[HARDWARE] PS2 & PhysX

Sentrosi · 2011-07-15, 09:14 AM

I have a technical question in regards to this part of Kotaku.com's article on Planetside 2;

Originally Posted by Kotaku.com

Coupled with the power of NVIDIA PhysX, it sounds like Planetside 2 has a firm technical foundation to build upon.

I haven't been keeping up on my video card tech for a while now, but this sort of worries me from a Radeon 6850 owner. Allay my fears by telling me that PhysX is now hard coded into the games to take advantage of both flavors of video cards.
If this is the case, then I'm going to have to seriously consider a massive upgrade to my existing system (E8400, 6850, 4Gb RAM). But I'll want the best hardware available that I can afford once the announcement comes out.

NCLynx · 2011-07-15, 09:22 AM

So what's the question?

I've been putting off building a new settup as well because I want to get relatively the best I can get.

Sentrosi · 2011-07-15, 09:24 AM

Is PhysX exclusively catering to nVidia cards or is there code within PhysX to also be used with Radeons?

kaffis · 2011-07-15, 04:16 PM

Originally Posted by Sentrosi

Is PhysX exclusively catering to nVidia cards or is there code within PhysX to also be used with Radeons?

nVidia cards will apply hardware acceleration to the PhsyX code. Other computers will not; instead, they'll use CPU cycles more heavily to perform the same functions.

The game, including the PhysX code, will run on any Windows DirectX system (of whatever version of DirectX the game will end up requiring). nVidia cards with PhysX acceleration support will ease the load on other components, potentially removing bottlenecks in some hardware configurations.

bjorntju1 · 2011-07-15, 09:25 AM

Well i thought Smedley said in a Q and A that PhysX would work on all graphic cards brands. However it will run better on an Nvidia card.

Sentrosi · 2011-07-15, 09:38 AM

Yeah, I've been wondering if it's worth it to put a Q9550 in this rig and call it a day until I can get into the stratosphere of processors. But I still want to get the best that I can afford.

Volw · 2011-07-15, 09:48 AM

Get a cheap nvidia card to run PhysX. Problem solved ;-)

Jennyboo · 2011-07-15, 10:31 AM

Originally Posted by bjorntju1

Well i thought Smedley said in a Q and A that PhysX would work on all graphic cards brands. However it will run better on an Nvidia card.

You are correct Smed said the only advantage is that the Nvidia card run slightly better,however other video cards will work fine. I remember being in the room when he said that seeing as a upgrade for my computer is coming was important for me to know

Sentrosi · 2011-07-15, 11:40 AM

Good, that brings a sense of relief. I may just get a Crossfire capable board then and shop for an i5/XF capable board then with plans on purchasing another 6950 in the future.

basti · 2011-07-15, 11:54 AM

I have a better idea: Sell the red crap and go for the green guys. That actually gives you performance rather than some thing in your machine that doesnt do much.

But thats the fanboy in me speaking. ^^

Vancha · 2011-07-15, 09:24 AM

http://www.planetside-universe.com/f...t=36496&page=5

I'm fairly sure PhysX is still much better on Nvidia cards, but they've said they want PS2 to be able to run on 5-year-old rigs in which case your GPU and RAM should be more than fine...I'm not sure about the CPU though.

Edit: PhysX does work on AMD cards now, just not nearly as well.

NCLynx · 2011-07-15, 09:29 AM

If you have an nVidia card it runs off of that, if you have an ATI card Physx runs off of your CPU which can slow ya down a lot

Bruttal · 2011-07-15, 10:08 AM

Then i guess you would just have to toss in something like http://www.google.com/products/catal...ed=0CGYQ8wIwAQ

basti · 2011-07-15, 10:25 AM

Originally Posted by Volw

Get a cheap nvidia card to run PhysX. Problem solved ;-)

Doesnt work anymore.

Originally Posted by Bruttal

Then i guess you would just have to toss in something like http://www.google.com/products/catal...ed=0CGYQ8wIwAQ

Waste of money.

Just wait, chill, smoke a pot, and see. Physx will run native on ATI cards by the time we get PS2 release.

Rbstr · 2011-07-15, 12:45 PM

Originally Posted by basti

Doesnt work anymore.
Waste of money.
Just wait, chill, smoke a pot, and see. Physx will run native on ATI cards by the time we get PS2 release.

What do you mean, doesn't work any more? All the new-ish nvidia cards support hardware physX.

I do agree about the PhyX standalone card, though. No point in dropping $150 on it when you can get a good full GPU for not much more money, if any.

(I've also never heard smoke a pot? You mean a bowl?)

On the topic of cpu/gpu physX, those w/o a background can read: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...deon,2764.html

I'm a green guy, personally...but that more has to do with CUDA's availability than anything else.