The only solution to this that we see is some sort of agreement between the two companies that will allow the hardware designed for one to work well with the software designed for the other. You might think it silly that two ‘competing’ companies would have any interest in doing this, but judging from our conversation with AGEIA’s CEO, Manju Hedge, such an agreement does not seem so farfetched.

Availability
One of the big questions we had for AGEIA going into this interview was concerning their plans for accommodating users on the cutting edge. Top of the line motherboards are dropping PCI slots like they’re going out of style, and those PCI slots that are still available are usually occupied by a sound card or TV Tuner. In response to this problem, AGEIA will be launching a version of their card for PCI-Express x1 slots in 2007. The different bus interface should not affect the performance of the card in any way whatsoever, but the ability to use the card in virtually any production motherboard is definitely a plus.

For users who are not interested in buying a video card from ASUS or BFG Technologies and installing it themself, AGEIA has secured the following OEM’s as providers of the PhysX hardware in their gaming PCs: Alienware, Dell, Falcon Northwest, VoodooPC, Velocity Micro. This opens the door to even more gamers, as there are many of us out there who rely on OEM’s such as these when purchasing new gaming machines.

Final Thoughts
We relayed in our ASUS PhysX P1 review that the best way to go when handling the computations for a specific task is a dedicated processor. This was proven to be the case in the audio realm not too long ago, and it will, or at least it was when we said that, most assuredly be the case in the physics arena as well. However, we wrote that article before we were really sure of the performance or specifications of the next generation video cards. NVIDIA’s G80 has since exceeded our expectations and shown us the true power of a unified shader architecture. These unified shaders, although currently only used for vertex and pixel calculations, can very well be programmed to perform physics calculations too. That is premise behind NVIDIA’s new Quantum Physics Engine, a development that we have yet to see the fruits of. Whether or not the PhysX hardware is going to be the best platform on which to run physics calculations is a debate that is getting more and more interesting as time goes on.

We would like to thank Manju Hedge and the helpful folks at AGEIA for making our conversation possible. We believe that the information we obtained from this meeting will help gamers everywhere with their purchasing decisions, as well as give them a firm grasp of the future of gaming physics.

Related Material:

ASUS PhysX P1 Review
PhysX Review Addendum
Deformable Objects Video