PhysX Card - The affects

[AkiranBlade]

Hi all,

Well, I decided to buy a PhysX card to see if it made any difference. I've read various contradictory views on the net and even asked here about them with a view to be utilised in CryEngine2 (which can be found here https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forums/technical/103357-cryengine2-physx.html.)

This is the story of my build and subsequent testing of the card.

[wrap=right]https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/gallery/files/2/9/9/6/BFGPhysXCard_thumb.jpg[/wrap]First of all, I received the cumbersome package. It came in the biggest box you can imagine, which I thought was total overkill until I peeked inside and pulled out a large triangular box. What a waste of natural resources. Anyhow, it was then sat there, on my desk, at work, staring at me, whispering "play with me" ... "go on" ... "leave now" ... "put me in" ... I'll stop there at the risk of sounding like a cheap blue movie! Finally, the time to go home came along. Time to see what this new toy did!

[wrap=left]https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/gallery/files/2/9/9/6/Thenewtoyanditsdestination_thumb.jpg[/wrap]So I get in, and plop the thing down next to my PC. The damn box is nearly as big as my case for crying out loud! At this point I'm now thinking about the other needs in my life, like foot. So there I was, new toy, hunger, home late from work. It's a toss-up between making my usual healthy salads (as I'm dieting at the moment) or saying screw it and get a small Dominos (I allow myself treats otherwise I'd go nuts on the diet!)


[wrap=right]https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/gallery/files/2/9/9/6/Dominos_thumb.gif[/wrap]Well as you can see, Dominos pretty much won the toss! That ordered I set about the installation. First off I grabbed the latest Ageia drivers from their website. I then checked I had the latest nVidia drivers for my graphics card and finally the latest version of 3DMark06.

[wrap=left]https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/gallery/files/2/9/9/6/BeforeIstart_thumb.jpg[/wrap]After doing all the software bits and pieces I proceeded with the first wave of bench marks. First came 3DMark06, then I went on to do a Fraps Benchmark in Entropia Universe. I logged the data for these. Having gotten this out of the way and having eaten my dinner I moved onto the hardware side.

First off is removal of the side window panel. Relatively easy with the quick release clips on it The next part was the more fun part... opening the box and getting out the goodies.

​

[wrap=left]https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/gallery/files/2/9/9/6/Allthatboxforthis_thumb.jpg[/wrap]And this is where we get to the bit which annoys me. So much wasteful packaging to house ... well ... nothing really! Anyway, the card is a normal PCI card (lucky I have some of those on this motherboard ) and looks fairly uninteresting to be honest, rather like an old graphics card (Geforce 2 Ultra anyone?) In the wallet is instructions on fitting, a driver disk, a tech demo disk and a free game called CellFactor: Revolution.) So... of course, like any consciencious system builder, I threw the instructions aside and proceeded to get stuck in.[wrap=right]https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/gallery/files/2/9/9/6/ModularPowerSupply_thumb.jpg[/wrap]The card needs to be powered via a standard 4-Pin molex connection, luckily I didn't need to add yet another cable to my modular power supply which keeps the inside of my case nice and tidy (ish) and therefore keeps the air flow cleaner. I slotted that card into place. Fasten the quick release clip for it and hey-presto. It's installed.[wrap=left]https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/gallery/files/2/9/9/6/PhysXCardnowfitted_thumb.jpg[/wrap] However, I was in for a little surprised as I had not noticed anywhere in the documentation or specs sheets online that in fact, and fortunately for my rig, had a blue glow on the fan, matching all my other blue glowy bits... nice!

​

Now I had the device installed, it was time for testing. First off I had a look at the tech demo. Interesting. Not the most wonderful looking example but the physics work well that's for sure. That done, I went to try CellFactor. Set all the settings high etc... start game.... hmmm. Loadout gets half-way, then all I get is... music. Neverending music. Obviously something I changed wasn't right :/. Right! Time to get a move on, it's getting late and I need to run the next benchmark. Again, into 3DMark, again, wait for quarter of an hour for all the tests to complete :yawn: and then get my score. A pleasant surprise there.

