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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marbles - Saturday, December 22, 2007 - link
We represent a very small fraction of PC gamers and users and even many of us are not sure we'll ever buy a PPU card. From someone who has repaired and built PCs over the years and has spent hours explaining the difference between "free" onboard graphics and 700.00 graphics cards I don't want to have to explain a PPU.Look at the Geo mod capability in Red Faction (7 yrs ago) and the physics incorporated into the Source engine (3 yrs ago). They all came "free" because of the willingness of the game maker to make this work and keep the game playable on a reasonable PC. Look at Fracture out next year for the PPU-less 360 and PS3.
The quality of popular PC franchises are already being compromised for consoles so there is little hope that a PC specific PPU will ever be required to play any game. I think AGEIA's best hope for the PC is middleware and having their technology integrated into main boards or graphic cards.
Are these two UT3 maps available for the consoles?
perzy - Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - link
The CPU is dead! The future is dicrete processors.The heat wall is a not a bump in the road, it IS a wall.
Look at chipzilla that had a concussion rammin it's head in the wall, spent 4-5 years redesigning then pentium m to core 2 duo.
AMD bought a gpu-manufacturer that still has a few years of developing before the heat wall and Intel bought Havok and is quietly gearing up it's own dicrete gpu-dept.
Nvidia seems to be working on worlddomination on their own, or just trying to boost their own value before being bought by chipzilla.
Sure you can have maybe 16 cores (heatwall + power envelope) on a CPU but still they are slow and they dont have their own superfast dedicated ram.
So Ageia is right on the mark, how far they now seem to be from it.
0roo0roo - Sunday, December 16, 2007 - link
give me all the physics you can on a 2 or 4 core cpu and go on from there. a phyx card does nothing during normal use. its dead weight. i'd rather pay for a nicer cpu or gpu which are used in some way 100% of the time. there just isn't a killer game play app for the ppu. stacking boxes is already possible and not that compelling. developing a ppu only killer app game isn't really something i can see happening. while they wait for that miracle to come by cpus will creep up and surpass the card anyways:PFrancisbacon - Monday, December 24, 2007 - link
You're absolutely correct.Games developers will only take PPUs seriously once a lot of people have them, and this will only be the case once Nvidia and ATI start shipping graphics cards with PPUs on-board.
This is not too far off, Nvidia and ATI are both known to be working on including physics on their next generation of cards.
Buying a bodge-job like this, a PCI expansion card which actually offers very little in the way of power and only really affects one mainstream game in a very minor way is a total waste of money right now. It's far more sensible to upgrade your CPU and wait for physics-enabled graphics cards to come out.
On top of all this, I'm fairly certain exactly the same results could have been acheived by fully utilising all four cores of the CPU, but the Ageia modders chose not to, for obvious reasons.
Francisbacon - Monday, December 24, 2007 - link
You're absolutely correct.Games developers will only take PPUs seriously once a lot of people have them, and this will only be the case once Nvidia and ATI start shipping graphics cards with PPUs on-board.
This is not too far off, Nvidia and ATI are both known to be working on including physics on their next generation of cards.
Buying a bodge-job like this, a PCI expansion card which actually offers very little in the way of power and only really affects one mainstream game in a very minor way is a total waste of money right now. It's far more sensible to upgrade your CPU and wait for physics-enabled graphics cards to come out.
On top of all this, I'm fairly certain exactly the same results could have been acheived by fully utilising all four cores of the CPU, but the Ageia modders chose not to, for obvious reasons.
Sacher - Sunday, December 16, 2007 - link
Nice in-depth article. I'm wondering, what did you (Ryan) have the texture-detail and world-detail [advanced video] settings at?Does the physics load change when using different world-detail settings?
FITCamaro - Friday, December 14, 2007 - link
While performance didn't increase that much with the PPU on the real maps, did the game look better? You didn't answer this. If I get noticeable better effects with the PPU and the same performance as without, thats a win to me. If it just displays the same effects as without the PPU just faster, then no its not worth it.Physics is not about increasing the FPS of a game. It's about making it more realistic and immersive.
Ryan Smith - Friday, December 14, 2007 - link
We mentioned this elsewhere in the article, but the effects are the same. Enabling the PhysX hardware only offloads them to the PPU, it doesn't create any new effects.ET - Friday, December 14, 2007 - link
For a low end or old system, an inexpensive card which could offer a performance boost would have been welcome. However these tests show more of a performance gain on the quad core than the dual core. While this might mean that people with money to spare (high end quad core users) may be able to get even more performance for relatively little (compared to their CPU's price), low end buyers can't get as much of a boost.Which sounds to me backwards. If I could get a significant performance boost for my semi-old PC, I might have been more interested.
SuperGee - Sunday, December 16, 2007 - link
That is because a lowbudged game rig has several bottlenecks and if this is GPU holding back FPS, ofloading a not so bottlenck like CPU yields not much in such case.As most game tend to be GPU limited. And a old or low budged PC wil often be most limited on GPU.
A PPU isn't ment for offloading but for more Physics. This means a decent game-rig is needed to use a PPU properly with a physics load made for PPU.
A PPU is more ment for Physics enthausiast, early adopter, hardcore gamers or highbudged rigs. To play PhysX games in optimal settings.
The QC yield so much because the benched it with a less GPU stressing setting. Wich is not the way people game with a high-end game PC.