It’s small and powerful... ooer missus!
Now although Ageia getting their PhysX cards working properly and really pushing forward in the developer relations area, which has made games such as Unreal Tournament 3 and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 run smoother with more detailed physics, perhaps even bigger and better news is that those crafty Ageia chaps are now bringing the power of PhysX to mobile platforms too... and by mobile I mean laptops, not phones, ok?
Whilst busy getting my arse thoroughly blown around in Unreal Tournament 3, I had to pause from the carnage to take a few snaps of the new PhysX Mobile chip, an add-in card which is heading to Dell laptops in the next few weeks. Sadly, this isn’t a post-sales add-in card but an integrated at build part.
Click for larger imageThe really claver bit is that despite the small size and reduced power consumption, running at just 10 Watts, the mobile PhysX PPU is optimized to deliver the same performance as it’s desktop big brother but at a fraction of the power usage. There’s an advanced power management set-up too, which cycles the chip down when there’s not much for it to do and cranks it up when things get busy.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, yes, Dell are integrating the PhysX board in their desktop systems at build, as are Acer and Medion too.
