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All GeForce 8 Graphics Cards to Gain PhysX Support

J. Dzhugashvili writes "Nvidia completed its acquisition of Ageia yesterday, and it has revealed exactly what it plans to do with the company's PhysX physics processing engine. Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang says Nvidia is working to add PhysX support to its GeForce 8 series graphics processors using its CUDA general-purpose GPU (GPGPU) application programming interface. PhysX support will be available to all GeForce 8 owners via a simple software download, allowing those users to accelerate games that use the PhysX API without the need for any extra hardware. (Older cards aren't CUDA-compatible and therefore won't gain PhysX support.) With Havok FX shelved, the move may finally popularize hardware-accelerated physics processing in games."

7 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Nice! But... by johannesg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...what will be calculating my 3D images, if the GPU is already working on the physics? It is not like there is so much spare capacity left over in modern games anyway...

  2. Hopefully, now PhysX adoption will become better.. by bomanbot · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I hope the NVIDIA acquisition and now this news will drive the adoption of the PhysX Engine. Right now, if you look at the list of titles, the PhysX Engine is not used by many games (namely, mostly Unreal3-Engine titles).

    If the adoption picks up, maybe Havok (which is now Intel property) will not remain the only physics engine in town, but right now, this news will not affect a whole lot of games...

  3. Re:It's the "Ray" experience. by Datamonstar · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Exactly. I support ATI now primarily for that fact. After using them I realized that they are just more capable all around cards. Who cares which one is minutely faster? In the end it doesn't matter what card I play my games on, so why should they be shoving ads for nVidia down my throat?

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  4. Re:PhysX by masticina · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They are not as they did put in the market a product that has a place. Okay they did fail to sell succesfull a product but the first graphic accelerators we'rent the most lucky either! What matters is that the idea sticks and that now we might see Physics being offloaded more. So it has a place but the one putting it first on the market well, they didn't fare well!

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  5. Re:It's the "Ray" experience. by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Have they? Where's the big news announcement?

    The last big news I saw was not that they OSed the drivers, but that they had given partial card specs and promised more.

    Please note that Matrox did the same thing in 1999 - They gave partial card specs (insufficient for implementing any 3D) and promised more, but never delivered. Lots of Linux users got suckered into buying paperweight G200s (including myself) back then. I will buy a card that performs as advertised NOW (whether or not it is with an open source driver or not), not a card that the manufacturer promises will eventually perform as advertised but can't at the moment.

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  6. Re:Hopefully, now PhysX adoption will become bette by Cathoderoytube · · Score: 2, Insightful

    One might think reluctance to adopt PhysX would be knowing that a large number of your customers don't use NVIDIA cards and therefore wouldn't be able to take advantage of the technology.
    It's almost the same reason why game companies aren't making their games Vista only.

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  7. Re:It's the "Ray" experience. by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "ATI needs the market share too badly."
    So did Matrox...

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