Interview: Andy Keane of AGEIA

[Rob Williams]

AGEIA is a company with huge ideas. They plan to make our gaming experiences much more immersive with their PhysX add-in card. We sit down and chat with Andy Keane to answer some burning questions.

Read the full interview here, and then feel free to discuss it here! Registration is not required, but would be nice!

 

[Greg King]

I enjoyed that interview very much. I am looking forward to getting my hands on one and seeing what its all about. I think this could be great on a RTS type game where you have armies of hundreds or even thousands of troops battling it out on a screen.....could lead to some serious gaming experiences I say. I assume that games will have to be written with this add in card in mind in order to take advantage of the extra physics power at hand.

Either way, I am stoked. Good interview.

 

[Unregistered]

That was a rather large collection of non-answers. Good questions, but the answers were horrible.

For example:

"Therefore, those changes will make their way into the PhysX processor at a reasonable pace.."

What the hell does that mean? What is his definition of "reasonable"? Every six months? Twelve? More?

 

[Unregistered]

Physx

One problem I do see with the board is that those of us wanting to build high end gaming systems might not have enough room to use it. 2 GPU's for SLI or Crossfire, Physx add-in and then Creative's new sound card that's also supposed to be released later this year. Where's it all gonna go? I haven't seen or heard of any mobo's that have near enough room for all these goodies.

 

[Unregistered]

I'm still concearned with the price.
I hate console gaming, but seriously.

2 7800 GTX in SLI - ~ $1000-$1200
1 AGEIA Physics PPU - ~$300

You are looking at upwards of $1500 if you want high end, and if they are all replaced in 6 months, that is a ton of cash to drop simply to game at the top for 6 months.

Granted it will all last longer, but still thats a heavy premium to pay for such short product cycles.

Also for the more main stream gamer, those with cards in the Graphics cards in the $150-$250 range convincing them they should drop another $300 on a PPU when the $250 GPU was already taxing their budget is ridiculous.

I know this is cutting edge tech, but even AGEIA has to realize that GPU's slowly worked their way up.. initially Voodoo cards were $100-$150... only recently has this trend of pricey video cards caught on. Had 3dfx started with $300 cards.... 3D gaming as we know it today would not exist.

Thanks,
Dave

 

[Rob Williams]

I don't think *they* know at this point. Depending on the success of the card, I would think once per year maybe. I would certainly hope it's not more than that, because of the price.

That was a rather large collection of non-answers. Good questions, but the answers were horrible.

For example:

"Therefore, those changes will make their way into the PhysX processor at a reasonable pace.."

What the hell does that mean? What is his definition of "reasonable"? Every six months? Twelve? More?

 

[Rob Williams]

That's a good question. Four cards will be a little testing, especially for cooling...

One problem I do see with the board is that those of us wanting to build high end gaming systems might not have enough room to use it. 2 GPU's for SLI or Crossfire, Physx add-in and then Creative's new sound card that's also supposed to be released later this year. Where's it all gonna go? I haven't seen or heard of any mobo's that have near enough room for all these goodies.

 

[Rob Williams]

I agree, the price is far too high, especially considering it's around the same price of a 6600GT. I am expecting to see the card go down in price after release.. of course that also depends on the success. If it takes off right away, the price will not budge.

This is why I expect to see the Xbox 360 take off in November. I expect the system, two games and a spare controller to be around $700.. which is less than half of the price point you gave.

It will be interesting to see how it fares after these next gen systems are released.

I'm still concearned with the price.
I hate console gaming, but seriously.

2 7800 GTX in SLI - ~ $1000-$1200
1 AGEIA Physics PPU - ~$300

You are looking at upwards of $1500 if you want high end, and if they are all replaced in 6 months, that is a ton of cash to drop simply to game at the top for 6 months.

Granted it will all last longer, but still thats a heavy premium to pay for such short product cycles.

Also for the more main stream gamer, those with cards in the Graphics cards in the $150-$250 range convincing them they should drop another $300 on a PPU when the $250 GPU was already taxing their budget is ridiculous.

I know this is cutting edge tech, but even AGEIA has to realize that GPU's slowly worked their way up.. initially Voodoo cards were $100-$150... only recently has this trend of pricey video cards caught on. Had 3dfx started with $300 cards.... 3D gaming as we know it today would not exist.

Thanks,
Dave

 

[madmat]

IMHO SLI with a 7800 is pure bragging rights and nothing more. The 7800 solo performs insanely good enough to run all the current games in full detail with all the eye candy turned on at 1600x1200 and still has enough power to run AA...who really needs more than that?

With games designed to take advantage of the Phys X chip running a single 7800 with the add in card will blow the doors off running an SLI rig without one simply because the CPU won't be a bottleneck any longer. Where's the sense in stuffing $1000 in video cards into a case just to stroke your ePenis when one card and a $300 PPU (Physics Processing Unit) will allow better gameplay on games coded for the PPU than the SLI rig will give you without it?

Besides, since there are boards with PCI-E slots in between the 16x PCI-E slots AND the 7800 is a single slot setup you could still stuff a sound card in between the graphics cards if you add some cooling to move air into the top card (example, the ASUS SLI board has 2 PCI-E ports, use the one closest to the bottom card and you've still got some room for the top one to breathe) and that would leave you all the slots below the bottom vid card to fill with other goodies.

I've run systems with every last PCI slot and my AGP port full, it can be done.

BTW, Rob, good read.

 

[madstork91]

"Where's the sense in stuffing $1000 in video cards into a case just to stroke your ---ePenis--- when one card and a $300 PPU (Physics Processing Unit) will allow better gameplay on games coded for the PPU than the SLI rig will give you without it?"

Funniest thing ive read in a week.... ty

 

[Rob Williams]

It may not be an ePenis thing if you are running super high resolutions, or dual monitor gaming.

 

[madmat]

I read one review of the 7800 and the reviewer was running HL2 at the max resolution the card would do with 4x a.a. and 16x a.f. and it was still fast at max details.

He also ran other games that way and it never went below 30fps or so he said.

 

[Bob]

wtf

hmmm.the fan in my titan vanessa l-type keeps starting and stopping. what have i done wrong?