The Real Truth to Ageia PhysX

[NFSFAN]

I have done some extreme decompiling and testing, reprogramming and reverse engineering, and came to the conclusion that the PhysX PPU is a very useless card. After months of decompiling and reverse engineering the game's code, on February the 13th I have found out in one of the game files that the Cloth and Fluid effects of the game are actually forced on default by the company.
After some minor reprogramming of the file, I have booted the game, and ran in with both Fluid/Cloth effects without a Physx PPU and it didn't drop down to 1 fps, when using this. The CPU however had a load of 65-78% when using Cloth/Fluid effects.

 

[MrGaribaldi]

Now, whilst this might be a very worthwile discovery, it would be much better if you told us a little bit more.
Are you working on an existing game, or a tech demo?
If it is a game, did you test it during several different conditions, multiple characters on the screen, moving fast/slow or did you just stand around in one place?
If it is a tech demo, it's most likely only showing of the physics, meaning that there is no AI, or anything else cpu intensive running in the background.
To me, I would much rather spend those 65-78% on AI, and have the physics running on a seperate card, than limiting my AI, sound, network, and input processing to 22%...

So please, give us some more info, so we can judge things better.

 

[Nodsu]

Also, did you measure the load on the Ageia card itself? Maybe the game just isn't uaing it to full potential?

 

[beef_jerky4104]

Wow. I and was thinking of getting one of those cards with my new build.

 

[NFSFAN]

Yes, well here it is all. I measured the load on my Cpu with and without the PhysX card and it makes a difference of about 60-70%. This is not much if you ask me. Secondly the game I tested was CellFactor Tech Demo R36, by AGEIA. Now the funny thing is that this demo was built to run only if you have this card. Of course you can use the classic hack, but fluid/cloth effects lag while turning around in-game. Card or no card the difference is obscure, and it really isn't worth the $200 investment for it to take the 5-10% load off the cpu. Now on the other hand I realize that not every one has a dual core cpu, so if I set the affinity of the cpu to make the game use only one core, then it puts about 15-20% more load on the cpu without the card. So, in other words the card somewhat helps if you use a single core cpu, but nowadays most people have a dual core AMD or Intel cpu. Also my main concern is that the physx card is very limited by the PCI bus, maybe not, but still it is a graphics processor.
My dad, works at a micro-chip manufacturing company and he is one of the scientists there at Silicon Integrated. I told him to take the card there and basically "x-ray" the chip on the card. After about a week because of his busy schedule he brought home the card and the schematics, and he personally said that the chip is limited by the PCI bus. He also said that the chip is very complicated, and that even though it runs on PCI it should be able to deliver at least 85-90% of its power that it was built for.
I am not trying here to say that this card is bad, don't buy it, but what I am saying is that it is not worth the money in my opinion. What do you guys think??