Without PhysX Card: 6541
With PhysX Card: 6559

This works out at over 10 point increase in 3DMark bench. Not bad. I was hopeful for some positive changes in Entropia Universe. So, off I go, run the Client Loader app. Run EU. Log in, go to the same place I was before (exactly the same place!) I was in for a not so pleasant surprise this time.

Without PhysX Card: 120 FPS average
With PhysX Card: 105 FPS average

Errrm. ooooooooooooooookay. Unfortunately the fps benchmark in fraps is not really much to go on and Entropia doesn't have a tech/benchmark demonstration. So calculating like for like with and without the PhysX card is nigh on impossible really.

So what has happened? From what I can tell, not a great deal... but I do get the sense that things are ... well ... smoother. It's hard to put my finger on really.

I've added the 3DMark Raw data below, for those that wanted it. It is in CSV Format so you can run your own comparisons in excel or whatever.

Benchmark,Without PhysX,With PhysX
Version,1.1.0,1.1.0
Width,1280,1280
Height,1024,1024
Anti-Aliasing,4 sample AA,4 sample AA
Anti-Aliasing Quality,0,0
Texture Filtering,Anisotropic,Anisotropic
Anisotropic Level,4,4
VS Profile,3_0,3_0
PS Profile,3_0,3_0
Force full precision,No,No
Disable HW shadow mapping,No,No
Disable post-processing,No,No
Force software vertex shader,No,No
Color mipmaps,No,No
Force software FP filtering,No,No
Repeat tests,Off,Off,
Fixed framerate,Off,Off,
Comment,,,
3DMark Score,6541 3DMarks,6559 3DMarks,
SM2.0 Score,2954 ,2967 ,
HDR/SM3.0 Score,3049 ,3047 ,
CPU Score,1515 ,1524 ,
Game Score, N/A, N/A,
GT1 - Return To Proxycon,28.407 FPS,28.573 FPS,SM2.0 Graphics Tests
GT2 - Firefly Forest,20.832 FPS,20.875 FPS,SM2.0 Graphics Tests
CPU1 - Red Valley,0.481 FPS,0.482 FPS,CPU Tests
CPU2 - Red Valley,0.764 FPS,0.771 FPS,CPU Tests
HDR1 - Canyon Flight,30.459 FPS,30.429 FPS,HDR/SM3.0 Graphics Tests
HDR2 - Deep Freeze,30.520 FPS,30.504 FPS,HDR/SM3.0 Graphics Tests
Fill Rate - Single-Texturing,7293.531 MTexels/s,7293.895 MTexels/s,Feature Tests
Fill Rate - Multi-Texturing,19359.617 MTexels/s,19359.936 MTexels/s,Feature Tests
Pixel Shader,388.483 FPS,388.322 FPS,Feature Tests
Vertex Shader - Simple,213.911 MVertices/s,213.933 MVertices/s,Feature Tests
Vertex Shader - Complex,113.663 MVertices/s,113.607 MVertices/s,Feature Tests
Shader Particles (SM3.0),109.027 FPS,109.027 FPS,Feature Tests
Perlin Noise (SM3.0),162.416 FPS,162.422 FPS,Feature Tests
8 Triangles,20.501 MTriangles/s,20.726 MTriangles/s,Batch Size Tests
32 Triangles,67.959 MTriangles/s,67.795 MTriangles/s,Batch Size Tests
128 Triangles,240.058 MTriangles/s,240.255 MTriangles/s,Batch Size Tests
512 Triangles,226.895 MTriangles/s,226.883 MTriangles/s,Batch Size Tests
2048 Triangles,214.061 MTriangles/s,214.057 MTriangles/s,Batch Size Tests
32768 Triangles,210.480 MTriangles/s,210.510 MTriangles/s,Batch Size Tests

Unfortunately it was not busy enough to test pKing properly, although the results I had in the ring with full quality were fairly good. It really does require more extensive testing, when it is busy at twin. I will update this thread with any more news on this in the future.

