Here you go guys, a 1800xt for $109 bucks!!!

http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=11173272/

with all this talk about an open API to use the card for physics processing I hope they also open the API for regular graphics use as well (i.e. for makeing Linux drivers)

But you need 2 graphic card to do physics. One render scenes and the other one handles physics, right? So all in all its cheaper to buy PhysX and this card needs less power...

The whole GPGPU thing is a waste. Even fairly trivial things like conjugate gradient (a common step in solving PDEs like navier-stokes, or elasticity) aren't terribly fast on the GPU despite it's amazing peak FLOP performance.

By the time GPUs have the generality to do these sorts of numerical algorithms we'll have 8 core CPUs.

Notice that they are comparing top of the line cards with careful optimization (i.e. painstaking implementation) versus a 3Ghz Pentium. Why not compare against a dual core chip that can accelerate a broad class of problems? Even the Xbox will have 3 general purpose processors.

The only reason that the GPU has such amazing performance is its dedication to a specific task. It will never have a reason to have good branch or cache performance, things that are very important for good performance in numerics.

Unless the GPU can outpace the CPU by a factor of 10 or more, no one will bother implementing these algorithms on the GPU. Far more likely is a low-power, general, multi-core processor.

I see lots of hype (the GPU is a supercomputer!), but little substance.

Heh Heh Heh......

I was thinking to myself, 'bout 2 weeks ago, something like this:
"Maby the reason the r520 is so delayed is because ATI has put a physx processor on there without telling anyone". Heh, kinda wish I had posted that, maby even put some money on that......

If indeed the r520 is this multitalented, it may explain the higher price. Of course, this all matters little when comparing framerates with the 7800gtx.

"Although the GROMACS implementation wasn't yet optimized for the Radeon X1000 series and still used Pixel Shader 2.0b, the Radeon X1800 XT was already performing between 2.5 and 3.5 times faster than a Pentium 4 3GHz processor."

Wow. Paper launches aside, all of this halfway redeems the X1000 generation in my book. Hopefully this ground work will lead to an impressive next generation for ATI.

$5 says there'll be a physics API in DirectX 10 or 11, and we'll have a situation similar to video cards -- some are more capable than others, and the stuff that h/w can't handle will be done on the CPU.

I hope there will be an open cross-platform API for physics, much like OpenGL.

Oh there goes another use for CPUs hehe. We'll see in about 2 years dedicated Crossfire GPU systems that work with distributed computing APIs. I got $5 on that!

This article needs reference to the creamy smoothness of rolling waves of virtual butter.

Oops I meant to reply.

The cool thing about the ATI gpu being able to do physics processing is this.

Picture the scenario.

Its 2007. Your X1800XT is getting a bit long in the tooth now and has trouble with the latest games but ATI or Nvidia have just released their new cards with all the new gizmos and you decide to upgrade. So you buy a nice new card and enjoy smooth gameplay once again.

But wait. What to do with the trusty old X1800XT?. Then you remember ATI's drivers have support for their physics engine, GravATI (see what i did there? i bet they end up using that name :D) which allows cards to do physics processing.

Saves having to fork out for a new physics card AND your old card wont need throwing out.

Good news in my book. I've got a drawer full of old cards i'm holding onto only because i sunk a hell of a lot of cash into them.

Well shader model 4 requires the pipes to be multipurpose and long instruction lines etc, so both the next nvidia as well as ati will have a lot of possibilities, the only thing with nvidia though is that they are not very forthcoming to developers about such details of the hardware, you see that with the 'video accelerator' thing on the nvidia cards, I only see crappy WMP-DRM enforced acceleration and no independant developers adding it, due to lacking information I assume.
So hardware-wise it's possible on nvida and very possible on future nvidia cards I think, but due to lacking support I don't expect anything but a vague possibility of nvidia hammering out a deal with aegis and using their api through the closed source drivers of nvidia.
Whereas ATI opened the door now it seems, I applaude them for their care.

Welcome to Sunday afternoon Scott... ;)

http://techreport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=34399

All that other stuff is great and all, but I really only care about the folding... Bring on the GPU client!!! :D ~25Ghz of folding power in one system... *drool*

So this is how ATi is going to sell their somewhat lackluster new line of GPUs....

I see a lot of potential here, especially if the interface/API's get hammered out ASAP. My biggest hope would be that Havok/AGEIA get in gear and work out an API licensing agreement with ATI, allowing the same general API to do physics on both types of hardware. Of course, the ATI card isn't pure hardware like the AGEIA card, and would be doing graphics, but it would allow acceleration (get this) even if you didn't buy an AGEIA card. This provides a very nice upgrade 'path' for the average user that doesn't want to spend 200$ on a separate physics card. That is, until he sees games supporting physics, because all the ATI cards have physics support on them as well.

To me, giving ATI the means to support your API is a great way to get developers to recognize that there's going to be a large enough user-base to warrant development. Sure, you'll lose a few sales because somebody's X1000 is going to do their physics for them - but in a year, when more and more games require both bigger graphics cards AND more physics, suddenly, you can choose to either buy a new 500$ video card, or simply buy a 200$ physics card. The physics card will offload the physics from your GPU, improving both playability and framerate.

I'm just saying, is all.

So now I wonder if NVidia is going to get after AGEIA to put PhysX chips on their graphics board to compete?