That's awesome! Sounds like you dont want to sit around watching the hour glass on your PC!! Me love big fat fast cpus.. Mmmmmm cpus...

Just out of idle curiosity, how many Processor's do you all have in your PC's. I'm refering to all Processor Units, be they the CPU, GPU, APU ect. I have 5 PU's in my PIII rig, the Xeon rig, when done, will have 6 (cant wait for the day when I hit the ON button to this baby).

Silent Hunter III
 

Hello Group,

I was at wal-mart shopping and picked up the game Silent Hunter III and I was going to buy the game but decided not to buy the game, why I am not sure however to day I visited UBI website and read the info for their download of the game and after reading about the game I am glad that I did not buy the game because of a software protection warning they posted.

I will never buy any software with protection software that causes problems with my computer. And if their download contains StarForce I do not want anything to do with it, from what I have read about software like Starforce, their software protection software insured one thing, a loss in sales................................

Darrell
http://www.againsttcpa.com

I dont know, just have the standard pentium 4 system with an agp video card. Whatever that adds up to is what's under the hood. I assume most people use a similar system to mine, just a single cpu unless they own a more up to date computer with either the x2 amd or dual core intel.

Hello,

My system has a Pent4 and a ATI Radeon Pro 256mb, however I have ordered a new graphics card a VGA|3D FUZION 3DFR66256 6600 AGP, I have had nothing but trouble from my ATI card, every card that I have purchased before has been ATI and this card has caused more problems that I care to think about.
I tried the ATI tech help and I can say for sure they DO NOT have any tech help.:down:
I recently downloaded some old drivers and removed the new drivers from my system, the card performance has been ok since the older driver installation, however it has a big problem with the PA RC4 high res install, needless to say the card has not performed as it should and I am not sure a different set of drivers will help, however if someone has a suggestion about another driver to try let me know.

Thank you for your time and help,
Darrell

Whats considered as a Processor are:
CPU - Centeral Processor Unit
GPU - Graphic Processor Unit
APU - Audio Processor Unit

Most PC's have just 1 of each type listed above, but as has been pointed out the new dual core's or like my PC a Dual CPU install account for 1 more. That would give a total of either 3 (standard) or 4 (Dual's of whatever type). So how do I get 5 you must be thinking. Well there is 1 more type and I have that installed.

PPU - PhysX Processor Unit.

So now we have 5 Processor Unit's. :)

My PIII
CPU - 2 x PIII-SM 1.266GHz L2@512
GPU - 1 x xFx GFX7800GT 256DDR3
APU - 1 x SB Audigy 2
PPU - 1 x Ageia BFG PhysX PCI

My Xeon
CPU - 2 x Xeon 3.2GHz L2@2mb L3@6mb MT64
GPU - 2 (1 x xFx GFX7950GX2 1GBDDR3)
APU - 1 x SB X-Fi Fatal1ty - Xtreme Fidelity Pro Gamers
PPU - 1 x Ageia BFG PhysX PCIX

I can just here you now "WTH is a PPU and WTF does it do!"
In a nutshell - Its a small stand alone PC of sorts, and all that it does is calculate ALL of a game's Physical Enviromental Elements. What happens is that instead of the CPU having to not only run the OS, run the network (online play), orchastrate the game, run the AI and calculate all of a games physic's, the PPU takes over all of the games physic's and applies a complex set of mathamatics to produce a Real Life Physical Enviroment. This is 1 of the most CPU intensive appliations of any game, now suddenly all removed from the CPU's work load. The finished physic's are then passed over to your GPU for rendering and the GPU does NOT now have to work out HOW to render it. It doesn't take a much to see how this would improve any games performance.

I must warn you tho, the PhysX Card is mainly ment for games that are PhysX's enabled, SHIII is of course not. BUT even tho you will be told by the sales guy that it wont do didly to a non PhysX enable game, hes wrong. The PhysX card WILL make a difference to ANY game. The most obvious 1 straight up is how much Smoother a game runs. Now with that statement you'd expect that you would recieve a massive FPS boost, well you dont. You do get some but thats not what the card's about, its about relieving the CPU of its overhead and freeing up resources. Of providing Enhanced Partical Effects to reflect Real World Physic's.

The PhysX Processor Unit is made by Ageia and is enbedded into 2 card only made by either BFG or ASUS. I have the BFG card and at a cost of $489:00AU I'm very glad that I bought 1.

I'd recommend that before you consider buying 1, got to Ageia and take a peek at what this thing can do.

LINKAgeia PhysX

Enjoy.

Everything I've heard about the agia card is that it doesnt help enough to be worth the high cost. They could be wrong though, everyone told me getting a faster hard drive wouldnt do squat either and it definitely helped! If Oleg's new flight sim coming out supports the physics card though it could be worth it. In those flight sims everything you can do to help the cpu out is a big help. I'm drooling just thinking about how many planes can be flying over london right now in a big raid with a PC like yours.. You must buy Battle for Britain when it's released!

