Yeah, you've got your quad SLI graphics cards and your pricey sound card to offload those processor intensive duties from the CPU, but what abouta physics processing unit? Ageia is hoping gamers will latch onto their new PhysX card that takes over physics related duties from the CPU, leaving it worry about AI and your taxes. Compared to modern GPUs the card sounds ancient, with 128MB of RAM, 130nm manufacturing, and a mere PCI interface, but it should be enough to deal with the current physics experiments being performed in recent games like F.E.A.R., Half Life 2, and the forthcoming Unreal Engine 3 which pledges support for the card. Ageia will work with other manufacturers to provide the actual boards, much like NVIDIA does, but there's no word on when the cards will start to show up in the market.

[Thanks, John]

It took merely a day of speculation to find out about shipping PhysX boards, which are going into Alienware PCs as we speak and should be ready to ship next week. Dell and Falcon Northwest have also been announced as launch partners.


Ageia to debut PhysX "physics processing unit" for gamers