Here's your first glimpse at the PPU card.

[Waphlez]

I am going to wait for a game that really uses the physics proccesors. I know there are going to be quite a few games that is featured with it but I have not seen a game that needs it for certain events and gameplay; so when I see a game that can really use all that power (such as "Large Scale Destruction") I can buy the PPU at a cheaper price then it's release at 250 - 300 bones.

 

[Nubius]

Looks like on the second card, it has a PCI X1 slot.

it's PCI-E dangit! PCI-E and PCI X are completely different things.

The PPU won't make any difference for SLI. If a game still has tons of really big textures, complex static worlds, high poly models, normal maps etc... then dual video cards will still help.

The point of it is, with your graphics card no longer having to do a crapload of mathematics for physics and your CPU as well....it'll be focusing solely on graphics...that means if you have say a 6800GT and a PPU and tried to play far cry with just the 6800GT you'd get for example 40FPS....toss in the PPU to take care of all the physics calculations you get 80FPS....(examples only of course)

The PPU practically makes your card 'more powerful' in a sense with it having to take off quite a bit of load.

SLI will be unnecessary because the current single card solutions will be more than enough to handle the screen rendering with the physics calculations no longer in their hands.

So like I said, in a sense your current card would then become more powerful as it will be able to focus solely on the graphics rendering.

Cards like the 6800GT (mainly overclocked) and the 7800GTX and now the ATIs X1800XT or whatever it is, can already run games maxed out....if their lifetime was a year in terms of maxing out games, then that lifetime would be expanded with the arrival of the PPU which will just make it that much more clear you don't need this 2 cards BS to play games maxed out.

I'm all for the PPU's all though of course it's just one more thing to suck up money, one more thing to suck up power in your case...blah blah.

Water cool and overclock that beotch!

EDIT: Those demos are pretty cool. It'll definitely make a nice impression in the physics world as those are just demos, so imagine when game developers spend years on a game assuming a PPU will be behind physics...should be amazing stuff.

 

[003]

it's PCI-E dangit! PCI-E and PCI X are completely different things.

The point of it is, with your graphics card no longer having to do a crapload of mathematics for physics and your CPU as well....it'll be focusing solely on graphics...that means if you have say a 6800GT and a PPU and tried to play far cry with just the 6800GT you'd get for example 40FPS....toss in the PPU to take care of all the physics calculations you get 80FPS....(examples only of course)

yes but with a PPU and SLI, it will be even faster, giving you the flexibility of AA and AF, now I don't ever plan on getting SLI, to expensive, but for the people who make a sh!tload of money, more power to them.

 

[Lonewolf5460]

if you have two cards in SLI and this PPU that is 3 slot taken away just for graphics that is wat too much!

 

[003]

Don't forget the sound card

 

[Nubius]

yes but with a PPU and SLI, it will be even faster, giving you the flexibility of AA and AF, now I don't ever plan on getting SLI, to expensive, but for the people who make a sh!tload of money, more power to them.

That single card will be able to handle AA and AF just fine with all physics responsibility taken off of it.

SLI is, never was, and never will be an efficient way of getting better graphics. Adding in a PPU (although I hate buying yet another piece of hardware just to see eye candy) should be able to make gaming improve quite a bit in terms of physics AND graphics, since they should be able to crank up the eye candy without your graphics card bending over and dying.

Instead of this whole 'buy two of our cards!' BS that they are trying to pull, one card should be more than enough until it just simply becomes completely outdated.

In theory this should allow nvidia and ATI on focusing on a single card solution that'll be able to accomplish amazing graphics...I think this is what they should have been doing in the first place, but nooooo lets bring up an idea that's been used in the past to try and increase our profits.

A good graphics card and a PPU will appeal to way more people than trying to sell off 2 graphics cards + a PPU

Of course we'll have those people at XS that'll want to put LN2 on two graphics cards, the PPU, and see if they can't get 100,000 in 3dmark05, but that's less than 1% of the buyers out there and nvidia isn't going to bend over backwards just for that.

IMO of course

 

[lazerman]

This is assuming Nubius, that the game developers don't make the graphics insane to balance the cards out. For example, if you are getting 40fps in FarCry with just a 6800gt, and then you get a PPU and your fps become 80fps because of the card not having to do any physics calculations, then game developers are going to use that extra 40fps you just gained to make games look even better. So in the end, you get incredible lifelike physics, incredible game graphics, and all still at your original 40fps.

If that didn't confuse you, well then you get my point.

 

[Nubius]

I got your point, but it'll still be an advancement.

It'll be ridiculously better graphics while retaining the original FPS...which was basically my point in the first place that your card will be able to then 'last longer' as they won't just go in and completely revamp an old game...we'll have to wait until the next couple years for new games to be released. In which that worry of 'oh no, my card wont play it' will become 'aright my card which was becoming weak, now can play it thanks to the PPU'

Yes of course there'll still be those that want 1000FPS instead of 999FPS cause 'it looks smoother' so says them, but if it's playable and looks amazing, that's all that matters.

Like I said, the main point is the fact that, as I said, a good single card solution + a PPU will sell more than 2 graphics cards + a PPU or even 2 graphics cards by themselves....this being for the average gamer and not the 'I CAN DIP INTO BILL GATES BANK ACCOUNT SO LET ME SPEND ALL MY MONEY ON GRAPHICS' kinds of people.

All in all this does infact make SLI look much more 'not worth it'


COWER IN FEAR NVIDIA AND ATI!! STOP THIS 2 CARD MADNESS!!

 

[DoomUK]

Also, I thought I read somewhere that ATI liked the idea of a PPU and actually is thinking about putting a PPU chip on their graphics cards.

Indeed, the future of the stand-alone PPU card could be bleak; GPU's could integrate a PPU if what this annoucement from the Havok crew is to become a standard:-

http://www.havok.com/content/blogcategory/3/53/

Although this would probably up the price tag on enthusiast model graphics cards of the future, it does mean one less piece of crap inside your box to worry about.

Oh, as for the 'death of dual/multiple video cards' speculation, none of us really know jack until games/apps come out that actually support the PPU to know how much calculating time is to be relieved from the GPU(s) in runtime. Excluding Unreal 3.0, presumably devs will be holding off until the advent of DX10 (or whatever you want to call it) to add support for PPU in their engines. In fact I wouldn't be suprpised if this is what the guys behind S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (the cursed game), Prey, CryEngine 2, Project Offset and so on are waiting for. But we'll have to wait and see I guess... Just my 2 cents.

 

[Nubius]

I don't think a PPU built into the graphics cards would be as powerful as a stand alone one in a PCI-E 4x slot with it's own cooling and power like whats shown in the pictures in this thread.

Seems like it'd be mighty hard to cool it if it was built into the card considering these things get hot as hell as it is, muchless the power requirement.

If they do add one it seems like it wouldn't be as powerful as a stand-alone unit...who knows they may add a weak version into their graphics cards, but that'll just raise the price, and quite possibly the stand-alone card would still come out..two PPU's working simultaneous would be nice, but I still think it just cause graphic card prices to sky rocket and they are already pretty ridiculous as it is.

I remember the days of G4 when the most expensive card was topping out at $250 maybe $300 and now it's like $800 easy