AEGIA PhysX physics boards are going to be available to buy from next week - but only from system builders. Bit-Tech learned that AGEIA PhysX PCI cards will be available in selected Alienware desktop systems, inlcuding Area-51 7500, Aurora 7500 and ALX systems. Pricing will vary according to specification - configure a system at Alienware.com and systems should ship next week. The general system specs are not for the faint-hearted: AMD Athlon FX-60 processor, NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX SLI, low latency DDR memory, Creative X-Fi audio. These systems represent the pinnacle of PC gaming performance available today, an ethos supported by the addition of the PhysX card.

However, anyone hoping that the prescence of a PPU to accelerate physics will somehow alleviate the need for high-end components elsewhere is in for a shock. While the PPU handles the physics calculations for the thousands of extra particles and objects in a scene, the GPU now needs to draw the additional polygons and handle the increased texturing / shading load.

"We drive sales of high-end hardware," Andy Hess, Director of Content Acquistion for AGEIA told us. "When you have a PhysX processor in your system, you've gotta have that SLI. You've gotta have both graphics cards to handle the amount of data that we send out. We keep those guys really busy."

In related news, AGEIA unveiled more info about their PhysX chip, including the games that will support it. The company states that 60 developers and publishers and over 100 games will support AGEIA's PhysX card in 2006 and 2007. The first games that will support the card will be Cryptic Studios' superhero MMORPG City of Villains and the 2005 first person shooter Bet on Soldier. The PC version of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, due from UbiSoft in May, will also support AGEIA physics out-of-the-box.