There’s been alot of buzz on real world physics in games lately, mainly due to AGEIA and their soon to be released first PPU in the world named PhysX. With BFG Tech and Asus as their launch partner, the card will retail at around USD249 - 300, Alienware will have the card in their system if you choose to, while in Dell (who bought Alienware despite the strong denial previously) website you can see PhysX is available for upgrade at USD249. Yes it will revolutionised gaming as we see it, but it sure comes at a hefty price tag.

Here’s where the fun start, Nvidia just announced a week ago that they are partnering with Havok, the brain behind FEAR and Half Life 2 physics, to provide their own version of physics processing for the 6/7 series of GeForce. Their idea is that during game time, you may not need all the processing power for the 3D on the screen hence you can use the spare horsepower for additional physics processing. If you’re on SLI, you can set it so that one GPU will be for 3D rendering while the other is dedicated to all the physics. HardOCP has a nice preview on this.

Not to be upstaged, ATI also announced their version of physics processing, besides the usual claim “our card has more horsepower” and stuff, their approach is more or less the same with Nvidia, Crossfire would do the same thing as SLI would, dedicating one GPU to rendering while the other to physics processing. But here’s the catch, when you have 2 ATI card in your system for such purpose, they don’t have to be crossfire. Nvidia’s SLI requires 2 cards of identical model, as for ATI, you can have a X1900XTX for your 3D rendering, and get a X1600 pro to do your physics processing, or one year later get yourself a X2800XTX for rendering while keeping your X1900 of physics processing. From any angle, it seems to be a very attractive solution. More info from FiringSquad and PC Perspective.

Well, I guess AGEIA’s original plan of just complementing the existing hardware instead of competing head to head has hit a brick wall. Both the green and the red have realised the potential and want a whole pie for themselves, only time will tell what will happen next.