Items tagged with PhysX
Although the names, or more specifically the acronyms, for some of the new technologies NVIDIA is unveiling today leaked out recently, details on what they offered gamers and how they worked were scarce. At the Game Developers Conference currently underway in San Francisco, however, NVIDIA officially took the wraps of some new graphics techniques for shadows and lighting – dubbed Hybrid Frustum Traced Shadows (HFTS), NVIDIA Volumetric Lighting, and Voxel Accelerated Ambient Occlusion (VXAO) – which can drastically improve in-game image quality. And the features are already being leverages in a trio of popular games, thanks to some recent updates and patches.NVIDIA PhysX-GRB In The GameWorks 3.1...
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At this point, it seems inevitable that whenever NVIDIA reveals a new GeForce series, the company will have a number of cool tech demos on-hand to help sell us on what it can do, and tease us on what's coming to gaming. Unfortunately, many of these tech demos remain internal at NVIDIA, but there is the odd one that the company packages up and lets loose. One example is the Apollo 11 demo that we talked about a couple of months ago, one that takes great advantage of Voxel Global Illumination (VXGI). Well, I hope that the Apollo 11 demo satiates your appetite, because the following preview of NVIDIA's PhysX FleX features are exclusive to the following video. It's really too bad, because some of...
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One of the ongoing questions around AMD's Mantle API is how much support it would garner in actual shipping titles. True, EA had committed to adding support to the Frostbite engine, but that's the kind of announcement that can be quietly swept under the rug or might be integrated into the engine but with a minimal number of titles actually using it. So far this year, only Thief and BF4 have shipped with Mantle support -- the former is a minimally regarded game, while the latter has been dogged by play issues that have nothing to do with AMD's API but have distracted from its quality. Three other games (Sniper Elite 3, Star Citizen, and Civilization: Beyond Earth) will include support for Mantle...
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NVIDIA is holding a tech event currently in Montreal to showcase a number of the tools and technologies that the company has developed to push the state of the art in game development. The event is taking place over the next two days and we’re told there will be a number of newsworthy items revealed. The day one keynote began with NVIDIA’s Tony Tomasi talking about the company’s “The Way It’s Meant to Be Played” initiative. He outlined a number of existing games that already leverage NVIDIA technology, like PhysX and Wave Works, and discussed a number of new or upcoming games, like Batman: Arkham Origins that will as well. Tomasi then moved on to talk about...
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NVIDIA on Thursday announced that it plans to support the Sony's upcoming PlayStation 4 (PS4) game console with its PhysX and APEX software development kits (SDKs). Game developers use PhysX and APEX technologies for collision detection and simulation of rigid bodies, fluids, particle systems, and things of that nature for more realistic game play. "Great physics technology is essential for delivering a better gaming experience and multiplatform support is critical for developers," said Mike Skolones, product manager for PhysX at NVIDIA. "With PhysX and APEX support for PlayStation 4, customers can look forward to better games." This also provides an opportunity for NVIDIA to attach itself to...
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If you've paid attention to quarterly earnings reports from the major computer OEMs, you've likely noticed that the hard drive shortage this fall had an impact, but not a disastrous one. Companies like Intel reported that manufacturer inventories were substantially affected as company's held off on restocking to see what prices would do, but net sales only fell modestly. The GPU market, on the other hand, seems to have taken a hit. Nvidia has stated that its Q4 results were hurt by the hard drive shortage, something AMD also mentioned in its Q4 results. We didn't break it out initially -- AMD's overall GPU results were fairly decent -- but in the wake of NV's statements it's worth revisiting....
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At the GPU Technology Conference today, the CEO of NVIDIA, Jen-Hsun Huang, unveiled a new CUDA initiative, dubbed CUDA-x86. As the name implies, the new framework will allow developers to write CUDA code natively for x86. Don't confuse this announcement with the PhysX issues we discussed last month—when we spoke to NVIDIA back then we were told that certain legacy performance issues would be addressed in the next major version of the PhysX SDK. Porting CUDA to x86 is a smart move for NVIDIA given Intel's own intentions towards the high performance computing (HPC) market. One of the core advantages of Intel's hardware will be the fact that it's based on the ubiquitous x86 standard—something...
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Prior to its launch, Mafia II was portrayed as a deep, character-driven drama that would take full advantage of PhysX to add depth and realism to the game. With the game out and available, we sat down to investigate how PhysX enhances Mafia II and while we were at it we reviewed the game as well... Mafia II: PhysX Tested, HotHardware Reviewed...
