Friday, May 28th 2010
NVIDIA Removes Restriction on ATI GPUs with NVIDIA GPUs Processing PhysX
NVIDIA has reportedly removed the driver-level code which restricts users from having an NVIDIA GeForce GPU process PhysX with an ATI Radeon GPU in the lead, processing graphics. Version 257.15 Beta of the GeForce drivers brought about this change. Possible commercial interests may have played NVIDIA's previous decision to prevent the use of GeForce GPUs to process PhysX with ATI Radeon GPUs, where users could buy an inexpensive GeForce GPU to go with a high-end DirectX 11 compliant Radeon GPU, thereby reducing NVIDIA's margins, though officially NVIDIA maintained that the restriction was in place to ensure Quality Assurance. The present move also seems to have commercial interests in mind, as NVIDIA could clear inventories of GeForce GPUs at least to users of ATI Radeon GPUs. NVIDIA replenished its high-end offering recently with the DirectX 11 compliant GeForce 400 series GPUs.
Update (28/05): A fresh report by Anandtech says that the ability to use GeForce for PhysX in systems with graphics led by Radeon GPUs with the 257.15 beta driver is just a bug and not a feature. It means that this ability is one-off for this particular version of the driver, and future drivers may not feature it.
Source:
NGOHQ.com
Update (28/05): A fresh report by Anandtech says that the ability to use GeForce for PhysX in systems with graphics led by Radeon GPUs with the 257.15 beta driver is just a bug and not a feature. It means that this ability is one-off for this particular version of the driver, and future drivers may not feature it.
276 Comments on NVIDIA Removes Restriction on ATI GPUs with NVIDIA GPUs Processing PhysX
Think about it, if it really was a mistake then the file should have been replaced by now. Downloading the file now should have the locks in place. Anyone want to test that theory?
If anyone wants more info about PhysX Hybrid setups I suggest you read this site: physxinfo.com/news/2789/hybrid-physx-mod-1-03-available/
I post regular comments on there under the name xDee xDee.
This is my rig: www.techpowerup.com/gallery/2634.html
When I saw Havok first used in Half-Life 2, it was fantastic. :rockout:
However, nVidia started making AMD chipsets before AMD bought ATi, long before. It has only been recently that AMD became a direct competitor by buying ATi, and it doesn't make sense for nVidia to just shut down their entire chipset devision because of it.The hardware accelerated parts of PhysX definitely are unuderused, and reduced to useless eye candy.
However, the software parts of PhysX, that run on the CPU like Havok, tend to be what makes the game playable and have anything moveable that interacts with the player.
I would really like to see PhysX uses to its full portential in games, with fully destructable environments, but saddly no developer will ever do that unless every gamer can use it. This means we will never see it unless PhysX runs on ATi hardware, or at least runs on a cheap nVidia card with an ATi card as the main GPU.
Based on your system specs, you may not know the difference between hardware PhysX and the ilk. The only title I can really comment on is Batman AA which makes excellent use of the technology and it looks great too.
Check out this video for a comparison between PhysX and non-PhysX.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GyKCM-Bpuw
I really just have a very hard time understanding how they can justify disabling a feature that works 100% with non-Nvidia GPUs in the same system. Obviously if people want PhysX they have to use an Nvidia GPU. So either way they would get sales. It's not marketing it's pigheadedness. To think someone paid their money for an Nvidia card and they can't use it how they want to, regardless if it is not their primary adapter, and Nvidia intentionally disables a working feature of a video card is ridiculous.
Heck I bet it would help them clear the shelves of their older cards because people using ATI video cards would like to purchase a 9800GT or even newer cards for PhysX which would be a sell that otherwise wouldn't have happened at all.
Stopping their chipset business would be like shutting down an entire devision of their company, it would be stupid. And as I stated, AMD wasn't a competitor until very recently when they aquired ATi.Yep, it is completely idiotic. I think a lot of ATi users would pick up a cheap nVidia card to use PhysX(and CUDA in games like Just Cause 2). Of course the problem is that nVidia doesn't make as much money on the cheaper cards compared to the higher end, but something is better then making nothing...
I think I said it before, they could totally run on the whole "Why pay more for PhysX?" campaign.
Could you imagine ATI diasbling Eyefinity functionality on all systems which employ secondary NV Physx GPUs? I couldnt either.
Allowing everyone regardless of the primary GPU to join the Physx party only results in not only in improved sales (which everyone knows they need) but also encourages more developers to put more A list Physx titles to market. Its a win situation for everyone in cluding NV despite how their flawed logic views the subject.
Like I said before... not officially supporting this means NV will never receive my money for a new GPU dedcated to Physx but Ill still consider buying a used card.