 

[Arto]

Thanks for posting

Been thinking about one of these myself ...
please keep us updated..

Arto

 

[Jack Styles]

Just wondering.

How much does this graphics card cost?

 

[AkiranBlade]

Just wondering.

How much does this graphics card cost?

It's not a graphics card, its a Physics card. I've been pKing some more, it does help. I'm helping move around quite well despite having all the settings up high, however, I am still being let down by the network lag I seem to get. Despite have an 8meg connection my connection to EU really sucks. I'm thinking of changing from BT to Virgin 20meg.

EDIT: Oops, sorry meant to say, the card worked out at about £88.

 

[Jack Styles]

Thanks for clearing up that is a physics card and not a graphics card.

The price is pretty reasonable. I thought it may have been 2 to 2.5 times more.

Does this mean that it works in combination with the current graphics card you have? Sorry, I am alittle bit lost on this issue.

 

[AkiranBlade]

Thanks for clearing up that is a physics card and not a graphics card.

The price is pretty reasonable. I thought it may have been 2 to 2.5 times more.

Does this mean that it works in combination with the current graphics card you have? Sorry, I am alittle bit lost on this issue.

It is seperate from the GPUs entirely, currently. What it does is take the work of calculating the vector transforms for the physics engine away from the CPU and moves it to a dedicated PPU (Physics Processing Unit.)

Apparently, according to nVidia, the 8000 series GPUs can process the same instructions as efficiently as the PPU which is much better than the CPU doing, from what I have read the nVidia team who bought Ageia are looking to make the changes to their drivers so their GPUs will perform as the Ageia engine. Personally, I prefer my GPUs to be dedicated to drawing and the PPU separate to do the calculations.

I hope this helps, if not, it's probably confused you more

 

[Eps]

I just bought a Dell XPS M1730 laptop, it comes with a PhysX card but also has dual 512mb 8800GTX, I wonder what the reason for Dell to put the PhysX card in there was?

 

[Jack Styles]

Thanks for the quick reply AkiranBlade.

I think I understand it a little bit better now. The Graphics Card does one part of the processing and the PPU will do the other part. Thereby, giving you a better graphics platform. Sounds interesting. Also, it might help my CPU to not being bogged down with a job it is not meant to do.

Thanks again AkiranBlade. Really appreciate it.

 

[Cloud]

Hi Akiran,
first, gratz on the new card, always a buzz with a new toy

In regard to PhysX i think the jury is still out.
I dont have one but many reports are of Lower FPS and only marginal increase in such things as some texture quality etc, sounds similar to your experience so far.

With multi core CPUs and cards such as the 8800 being able to handle Physics as well it is open for debate if these new cards will be of great benefit and therefore what future they have.

I am not a fan of more components in a PC unless they significantly add obvious improved use.

Anyway, you can keep us up to date with your experiences

Cloud

 

[Mikass]

Nvidia has recently bought Ageia(NVIDIA completes Acquisition of AGEIA Technologies) and will implement their tech in future Geforce cards. Regarding Crytek2 engine, I don`t think it uses PhysX. MA actually said they will scrap current physics engine and will use the one integrated in Crysis.
Here`s a list of supported games: AGEIA. Best title is UT3 but Crysis is not on the list.

 

[Cloud]

Seems about right Mikass.

EU Update:
Version Update Features (8.6.0):

New Physics Engine
As part of the ongoing enhancement of the Entropia Universe, MindArk are proud to announce the implementation of the 'PhysX' physics engine by AGEIA. The AGEIA PhysX engine delivers the computing horsepower necessary to enable true, advanced physics in the Entropia Universe.

This first implementation stage will allow MindArk to greatly enhance the Entropia Universe with exciting new features during the coming seasons.

