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Are physics processing units still not worth it? [closed]

Are physics processing units still not worth it? [closed]

Physics processing units used to cost about as much as a middle range GPU (when I last checked, two years ago), and did little to alleviate the CPU of processing responsibilities. Has this changed? Are PPUs still more or less worthless?

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Guest [Entry]

"There used to be decent updates on Physics processing at this Hardforum FAQ.
Alas, it has been formally declared defunct recently.

Radion and GeForce cards have quite good capabilities these days.
General Purpose GPUs are getting more into the scene of Physics processing.
NVIDIA has ported the AGEIA Physx platform (after acquiring it) on its GeForce 8 cards.
NVIDIA is also working on PS3 SDK: PlayStation 3 developers get free PhysX SDK
These days you can also have SLI configuration that will use your old card as dedicated Physx processor. More at NVIDIA Physx FAQ.

The Nehalem roadmap is planning GPUs within the processor too.

A recent comparison with GeForce -- PhysX Performance Update: GPU vs. PPU vs. CPU
Some more performance comparisons here.

An older article before AGEIA was acquired by NVIDIA
-- GeekTech: Will Your Next Upgrade Be a PPU?

On the whole, I am starting to think Physx is well coupled with Graphics Cards.
Maybe, they'll be called something else (instead of graphics card).
With Nehalem also venturing into on-chip GPUs, the scene can change rapidly."