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Posts Tagged ‘physx’

Consider a Red Sox-Yankees match up in the playoffs and you pretty much capture the spirit of what took place on April 2 when rivals Nvidia and AMD / ATI both launched mid-priced, performance video cards on the same day. Although each team sent their sluggers in to swing for the bleachers, Nvidia edged out the competition with its GeForce GTX 275 when measured against ATI’s Radeon HD 4890.

Nvidia aimed the newest addition to the growing GeForce family at the sweet spot between the GTX 260 and the GTX 285, but buyers get some serious value in the deal. The GTX 275 is based on NVIDIA’s 55nm GT200b GPU, essentially the same one used in both the dual-core GTX 295 and the GTX 285. Hosting a massive 1.4 billion transistors, the GPU has been tweaked for the GTX 275 and serves up a graphics clock spinning at 633 MHz and a processor clock tripping the radar at 1404 MHz. Translation: the GTX 275 is sporting some serious muscle often found on more expensive hardware.

Add to this the fact that the GTX 275 uses the same dual-link DVI outputs and HDTV output as the 285, the 275 also marks the launch of Nvidia’s version of Ambient Occlusion (AO) – a new feature of the Release 185 graphics drivers. Ambient occlusion adds additional realism by mimicking the way light radiates in real life, factoring in how objects relate to each other. AO demands a high processor load – performance can plummet by as much as 20% – but the effect can be dramatic, particularly in games deploying low light or indoor situations.

Roll in Nvidia’s usual suite of proprietary technologies such as GEForce 3D Vision, PhysX, and CUDA and add compatibility with Microsoft’s DirectX 10. Since it hardly breaks the the bank at around $250, the GeForce GTX 275 is a great addition to Nvidia’s fleet of mid-priced graphics cards.

Want to find out more? See Nvidia’s site for more details.

Nuts and Bolts:

- Core clock: 633 MHz
- Frequency of unified processors: 1404 MHz
- Unified processors: 240
- Memory type: GDDR3
- Memory: 896 MB
- 2 x DVI-I Dual Link
- Max. 2560×1600 digital video output
- Double SLI connector
- PCI Express 2.0
- Power consumption: up to 219 W (two 6-pin connectors)

NVIDIA is preparing to present a new set of drivers with support for the PhysX API, through the use of their GPU with unified shader architecture and Cuda.

Underlying these drivers are of course the acquisition of Ageî by NVIDIA, which occurred in recent months and that will soon take the first concrete in the form in fact a driver that provides compatibility between these APIs and GPU NVIDIA Series GeForce 8, GeForce 9, and the next-generation GeForce GTX 200.

The PhysX API is particularly widespread in both the console and in the PC, allowing you to implement the physical effects of 3D objects. Until now it was possible to exploit these APIs with the PhysX hardware solutions, the so-called PPU (Physics Processing Unit) developed by Ageî, but following the acquisition by NVIDIA all research and development efforts will go in the direction of using the GPU for calculations related to physics.

The unique feature of the PhysX API is currently not implemented via Cuda GPU is in the management of rigid bodies, it is not clear at present moment if and when this function can be somewhat accelerated by the GPU.

The processing power of recent GPUs with NVIDIA physical processes linked to is much higher than that made available by the PPU Ageî on the market. On the other hand, the GPU must provide for all the processes related to traditional 3D rendering, so only a part the resources available can be used for the management of physics.

This obviously opens up space for hybrid-type approaches, in which one or two GPUs are used for the traditional rendering 3D GPU while another is specifically designed for use with PhysX API in order to obtain the highest possible acceleration of the effects related to physics.