Introduction:
You've heard all about it, but what is it? And how will it affect your gaming? And, more importantly, your gaming pc? PhysX is Ageia's brand new physics processing unit (PPU). Games, for the last year or so, have been increasingly feeling the heat from gamers to apply the laws of physics to, not only the characters and enemies you interact with, but all the objects around you. Games like Half Life 2 have pushed these boundaries into new spheres and the whole principal of in game physics has spawned an industry unto itself. The physics engine Havok is just one example of how a game designer canm be left to design the game, whilst the physics engine of Havok takes care of the physics. With Havok, you can walk freely around and kick, shoot and move innanimate objects such as chairs, boxes, crates, cans etc etc around your game. All of this adds up to a more realistic gaming experience for you, and of course, in the idle moments when there's not enough baddies to shoot, there's nothing quite like blasting the shit out of a petrol cannister just for the heck of it.

There's no doubt that physics processing takes a chunk out of the GPU's processing power, yet gamers demand more realistic physics properties, hence the need for dedicated physics processing engines such as Havok, but what of the next step? Evolution in technology is always going to happen and it was only a matter of time before something like PhysX hit the industry.

What is PhysX?
PhysX is Ageia's very own dedicated PPU. Yes, an entirely dedicated add-in card that only processes the physics of a game. The Ageia PhysX PPU will accelerate the physics for any game that uses the NovodeX Physics engine. Epic Games, the company behind the Unreal franchise, has announced that it is using NovodeX physics in Unreal Engine 3, which may be the 3D game engine developers will use to build games on in 2006.

Ageia have already amassed a list of game developing partners with many more reportedly on the cards for 2006. One of the biggest titles to hit the shelves this year that will utilise the NovadeX and fully support the PhysX engine is Unreal Tournament 2007.

Whilst this particular title is undoubtedly going to be one of the biggest of the year, it remains to be seen how many other games developers see the need to implement support for PhysX into their up and coming games. And that would depend on the number of gamers that start demanding PhysX power. A lot about this technology hinges on whether or not the mainstream gamers will take to this technology or not and, as we all know, just because you have a certain technological capability, it doesn't mean its needed or, indeed, wanted.

What games will utilise the NovadeX engine?

But what are the problems and concerns?
From BEAST's point of view, there is at this moment in time an unavoidable fundamental flaw in the whole concept. The card is obviously aimed at serious gamers. Serious gamers, these days, from our experience are most likely to be running top of the range dual video card rigs. Take dual 7900 GTX cards, for example. These cards have monstrous heatsink and fans on them. So big in fact that the fan/heatsink actually covers the whole PCI slot adjacent to the PCI-E slot. These cards, to run at maximum efficiency, need to be in a PCI-E x16 motherboard, the ASUS A8N32 SLI Deluxe, for example:

As you can see, the board is only so big. Remember that the PhysX card is an independent PCI card which requires an entire PCI slot to itself. Now if you look at this board (and this is one of the largest of its kind) you'll see the 2 PCI-E slots marked with the two little white clips at the bottom. Picture the 7900GTX in this slot and realise that the heatsink and fan on these cards will render the adjacent PCI slot to its left completely unusable. That leaves you with one spare PCI slot.

Now you're faced with a choice. Do you fit a dedicated X-FI Extreme Music sound card in there for maximum clarity and audio performance? or do you stick a PhysX card in there to heat up your system a little more?

Of course, all of today's motherboards come with onboard sound so having sound and a PhysX card is still an option, but therein all of this cardy stuff is a another problem - or two. Airflow and heat.

So to maximise system stability, we have to keep your system cool. To keep your system cool is gonna be a complicated one given the fact that the new card will emanate more heat into your system. Plus you also have the less than impressive audio of the onbaord sound system.

All of this for a technology that is yet in its infancy, is not required for any games released, nor will it be an essential, integral part of any future game released and it packs an extra £200(ish) to your system price. Is it worth it?

Is it worth it?
So there we have PhysX. Yes, it offers our gaming an extra dimension by self processing all the physics of games that support it, but to utilise it, you have to make sacrifices one way or another. Do you go with 1 graphics card? No dedicated sound card? What exaclty is the sacrifice that you will make to make use of this groundbreaking technology? And, perhaps more importantly, do you need it?

Well, in concept, a dedicated PPU is an awesome idea. In practice? I'm not sure if a better solution would be to find some way of integrating the PPU into the GPU? You already have the advent of Quad SLI. Surely, in this day and age, perhaps a GPU with a PPU built onto it, utilising the same cooling techniques as Quad SLI may be a better solution than giving us something else to cool and hog up what remaining PCI slots we have left...

Having read Rahul Sood's blog and discussion on the topic, and hearing him suggest that both nVidia and ATI have potential 'all in one' GPU and PPU solutions in the pipeline, perhaps now is not the time for a dedicated PPU. There's even talk of it being delivered via a Driver Update....now that would be cool.

Our Conclusion:
In the opinion of BEAST, you don't need this technology yet. The sacrifices you will make in order to fit this thing into your rig are not worth it. For me, I need my 2 graphics cards. I need my 1900x1200 resolutions and I need my sound to shell out bullet casings behind me with crisp clarity. I need my system to be stable and cool and I need my BEAST to outgun and outperform all other rigs I game against. And PhysX, at this moment in time, isn't going to do that for me.

BeastMaster
BEAST Extreme Gaming Systems
http://www.beastcomputers.co.uk

24th April 2006

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