Now let’s get down to serious business, the games.
Bet on Soldier
Developed by Kylotonn, Bet on Soldier supports the PhysX card thanks to a 1.3 patch that will be available very soon. The PhysX card is used to calculate particles in explosions and when a flamethrower is used. Here are a few screenshots with and without PhysX :
Without PhysX
With PhysXVideos :
Without PhysX
With PhysXEven if the graphic aspect is open to interpretation, explosions gain in intensity and a high number of particles are generated. Their life is short, however, as they quickly disappear. The additional particles only increase visual effects and can’t touch the player or another character, thus restricting their interest.
These effects have only been implemented in the PhysX version and it isn’t possible to activate them with a CPU, even if theoretically this should be possible. It is hard to compare performances at equivalent rendering quality so we compared them with and without PPU. Keep in mind that for this test with this resolution, we are CPU limited and not graphic card limited even with the additional effects.
The explosion begins at the 5th second. At this time, performances collapse with the physic card and this is the reason why we show results in this form. If we would have taken an average, the drop wouldn’t have been as significant. Game comfort significantly drops when the card is in use and blowing up ten objects at a time is at 10 fps.
Why does this happen? We don’t know and can only suppose that use of the PhysX card leads to a CPU overload. Or that data can’t be directly interpreted by the PPU and has to be converted by the CPU first before being sent. Another possibility is that PPU processing latency isn’t masked and the CPU spends time waiting for the PPU to send processed data. Either way, from what we saw and the performance loss, it’s hard to imagine that the CPU isn’t entirely the cause.
Ghost Recon : Advanced Warfighter
We were eagerly waiting for GRAW because it was announced to be the first game to really use the PhysX processor. We were quickly disappointed because only some explosions are accelerated.
Without PhysX
With PhysXVideos :
Without PhysX
With PhysXThis time, graphics are an undeniable success. Explosions gain in intensity but just like with Bet on Soldier, additional particles can’t affect a player and are only there to increase visual aspects. They are particles and not three-dimensional objects and it doesn’t do much for the reality of a game. Pieces of metal fly in your face without any trouble while a bullet can kill you instantly.
Just like Bet on Soldier, these additional particle effects only work with the PhysX card. However, we decided after all to measure performances in a CPU-limited situation:
The second 4 correspond to the beginning of the explosion. Results are partly similar to those previously observed. There is a big performance drop as soon as the PP starts working. This time, however, performances remain poor for a longer period of time. Here again we aren’t really convinced of the interest of the PhysX card…
