AFTER A LACKLUSTRE DEBUT from Ageia, there are many people who are scratching their heads, both in the world of journos and developers who feel they were left in a state of awe.
That is because the PhysiX PPU actually ended up in slowing games down and showing some not-so-fancy graphics effects, the testers allege.
But, every start is a hard one.
After being a no-show on CeBIT and E3, ATI is returning to the wonderful world of trade shows, doing it in style with the presentation of their own "GPU can be GP GPU and do more stuff" concept.
Our sources claim that the concept won't be tied into the "1GPU does GPU-stuff, 1GPU does PPU-stuff", but rather sharing a dynamic load. RingBus memory controller is of course, the guilty party for making Physics & GPU sharing a reality. Even better, it will probably not be required to use two same spanking cards at the same time - shelling out 500 dollars for a GPU and another 500 for the "GPU with identity crisis" is really not a great idea. ATI's approach is set at raising the number of sold X1600 boards and getting rid of old R520 stock.
Of course, there'll be much more info from ATI when the NDA lifts and Nvidia's non-flexible SLI Physics get some competition. One thing is certain: competition is a really good thing to have. On the other hand, we have been warned by the developers that many games could end up with no physics support at all, since the publishers could decide against the expenses required in order for implementation of the feature. Someone needs to pay for those extra man-hours... µ
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