Please note that the implementation of the PhysX engine does not require that particpants purchase the AGEIA PhysX Card. This update does however lay the foundation for extra physics features in the future which will benefit from the PhysX Card.


CRYENGINE2 Feature:
Integrated Multithreaded Physics Engine
Can be applied to almost everything in a level, including trees and vegetation, to
realistically model reactions to forces like wind currents, explosions, gravity,
friction and collisions with other objects, without the need of specialized
coprocessing hardware.

 

[Compusmurf]

AkiranBlade

Not surprised at the results. I, however, AM surprised at your overall 3dmark score. I would still have expected a bit higher, tho 65xx is a decent turnout.

Not sure what driver set you are running, etc, but it seems still a bit low for that system.

What's the full stats of your system, video card, os, etc.

 

[Mega]

Without PhysX Card: 6541
With PhysX Card: 6559

This works out at over 100 point increase in 3DMark bench. Not bad.

Is there a typo here or am I missing something? I make it 18.

Interesting story for those who like upgrading pc's like I used to!

 

[aridash]

... and then get my score. A pleasant surprise there.

Without PhysX Card: 6541
With PhysX Card: 6559

This works out at over 100 point increase in 3DMark bench. Not bad.

first point, same as Mega. taking 6659 as the with Physx number thats a less than 2% increase. cant say im impressed by that.

Log in, go to the same place I was before (exactly the same place!) I was in for a not so pleasant surprise this time.

Without PhysX Card: 120 FPS average
With PhysX Card: 105 FPS average

Errrm. ooooooooooooooookay.

real life tests are invariably poorer than synthetic. but i think fraps is perfectly adequate to measure the business end of a game, the FPS, just have to re run a route a few times to take an average. Im not completely surprised by this result, since the data is being piped back and forth across the northbridge, from CPU to PPU, then PPU to GPU, rather than direct CPU to GPU. I wonder if detection of the card turns on additional features not present without which would then have to be rendered?

so not a great advert for the Physx. combined on GPU might prove better in the future.

 

[Lugzan]

Not surprised at the results. I, however, AM surprised at your overall 3dmark score. I would still have expected a bit higher, tho 65xx is a decent turnout.

Not sure what driver set you are running, etc, but it seems still a bit low for that system.

What's the full stats of your system, video card, os, etc.

I was thinking the same, this card should definately be capable scoring a thousand or couple (even all 3000) more in 3dmark06... Akiran sure has nice memory modules and I'm sure at least a couple of those HDDs are running in stripe? =)

anyhow, for those who are about to buy and have their doubts, take a look at this site performance/buck. it gives a rough idea where to insert the next penny in the upgrade, I mean, person far from hardware does not want to dig on the net for hour trying to understand which piece scores better, performance per ped invested is what really matters =)


J.

 

[AJack10600]

What Graphix card did you add this to ?

I think Physix cards are dead... there is no market for it. No support by the games...

and Nvidia will let it die anyway and put the technology on their standard GPUs...

 

[AkiranBlade]

With multi core CPUs and cards such as the 8800 being able to handle Physics as well it is open for debate if these new cards will be of great benefit and therefore what future they have.

I agree, but I like the notion of having a separate card for the physics. It wouold seem to make sense from a logical processing point of view, however, it seems that, as aridash mentions below, that the North Bridge is slowing things down. Perhaps if I overclocked my E4300 it may change the situation. I'm waiting for a Q9450 to arrive in the next week or so (whenever they release it!) so hopefully we may see a variation in the results. Certainly some of the online test suggested a better result than this but these were geared around Ageia's Unreal Tournament 3 Map Pack which have added Physics content, which is probably where the true power of the card could be seen.

Nvidia has recently bought Ageia(NVIDIA completes Acquisition of AGEIA Technologies) and will implement their tech in future Geforce cards. Regarding Crytek2 engine, I don`t think it uses PhysX. MA actually said they will scrap current physics engine and will use the one integrated in Crysis.
Here`s a list of supported games: AGEIA. Best title is UT3 but Crysis is not on the list.

