http://www.dailytech.com/Update+NVIDIA+ ... e10573.htm

Looks like it will be nVidia (AGEIA) vs Intel (Havok) in the physics processing wars. Hardware vs Software, speed vs scaleability, *flicks the lights on and off* Fight Fight Fight Fight!

More people probably bought the 150$ Gaming Network card than a physics card. Non-event; unless future iterations will have the physics card on the video card itself.

i think thats what you will see with this deal.

Agreed. I can totally see a varient of the AGEIA chip being added as a subprocessor on future nVidia boards. With HDMI also transmitting sound information I wouldn't be surprised if future "HD" cards had a crude, but decent, sound processing unit on them as well like the HD 2900's.

ok ok i red the post and the link but i still have no clue what this is.
some1 mind explaing for the n00b here?

AGIEA developed and released a Physics Processing Card a year or so ago that would handle extra physics mechanics used to make objects in video games more life-like and not slow the game to a grinding hault. It's like the Havok Engine, which is used in some games now, except it would be processed entirely by a dedicated PPU - and we all know how well specially dedicated chips are at their specific task (see: GPU).

The problem was no games at the time supported the AGEIA hardware, and if no games supported the hardware than why would people be willing to spend $150 on the card? This Catch 22 resulted in low sales but the basic idea of having a seperate PPU, or at least enhancing the software and games to allow for more physics processing, was interesting to most gamers.

Now a year later nVidia comes along and buys the company, which it was never in competition with, for reasons we can only assume is to push forward AGEIA's technology... which in my mind is a good thing.

Hope that helps.

*Edit*
These game play videos probably explain what it does better than I can with words:
http://www.ageia.com/physx/videos.html

Looks like all GeForce 8800 series cards will be getting PhysX support:

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/14147

They said the 6800 series would be doing Physics back in 2006...

It did. I threw one across the room and it collided with the wall and smashed into several pieces.

One of the game demos I installed (have no idea which one it was) installed some form of software app which provided PhysX support. Never could tell if it was doing anything.

You'd think that it would be fairly easy to code something like this to make use of one core out of a quad core chip without having much affect on gaming performance.......

It won't matter in a few years anyways when the general switch to raytracing (heavy heavy CPU usage) will become prevalent. Of course we all will need 2560x1600+ to realize this.

I thought ray tracing had to do with the reflective lighting of objects and not physics?