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Prior to its launch, Mafia II was portrayed as a deep, character-driven drama that would take full advantage of PhysX to add depth and realism to the game. With the game out and available, we sat down to investigate how PhysX enhances Mafia II; our review of the game is on page three. The term APEX is also used when discussing PhysX in Mafia II, often in ways that don't explain the difference between the two. NVIDIA describes the difference as follows: "Rather than providing a low-level API that requires a programmer to use it, APEX creates an environment where artists can create complex high-level dynamic systems without depending on developers. Because APEX is completely artist focused, APEX...
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NVIDIA may have had to navigate a tumultuous path on their way to releasing the company’s first DirectX 11 desktop GPU, the GF100-based GeForce GTX 480, though they seem to be firing on all cylinders at this point. In the last 5 or so months since the GeForce GTX 480 arrived, NVIDIA has released—or will imminently release—a slew of other new DX11-class GPUs, targeted at markets ranging from low-power thin-and-light notebooks to mid-range desktop gaming systems. And the GTX 480 remains the company’s flagship desktop product. NVIDIA has also optimized their software and drivers to wring significantly more performance from their newest GPUs. Things seem to be looking up....
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NVIDIA has just taken the wraps off an entire line-up of Fermi-based GeForce GT and GTX 400M mobile GPUs—seven in total---and revealed a number of notebook design wins from major OEMs using the GPUs. Like their desktop-targeted counterparts, the mobile GeForce GT and GTX 400M series GPUs leverage technology from NVIDIA’s Fermi architecture, which debuted in the GF100 GPU at the heart of the company’s flagship GeForce GTX 480. GeForce GT and GTX 400M series GPUs are DirectX 11 compatible and support all of NVIDIA’s “Graphics Plus” features, including PhysX, 3D Vision, CUDA, Verde drivers, and 3DTV Play. All of the GeForce GT and GTX 400M GPUs support NVIDIA’s...
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About four months ago, we covered the latest round of shin-kicking between ATI and NVIDIA, with ATI claiming that NVIDIA purposefully crippled CPU performance when running PhysX code and coerced developers to make use of it. NVIDIA denied all such claims, particularly those that implied it used its "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" program as a bludgeon to force hardware PhysX on developers or gamers. A new report has dug into how PhysX is executed on a standard x86 CPU; the analysis confirms some of AMD's earlier statements... NVIDIA Sheds Light On Lack Of PhysX CPU Optimizations...
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About four months ago, we covered the latest round of shin-kicking between ATI and NVIDIA, with ATI claiming that NVIDIA purposefully crippled CPU performance when running PhysX code and coerced developers to make use of it. NVIDIA denied all such claims, particularly those that implied it used its "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" program as a bludgeon to force hardware PhysX on developers or gamers. A new report from David Kanter at Real World Technologies has dug into how PhysX is executed on a standard x86 CPU; his analysis confirms some of AMD's earlier statements. In many cases, the PhysX code that runs in a given title is both single-threaded and decidedly non-optimized....
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Bill Dally, chief scientist at NVIDIA, has written an article at Forbes alleging that traditional CPU scaling and Moore's Law are dead, and that parallel computing is the only way to maintain historic performance scaling. With six-core processors now available for $300, Dally's remarks are certainly timely, but his conclusions are a bit premature. Will The Real Moore's Law Please Stand Up And/Or Die Already? Moore's original representation of his now-famous law.Dally's claims Moore's Law is dead because "CPU performance no longer doubles every 18 months." This is little more than a straw man; Moore's Law states that the number of transistors that could be built within a chip for minimal...
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When it comes to hardware-accelerated PhysX and the future of GPGPU computing AMD and NVIDIA are the modern-day descendents of the Hatfields and McCoys. Both companies attended GDC last week, where a completely predictable war broke out over PhysX, physics, developer payoffs, and gamer interest in PhysX (or the lack thereof). The brouhaha kicked off with comments from the senior manager of developer relations at AMD, Richard Huddy, who said: "What I’ve seen with physics, or PhysX rather, is that Nvidia create a marketing deal with a title, and then as part of that marketing deal, they have the right to go in and implement PhysX in the game...I’m not aware of any GPU-accelerated PhysX code which...
