TechBloggin.com

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Gaming

It’s not a direct response to AMD unveiling the HD Radeon 4850 X2 and 4870 X2 yesterday, but NVIDIA also came to play at SIGGRAPH, and it’s got lots of new GPU-as-CPU toys for us this morning — and what’s more, they’re free. Like we’d been hearing, GeForce 8, 9, and 200-series cards are all getting PhysX support as of today via a free GeForce Power Pack that contains a free full copy of Warmonger, three PhysX-enabled Unreal Tournament 3 maps, demos of Metal Knight Zero and the Nurien UT3-based social networking service, and a couple tech demos. The Power Pack also includes some new CUDA apps to play with, including a new Folding@Home client (ahem) and a trial version of the Badaboom video transcoder. That’s a lot of new toys, so get downloading and let us know what you think!

Read - PhysX GeForce Power Pack apps
Read - CUDA GeForce Power Pack apps

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Source: Nilay Patel

written by

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

It’s arriving a month later than anticipated, but at least it’s arriving (we hope). According to a first look at PhysX on NVIDIA’s GeForce cards, The Tech Report is reporting (ahem) that the graphical outfit will dish out new drivers that add PhysX support on August 12th. The new software will allow owners of GeForce 8, GeForce 9 and GeForce GTX 200-series cards to use PhysX acceleration without shelling out any additional coinage, which means that you all will surely be giving it a shot just for kicks, right? Keep next Tuesday clear — you and Unreal Tournament 3 have a date, like it or not.

[Via UberReview]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Source: Darren Murph

written by

Filed under: Gaming

Eran Badit of NGOHQ.com has already made some considerable progress getting PhysX to run on AMD hardware, and it looks like he’s now getting a helping hand from a somewhat unexpected source, with NVIDIA itself reportedly giving the project its blessing. Apparently, NVIDIA has even gone so far as to invite Badit to join its developer program, which gives him access to documentation, SDKs and, most importantly, direct access to hardware and NVIDIA engineers, a move that Badit describes as “impressive, inspiring and motivating.” Badit is decidedly less impressed by AMD, however, which has apparently been unwilling to provide with any hardware or support for the project. That stubborn stance, he surmises, can only be due to AMD’s backing of Intel’s Havok physics engine, which NVIDIA would no doubt like to have out of the picture (hence its willingness to help here).

[Via TG Daily]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Source: Donald Melanson

written by

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Well that was fast — just nine days after announcing plans to acquire PhysX maker Ageia, NVIDIA said today that the deal is done. Still no word on when we might see NVIDIA cards with Ageia tech in them, but we’ll let these two enjoy their first Valentine’s day as a happy couple merged corporate entity before we start asking the hard questions.

[Thanks, Ryan]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Source: Nilay Patel

written by

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

After months of rumors and speculation, NVIDIA announced today that it’s acquiring Ageia and its PhysX tech. There’s no word on how much coin NVIDIA is dropping on the deal, but the company says the move makes sense, given the similarities in GPU and PPU designs and the trend towards massively parallel coprocessing units like NVIDIA’s CUDA cards. Of course, given the war of words between game devs and hardware manufacturers over the value of PPU units, it’ll be interesting to see how the industry reacts to this deal — come on, John Carmack, we know you’ve got a statement ready.

[Via FPS Labs; Thanks, Chuck]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Source: Nilay Patel

written by

Filed under: Gaming, Laptops

John Carmack may not believe in dedicated PPUs, but it seems that Dell certainly does, as IGN recently reported that the company is set to add Ageia’s new mobile PhysX PPU to its laptop line, a move that now appears to be all but confirmed by the above image residing on Ageia’s press site. The mobile PhysX PPU itself was announced just ahead of the recent Leipzig Games Convention, and promises to offer many of the same benefits as its desktop counterpart while keeping power consumption to a minimum (10W during gameplay, according to Ageia). While there still doesn’t seem to be any official word from Dell, as IGN points out, the company’s top-end XPS M1710 (or forthcoming M1730) would seem to be the most likely to get the new upgrade.

[Thanks, Mack S]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Source: Donald Melanson

written by