Poor Poor Ageia

[ctjoyce]

You may know Ageia, you may not, but for those who dont, Ageia is a company that makes GPU's that enhance physics models. As of three months ago, we thought that for the next gen of games, we may be useing Ageia cards. However ATi and nVidia didn't want to hear that their market was going to be stolen by a company worth about 1/3 of a new card launch. So they figured out how to put a physics engine into their cores, and now the ATi X2K, and nVidia 8 series will all have  physics acceleration. Poor Ageia is again thrown to the back by the big boys.

But who knows, Mabe Ageia's new core will magically outbench that of ATi and nVidia, or mabe it will be cheaper, and attract people that way. Who knows.

Cheers
Cameron

[Mobius]

I think it might attract those of us who already have video-cards and see no point in buying a whole new vid-card for no real reason other than just for physics processing.

[Weather_Man]

What's Ageia have to do with graphics? Their PPU's don't render anything. They do not compete with the GPU makers, it's a completely new market. You cannot plug in a PPU and expect to view anything at all. There's no video output for your monitor!

I would rather Nvidia make a dedicated PPU addon card to compete with Ageia. There can be some great things in the future for PPUs if we can get all the players on board. MS is already developing an API (like DirectX) for PPU processing. Trying to make a GPU do something it's not suited for rather sucks, IMO. I want as much dedicated GPU power as I can get in a card. That's what it's good at.

[ctjoyce]

I think I worte this a bit wrong. nVidia and ATi are adding PPU to their chipsets (I think their adding a second core to their cards). So basically they are going to out do anything that Aegia can do with their current card.

@Mobius: We are all going to have to buy new cards in about a year anyway, and most likely we are going to need PPUs to be able to play many of the games.

Bottom line, pick up the article, and check it out for yourself.

Cheers
Cameron

[Mobius]

Yeah, but since I just bought a new video card, I'm going to need a really good reason to buy a new one any time soon.

[ctjoyce]

Direct X 10 in exactly 13 months (according to MS) and by the looks of it, their forceing people into it. It also looks like video card, and motherboard companys are forceing people into PCI-Express, as ATi and nVidias new series of cards, none are going to be AGP, and all AM2, and 955X / 975X boards have only PCI-E.

On a side note, looks like intel is also getting rid of PATA on their boards, and hopefully AM2 is getting rid of PCI-E x1

Cheers
Cameron

[congo]

I think I worte this a bit wrong. nVidia and ATi are adding PPU to their chipsets (I think their adding a second core to their cards).

Maybe chipset is the keyword here Cameron.

Both ATI and nVidia are in the chipset business now, producing mainboard chipsets................ I thought it would be an onboard PPU.  

[ctjoyce]

Oh god, shows what no sleep can do to the body. No not chipset, I ment on the graphics card itself. You would have your GPU, and right next to it you have your PPU.

Cheers
Cameron

[congo]

That sounds a silly idea, another gimmick to flog cards if true. No reason why they couldn't just throw the PPU chip on the mobo in my opinion, unless there is some reason to have it on the video card itself.