The really important question, which I'm surprised no one has yet asked, is what song was playing in the video?

I'm really surprised at all the negative Physx comments on here.

After playing through the game with Physx enabled I was curious to see what the difference was disabled. I thought maybe it just ran slower or something. But seeing the effects that it completely takes out I would definitely not want to play the non-Physx version.

The cloth, glass and smoke effects were all highlights that I made this game better to me. I had talked to my friends about how cool all 3 of these things looked in the game.

Maybe you have to actually play the game to appreciate them, but you guys should really check the Physx version of the game out if you have the chance. I absolutely loved the game, and I had doubts of it when I started.

I ran the game on a Q6700, 4GB RAM and a GTX 280 at 1920x1200 with all the settings maxed. It dipped below the V-sync'd 60fps every once in awhile, but not much.

i would be interested in knowing how the ageia physx cards fare, compared to using the gpu to do the physx stuff. also, could you use one gpu (perhaps integrated onto the mobo?) for physx and the main vid card to do the rendering? i haven't kept up with this so i don't know if that's possible yet or not.

I think it looks nice, but is useless... just as ati tried with dx 10.1 (that is a hardware extension! not a software one) nobody using it, just assasins creed? and the support was retired with a patch to justify nvidia payola. I would like to see something based on a standard... like opencl, more generic stuff, maybe with overhead, but ¿there is a programer who cares bout overhead?

You all should test with two graphics cards, one physX, one graphics. I'm thinking of recycling a 8800GT as exclusive physX. How does that run in this equation? Considering the fact that Windows 7 doesn't even support SLI, all those dual card rigs become worthless. I'm not sure why no one makes a big deal about this. So what are the numbers?

having both played the game and watched the game I can't shake the impression that all scenes using PhysX could have been done just as well without PhysX on existing hardware from Nvidia or ATI and do it without the performance hit being near so dramatic.

I just don't see the potential yet......if it can be done better without it, it;s not just a gimick but a terrible one.... at the moment at least.

Candy for the eyes
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Steam Sale where are you?

If you happen to own one of HTPC-oriented Intel-CPU motherboards containing the new single-chip nVidia MCP7A/9300 (or 9400) IGP core-logic and you add-in a nVidia graphics card of the 8xxx series or higher, you can run PhysX entirely on the IGP and leave the graphics card free to handle the graphics. The IGP has 16 CUDA-capable stream processors. I have a HTPC with one of these motherboards (Asus P5N7A-VM), and a 9800GTX+ handy but do not (yet) own Mirror's Edge. When I get the game, I shall do some benchmarking running graphics-plus-PhysX on the 9800GTX+ vs graphics on the 9800GTX+ with PhysX on the 9300 IGP. Unless Matt Butrovich or one of the other Tech Report contributors with access to both Mirror's Edge and a 9300/9400-IGP based motherboard "beats me to the punch".

Btw, a 9300/9400-IGP uATX motherboard is a great way to go if you want to economically alternate full HD/Blu-ray decode + video out capability with high-performance gaming and you are not interested in SLI. For example, the Asus board supports all Core2 variants, up to 16Gbytes of DDR2-800 memory and has DVI, HDCP/HDMI+audio, and DisplayPort outputs. It also has separate analog/TOSLink audio outputs if you do not want to route the audio via HDMI. Add your choice of graphics card for gaming. Not unexpectedly, nVidia does not provide a driver which will allow PhysX on the IGP in combo with graphics from an ATi graphics card......

What I'd like to know is if the CPU accelerated PhysX effects still limited to 1 thread? Or will it use everything available for the calculations?

What are the figures like if you used a dedicated card for PhysX? Say, a Geforce 9600 or even an original AGEIA PhysX card if you have one handy?

Looking over this it looks like a lot of the time physx takes stuff away from the game. I mean, those blue tarp things in the scaffolding look like they really block your view.

Nice for little eye-candy but xbox360 and PS3 doesen't have support for it so it's a dead end tech that brings nothing that would affect gameplay. AMD probably provides graphics for next xbox too so physx is left in marginal position.

I really, really like the cloth waving in the wind.

The glass, though, doesn't look all that great to me.

PhysX is 100% political. Nvidia released it and said "well, anyone can do it" just to try to have an edge on AMD. I'm sure if AMD comes up with their own version and doesn't offer it outright to Nvidia, you'll see NV cry foul.

This is just the last step NV has left to try to hold onto their market share which is down bigtime.

It's not bad that it's come along, I think it's time for more realistic physics, but it'd be via openGL3 if it were truly open to all platforms. This is more like DX 10 vs DX 10.1

If a video provides a better experience than a picture, then hopefully playing the game provides a better experience than a video, because watching that video did not give me the sense that physX made the game experience that much better.

Dunno.

I'd love to check it out myself, but I don't have the game and I don't have an Nvidia card.

Cool. Thanks for putting up some more numbers.

I'm curious about the actual gameplay. Is that affected by PhysX at all? If you're hiding behind a tarp, can the baddies still see you? In that case, playing with PhysX would be a little easier. What about multiplayer. Does your opponent interact with tarps and blinds even though they can't see them but you can. (Is there even a multi-player component to the game. I can't say that I ever checked).

I'm not sure why (I didn't measure it), but I remember a smoother experience when seeing the game at a friend's, running on a slightly overclocked 8800 GS and the latest drivers (all effects inclusive). But since nowadays most midrange videocards more or less fall into the processing capacity range of ye olde 8800 GTX, I wouldn't be too surprised. People who own a 9800 GTX, or GTX+, or better, (not to mention those 3 guys who own GTX 295 videocards) won't even need much of a compromise or any tweaking to see this game shine.

The game sure does look pretty, even though it's using UE 3, and I have to say that the PhysX effects are nice.