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ASUS PhysX P1 GRAW Edition 128MB (PCI)

By Vincent Chang - 20 May 2006

Game Impressions and Performance Part 2

Game Impressions and Performance Part 2

Cell Factor Demo

Commissioned by Ageia to produce a tech demo to showcase the capabilities of the PhysX engine, Artificial Studio has come up with the visual overdose that is Cell Factor. Practically every kind of eye candy can be found in the game, from high dynamic range rendering (HDR) to a "per-pixel motion blur" effect that made the game feel like an aftermath of a drinking spree. It is no wonder that even our test system, with a GeForce 7900 GTX no less, managed frame rates of between 17 to 20 frames. Less capable systems can opt for a less intensive version of the demo or disable some of the eye candy like HDR. So does this demo truly show that PhysX matters?

We are no physicists but chunky blood bits? To be fair, this could have nothing to do with the PhysX engine.

We have to say that Cell Factor has certainly achieved its purpose of showcasing the PhysX engine, as some of the things that you do in the game would not be possible without some form of physics. For example, the gravity grenade sucks in objects around it before discharging them in all directions with a bang. Getting hit by any of those flying objects could be fatal in the game. The protagonist in the game also has some form of 'psi power', which allows the gamer to manipulate objects in a way analogous to Jedi Knights and their Force powers in the popular movie series. Meaning you can push and pull objects around you and even push your character off the ground with it and fly with it.

Here's what happens when our gravity grenade starts sucking everything in its surroundings towards it.

Boom! And the debris collected by the gravity grenade flies in all directions, inflicting possibly fatal damage to all players in the vicinity.

These metal streamers wave and move rather life-like in the 'wind', a case of the PhysX card in action.

In fact, the demo would refuse to run without a PhysX card installed, though a command line workaround is apparently possible. It is debatable however if you really need the PhysX implementation. It does seem doable with physics middleware and the low frame rates we got at the high quality settings made it hard to tell if the PhysX card was helping or making things worse just like in GRAW. Nevertheless, the physics certainly takes center stage in this game and shows us what is possible when physics becomes integral to game play and not just throw up more eye candy. It does mean that getting a PhysX card would be necessary with Cell Factor, despite its high-tech graphical gloss, doesn't really look like the killer game to start the ball rolling. Even the developers have revealed at the recent E3 gaming showcase that they are unsure if it will progress into an actual retail product. For now, it's a good tech demo to remind audiences what they are missing from their games.


Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends Demo

A major real time strategy game from Big Huge Games and Microsoft Games, Rise of Legends is set in a world with an intriguing mix of fantasy and sci-fi elements. It's probably closer to steam punk for those into genre fiction and games. Although the pedigree of the game is decent, we have our doubts about how the PhysX implementation would turn out in the game, especially after GRAW. So we downloaded the demo and loaded the game with our ASUS PhysX P1.

Here's a sample in-game snapshot of the ongoing battle.

More explosions, but unfortunately as we found out, the game currently will not have support for hardware PhysX. An upcoming patch is said to plug that.

Trying the campaign mission, we found it rather difficult to distinguish whether the PPU was present or not. The explosions looked good regardless and maybe there was just a bit of exploding debris that wasn't present without the PPU or we could be trying too hard to spot the difference. Despite the game mentioning support for PhysX, we did some further research on the Internet and it seems that full hardware physics acceleration support is slated for a future patch. It might turn out to be interesting since it's a real time strategy (RTS) game, but it looks like we'll have to wait a while more to see the outcome.

Burrowing through the game options, it did have a section on physics and warned of the possible effect on performance. One could enable ragdoll physics, destructible environments and also calculations involving how the units moved, especially those with mechanical legs. It is possible that without the PPU, the CPU would just take over these calculations like in our case. Undoubtedly, RTS fans would find Rise of Legends an entertaining and a very beautiful game but the big question at the moment is if the forthcoming game patch would provide better performance or improved visual effects when combined with a PPU.

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