Unless, 50% or more of the top PC games out there start relying on PhysX... I doubt this is going to occur anyway :rolleyes:
Bad move Nvidia.
Put it like this, you've got two high end sports cards from two manufacturers. Both are very similar all around in performance and price, say they are both about $200K, and the profit is $150K per car. Car A has cup holders, and you like cup holders but don't need them. Car B has sun visors, and you like sun visors but don't need them. Then, the manufacturer of Car B releases a very cheap $15K car that has sun visors also, that fit perfectly in Car A, but the profit of this new cheap car is only $2K. So now, what are you the consumer going to do? Buy Car A, give $150K in profit to that company, then buy the cheap car and only give $2K to that company. Would you see why the company making the cheap car would then change their sun visors so they won't work in Car A? Yes, they are still making the $2K profit, but if they didn't give the consume that easy option to go with the competitor and not loose any functionality, then they are losing a potential $148. Yes, the consume still might have gone with the competitors car anyway, but they might not have.Thats good, because I never said you could.
They can't use Hardware Accelerated PhysX either, at least not officially, but my point was that they would buy a cheaper nVidia card if they could.
Lets put it another way: If ATI have a 30% market share and PhysX was worth it and allowed in ATI systems, that could potentially be a lot of PC's running a secondary Nvidia card.
Putting a more accurate example in:
Nvidia sell a car, which runs hot and chews fuel. it has a sunroof and cup holders.
ATI released a car which is a tiny bit slower, but cheaper, far better on fuel, and has no sunroof and cupholders.
You can buy a kit nvidia sell optionally (say, a 9600GT) to add that sunroof and cup holder to your car... it fits. but Nvidia specifically forbid you to do so, even tho they make money from it cause they'd rather you buy a new car, than an optional product.
However, the volume is relatively the same when talking about buying cards just for PhysX.
I have the room in my case and the slot on my motherboard and a 4850 X2 just looking for some help in Batman Arkham Asylum. I don't care if Nvidia wants to try to stop me. I will make it happen. For those of us who already have ATI graphics cards their business strategy is to block the only friggin reason for us to purchase any of their gear because we don't need it for anything else. Nvidia is so dumb that they don't realize that they are simply alienating a large crowd of gamers who already have ATI cards and frankly don't need to switch brands for normal graphics. WE WANT TO BUY YOUR PRODUCT. WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO STOP US? DID YOU EVER HEAR OF 3DFX? Yes you probably did. Hell, you bought their SLI technology and I hope you either wake up or suffer the same fate as 3DFX. No marketing strategy has ever included preventing sales. I guess Nvidia is looking to be inventive. But a wheel is round for a reason and no possible sale should ever be turned away. :mad:
Someone somewhere will always be able to hack something or mod something that will work 99% of the times without spending excesive time and money on the development, but they are free of responsability if that 1% for which it doesn't work as it should, breaks their PC trying to make it work. Companies have to ensure by law that it works on 100% of the cases and when it fails they have legal responsability. It's that 1% that costs these companies (and this goes for any tech company, game developer, car vendors, whatever) a lot of money in QA, but they have to do it, because even something that seems so small as 1% is a very big number of people in real life, outside iof enthusiast forums. A hack is used by very few people, which can literally translate to 99 people saying how well it works and only one person saying it broke his windows installment. That person will be ignored and people think it works flawlessly which in most cases is probably true, but not always. There's still the fact that it could NOT work in certain cases, because it has not been tested. If something untested was officially released and it didn't work in just 1% of people, that would still make a number of more than 1 million failing cases and that would make a lot of noise... class actions would be put in place etc, etc. I repeat, companies have to ENSURE it works flawlessly and that costs a lot of money, not to mention having access to tech and IP that the company might not have, like for example, for Nvidia Southern Islands/Northerns Islands. How are them supposed to ensure 100% interoperability when those cards are released? Average joe will not understand if for whatever reason PhysX doesn't work in his shiny new card. Why is he supposed to wait 2 months in order to have something he already had working before?
In a sense that's what is good about PC gaming and modding. Someone can make something and you can try it under your responsability. When I say "you", I mean an enthusiast, because average joe will not downlaod it, and that's the difference. Average joe won't download such a hack, but average joe will download an official release, average joe will try such official release and if it doesn't work average joe will blame the company and will go as far as taking legal action, because average joe knows much more about class actions than he knows about tech. And that's all, really. No campany is willing to spend so much money making something work when it won't even work in most systems out there (Vista). try explaining average joe why that something that is official works on XP or 7, but doesn't work on Vista... try...
PhysX could be made to run on ATI stream, but there is just no way in hell CUDA can run on ATI, nor stream could run on Nv.