ATI & Physics

June 6, 2006 7:41 AM

HardOCP reports from Computex, where ATI is showing off its GPU based physics acceleration solution. ATI has teamed up with Havok for this.

Maarten Goldstein

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hobosapien

 reply
June 6, 2006 8:55 AM

this is what needs to happen, gpu/physics merged into one chip, or at least 2 chips or whatever on the same board.
- ghost hacker
  
   reply
  June 6, 2006 9:19 AM
  
  As long as ATI is not creating the CCC for that as well.
  - the rizzo
    
     reply
    June 6, 2006 9:32 AM
    
    use omegas drivers and stop complaining
    - coyoterys
      
       reply
      June 6, 2006 9:52 AM
      
      Does omega drivers come with its own control panel? I've never used them, but I'm tempted. After installing CCC my pc seems to take 20-40 seconds longer to shutdown.
      - Killrig
        
         reply
        June 6, 2006 10:20 AM
        
        Negative. Just the drivers. You will need to uninstall the CCC to use the Omega drivers.
        
        I recently installed them, over the recent Catalyst drivers -- which were causing HL2: Ep1 to crash on launch -- and I've been pleased so far.
- malloc
  
   reply
  June 6, 2006 9:38 AM
  
  second'ed
- Mr Milquetoast
  
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  June 6, 2006 1:57 PM
  
  Both nVidia and ATI are talking about dual card setups so if youÃ¢Â€Â™re going to have to buy a second card to fully experience the physics that second card may as well be a dedicated physics card designed from the ground up for physics calculations rather than another graphics card.
  
  Plus ATI and nVidiaÃ¢Â€Â™s physics solutions are only for eye candy and can not influence the actual game play and the CPU still has to handle the gameplay related physics.
  
  These solutions work out at least as expensive as buying a dedicated physics card but canÃ¢Â€Â™t provide the environmental interaction that the PhysX can potentially offer. Why pay more for less?
  
  If they were putting a physics chip on the graphics card then great but they're just using the graphics chip for physics calculations and I'm sure as hell not rushing out to spend $400 on a second graphics card so it can do physics calculations slowly.
  - tigeN
    
     reply
    June 6, 2006 2:29 PM
    
    This is supposed to be faster than PhysX, and can do alternate duty as a graphics card. And on top of that the PhysX cards are more expensive than an X1600 card. I also haven't really seen anything to show that PhysX can give better gameplay or whatever.
  - dealie
    
     reply
    June 6, 2006 5:35 PM
    
    Nobody is going to market a game with game altering physics that requires a PhysX card, or else it will fragment the gaming market (physx players won't be able to play online with non-physx players) as well as development. It just doesn't make any sense.