Ageia PhysX Accelerator???

[Vega]

what are these cards for, (Ageia PhysX Accelerator ) are they instead of a Graphics card or to go with a graphics card etc.........

[pak000]

they are supposed to take some of the load off of the gpu by being specifically designed to handle physical calculations, their specialisation in physics calculations means that they are able to do them faster than a standard gpu and so supposedly more detail can be seen in the game (if it is optimised for the system).

You still need a graphics card

[nichomach]

Initial reviews of them have been rather spotty; in many cases, what they're doing is adding physics effects that wouldn't otherwise be there (like additional debris after explosions), which then have to be rendered by the graphics card, so the net effect is a drop in frame rates, since they actually produce more work for the graphics card.

[Smokey21]

Will be a while till they are needed, or worth it.

[pr0p4g4nd4]

I think it's ahead of it's time and currently just an expensive circuit board!

[Jeebus]

Here are some links of cards available in my area.... Pretty cool stuff but I would spend the $$$$$$ on a video card before I buy one of these!! http://www.canadacomputers.com/index...010201&cid=999
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index...010206&cid=999

[FatalSaviour]

they are supposed to take some of the load off of the gpu by being specifically designed to handle physical calculations, their specialisation in physics calculations means that they are able to do them faster than a standard gpu and so supposedly more detail can be seen in the game (if it is optimised for the system).

You still need a graphics card

In my understanding, it won't take any load off the GPU, as it is the CPU that handles all the physics calculations normally.
The PhysX cards handle physics acceleration, as opposed to graphics acceleration, so you do still need a graphics card yes.

[Grey M@a]

I would basically say stay away from them, why buy a physics based card and then a gpu just to get a few nice graphical enhancements, will also cost a fortune. Wait a while and you will see ATi and nVidia have these onboard and saving the public wasting 200 quid on a spare board. ATi have already flashed what their real time physics units can do. I believe it was linked on the Hexus main page with a video showing it off.

[Kumagoro]

its only worth getting if you are going to get a really top of the range computer with sli/crossfire using the top notch cards etc.

[trect]

There's a review of the Asus PhysX P1 here:

http://www.itreviews.co.uk/hardware/h973.htm

Which basically concurrs that it isn't really worth it yet...

[Odc]

I think that at the moment, no games have been developed in conjunction with PhysX cards so there is no noticable increase in performance but with games that are being developed with the cards, they supposedly do help a lot. I think that UT2K7 is making use of the PhysX cards.