According to this posting over at The Inquirer, AGEIA physics cards are most certainly nothing to write home about, and although this isnt the first time these new dedicated PPU solutions have been talked down, theres some very interesting points brought up with reference to a recent article on Toms Hardware.

AN OLDER REVIEW performed by Dr Thomas Pabst's crew at Tom's Hardware concluded that the Ageia PhysX is under-supported, irregular with its physics and soon to be displaced by NVidia's adoption of Havoc via its SLI-based-physics approach, which wasn't good reading for Ageia.

A much more recent article has appeared at Tom's, further lambasting Ageia's performance. It's a considerably more interesting follow-up, as it focuses on how to play PhysX demo's without the need for the card - allowing the direct comparison of software vs hardware-enabled physics, and again it isn't good for Ageia.