Yes, in the other thread that I linked to in the first post this was posted. That's not to say that CryTek won't develop against the Agiea engine in the future, then there is the notion that the DirectX 10 libraries will support PhysX in the near future (although found no concrete evidence of this, only theory and rumour so far.)

first point, same as Mega. taking 6659 as the with Physx number thats a less than 2% increase. cant say im impressed by that.

I apologise, I was trying to pump the thread out before a very late bedtime last night I've corrected the first post.

real life tests are invariably poorer than synthetic. but i think fraps is perfectly adequate to measure the business end of a game, the FPS, just have to re run a route a few times to take an average. Im not completely surprised by this result, since the data is being piped back and forth across the northbridge, from CPU to PPU, then PPU to GPU, rather than direct CPU to GPU. I wonder if detection of the card turns on additional features not present without which would then have to be rendered?

I agree, I will be re-running these tests when I get my new CPU, I'm also intending to rebuild my OS, so I will have a nice clean operating system to play with too.

so not a great advert for the Physx. combined on GPU might prove better in the future.

No, I agree, not a great advert, some part of me just wished it would work better as a separate card, the more logical choice, as sharing the workload on the GPU sounds like an un-optimised way of achieving this.

That said, I was doing a lot more pKing last night, when Twin got a little busier. It did seem to be different. Just smoother. I had less instances of being lagged out by corpses etc. Ultimately, my personal system performances are related to latency, but I definately feel this card has helped me somewhat.

Now the real question is.... when nVidia release the new drivers which make use of the PhysX engine on the GPU I already own (BFG 8800 GTX OC2) will the drivers use my GPU or my PPU? Only time will tell and I will keep you posted on that.

I hope this thread helps though who didn't understand this card and the gains/losses in using it.

 

[AkiranBlade]

I just bought a Dell XPS M1730 laptop, it comes with a PhysX card but also has dual 512mb 8800GTX, I wonder what the reason for Dell to put the PhysX card in there was?

Sorry, missed this one....

It's hard to say really, did they buy into the 'hype'? Did they feel, given that it's a small space to work with that putting a moderate GPU and a PPU made a more sensible decision?

 

[AkiranBlade]

What Graphix card did you add this to ?

I think Physix cards are dead... there is no market for it. No support by the games...

and Nvidia will let it die anyway and put the technology on their standard GPUs...

I have a tendancy to agree with you, but until nVidia release the new drivers to do the PhysX on the 8000 GPUs I want to reserve judgement.

 

[AkiranBlade]

I was thinking the same, this card should definately be capable scoring a thousand or couple (even all 3000) more in 3dmark06... Akiran sure has nice memory modules and I'm sure at least a couple of those HDDs are running in stripe? =)

Yes, you are right. For some reason I have been thwarted on performance. I have an incling that it is routed in my XP build. I moved from an AMD FX-55 with twin 7800 GTX SLi scoring over 6300 marks but dues to some problems with stability I've been swapping out component after component.

I moved to an Intel motherboard and E4300 and new RAM to factor out anything there, still problems, replaced my PSU, still some problems (but less I might add!) In moving to Intel CPU my score went down to 5400 marks (un-overclocked.) I have not been able to clock this CPU and since buying a new PSU have not re-attempted it. All this time, I have been extremely unwilling to reflash my OS (so much to install so little time ) Even after all this my DVD-Writer is still acting up... so that's next on the list

This is why I am intending to install a new OS when I get the new chip. I can then re-run all the benchmarks on a fresh OS. I didn't have time to run comparisons last night for 3D Mark 06, so I will need to see where I should be. Although I'm not 100% sure on using 3D Mark these days, I though adding AA and AF would balance the score according to that, maybe I should try it without those settings.

