NVIDIA acquired AGEIA, and consequently PhysX, and announced that it would port the physics API to CUDA. Today CUDA is supported by both GeForce 8 and 9 series GPUs (so far only G92-based cards), and the all new GTX series. The PhysX support is not available with all CUDA GPUs just yet, but it’s coming, just like Folding@Home. Even though the PhysX support is pretty fresh, it has already proven to be more than ready to push Vantage scores to new heights. The CPU score gets an extraordinary boost thanks to the PhysX driver.
The significance of the CPU score has been lowered in Vantage since 3DMark 06, but the way PhysX boosts the score, it will still have a major impact on the final score. The best part is that you can install the PhysX driver with only one graphics card, and still get the boost. If you have more than one PhysX-capable card (not necessarily of the same series) installed you will be able to choose which of the cards to use for physics.
At least that’s the idea with future drivers, right now everything is in beta stage and not all functions are there yet, but the performance is. This is also why there is rather little information available on the performance in games, we would expect more information to surface rather soon.
A quite nice and free upgrade for all owners of a modern GeForce card. We’re not sure which and when NVIDIA will add more cards to support PhysX because right now it looks like even the weakest GeForce cards could do physics just as well as the PhysX PPU.
