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
Hell, they don't even have to go that far. They can simply say mixed gpu solutions are not officially supported, and they wash their hands of the imagined support costs.
And none of that explains why they let it go for so long before deciding to cut it out.
It has nothing to do with support at all. It's nVidia not happy with the situation, and taking their ball and going home.Stop using Batman as an example. It's a poor one, and doesn't support your arguments at all. We've been over this a million times. That is one place nV was not wrong. The AA in Batman does not work in ATI properly, even when you force it.
Nvidia strugles to stay in green. Hell even Ati struggles and the reason that Stream never kicked off is because they simply didn't want to put money on it. Same for OpenCL right now, or GPU accelerated Havok or countless of other examples. Just because Nvidia has money doesn't mean they have to let it go down the drain.
I use it as an example because i keep hearing crap about it from nvidia users...and AA works just fine in it on ATI, if you force it via CCC.
They don't want to have to worry EVER. Period. That's why you just cut it off. Other option is enable it and see the web flooding with complaints. And don't say that there would be no complaints, because there's been many complaints about far more irrelevant things than poor fps in a certain game which is the first sympton that would be noticed.When forced from CCC it's not Nvidia's AA, it's the normal supersampling AA that is always posible.
Or if you mean the regular SSAA, it's because it's not in the engine at all. It would just be the equivalent of forcing it thru the CCC anyway.
They didn't disable anything for ATI. They added a feature for themselves. 2 entirely different things. If they disabled shit for ATI, we would already be hearing about anti-trust/anti-competitive lawsuits or investigations. Nothing supports your theory, mussels.
Come on man admit it! Nvidia blocked a feature so that you would buy their hardware exclusively. All that hacker did was re-enable it. This has nothing to do with QA and everything to do with investment. If Nvidia was smart and REALLY wanted Phyisx to go mainstream they would sell dedicated PPU's like AGIEA. However they won't. Why because they think they bought the golden goose with Physx. Problem is none of the developers seem to agree unless you toss a bucket of money at them with TWIMTBP program.
i was talking about the other stuff, the random debris and effects that got disabled without physX, when they dont need it for those effects.
Physx is capable of much more. It doesn't have the market share for devs to use it for anything more tho. Non-nV users still need to want to play the games, and using Physx too heavily counts them out of the super advanced features. That IS nV's fault, however, and this blocking Physx on systems with ATI is one of the prime reasons.
The AA forced through CCC is FSAA, not MSAA, which is why the AA enabled through CCC comes at a huge performance hit, and the AA enabled through the game menu doesn't.
Also, the AA that nVidia added to UE3 for Batman doesn't work on ATi hardware as it wasn't coded for ATi hardware. This is identical to your argument about CUDA not working on ATi hardware. It wasn't coded for ATi hardware, so it doesn't work on ATi hardware.
You can find more info about it here: www.ngohq.com/graphic-cards/17716-batman-arkham-asylum-msaa-fix.html
Such thought as...are invalid.
This case has nothing to do with nvidia hardware/technology, just two VendorID checks. One in the launcher, another one in the game.
What about CUDA... it's just a badly programmed applications. They are supposed to choose CUDA GPU by themselves, but some apps just ignore anything but primary GPU.
"The software is provided 'as is', without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and noninfringement. In no event shall the contributors or copyright holders be liable for any claim, damages or other liability, whether in an action of contract, tort ot otherwise, arising from, out of or in connection with the software or the use or other dealings with the software"
I'm sure ATI has the same disclaimer, effectively saying if drivers are dodgy, tough - you installed them. It's this sort of small print ant the end of the release notes thate makes a mockery of the notion that just because they're official you can use them with absolute certainty you have recourse to legal action if things go wrong.
So this kind of nullifies any arguments about QA for mixing gfx cards and physx where system damage is the end result.
Those disclaimers and the EULA are put there in order to make people think they can't do anything if something goes wrong and from what I see, it works.
it seems to me they don't take QA seriously