the PhysX

[shortcut_reallife]

what do you guys think of the PhysX? i heard about it today and was wondering whether you guys could tell me your opinions and anything you've heard. i read it's pretty good but i ain't gonna jump the gun and go straight to 'how do i get this thing' without info from people who know stuff about it.

[Gus Bell]

From the stuff I have read, it is a bit of a trade of at this point. It does add a bit more realism to the games that are coded to utilize it but at a slight framerate hit, even though the physics are supposed to be off loaded and not affect the GPU performance. I think the technology will definitely add to our experiences at some point in the future but IMHO, this is a technology that even as a sometimes "early adopter", I am waiting for a while on. If your heavy into games and have top notch everything else in your system and have a few extra bucks, why not. But if you can use that money on a better graphics card, bigger monitor, more ram, better sound card, faster processor or HD, I think your get more bang for your buck there, at least at this point.

There are some articles to read:

http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2751

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2759

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/900/

[MaxMercury]

Reallife,
Hi! In addition to the articles and info provided by Gus, you might want to take a look at this thread:
http://forums.pugetsystems.com/viewtopic.php?t=2336

From it, you'll see that Puget is now offering the PhysX. PCC-William provides some valuable information for people considering getting the card, i.e. possible advantages and disadvantages, along with photos of its installation in a custom Silverstone TJO7, liquid-cooled system.

In addition, here's a link to another interesting article on the PhysX from GamePC. Like the articles from AnandTech, GamePC provides readers with downloadable videos, so you can see some of the PhysX effects:

Physics Processing For All : BFG Tech’s AGEIA PhysX Card, 5/19/06 (http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=physx&page=1)

-- Max