Regarding PhysX and PS2

[Sibercat]

I'm pretty sure devs told us, that the PhysX that they are implementing in to planetside 2 will work on both brands. NVIDIA and ATI=AMD GPUs.

[Goku]

Originally Posted by Sibercat

I'm pretty sure devs told us, that the PhysX that they are implementing in to planetside 2 will work on both brands. NVIDIA and ATI=AMD GPUs.

The GPU accelerated PhysX can only be run on Nvidia GPUs. No game has ever managed to used GPU PhysX on an AMD card. You can attempt to use your CPU to run the GPU PhysX when using an AMD, but expect really awful frame rates. From what I understand they are using the GPU PhysX with Nvidia. I'm going to dig this up to see what they said again.

[basti]

The actual question is if you should get a Ati or Nvidia GFX. And the answer is simple there: Get a Nvidia if you want quality, a ATI if you want to throw your cash away.

[Vancha]

Originally Posted by basti

The actual question is if you should get a Ati or Nvidia GFX. And the answer is simple there: Get a Nvidia if you want quality, a ATI if you want to throw your cash away.

Would you like to elaborate, or are you being purposefully unconstructive?

I could just as easily say "Get an ATI if you want quality, or Nvidia if you want to throw your cash away!"

Right now, the only arguable waste of cash would be a high-end Nvidia (hence the price drop they're getting soon). After that, everything should be fairly well priced in relation to each other, albeit rather expensive in general.

[Ailos]

Originally Posted by basti

The actual question is if you should get a Ati or Nvidia GFX. And the answer is simple there: Get a Nvidia if you want quality, a ATI if you want to throw your cash away.

That's just you being an nVidia fanboy. If the game isn't specifically built to use GPU PhysX on every special effect, there is no appreciable difference between nVidia and ATI cards. Except that nVidia cards tend to be slightly more expensive.

Originally Posted by Vancha

Would you like to elaborate, or are you being purposefully unconstructive?

I could just as easily say "Get an ATI if you want quality, or Nvidia if you want to throw your cash away!"

Right now, the only arguable waste of cash would be a high-end Nvidia (hence the price drop they're getting soon). After that, everything should be fairly well priced in relation to each other, albeit rather expensive in general.

I'll agree with you on that one. Personally, I've never bought anything I considered to be beyond the point of reason (generally, around the $300 mark for each component). Such equipment is incredibly quickly depricated due to the fact that the cutting edge of any electronics gets dull quicker than the silicon its made from, and also because the newest cutting edge technologies will frequently suffer from bugs and performance issues that slipped past quality control.


Back to a more relevant topic, the reality is that if SOE decide to, they can make the game run just as good on an AMD system as it would on a system with an nVidia GPU if they go in and tweak some settings in the PhysX engine to allow it to run on the CPU. And in all reality, they may end up having to do that anyway if they are to meet their goal of making this game run on 4 to 5 year old hardware. I also, don't see any drawbacks to them doing that here. Here's why:

The kind of PhysX that absolutely requires an nVidia GPU (at least currently) is the one that simulates special effects (such as explosions) as particle phenomena. In other words, things like explosions, waterfalls, or fog are treated as millions, billions and sometimes trillionons of individual tiny particles and are rendered as such. Rendering these kinds of occurances requires insane amounts of repetitive, simple, and mind-numbing calculations - something that a GPU is much better suited for. Even though GPUs typically have clock speeds of only around 1 GHz (compared to a CPU's ~3GHz), their GDDR4 or GDDR5 (which can run as high as 4 GHz) allows incredibly higher amount of data transfer between the actual processor chips and memory, allowing the pixels to be calculated in time for the frame to be refreshed. To describe it another way, this kind of PhysX modelling is very similar to the kind that fluids engineers use to study and simulate aerodynamics and flow of fluids, when the simulate the flow by modelling the fluid's molecules.

CPUs on the other hand are more complex chips, use a higher level of instructions, and are more suited for more complex operations. Furthermore, CPUs don't have immediate access to gigabytes of memory - their on-board caches typically total on the order of a dozen MBs. And while they may have access to 8 GB or more of RAM, that sits further away, past a controller, and usually doesn't operate above 1.6 GHz. Though calculating the trillions of pixels per second needed to render isn't something that is difficult for the CPU, the amount of data exchange required to do this in a timely manner presents a problem for the memory controllers. Even if the interface bus is wide enough to accomodate the bandwidth, the CPU's playground (RAM) will simply be unable to keep up (by the time the CPU's 3 GHz clock requests another chunk from RAM, the memory is still recording what the CPU sent it of the last chunk).

However, the CPU has absolutely no problems in assisting with and outright controlling the macroscopic simulations - larger and more complex particle physics, like bullets and tanks, are at their heart, still single-step calculations. A CPU would have absolutely no problem performing these calculations in time, and in fact, a faster clock speed and multi-threading is much more important now because the calculations are no longer as repetitive, and each one will be different from the next. There is less data that must exchange hands, but more manipulations must be done in between exchanges.

Based on what I saw from the GDC demo, the game is probably not using the particle special effects version of the PhysX engine, primarily because muzzle flashes look like animations. It's a bit harder to tell with the fog and the dust that comes up from tank cannons and whatnot, but with a bit of CPU optimization, it shouldn't be too hard for the team to make it run well on any decent-speed CPU.

[Sibercat]

I asked Higby about it and he told me this :


Matthew Higby:

"PhysX will work on all GPUs. Some features are exclusive to nVidia GPUs, but they'll be FX not gameplay." from the Tech Dir.

[Goku]

FX?

[Sibercat]

Originally Posted by Goku

FX?

Like particle effects, grass, most likely clothes physics stuff like that.

[Goku]

Originally Posted by Sibercat

Like particle effects, grass, most likely clothes physics stuff like that.

Yup sounds about right. Thanks for the clarification.

[Sibercat]

Np bro

[Ailos]

Ah well then, I am gonna be needing an nVidia PhysX dedicated GPU.

[Fenrys]

I'm OK with not seeing peoples' majestically flowing capes, and I'm glad I won't need to add a dedicated PhysX card

[Ailos]

Just thought of an interesting idea for those of us who (like me) opt to have a dedicated PhysX GPU and an AMD primary - you could have a PhysX-enabled Eyefinity group! 4800x900 resolution anyone?

[Mutant]

Originally Posted by Ailos

Just thought of an interesting idea for those of us who (like me) opt to have a dedicated PhysX GPU and an AMD primary - you could have a PhysX-enabled Eyefinity group! 4800x900 resolution anyone?

I already have a 6144x1158 Eyefinity setup but no confirmation on if/how well it will be supported.

I also have a GTX 260 sitting on my desk i could use for PhysX although I could prob pay for a newer card in a short time with power saving alone.

[Ailos]

Well, that's the the hitch innit? I think the really simple way for SOE to support such a wide resolution is letting us pick the FOV cone of up to 120 degrees if we're using a resolution with a higher ratio than 16:9. Can't imagine having any other issues beyond that.