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Review: Ageia PhysX Graphics Accelerator from BFG By Justin Whitaker June 2, 2006 3:55PM As you fire a grenade into an enemy building, the explosion creates thousands of pieces of shrapnel that fly through the air all around you. The shrapnel ricochets off the surrounding buildings and can cause damage to you, or your squad mates, if you haven't taken sufficient cover.   Related Topics Games Graphics Physics Accelerator Latest News Endeavour Inspected for Damage Autism Risk for Kids of Older Mothers Go Online and You Can Save the Planet In Haiti, Relief Gaps Are Spreading U.S. To Form Climate-Change Agency The Ageia PhysX PPU (Physics Processing Unit) is a new expansion chipset designed to give PC gamers a more realistic and immersive experience. The PPU's capacity for complex calculations means few limits to what developers can do in a physics-based gaming environment. Imagine being able to punch, kick, shoot, or take cover behind every single object on the screen. Imagine an absolutely lifelike driving experience as you take control of an armored tank to storm an enemy city. Imagine true-to-life smoke, explosion, and ricochet effects accompanying each and every gunshot fired in a first-person shooter. The PhysX PPU promises to deliver these types of thrills to the everyday PC gamer. Does it deliver? Look and Feel The PhysX PPU chipset, available on cards made by both ASUS Computer International and BFG Technologies, is designed just like any other PCI expansion card and only requires a single open PCI slot for installation. We tested the BFG card, which has 128 MB of GDDR3 memory. Interestingly enough, the PhysX card does not have any input/output connections. The card's exclusive function is to take some of the processing load off of the CPU, transferring data to and from the CPU and graphics card via the PCI bus. Features Adding a PPU to handle physics calculations might seem like it would enhance the speed of your current system , but it has no affect whatsoever on overall system performance. To take advantage of the effects made possible by a dedicated PPU, developers must design their games to support the advanced effects. So the bottom line is that the current generation of PC games will neither run faster nor look better with a PhysX PPU installed. Currently, the number of titles that use the PPU capabilities is extremely low. Only two games -- "Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter" and "City of Villains" -- and a few game demos, including "CellFactor" and "Hangar of Doom," make use of the PPU. About 15 more PC games supporting the PhysX PPU are slated to be released later in the year, including the major title in the next edition of the "Unreal Tournament" series. Performance For the limited titles that do support the PhysX PPU, the resulting level of detail and object interaction is quite impressive. As you fire a grenade into an enemy building, the explosion creates thousands of pieces of shrapnel that fly through the air all around you. The shrapnel ricochets off the surrounding buildings and can cause damage to you, or your squad mates, if you haven't taken sufficient cover. (continued...) 1  |  2  |  Next Page >   Tell Us What You Think Your Comment: Also Visit: iPad Info Center Billions of Bytes Mobile Device Now Apple Info Center TopTechWire.com Advertisement  Personal Tech 1.   Nvidia Auto-Switches Notebook GPU 2.   Macworld Focuses on Mobile Apps 3.   MS: Windows 7 Doesn't Hurt Battery 4.   Nexus One 'Support' Passes the Buck 5.   Google May Make Gmail More Social EPIC Objects To Google-NSA Ties Cyberattack meant to rattle Google? Average Rating: Symbian 3 Is Now Fully Open Source But mobile OS remains linked to Nokia. Average Rating: Sony Ericsson Unveils Aspen Handset Windows Mobile unit comes with Skype. Average Rating:

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