2K has released a demo of its long-awaited Mafia II action game. The title features an epic gangster story line, hours of GTA-style joyriding, shooting and massive explosions.
But for GeForce gamers, the dangerous and misty world of Empire Bay is made even more enticing with the integration of Nvidia’s PhysX technology.
“Tear up [the] Bay with your machine gun and experience the mass destruction and particle effects as glass shatters, wood splinters, cars explode and buildings crumble…[Because] PhysX uses the GPU to simulate up to 10,000 particles on the screen at a time,” explained Nvidia spokesperson Jason Paul.
“2K Games has also used PhysX to physically simulate clothing on the characters – trench coats accurately move with the wind and interact with the character’s body.”
According to Paul, higher end cards such as GeForce GTX 480 and 470 can handle both the graphics and PhysX processing in Mafia II on just a single GPU.
“[However], to get the best experience I recommend having a dedicated card for PhysX, such as GT 240 or above, to help offload your primary graphics card and boost your framerates.
“[And] If you are currently gaming on a prior gen card like 8800 GT and have a motherboard with two x16 PCI-Express slots, upgrading to a new GTX 400 GPU and using your 8800 GT as a dedicated PhysX processor will give you a very nice setup for Mafia II.”
