SLI Physics!!

[FatalSaviour]

http://www.rojakpot.com/showarticle....tno=303&pgno=0

Sounds pretty cool

[user1453]

but would it work with a single 6800 gt?

[sawyen]

but would it work with a single 6800 gt?

Then u'll get break-neck physics on very very ****ty graphics..

[nvening]

Lol, that report didnt look made up

[Agent]

Could be the end of AGEIA before they have even started

[aidanjt]

Depends, physics can be as basic or as complex as you like, obviously the more math you throw at a physics effect the better quality the end result will be.. if you want to do raytracing, newtons law, explosions and other particle effects in realtime you'd be much better off with a dedicated physics card and leave 3d geometry to the GPU. Then the CPU can be left with mundane things like A.I., file I/O etc..

[herulach]

Depends, physics can be as basic or as complex as you like, obviously the more math you throw at a physics effect the better quality the end result will be.. if you want to do raytracing, newtons law, explosions and other particle effects in realtime you'd be much better off with a dedicated physics card and leave 3d geometry to the GPU. Then the CPU can be left with mundane things like A.I., file I/O etc..

But if you have a second gpu to play with anyway. It would make a nice upgrade route for those who dont want to throw their old cards away.

As far as i understand it, the PhysX cards are basically a gpu style (i.e, highly parallel) processor that happens to have a good api for physics, if someone writes a similar one for gpus then im pretty certain theyll be a damn site faster than anything ageia can make

[sawyen]

Poor bastards...

[nvening]

I can see Nvida physics only cards though, bad bussiness sense to le people re use thier old cards.

[FatalSaviour]

This really does beg the question, what's the CPU gonna be used for? Like aidanjit says: A.I., file I/O etc sure, but is that going to bog down say, my X2 4200+?

[TooNice]

Could be the end of AGEIA before they have even started

How far have they got anyway?

[Butcher]

This really does beg the question, what's the CPU gonna be used for? Like aidanjit says: A.I., file I/O etc sure, but is that going to bog down say, my X2 4200+?

AI will easily consume all available CPU and then some.

[DavidM]

Almost going back to the Amiga idea of dedicated processors for different tasks - which isn't such a bad thing.

[FatalSaviour]

AI will easily consume all available CPU and then some.

Heheh, perhaps not with the low low settings that I'll be running a brain-dead AI on .

[DanceswithUnix]

raytracing, newtons law, explosions and other particle effects in realtime you'd be much better off with a dedicated physics card and leave 3d geometry to the GPU. Then the CPU can be left with mundane things like A.I., file I/O etc..

Raytracing? That would allow you to do graphics acceleration on your physics card

[aidanjt]

This really does beg the question, what's the CPU gonna be used for? Like aidanjit says: A.I., file I/O etc sure, but is that going to bog down say, my X2 4200+?

Heh, there are A.I. systems that would max out a 1000 of your CPU's working on it in parallel. We just wont see anything nearly that advanced in anything other than lab conditions for some years to come, much less games.

Raytracing? That would allow you to do graphics acceleration on your physics card

Mmmm, kinda but not really, in physics tracing the trajectory of photons is a bit more complex, there's more factors to be considered than just the source.. You have material reflections, optics, particale absorption, gravity could all be included factors in a few years with dedicated physics processing engines. Granted we have a limited material reflections, optics, and particale effects with current GPUs, but there's no harm in improving things