GeForce GTX 275 Video Card Review

The technology behind the GTX 275 is rather simple and combines many of the great things from the various other products in the GeForce lineup.  The main GPU comes with 240 Stream Processors which is the same as the core found in the GTX 295.  The GTX 275 also has a 448-Bit memory controller which is the same one found on the GTX 260.  The hybrid combination creates a new midrange product that is almost as good as the GTX 285 with a proper midrange pricetag.  

The GeForce GTX 275 is using the new found glory of the 55nm process to help give the card more power over it's old friend the GeForce GTX 260. This allows for higher clocks, better overall heat envelope and lower power consumption. Still all this horsepower isn't always needed for today's games.

Instead of getting wasted the extra cycles can be used to power things like CUDA and Physics calculations in games. This is the new found reserved power of the GeForce GTX 275 that will help push PhysX in to the future of gaming.

{From the NVIIDA website}

NVIDIA PhysX is a powerful physics engine enabling real-time physics in leading edge PC and console games. PhysX software is widely adopted by over 150 games, is used by more than 10,000 developers of all types and is supported on Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and PC. PhysX is optimized for hardware acceleration by massively parallel processors.

Today's AGEIA PhysX processor provides an exponential increase in physics processing power and soon PhysX-ready GeForce processors will be enabled to take gaming physics to the next level.

What is physics for gaming and why is it important?

Physics is the next big thing in gaming. It's all about how objects in your game move, interact, and react to the environment around them. Without physics in many of today's games, objects just don't seem to act the way you'd want or expect them to in real life. Currently, most of the action is limited to pre-scripted or ‘canned' animations triggered by in-game events like a gun shot striking a wall. Even the most powerful weapons can leave little more than a smudge on the thinnest of walls; and every opponent you take out, falls in the same pre-determined fashion. Players are left with a game that looks fine, but is missing the sense of realism necessary to make the experience truly immersive.

NVIDIA PhysX combined with CUDA-enabled GeForce GPUs will deliver the computing horsepower necessary to enable true, advanced physics in the next generation of game titles making canned animation effects a thing of the past.

Here we are looking at the game “Sacred 2” with a PhysX patch applied.  With it we get to see the added content the PhysX brings to the game. In these screenshots you get an idea of what some of the visuals elements and the physical ideals of PhysX. The first picture in each row is without PhysX enabled while the second it the same exact spell with PhysX content added.

This all looks mainly visual, but underneath it all it is way more than that. You are talking about things that do not have true visual content. This would be force of wind on an object to the push of a spell. This could also mean the loss of balance of another character when a Golem whacks the ground. There is really too many examples to list. Physics is a huge part of gaming whether we realize it or not. So let's keep enjoying the wealth of power from out Nvidia GPU's with PhysX to make our games that much better.