 

[AkiranBlade]

I'm going to repeat the 3D Mark Test tonight with the AA and AF settings turned off.

I want to see if this affects the benchmarking results fore and aft of the addition of the PhysX card.

 

[Legion]

if you ask me.. you just made a fubar ;P

Fudzilla - Nvidia confirms PhysX hardware dies

 

[AkiranBlade]

if you ask me.. you just made a fubar ;P

Fudzilla - Nvidia confirms PhysX hardware dies

The point of this exercise was to figure out if it made any difference. I knew that they were going to be phased out. No 'fubar' at all

 

[711]

I just bought a Dell XPS M1730 laptop, it comes with a PhysX card but also has dual 512mb 8800GTX, I wonder what the reason for Dell to put the PhysX card in there was?

I just bought the same laptop myself, with 2.4 GhZ core 2 duo processors, and the PhysX card as well. However mine has dual geForce 8700M 512 MB cards in SLI mode, rather than the 8800 GTX's. Cannot really notice much difference in the ragdoll animations from the PhysX card.

Nice to see this thread, as I was wondering what the difference might be. Perhaps MA has not implemented much in the way of PhysX-specific graphics/animations yet? Or perhaps the coming of CryEngine2 resulted in MA un-prioritizing development of PhysX things?

 

[waperboy]

Nicely written test, AkiranBlade - do you write hardware reviews for online mags?

Does 3DMark specifically incorporate Ageia physx in it's benchmarking?

If not, having the card will not make any difference. This card has nothing to do with graphics whatsoever - no improved texturing, etc. All it may do is allow the CPU to haul more polygons to the graphics card, since the PhysX card is now calculating the positions of flying debris in explosions, your avatar's movement when rolling dead down a hill, etc.

As a result, for applications that use the PhysX card, you may get LOWER framerates, since more polygons in moving stuff (debris, particles, higher-polygon-count avatar models etc) is now allowed to be sent to the graphics card, having offloaded the physics calulation from the main CPU.

Result -
- CPU gets to haul more data, to TWO external processors, one of which is behind slow old PCI slot
- graphics card gets (if lucky ) more to draw, meaning it may take longer to draw it

I don't mean to sound here, but it seemed that it was not entirely clear what the implications of using this card were.

 

[Meester]

Nice work, i've been wondering what difference a physics card made but never got round to buying one...don't think i'll be bothering seeing they're being phased out (something i didn't know).

 

[AkiranBlade]

Nice to see this thread, as I was wondering what the difference might be. Perhaps MA has not implemented much in the way of PhysX-specific graphics/animations yet? Or perhaps the coming of CryEngine2 resulted in MA un-prioritizing development of PhysX things?

I have a tendancy to agree, also, without the mobs being blown around when rockets and stuff explode proves that very little has been done on the PhysX platform.

Nicely written test, AkiranBlade - do you write hardware reviews for online mags?

LOL, no, I thought it was pretty novice to be honest lol.

Does 3DMark specifically incorporate Ageia physx in it's benchmarking?

It is listed as supported technology on their website.

I don't mean to sound here, but it seemed that it was not entirely clear what the implications of using this card were.

They were to me and were backed up in what I written about it. Lower FPS, but smoother feel, albeit only slightly.

 

[McCormick]

Soon you have a rare and ancient item Akiran

 

[AkiranBlade]

I'm currently running through some more benchmarks with low-quality image settings:

First one with the low settings, no overclocking on the CPU and with the PhysX Card:

7935​

Overclocked @ 366 FSB/1.455V giving 3300MHz CPU stable on E4300 with PhysX Card:

12413 ​

 

[Ronin]

Hey Akiran, off topic what concerns the Physix, but are u running on a 6-quad gigabyte MB as well (looks like it from pics)? Mine kicks ass, i run dual 6600 1066 FSB, dual SLI geforce 7600 512 passive GS, 4GB ram @800. (althought designed for crossfire, for me it works like a charm )