GeForce 8 Cards to Gain PhysX Engine Support

[Jetboy]

Hardware manufacturer Nvidia, which just purchased physics technology developer AGEIA, is porting AGEIA's PhysX engine software to run on its GeForce 8 cards, according to The Tech Report.

During a financial call, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hseun Huang revealed that the ported engine will bring enhanced physics capabilities to all of the company's existing GeForce 8 cards, as it will be programmed in CUDA.

"Finally [developers are] able to get a physics engine accelerated into a very large population of gamers," explained Huang. "[It's] just gonna be a software download. Every single GPU that is CUDA-enabled will be able to run the physics engine when it comes...Every one of our GeForce 8-series GPUs runs CUDA."

At the time of the AGEIA purchase, Nvidia noted its intent to integrate PhysX support into its products, but did not specify any details. In light of today's revelation, Huang expects to see increased sales of the Nvidia cards, especially to those equipped with SLI slots.

"It might, and probably will, encourage people to buy a second GPU for their SLI slot," he said. "And for the highest-end gamer, it will encourage them to buy three GPUs. Potentially two for graphics and one for physics, or one for graphics and two for physics."

From http://www.shacknews.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; interesting news that its going to be backwards compatiable with the current 8xxx series cards

[BAZZIL]

this sounds rather good for ppl like us =]

[Bold]

Yes, luckily I got myself an 8800GT yesterday

[Murphy]

Yes, luckily I got myself an 8800GT yesterday

What did you upgrade from and are u impressed?

Murf

[Bold]

I went from a pair of 7800GTX's in SLI.

Not too impressed so far, only an extra 1500 in 3DMark06. My current CPU is too slow to take advantage of it. On the plus though, its a hell of a lot quieter and cooler than the two monster 7800's..

I'm still waiting on the rest of my upgrade, going from a Athlon X2 4200+ to a Core 2 Duo 8400. Once the rest of that arrives I should be get another 4000 3DMark06's

[Murphy]

Cheers, I was going to upgrade but have accidently bought a house, may wait to see if 9 series ever eventuates

Murf

[Inspector]

I'm still waiting on the rest of my upgrade, going from a Athlon X2 4200+ to a Core 2 Duo 8400. Once the rest of that arrives I should be get another 4000 3DMark06's

Why that CPU Michael, why not a Quad core one? Was it a cost issue or some sort of performance thing? I see the quads have an extra 2mb of cache (8mb compared to the 8400's 6mb) and are about $80 to $100 dearer.

[Bold]

Because 90% of software still wont take advantage of 2 cores, let alone 4.

8400 runs at 3gig and is ~$330

a quad core chip running at 3 gig is $1000+

The only reasonably priced quad core is the Q6600 which runs at 2.4gig and is a slightly older generation (runs hotter and slower).

So there fore most games, except maybe crysis and supreme commander will run a lot fast on the higher clocked 8400.

This may be different in 12 months time, and I might just have to upgrade to quad core then

So basically its all bang for buck, 8400 is better now.

What quads are you looking at that are $80 - $100 dearer?

[Inspector]

Yea wasn't as flash as I first thought.

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU 2.4GHz 8Mb Quad Core 1066MHz FSB (my buy $427.28)

Intel Core 2 Duo 3.00GHz 6M 1333MHz 45nm E8400 (my buy $311.83)


Tech Pacific show -121 stock of the E8400 with an eta of TBA, could be a bit of a wait.

[Bold]

heh, hopefully Hippy has got mine in the queue....

I have everything else sitting on the desk waiting for the chip