard just because