ATI was the last of the three big actors to jump onto hardware acclerated physical effects where AGEIA has started up a whole new concept with its external PhysX processor and NVIDIA followed with its SLI Physics technology, that used the graphics card for handling physics. ATI was not late to reply with its solution that also used regular graphcis cards for handling physical effects, but in a on paper more open manner. It has now at Computex displayed its new concept “Boundless Gaming”. ATI’s first platform for this concept will be based on Intel’s Core 2 Duo processor and two or three Radeon X1x00-based graphcis cards.
ATI namely lets one of the graphics cards in these systems handle the physics and as we’ve earlier reported there are no limitations for what cards you pair up, as long as they’re X1x00-based models. ATI displayed a system with no less than three Radeon X1900 XT graphcis cards, two in a Crossfire configuration while the third was used for accelerating the physics. At HardOCP they’ve published an article that discuss ATI’s thoughts on phycsial effects and what its Boundless Gaming platform will look like.
Statements that a Radeon X1900 XT would offer 9 times the performance during physics acceleration than AGEIA’s PhysX processor will at least cause some steaming debates.
You can rely on that we will submit more information about ATI and physics acceleration soon.
