Despite of being the only dedicated physics processing unit (PPU) for consumers on the market, Ageia PhysX has not become popular so far, although it has been available for about one and a half years. One of the reasons for that is relatively high price of the device and another is the lack of games that take advantage of it. On Tuesday Ageia said it would cut price of its PhysX to $99 in time for holidays.
“Just for the holidays Ageia PhysX card price has dropped. Both NewEgg and TigerDirect are running specials on the card. You can now get it for $99,” a statement by Ageia reads.
Initially Ageia along with Asustek Computer and BFG Technologies sold PhysX add-in cards with 128MB 733MHz GDDR3 memory designed for PCI bus for $299, but late last year the manufacturer suggested retail price dropped to the range of $179 - $249 along with enrichment of product bundle. The move also did not help to drive Ageia PhysX sales to high levels and now Ageia slashes the pricing of its PhysX accelerator to $99.
In addition, Ageia promised to release a special mod-kit for Unreal Tournament 3 along with two levels that feature enhanced physics effects.
Ageia’s PhysX is the world’s first physics processing unit (PPU), which offloads software physics processing from central processing units and graphics processing units to it. The architecture of the PhysX PPU is tailored for multi-threaded processing of vertexes, which allows game creators to develop detailed, soft and precise animation and simulation of movements, hair, clothing, liquids, fluids and other.
To take advantage of advanced capabilities the PhysX has, game developers have to create games using Novodex SDK supplied by Ageia, which requires some additional effort from them. According to Ageia, more than one hundred games designed for and supporting the Ageia PhysX processor are in development from over 60 software creators and publishers. However, the vast majority of Ageia PhysX-enabled games provide negligible advantages of PhysX.
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