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Page 1 of 5   A decade ago many thought that progress of 3D accelerated graphics in games and applications has came to its peak, simply because CPUs of that time did not have enough power for real-time photorealistic rendering. Around that same period first consumer 3D graphics cards were making huge steps toward photorealistic rendering. After that came surround sound that further contributed to whole 3D virtual experience. Character animation in games, which was inseparable element of every 3D game, at the beginning was pre-programmed, so for example, characters in Quake and Unreal Tournament always jumped in a same way despite the fact that they were hit by a bullet or a rocket missile while in mid air. Similar situation was with racing simulations that looked close to real world examples, but could not offer similar real-world experience. So, something had to be changed.
Around that time in history of gaming, company Havok came out with their physics engine named also Havok. It relied only on CPU processing power and was embraced by lot of companies and consequently appeared in lot of games. Also some application also used it like 3DMax and Maya. Obvious advantages were in skeletal animation and rag-doll effects thanks to which characters in games finally started to move as they should. Since CPU processing power in that time was still not enough to fully support physics engine and 3D animation, not all features could be fully utilized and implemented. Because of that Ageia created separate chip with separate API that should be dedicated only at physics. Problem was that this new API was not compatible with Havok, and demanded different implementation. Two companies, ASUS and BFG were only that bought licenses and produced physics add-on cards based on Ageia chip. Despite the fact that scenes generated with help of these cards did look impressive, especially when it came to particle effects, number of games that supported this new technology were scarce, while price tag on Ageia cards were also unpleasantly high.
More than a year later, when Ageia was on edge of oblivion, NVIDIA came and bough complete intellectual properties along with licenses, and announced that PhysX effects will be available on their graphics cards thanks to new generation of programmable GPUs and CUDA technology. In the mean time, NVIDIA also released graphics cards that support PhysX with much lover price tags so majority of gamers can actually have one of those. Also, more and more interesting games are appearing that support this “new” technology so we decided to give you an insight on performance rates from GeForce GTS 250 (GeForce 9800GTX+) with price tag slightly above 100€ up to two GTX 200 GPUs that have slightly higher price tags than that. Support for these was powerful rig based on Core i7 920 CPU that we overclocked from default 2.66GHz up to 3.4GHz just to be sure no bottlenecks would appear.
We used 3 games that support PhysX acceleration on NVIDIA GPUs. We should also mention that none of these games supports PhysX acceleration out-of-the-box and all should be patched to newest versions along with graphics card driver that comes with newest PhysX software.
When we enabled PhysX acceleration in “Batman: Arkham Asylum” first detail that anyone will notice are smoke effects that without PhysX did not exist. Beside this, small objects like pieces of paper on the floor are also moved thanks to presence of PhysX engine. Game itself offers two settings when it comes to PhysX, but authors suggest using two graphics cards in case you wish to set it at high. Problem is that in that case those two cards should not work in SLI mode, and one of them should be dedicated to PhysX only. Since differences between normal and high settings for PhysX are minimal, there are no reasons why you should buy another 100+€ graphics card, use it in non-SLI mode just to enjoy “better” PhysX effects.
Game “Darkest of Days” is dealing with imaginary alternative history and traveling thru time, but technical characteristics of the game are not as impressive as it may sound. In fact, with PhysX settings at low this game looks like itself has been traveling true time from 2006 but with nicer textures. With PhysX effects set at higher levels, leaves will start to move in the wind, enemies will drop more realistically while smoke and explosion effects will look much better.
DICE’s Mirror’s Edge is one of their newest games published by Electronic Arts that packs interesting action and very interesting and minimalistic design. When PhysX is enabled glass will break more realistically, curtains will move almost as real ones, while smoke and explosions will also look more impressive. All this is disabled in case you don’t have NVIDIA graphics card, of course.
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