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
if you two want to argue this stuff, at least get your facts right.
Please learn what these all are, and do:
CUDA
PhysX
Physics
Stream
once you've done that, come back, and make sure you dont screw things up. Nvidia doesnt do physics - they do PhysX. ATi doesnt do CUDA, and never will, and so on.
CUDA is the reason you need an nVidia card, because that's what language PhysX speaks.
Is Streams ATI's version, or answer to CUDA?
Physics is math.
Just making sure it's all straight in my head.
is it possible for a CUDA app to be ported to STREAM and vice versa? yes. but no ones done it yet (probably due to legal reasons)
Ok, so no one will port CUDA to Stream, simply because nVidia would hammer them with lawsuits to protect their IP. Using an nVidia card to use CUDA isn't illegal because that's the reason you bought it, and you own the product.
Maybe nVidia is trying to protect themselves from liability by not supporting the GTX for PhysX front, in case someone seriously messes up their computer. They're not making it really hard for it to be hacked.
thats like saying i'm gunna port OSX to windows. Or run the GUI for an iphone on my samsung mobile phone. you can convert OSX apps to run in windows (with a lot of work) but you cant make OSX run in windows.
They're two different langauges, maybe i should stick with that for examples.
You can translate a japanese movie into english, and back and forth - but you cant make a movie in english and then expect japanese speakers to understand it WITHOUT that translation.
You could write a translation layer that translates CUDA into STREAM allowing CUDA apps to run on stream, but it wouldnt be a perfect lineup, just like spoken languages don't translate perfectly. manual debugging still needs to be done, and performance would be far worse than doing it natively
(ignore the whole VMware thing that someones going to throw up in response to this - emulation isnt the point at hand)
Oh, I totally get it. Like I said, I misread, lol.
Physics is PhysX, right.
I think I'm done. :)
PhysX is one physics engine made by ageia, now owned by nvidia. the words physics and physx are NOT interchangeable.
ATI's stream and nvidias CUDA are the same thing, for their different hardware engines - a way to use the power of a GPU to perform non 3D tasks. anything doable on CUDA is doable on stream, so long as its coded natively for that platform.
Robert, PhysX is nVidia's proprietary physics engine. Physics is not PhysX.
Here's a thread with pretty in depth discussion on it:
forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=119217Meh, I've never played it on the console. I'm starting to become a PC gaming guy these days. All I ever built my machines for in the past was for WoW and I overkilled it. My Xbox gathers dust, unless an exclusive title comes out I really want to play.
But Mussels I led you astray in my earlier post. I was merely trying to question why CUDA would be harder to do on a NVidia GPU used as a PPU with an ATI also present as the main GPU. Why isn't this being done? That is all I was trying to shout.
These posts have way too many acronyms. Good night all.
even again there you say something that makes no sense.PhysX is a software physics engine designed to run on the CPU primarily, or be accelerated by a PPU or Nvidia GPU. It has nothing to do with translating anything.
and btw i think this is ilegall move, we buy the card because of this feature. i hope EU can step in just like they do wit linux in ps3
but theres nothing we can do about that here.
Nice hybrid driver
Anyway, it was obvious they didn't "remove" restriction. They're Nvidia and that won't happen. The block was on Nvidia's CP level, in SLi&Physx settings. When used with a non-Nvidia GPU, Physx option disappeared. Now that they changed UI to a new one on that page in 257.15, block went away on first rev beta drivers. They forgot to put it back, LOL. Now I wonder if I can do SLi on Server 2003, without changing it to XP x64... maybe tri-way SLi, or how about Quad SLi on XP based OS? Is there ANY reason why I can't, other then their policy? Man Nvidia is stupid...