That would be the fact that not many games are PhysX enabled so ppl dont really understand what it does. Its not just about making the game run faster or even smoother, thats just a side effect. Its about how ALL of a games Physics behave. Case in Point, Ragdoll - this is how a 3d model of a animated body behave in a game, how it falls down, how it moves how REAL it looks, now in 99.99% of games this is a SCRIPTED Physical animation that has only so many LIMITED results when its shot, blown up, burnt, hit, bumped, droped ect ect. Now do the same with a PhysX enabled game and the Ragdoll is subject to TRUE real world physic's. That means that if its shot at it reacts to the impact Correctly to the amount of force its received, the direction of that force, the size of the projectile, the surface that the ragdoll hits, at what angle it hits it at, the weight of the ragdoll at the time of impact, the speed of the ragdoll at time of impact, the direction of travel of the ragdoll at impact. In other word all the Physic's of the real world are imparted INTO your game, so now no 2 actions/reactions are ever the same.

Say you blow up a fuel truck in a normal game, big bang a few bits of shrapnel for eye candy and thats about it. Do the same with a PhysX enabled game and all those bits of shrapnel are now Leathal, fly at the right speed, direction, BOUNCE off surfaces that real world Physic's would determine it should.

And as for your system :
Benchmark 3DMark 2003 on the PIII without the PhysX card - 8237
Benchmark 3DMark 2003 on the PIII with the PhysX card - 12622

Benchmark 3DMark 2006 on the PIII without the PhysX card - 200
Benchmark 3DMark 2006 on the PIII with the PhysX card - 3478

I'd say its worth it. :)

I thought the game still needed to be programed to allow for shrapnel and extra physics before the agia card could do any good. I dont see how it magically enables all that stuff. Is the programming already in the game engine but it's just not enabled till it sees an agia card in your system?

ps: those are amazing score improvements! I'm just not realizing how all this extra stuff will suddenly happen by plugging in the card.

I'm running this:

AMD® Athlon™ 64 FX-62 (2.8GHz) Dual Core Processor, Socket AM2 - 2 x 1Gb L2 Cache

2Gb DDR2 PC5300 at 667Mhz (2 x 1GB)

ATI Radeon® X1950 XTX, 512Mb, GDDR4

Samsung 204B 20.1" LCD, Black - 1600 x 1200, 5ms

Seems to do the trick.....

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

Read the post again matey, you will see the term "PhysX enabled" before the parts about the extra bits. But having said that I do get more effects rendered in NON PhysX enabled games than I ever did before. The PhysX card has the ability to expand on whats in game already, not to the same effect as a game that been written with the PhysX card in mind, but it still will improve on the games SCRIPTED physic's. Ok every game has some sort of game world physic's already SCRIPTED into a game, these will always behave the same each and every time they are called by the games programing, now when a PhysX card is added to the mix, it takes these SCRIPTED Physic's and Builds on them - expands on them. Now in a game that been PhysX enabled this will have been written in such away that its no longer SCRIPTED. Each game world physic's is now determined by the PhysX engine on the card so its now entirley different for each game physic's thats called by the games programing and these effect are determined by Real World Mathamatical physic's to determine how each effect looks, takes shape, performs, what it will effect.

Hi CDre Gibs,

I have been reading your post that you are making about the Physics cards and I ran a search for the AGIA and check out the product, it looks very impressive and I would like to have a card that would perform like that, there is just one problem I just bought a new graphics card and installed it yesterday, I do not think the wife would understand wanting to buy another card.
Do you know if the AGIA drivers would work on a pc that does not have an AGIA card???:hmm: I know it is a stupid question, but thought that I would ask any way...

Darrell

Well you could try loading the drivers, but without the card and the relivante PhysX engine there in, it be pointless I'm sorry to say. I can understand the issue regards the money side of things, for a card that just sits in your PC that you dont plug anything else into but to all intents LOOKS like a graphics card - $400 odd dollars AU is a lot of money, for what to some may seem like a waste but in truth is not. BUT heres the thing, more and more games will slowly become PhysX enabled, this means that hopefuly the price will come down relitive to the power of the card going up. So yeah I'm 1 of the first few through the door, so I'm paying for it. But when its all said and done I'm glad that I did, an so is my PC. :)

Thanks for the explanation Gibs, could you do something for me though? If you have IL2 pacific fighters can you run the black death recorded track and let me know what your avg fps number is? I'm curious how IL2 reacts to this card.

Sorry matey, I dont have IL2 pacific fighters, so no can do. Flight Sim are not really my cup of tea, planes are an un-natural act ! ;)

In fact ask either Pants or Kpt Lehmann how great I am in a Flight Sim game (read I SUCK big time :lol: )