Havok, AMD And Game Physics

By Digital Trends Staff Published October 25, 2009

Havok, AMD And Game Physics

You might never think about game physics, but it’s important to any game, and the more complex the game, the greater the strain on the resources of a PC. Many of the current games use Havok’s engine for its physics effects.

Now AMD has announced deal to work with Havok to get the most from AMD chips.

Recommended Videos

Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager of AMD’s graphics products group, said:

“As the complexity and visual fidelity of video games increases, AMD wants to take advantage of opportunities to improve the game experience. By working with the clear market leader in physics software, AMD can optimize our platforms to consistently deliver the best possible visual experience to the gamer."

Havok’s Managing Director, David O’Meara, also welcomed the deal, noting:

"The clear priority of game developers is performance and scalability of the CPU. Beyond core simulation, however, the capabilities of massively parallel products offer technical possibilities for computing certain types of simulation."

Havok’s biggest competitor is Ageia Technologies, which has the PhysX physics platform. Ageia was bought by Nvidia in February.

Digital Trends Staff

Digital Trends has a simple mission: to help readers easily understand how tech affects the way they live. We are your…

Computing

Performance leaks for AMD’s RX 9070 XT are all over the place

RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT on a pink background.

We're in that exciting period leading up to the release of some of next year's best graphics cards, and that means leaks and predictions are coming out every single day. The last few weeks have really brought into focus AMD's next-gen flagship, which is now said to be called the RX 9070 XT. But now, more than ever, we're seeing a lot of conflicting information about the kind of performance we can expect from the top RDNA 4 card. The latest leaks see it falling within a stone's throw of Nvidia's RTX 4080.

According to zhangzhonghao on the Chiphell forums (who is a frequent leaker in the CPU and GPU space), the difference between the RX 9070 XT and the RTX 4080 is just 5%. They didn't specify which card was the winner, though, and we don't know which games they were tested in.

Computing

AMD’s next GPU already has two big problems

We're about to enter a new era of GPUs, with Nvidia, AMD, and Intel duking it out for slots among the best graphics cards. But this time around, things are different. Team Red, which has traditionally served as a downward force on prices against much more popular Nvidia GPUs, is caught in the middle of a graphics card market that's headed in two vastly different directions.

Although AMD has yet to formally unveil its RDNA 4 graphics cards, the company has confirmed that it's coming early next year. The details about AMD's next-gen GPUs are still up in the air, but you don't need any official specs or benchmarks to see the precarious position that AMD is in. The company's next-gen graphics cards already have two big problems -- Nvidia, which likely will pursue flagship dominance, and AMD itself.
A picture of what's coming

Computing

The Alienware m16 R2 gaming laptop with RTX 4070 is $500 off

The Alienware m16 R2 on a table in front of a window.

The gaming laptop deals of the holiday season aren't over yet, as there are still some excellent offers, such as Dell's discount for the Alienware m16 R2 with the Nvidia RTX 4070. From its original price of $2,600, the machine is down to $2,100. It's still pretty expensive, but it's actually a steal at that price, and the $500 in savings is huge. You're going to have to be quick in completing your purchase though, as there's no information on how much time is remaining before this bargain expires.

Why you should buy the Alienware m16 R2 gaming laptop
We highlighted the Alienware m16 R2's great gaming performance in our review of the gaming laptop, and this configuration that's on sale comes with the mighty Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card. Combined with the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor and 64GB of RAM, which doubles the recommended specification from our guide on how much RAM do you need, the Alienware m16 R2 won't have trouble running the best PC games at their highest settings. It's going to be ready for the upcoming PC games of the next few years as well -- it will be a while before you need to start thinking about making any upgrades.