[AGEIA ® PhysX ® physics accelerator] what is, and is it worth the $ ?

anyone know what a "AGEIA ® PhysX ® physics accelerator " is exactly and is it worth it for other software or is it not worth the bang ? i am NOT a heavy duty gamer, but i do some "minor" video editing, and the occational game of quake and doom, star wars etc, but not involved with "special" add on controlers etc.

no rush, just "window" shopping at the moment (you know pressed against the glass, looking)

 

I think the only full-fledged game that supports it is Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter - IIRC. Or maybe one or two others at most.

The word on the street (at least what I've heard) is that since it doesn't improve performance, why bother? I think the goal here was to not only make explosions prettier but to offload some of the work of the grapics card (and cpu?) but so far it doesn't seem to have held up that end of the deal at all.

Gary

 

thanks for the info

Thank you both for the information.
i was wondering if there was a costerformance benefit
so now i have more info to work with.