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Back in late September of last year, NVIDIA disclosed some information regarding its next generation GPU architecture, codenamed "Fermi". At the time, actual product names and detailed specifications were not disclosed, nor was performance in 3D games, but high-level information about the architecture, its strong focus on compute performance, and broader compatibility with computational applications were discussed. We covered much of the early information regarding Fermi in this article. Just to recap some of the more pertinent details found there, the GPU codenamed Fermi will feature over 3 billion transistors and be produced using TSMC's 40nm processes. If you remember, AMD's RV870, which is...
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Back in late September of last year, NVIDIA disclosed some information regarding its next generation GPU architecture, codenamed "Fermi". At the time, actual product names and detailed specifications were not disclosed, nor was performance in 3D games, but high-level information about the architecture, its strong focus on compute performance, and broader compatibility with computational applications were discussed.We covered much of the early information regarding Fermi in this article. Just to recap some of the more pertinent details found there, the GPU codenamed Fermi will feature over 3 billion transistors and be produced using TSMC's 40nm processes. If you remember, AMD's...
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ZOTAC is expanding its Silent ZONE Edition Lineup with the new ZOTAC GeForce GT 220 ZONE Edition. This silent graphic card is powered by a NVIDIA GT 220 graphics processor with 48 CUDA cores and 1GB of high-speed DDR2 memory. The ZOTAC GeForce GT 220 ZONE Edition supports Microsoft DirectX 10.1, DirectCompute, OpenGL 3.2, and NVIDIA CUDA powered games and applications. “ZOTAC is one of the leading manufacturers of silent graphics cards. Our lineup of ZOTAC GeForce ZONE Edition graphics cards has won many awards for the combination of performance and silent operation,” said Carsten Berger, marketing director, ZOTAC International. “The ZOTAC GeForce GT 220 ZONE Edition is the latest addition to...
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Last week, we covered NVIDIA's decision to disable PhysX support if the NV drivers detect the presence of an ATI product. Jump ahead seven days, and the utterly predictable has happened—end-users have found a way around NVIDIA's lockout and have re-enabled the one-two punch of ATI graphics and NVIDIA PhysX. Quick, kids: Can any of you guess what happens next? Over at NGOHQ, forum member Regeneration is claiming that the NVIDIA drivers published after the 185.85 WHQL series (this includes 186.18 through 191.07) also disable Ageia's original PPU add-on board if a non-NVIDIA GPU is installed. We've yet to see concrete proof that this is true; if you're one of the handful of people who own an Ageia...
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Every so often, someone on the 'Net stumbles across something noteworthy, but the news doesn't spread until weeks or maybe even months later. That's what's happened over at NGOHQ, where forum reader DarthCyclonis discovered that NVIDIA drivers released after the v185.85 WHQL package (i.e, 186.18 and higher) removed the ability to use a GeForce 8xxx, 9xxx, or 2xx card as a dedicated PhysX processor if an non-NVIDIA GPU is present. When asked for the reason behind the change, an NVIDIA representative stated: "For a variety of reasons - some development expense some quality assurance and some business reasons NVIDIA will not support GPU accelerated PhysX with NVIDIA GPUs while GPU rendering...
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NVIDIA has just announced a bevy of new mobile GPUs in the GeForce 200M series. Unlike some previous mobile products, however, the GPUs in this release are based on all new silicon, and not a re-branded version of the G92 that has served NVIDIA so well over the years.The new products in the GeForce 200M Series include the GeForce GTS 260M, GeForce GTS 250M, GeForce GT 240M, GeForce GT 230M, and GeForce G210M. Although we have not tested any of them yet to confirm, NVIDIA states the chips are engineered to deliver twice the graphics performance with half the power budget in their respective market segments. As you'd probably expect the new GeForce 200M Series GPUs being announced today are Windows...
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Ever since NVIDIA acquired Ageia's PhysX technology last year, the company has been aggressively working to drum up additional developer support. While NVIDIA has had a lot of success in recent months and a number of high-profile developers have begun integrating PhysX technology into their games, today NVIDIA--in conjunction with a number of partners--is announcing that support for PhysX is coming to a number of hot, upcoming games. The announcements come by way of GRiN, Sega, 8monkey Labs, Capcom and Biart Studio...The Future Of Mankind Depends On NVIDIA PhysX Technology Terminator Salvation Video Game to Feature Highly Interactive Environments Courtesy of NVIDIA PhysX Technology SANTA...
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