See Subject.

I'm thinking about building a computer through ibuypower.com and trying to decide if I should bother getting the PPU. Its an extra $300, so I probably won't, but I'm still curious if its worth bothering with.

Count the number of open SDK's that make use of it. If it's more than 0 it *might* be worth getting.

If you have the extra $300 to spend then get an extra video card and run SLI instead of geting the physics card.

Yeah, I figured it would be a waste of money at this point. Apparently at some point your supposed to be able to get a PPU as a PCI card rather than directly wired to the motherboard.

I save the $300 for rent. Or an R/C helicopter.

No...rent.

While we're at it, has anyone dealt with ibuypower.com before? They seem to have some hellacious deals. Almost too good to be true.

my friend adam bought a laptop from them, which was sadly kinda shotty. it overheated even after he took off the cpu's hsf and used arctic silver. also the laptop's body/frame seems kinda cheap and not put together very well. but that could have just been this one computer

Thanks killerofall.

Huh...it seems that they have been sucking quite a bit recently. But many earlier reviews have them doing quite well.

I'll wait for the AMD price drops to hit their systems and check on them again.[/quote]

Wait for AM2 low prices to be universal, and just build. It's easier all-around.

I would say no. There are many other things you can spend $300 on to get a better looking, running, and sounding gaming experience.

like jeremy's hair

The short answer: no, either wait or spend it elsewhere

The medium answer:
Too many unknowns.
-- Will multi-core CPUs be able to handle the work of a PPU?
-- ATI and nVidia are currently looking into PPUs, what will they come up with? They have already demonstrated that assigning one SLI'd GPU to physics is viable, not to mention speculation that there could be PPUs included on future video cards.
-- We only have a few small games and demos specifically devoted to showing off the card, hardly enough to prove worth.
-- Video game physics are a tricky thing to implement well. Better algorithms could be out there, will the card be able to adapt? If we have all of PhysX, ATI, and nVidia in the ring, will this create vendor-specific issues in games?

Also: no Havok support yet.

The long answer(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhysX
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/06/19/ ... index.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/07/19/ ... x_failing/
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/08/03/ ... index.html
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2376&p=3

It is a PCI card. Asus and BFG make them. It is not hard wired to the motherboard like you said. And no they are not worth getting because only a few games support them and they slow the games down because there are so many more things for the graphics cards to render. If you really want one, then I would suggest buying one on Ebay for $250. By the way I would wait on that comp anyways because near xmas Windows Vista and DX10 come out so all your stuff will be really obsolete as those will both require new video cards.