Nvidia has bought Ageia, maker of the PhysX PPU.
http://www.macworld.com/article/131955/2008/02/ageia.html
Any gamers out there that can explain to me exactly how much of a difference having a PPU makes?
Depends on the physics engine of the game. A dedicated ppu takes on the physics calculations freeing up the cpu to deal with things like game logic and character AI. Some people argue that the cpu is powerful enough to deal with the physics as well. I don’t know. I think as more and more games are created with more complex physics modeling a ppu will be more important. Right now maybe a ppu will make a noticeable difference with a game like Crysis. Not sure it would make a difference with say… Oblivion.
And, as the physics & realism increases in not only games but in other life simulations as well, a ppu will make this easier to become the best it can be.
Games that support Ageia PhysX card’s(Crysis has it’s own physics engine and doesn’t support Ageia card’s to my knowledge):
http://www.ageia.com/physx/titles.html
Not a long list huh ? ;D
So for any serious gamers these card’s are worthless. It makes more sense to invest a bit more into your cpu or gpu instead of buying this Ageia PhysX card. At least that’s how I and a whole bunch of other gamers see it.
Agreed, but now NVIDIA may just integrate the PhysX chip into their Graphics cards somehow so you could get the extra performance on the (few) games that support it without buying the expansion card
Yes you’re right, they didn’t buy Ageia for nothing … ;D
tbh i’m unhappy because i was in hope AMD buys Ageia …
now AMD should buy Creative Labs 
(low price of stock, load of IP (patents from EMU, Aureal, Sensaura, 3Dlabs and else))
why? well i’m pretty sure NVIDIA is up to something more than just GPU + PPU on single PCB
anyone remember SoundStorm 1,2 ? so what if NVIDIA throws out GPU+PPU+APU on single PCB (4 cores, 2 dedicated GPU and 2 generic purpose GPU/PPU/APU)
give sense
As I mentioned above, there are other applications and software that a ppu will be of a great improvement other than games. An example would be the correct detail and actions of the inner workings of the human body.
tell me about it i was like hurray when Natural Motion implemented support for Physx …