Gaming performance of Radeon

anupamcin

I always wondered what the performance of Radeon cards will be in games which require PhysX support for better real world simulation.

tuco · 11-09-2012, 16:40 | posts: 3,036 | Location: SoL 3

Quote:

Originally Posted by anupamcin

I always wondered what the performance of Radeon cards will be in games which require PhysX support for better real world simulation.

''will be'' you say, so are you asking about the performance of future AMD cards then?

anupamcin · 11-09-2012, 16:48 | posts: 10 | Location: Dehradun, India

Quote:

Originally Posted by tuco

''will be'' you say, so are you asking about the performance of future AMD cards then?

Current as well as future. I am asking because PhysX chips are only found on GeForce based cards which become "active" when you enable PhysX option in game(s) that support it. So if i run a game on a GeForce card with PhysX enabled and again run the same game on a Radeon without enabling PhysX, what will be the difference in real world physics simulation in both these cases.

XBEAST · 11-09-2012, 17:41 | posts: 1,442 | Location: Unknown

Games with heavy use of PhysX (Batman: Arkham City, Mafia II, etc.) will run very slowly, unless you turn off those advanced effects. That is because all PhysX calculations will be performed by CPU. Also, some games disallow advanced PhysX effects, unless there is PhysX-compatible GPU in system. Games which use PhysX as a basic physics engine (most Unreal Engine 3 games, for example) will run without problems.

anupamcin · 11-09-2012, 19:20 | posts: 10 | Location: Dehradun, India

Thanks.

Fox2232 · 12-04-2012, 19:53 | posts: 369 | Location: EU, CZ, Brno

As far as "PhysX support for better real world simulation" goes. Ageia PhysX was great idea. In tech demo we had All those objects like boxes, pipes, cloth simulated via PhysX and they behaved in really tasty way on those old weak cards.

Since nVidia got it, it was immediately degraded to "Far from real world simulation" Eye Candy Particle Generating Engine.

You shoot wall with thousand of bullets, it generates ten thousands of small blocks falling down from wall, but wall stays same. As of today there is only one map in UT which uses PhysX in way I would not be so much embarrassed to call it physical simulation.

Some games uses it for rigid body simulation, well most of other engines managed to do same without PhysX proprietary library. And Scripted Havoc building collapses are much better feature in BC2 than in any PhysX based game. Even when it's scripted.

Now For Performance:
All pre PhysX SDK 3.x games suffer from bad CPU utilization and non optimized code even for single thread. Those are all till now.
nVidia promised that SDK 3.x will have fully functional multi-threading without any special work required from game developer side.

In Borderlands 2 as one of last pre SDK 3.x game with really strong CPU there is only minor difference in performance while PhysX is on High on both nVidia/AMD. With Average CPU nVidia has higher framerate.

As for a future of PhysX gaming, Look closely at Planetside 2 which is 1st SDK 3.2 based game. How well nVidia kept their promise.

For some reason developers (SOE) disabled PhysX completely upon launch. Crashes and so no.
Once they make it back we will see if PhysX will work correctly and utilize at least 2 additional cored other than One on which Game main thread is running.
So unless I see utilization at least for 3 cores I say, PhysX is still just marketing gimmick.

And as for Planetside 2, In big battles with all those tank shooting and leaving trails in air, visibility really decreases. In some videos with PhysX ON i saw even more clutter everywhere.
As Sniper I prefer not to have so much trash in the air as I have to aim for head which is usually about 10 pixes in diameter in scope @1080p.

anupamcin · 12-05-2012, 15:18 | posts: 10 | Location: Dehradun, India

Thanx.

elpsychodiablo · 12-19-2012, 03:37 | posts: 119 | Location: at Bill Gates Dog House

Isnt Physx dead like EAX?

naike · 12-19-2012, 11:27 | posts: 1,955

I never cared for PhysX. I remember the demos back when it wasn't a nVidia thing and back then it was amazing. But what nVidia has done with it is pretty disappointing, there are games that have more realistic physics without Physx than games that support it.

Lets put it this way, if PhysX was a big deal for general gaming, not so many people would be using ATI would they?
Fact is, not many people care about it and prefer to buy a cheaper card without PhysX that performs the same generally in games.

That being said, I think it heavily depends on what games you play, which seems to be the case considering all hardware now days. Game optimizing is really biased imo..

krisby · 12-19-2012, 11:36 | posts: 818 | Location: In Kylies head...

The only game I noticed a difference is Mirrors Edge, and I think that was only for things like dust sheets blowing out when shot or falling through them, other than that, nada.

Apart from that, it would seem none of the games I am currently playing (or revisiting) require it, as since I built my new rig 2 weeks ago, none have asked for it, but a mate reinstalled Shift 2 and he said physx was needed.