Original Ageia cards?

C

Cronyx

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 24, 2005
Messages
146
There's still plenty of old Ageia PhysX cards floating around, that have nothing to do with nVidia. I'm seeing plenty on ebay, for example.

I'm wondering if these are worth anything. How fast does a physics card really need to be? Would these cards do anything for modern games?
 
the ppu is no longer supported by nvidia, so not much practical use unless you scour for older drivers which won't have updates for newer games. not worth much these days. the ppu was probably comparable in terms of physx performance in between an 8600gt-9600gt, leaning closer to the 9600gt. imo, it wouldn't be worth your while to buy one since the latest physx games won't be supported by it, and the performance gain, if any, would be lacking. you're better off getting a used 8800/9800gt than the ageia ppu at this point.

as far as how fast a physx card has to be: to see any real benefit, a 8800-9800gt is considered to be a minimum for most, while you could probably get away with a 9600gt-gso or gt240 for a visible gain; an 8600gt, you would actually lose fps in modern games with gpu physx. while the maximum at this point is anywhere around a gtx260-275 or gtx 460 level card in terms of how much you should spend on a dedicated physx card.
 
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I have one of these Ageia cards and was contemplating using it with my 5870s but guess it sounds like there is no point then?

Shame :(
 
Yeah I wouldn't expect them to be useful anymore with no real support. Even if they were supported I thought they were very slow... probably 8600GTish as mentioned before.
 
put it in a case and keep it in pristine condition until the value rises for historical reasons
 
The cards continue to perform just fine to this day, with a few caveats.

You need to use this driver: http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx_8.09.04_whql.html

Do NOT install any physx drivers that are newer than that or your card will be disabled.

These drivers, even though they are 2 years old, still support up to version 2.8.1 of the PhysX SDK, which at this point still includes the vast majority of PhysX games and apps that currently exist, including 3dmark vantage.
 
I still have 2 of the original PPU cards...had to replace the HS/fan with a mod job on one...the others is top shelf. Unreal 3 was sweet with Physx...but there weren't but a few games that supported it until the buyout...but it was cool to see the cloth and liquid come to life
 
According to this list, Batman AA, Crazy Machines II, Cryostasis, Mirror's Edge, GRAW 2, UT3, and Warmongor, are games that support both GPU and Aegia PPU cards. The rest just support GPU. Apparently this list does not include games like GWAR I that only supports PPU.

On a side note. I think hardware physics is a really cool idea but it's just in a sad state considering how long it's been available. That game list is just laughable.

If Nvidia stopped using PhysX as a marketing scam and instead opened it up to be on all GPU's and optomized the code so you don't need a dedicated card, I think it would take off and PC gaming as a whole would benefit. Until that day comes, I don't think anyone should support closed-system archetecture like PhysX because it is not in the consumers (everyone reading this) favor.
 
Since I have an older X38-motherboard system that can only support ATI Crossfire, I bought a cheap PPU on eBay to use in a few games. It works great in Batman: Arkham Asylum, Mirror's Edge, and Cryostasis along with many of the older PhysX games like Infernal and GRAW.

It's doesn't work for games that use newer PhysX libraries like Mafia 2 or Metro 2033, since nVidia has removed PPU support. It'd be too slow to run those games properly anyway. I'll have to replay those on the nVidia-based rig I'm currently piecing together.
 
What ever happened to Cell Factor? I remember modding the demo's .msi installer with Orca so that I could install it under Windows XP x64. I didn't even have a PPU but loved trying to play it and having it lag to shit whenever boxes would explode lol.
 
I have an Ageia card lying around and a while back I benchmarked Batman AA, and Darkest of days and found that with the PPU in I got around 20FPS lower than with just my GTX 260 in. I don't know if this is nvidia's doing or not.
 
cybereality said:
Ageia PPU is basically a paper-weight these days. No reason to even bother.
Click to expand...

It's a cool piece of computing history if nothing else. Those latter days 3dfx cards still fetch quite a penny on ebay.

Speaking of PPUs, whatever happened to that company that planned to be coming out with an AI PU?
 
Simmonz said:
I have an Ageia card lying around and a while back I benchmarked Batman AA, and Darkest of days and found that with the PPU in I got around 20FPS lower than with just my GTX 260 in. I don't know if this is nvidia's doing or not.
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Not nvidias doing, just that modern physx calculations are bottlenecked by the PPU where a more modern physx card can do much better.
 
anexanhume said:
It's a cool piece of computing history if nothing else. Those latter days 3dfx cards still fetch quite a penny on ebay.

Speaking of PPUs, whatever happened to that company that planned to be coming out with an AI PU?
Click to expand...

Man, my first gamer video card was a Voodoo 3 3000 16MB I believe, so I just checked out of curiosity and they aren't getting crap :p

The prices are odd though, one ebay "top seller" has a 3dfx card for $150! While some others have similar cards for $10 shipped,haha
 
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