Remember Ageia PhysX before Nvidia bought them?

We are checking out an Ageia PhysX PPU (Physics Processing Unit) card! It had some missing capacitos, so we will attempt to repair it and then checkout some PhysX tech demos.

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[Jdvc-ydtx]

I LOVE your lab. It's very plain and stark, allowing you to focus on the work without distraction. I've been moving in this direction for over a year now. ❤

[ThBeowulf]

I'm glad you posted the repair attempt despite the lack of success. The history and analysis is spot on, demonstrating just how these cards really were a flash in the pan.

I missed the Aegis PhysX card bandwagon but I did get my feet wet later with a spare PCIe 1x GTX 520 card I picked up for a different project. It really enhanced the particulates and rubble in the game "World in Conflict". Beyond that, I didn't explore PhysX too much. My GPU at the time was a GTX 460 Ti.

[JamesSmith-swnk]

There is a gtx 275 "PhysX" edition that also has a gts 250 on it that just handles the "PhysX".

[baoquoc]

Just coincidentally looking at this video after I read some articles that Nvidia has dropped off PhysX support for RTX 50 series gpus, which mean older games with PhysX support are going to have effects issues than the most powerful consumer card that isn't workstations - RTX 4090

[MeALot]

It really helps if you use a heatgun to heat up the pcb before soldering smds. Its often a lack of heat if you are struggling with it.

[dawiekaboutereen]

Your video really took me back. I also wanted to mention that Ghost Recon Advanced Warfare (GRAW) was one of the first games I played that utilized the Ageia card in game.

[Darxide]

Capacitors just falling off is a sign of leakage. The electrolyte inside of electrolytic capacitors is corrosive. The corrosion will resist solder even with good flux, so after removing the old solder, you may want to scrub the area with a toothbrush and isopropyl alcohol. In the worst cases, some extra abrasion will be needed to really scratch at the pads to remove the metal oxide layer. But that's about the only real thing that would prevent solder from easily taking to pads and component legs when using flux. If you plan on really getting into repairing old cards, a can of a de-oxidizing agent like Deoxit would be a worthwhile investment.

[SidneyCritic]

Make sure you use leaded solder because it's easier to solder, and if you use cheap flux you need to put so much on that it submerges the joint. Caig/Deoxit flux makes soldering a lot easier, it's just the rosin in hard to clean afterwards.

[Cyklonus]

I remember reading articles about it and what a fascinating technology it was for me at the time.

[McKay]

iirc CellFactor was the one single best physx demo game at the time. with gravity grenades and destructible environments, tons of physics props to play with lying around everywhere, it was glorious

[Dukefazon]

Tip for solver wick: Cut off a short strip and hold it with a tweezer. The longer strip you use the more heat it sucks away from your soldering attempt. You need to practice a bit to get a feel for it. And don't forget to use fresh flux so it helps adhering the molten solder to the wick.

[JosepsGSX]

For the iron work, I would suggest also trying a tip with more mass. I moved from pointy tips to way bigger ones, blade style and tother chunky ones, and it is a game changer.

Another area to check is the wick. I moved from the Aliexpress wide 3.5mm one, that yours look like, to a branded 2.8 one, which has proper flux embbeded that releases when heated. Both the smaller section and the flux help a lot. I also add flux generously and a bit of solder in the tip of the iron to help starting.

In any case, for multilayer boards with huge earth planes that suck the heat, it is really painful to work with a simple iron. As others suggest some help with the heat gun to assist makes a big difference, and I have to test the heat bead from an old 3d printer, that might help pre-heating to the whole thing. I have several cap replacements in my old 2000s Athlon motherboards, that are on hold as my first tests with the iron alone were a disaster.

[fft]

Well done Phill! you will get better with time soldering. I did
yeah if you are into retro hardware there is no way around a little soldering from time to time ;)

[licksludgee]

I remember, I then had 3 GPUs, 2 in sli and one for dedicated physx back in ddr2 with an nforce board. What a waste of money

[ordinobsolete]

Those cards are virtually absent nowadays or very expensive. It's usually a better idea to buy an old 8600GT or GT210 that are cheap and do work fine as a dedicated PhysX controller.
Also note that it was possible back in the days to use an ATI/AMD as your main graphics controller coupled with an NVIDIA for PhysX. They updated their drivers to block that, but it's always possible to find a workaround.
PhysX was widely used in countless game such as Mass Effect 2 but in a "basic" mode that could work on CPUs and home consoles.
Only a few games such as Batman Arkham Asylum, Alice Madness Returns, Mirrors Edge.... had support for more advanced PhysX effects that CPUs could not handle. Plus, it was only cosmetic and did not rendered that well (I remember fog that looked like cotton).

[gorky_vk]

Most PCIe cards have large ground plane which make soldering on them extremely hard without preheating the board, investing in proper setup isn't probably wise thing to do when that isn't something you do for living but even cheap small preheaters from places like aliexpress will make your life easier when you need to do stuff like that.

[Nevakonaza.]

I actually owned one of those, And while it did improve PhysX in Mafia 2, I later added a secondary 8800GT as a dedicated PhysX card which as you can imagine totally blew away this PhysX card, But without the Agia technology it would be interesting how modern cards handled PhysX.

[dazamad]

I think you should feel satisfied. You made the card better and work that's a win. I've dmg boards and made them worse, but I didn't give up and learnt to re fix it and eventually made thr board work. That's with smd stuff too.
A great channel to watch is mr solder fix. He has a few on smd components

[billchildress]

I purchased one of these cards that is for PCI not PCIe back in 2005 and I don't remember what I gave for it but it still works fine with ATI/AMD cards too! Never had any issue with it.
Glad to see that you have one! I have used this card on win10 too. Use lead based solder too.

[themiln]

I still got this card. Loved playing GRAW with it!