PhysX physics cards only $50 in Japan
Category: PC, Posted: 12/19/2007 at 07:06PM CST by Sean Pincombe, Staff Writer
The PhysX physics card certainly hasn't been the success that Ageia were hoping for, but that could soon change.
Ageia has just announced a new deal with Japanese graphics card manufacturer ELSA, who are going to be start selling the PhysX cards in Japan. The cards will be known as ELSA Phynite X100s and will retail for around 6000 Yen, which is just over $50 USD.
The idea behind the Ageia PhysX card is similar to the idea behind graphics cards. Graphics cards were first introduced to help alleviate calculations from a computer's CPU, specifically calculations relating to 2D and 3D graphics. The PhysX card works in a similar fashion, handling calculations involving physics, allowing the CPU to work on other calculations.
With current Ageia PhysX cards still sitting in the $130-$180 USD price range, many PC gamers are unwilling to put so much cash down for a card that is only supported by a number of average titles. If the Japanese price were to translate to international markets however, more gamers might start buying the cards, which would in turn give developers more incentive to include full PhysX support in their games.
[via Digital Battle]
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I really don't know if thats a good thing. Yeah it could increase gamer performance, but who really wants ANOTHER peripheral to upgrade every few years?
This is NOT like a graphics card. A graphics card is a self-contained computer to process graphics data and rendering programs. In addition to a CPU (GPU) it has its own input, memory *and output*. This lasty one is very important to recognize. The output from the graphics card goes directly to the screen. It doesn't have to be directed back at the PC's internals again. A physics card is merely a coprocessor on the relatively slow bus. What it does needs to wind its way back to the CPU and system memory. And so, it makes *much* more sense for any such processing to be part of the central processing in the PC. Intel bought into this tech for a reason. I think eventually we'll see some of the many cores in future CPUs dedicated to peripheral functions, one of those being physics.
Thats cool (spends 500 to get to japan, picks up card on the market, hits up super potato, goes home) Did i save money?
At $50, it sounds like a good idea. It would help the install base.
50$ is the price range they need to have any chance of mass adoption. But the problems with yet another add-on card is it could fracture the potential user base as 3d cards did. As a developer it's a lot worse to have to worry about the system specs of proccesor, memory AND graphics card AND physics card. Devs need to know what capabilities to plan their games for and each new variable makes it that much harder to know what tech to use and how to budget for it. In the long run I think this kind of thing is best being implimented with on the cpu tech or on the graphics card.