Nvidia's Big Bang II Comes this September [Updated]

One of the major topics of discussion for the last two weeks was Nvidia preparing a driver codenamed "Big Bang II" for introduction in September. In case you didnt know, Nvidia's first driver for SLI came with "Big Bang I", so naturally people assumed that this must be something similar & significant, in case you didnt believe the codename.

Release 180 is the official name for Big Bang II driver. Among other features like DisplayPort support, OpenGL 3.0, GPU transcoding, Multi-monitor support for SLI, Nvidia is also preparing for optimizations that will help Nvidia be more competitive to the Radeon 4800 series. As far as we are aware of the performance optimizations are mainly geared towards the GTX 200 series with the 9800 series getting a much needed boost as well.

However one of the major features touted in the release is the support of PhysX processing on dedicated GPU. This will enable a Geforce 8 or 9 series card act as a Physics Processing Unit (PPU). This is remarkably similar to the ATI concept (before the merger) demoed at Computex 2006. ATI's demonstration used a X1600 as a dedicated PPU along with the X1900 for graphics processing. The performance improvements shown were significant. However, as Physics processing on GPU failed to take off and companies like AEGIA didnt do well selling their dedicated PPU, the concept never came to fruition. Nvidia picked up AEGIA in February this year and will be bringing this concept back to life very shortly.

The scenario would be simple; a user with a 9600GT could simply upgrade to the 9800GTX+ and use the 9600GT as a dedicated PPU. You could also imagine a similar upgrade path from 9800GTX to a GTX280 or GTX280 SLI if you got the money for it. There are too many variables currently to say that a Geforce as a dedicated PPU would take off just like SLI four years ago (Note: SLI is still a niche product but none the less gives Nvidia a performance edge). The library of games listed on the PhysX website isnt as large as Havok and we havent yet seen the performance benefits.

In conclusion, the driver packs in quite a lot of useful (and much requested) features and performance improvements. Does it deserve the Big Bang codename? Its upto you to decide.

Update I: We were contacted by Nvidia and were rightly pointed out that Nvidia was the first one to demo this concept and not ATI. This demo was done at GDC '06, so in reality it was Nvidia who actually beat ATI to this concept by 3 months. You can read more about the demo here: http://developer.nvidia.com/object/havok-fx-gdc-2006.html

Update II: Computerbase.de have tested the physics performance of a brand new mainstream 9500GT and the result is not surprising; a Yorkfield gets outscored by 200-300%. (Via: Geeks3D)

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