I still wont buy it

Their product is technically inferior to 'Sh' and C+ being 'stream crunched' by GPUs, and made on an outdated die 'shrink'.

If it was 90 - 65 nm, and PCIe x1 - x4 (people who have, or rather had, an interest in Ageia PhysX mostly had PCIe x1-x4 slots) then it maybe, just maybe, could gain a market niché.

Here are the specs of a BFG assembled PhysX card:

>> Processor Type: AGEIA PhysX
>> Memory Interface: 128-bit GDDR3 Memory Architecture
>> Memory Capacity: 128MB
>> Peak Instruction Bandwidth: 20 Billion Instructions/sec
>> Sphere-Sphere Collisions/sec.: 530 Million Max
>> Convex-Convex (Complex) Collisions/sec.: 533,000 Max
>> Bus Technology: 32-bit PCI 2.3 (3.3v & 5v support)

Most PhysX cards use just 30 watts, and have 128 bit x 700 MHz memory, for apx 11.2 GB/sec peak throughput. The 30 watt limitition is PCI slot imposed really. They'd need to be able to use PCIe x16 slots to really get anywhere near 65+ watts without adding a molex power requirement.

Remember, PCIe x16 slots are the exclusive domain of Video Cards, currently dominated by ATI/AMD and nVidia. This is a key reason why Ageia PhysX will fail. As 500+ million transistor GPUs become more common, and 1+ billion transistor setups using SLI, ATI Crossfire, E&S systems, etc Ageia's 125 million transistors pales by comparison.

The Ageia PhysX PPU is built on a, now materials uncompetitive, 130 nm die process and consists of apx 125 million transistors. Usually, quite possibly exclusively, by TSMC.

Using the 32-bit PCI bus, at 33 MHz (often a shared bus) yields 133 MB/sec to/from host CPU (peak, typical will be far less).



I feel sorry for anyone who has invested in Ageia... although it was an obvious technical suicide almost from day one.

4 - 8 years ago such an idea wouldn't been OK, but AI acceleration / offloading is where it will be next, and that is something that even future GPUs will have a harder time offloading, assuming games scale depth and quantity of required AI processing. (Chicken & Egg scenario).

you have a strong point, personally, i see bundling games as an desperate attempt to sell the PhysX Cards, of all the 3 Games bundled, GRAW is the only title a gamer would be interested in, and GRAW actually takes a performance hit when using PhysX! so what is seriously a point of buying a PhysX card, all it will do is Eat Power and generate heat. Worthless