NVIDIA Shuns Lucid Hydra

[wolf]

I understand the whole PhysX deal, they paid money for that company, they dont have to share that for free.

I almost forgot that, but all around the net people think it deserves a :shadedshu

Given they did pay for that technology, and as I remember it, threw Ageia a bone at the same time (as they were slowly going under) I think it was an olive branch of peace from Nvidia to offer it for free.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Eh??? Hello??? AMD blocked a third party programmer from making PhysX possible in AMD cards. Hydra is not a standalone piece of hardware that can work on its own, it depends on GPUs to be of any use, so yes, they have to colaborate as much as AMD/Nvidia feels they have to. If not anyone of them can directly block them from using/modifying their hardware.

AND all this is if Nvidia is really bloking anything at all, because all I have seen about the issue so far comes from Lucid themselves. It could be just someone in Lucid being pissed off and /or having hallucinations because the only MB using their piece of hardware has been delayed.

No I believe it was Nvidia that disables Physx when a ATI card is recognized.

 

[Cheeseball]

@TheMailMan78

That situation just happened in recent times. Months before, NVIDIA was offering PhysX implementation to AMD/ATI cards, but they just didn't accept it. (Most likely because they wanted to work on their own Stream implementation, but as it is, it never took off.)

 

[theubersmurf]

As much as I hate Nvidia for doing this I don't blame them. They invested a lot of money into their own developments. Why allow the competition benefit from your hard work? Also lets not start screaming "anti-trust" just because we don't agree with something. This is nowhere near anti-trust yet. Nvidia holds the majority of the market but no where near enough to be a monopoly.

Speaking of which whatever happen to the ATI/Nvidia "price fixing" thing a few years ago?

I got about $130.00 from the settlement. Not what I paid for the stuff, but it was a nice rebate.

 

[human_error]

Nvidia offered PhysX for free to AMD. The reason for that is simple, they needed it to be widely used. AMD refused for a simple reason, at the time they were nowhere near close to be competitive on that front, they still aren't in reality, but they are closer at least in the general perception.

I don't believe nvidia did offer it free to ATi. The guy who hacked out the ability to run physx on ati cards was snapped up by nvidia almost immediately to stop him making any more drivers (nvidia couldn't order a cease and dissist order like creative does to driver modders as he was modding ATi drivers). Even if Nvidia said publicly they offered physx free to ATi (which i have never seen official evidence of) behind closed doors they would have demanded a heavy premium from ATi - every card sale nvidia could have made only due to physx hype would have been lost and so they would have lost revenue, so unless we see official documentation from nvidia you can't say it was offered free (to be fair it would be stupid to offer it free, but i can see nvidia getting unreasonable in liscencing demands from their competition). I'm not saying ATi are saints, but i am saying that nvidia's M.O. at the moment is dick move after dick move (removing dx10.1 from Assasins creed, blocking AA in batman:AA, disabling physx if an ati card is present, bricking their cards if luicid is present).

Back OT though this is a dick move from nvidia - they see their proprietary standard (and chipsets) threatened by a new product and so c*ckblock it - the hydra chip only allocates different directx calls to different chips - there is nothing wrong in that as all the cards handle is directx calls, the hydra chip just reduces the number of calls an individual card has to make, so there is no compatability issue there (it's the same thing as reducing draw distance or disabling the showing of certain effects in-game, less directx calls - the only issue would be with AA across boundaries but i'm sure luicid would be able to workaround that issue. Luicid would have no effect on how the nvidia cards would work - the nvidia drivers still decode the directx calls and render an image - this would be no different if luicid was there or not - the problem comes as nvidia's chipsets and SLi liscencing would be significantly reduced if luicid became popular, as well as nvidia's ability to block dual ati cards from working on nvidia chipsets.

Here's to hoping luicid can release soon, i'd really like to see if it is more efficient than SLi/crossfire

 

[TheMailMan78]

@TheMailMan78

That situation just happened in recent times. Months before, NVIDIA was offering PhysX implementation to AMD/ATI cards, but they just didn't accept it. (Most likely because they wanted to work on their own Stream implementation, but as it is, it never took off.)

Well my point is nothing is for free. That olive branch had a cost. Licensing or something. You don't buy out a company and give the technology to your competitor. Also the fact Nvidia disables support of Physx when a non-Nvidia GPU is present kinda brings that home.

 

[Munki]

nVidia is like trying to have its own little monopoly. I dislike it very much, thus why I have not/Will not buy anything from nvidia ( Epic im wearing a Nvidia shirt only thing I own )

 

[TheMailMan78]

nVidia is like trying to have its own little monopoly. I dislike it very much, thus why I have not/Will not buy anything from nvidia ( Epic im wearing a Nvidia shirt only thing I own )

You have an Nvidia T-Shirt? Dork.

 

[PP Mguire]

Ill trade you my ATI shirt for your nVidia shirt

I dont like their business practices BUT i love their products. I really dont care what they do on the side just as long as they HURRY THE FUCK UP WITH A GOD DAMNED DX11 GPU!!!!!!!!

 

[TheMailMan78]

Ill trade you my ATI shirt for your nVidia shirt

I dont like their business practices BUT i love their products. I really dont care what they do on the side just as long as they HURRY THE FUCK UP WITH A GOD DAMNED DX11 GPU!!!!!!!!

Man after my own heart. My next rig will be Intel/Nvidia for sure.

 

[Munki]

You have an Nvidia T-Shirt? Dork.

Zat meh! I am THE dork.

 

[Benetanegia]

Well my point is nothing is for free. That olive branch had a cost. Licensing or something. You don't buy out a company and give the technology to your competitor. Also the fact Nvidia disables support of Physx when a non-Nvidia GPU is present kinda brings that home.

Like he said that's months (almost a full year) after AMD refused to take PhysX for free. They had no reason not to adopt it except they would be much slower at doing GPU physics. As for why they don't allow Physx when Ati is doing the rendering is easy: AMD is not willing to help them with optimizations and QA, and there's no way that Nvidia can QA on AMD cards themselves, so they can ensure it works well. The guy that has hacked that has all his community to test and even if the solution is not perfect it doesn't matter, no one will blame him. On top of that anyone using the hack is an enthusiast, so he knows how this things work. If Nvidia allowed for Ati+Nvidia for PhysX and something went wrong on the Ati front that affected how PhysX was working, they would be blamed and this time by the mainstream public, which is incapable of understanding anything, but "It just doesn't work".

I don't believe nvidia did offer it free to ATi. The guy who hacked out the ability to run physx on ati cards was snapped up by nvidia almost immediately to stop him making any more drivers (nvidia couldn't order a cease and dissist order like creative does to driver modders as he was modding ATi drivers). Even if Nvidia said publicly they offered physx free to ATi (which i have never seen official evidence of) behind closed doors they would have demanded a heavy premium from ATi - every card sale nvidia could have made only due to physx hype would have been lost and so they would have lost revenue, so unless we see official documentation from nvidia you can't say it was offered free (to be fair it would be stupid to offer it free, but i can see nvidia getting unreasonable in liscencing demands from their competition). I'm not saying ATi are saints, but i am saying that nvidia's M.O. at the moment is dick move after dick move (removing dx10.1 from Assasins creed, blocking AA in batman:AA, disabling physx if an ati card is present, bricking their cards if luicid is present).

Back OT though this is a dick move from nvidia - they see their proprietary standard (and chipsets) threatened by a new product and so c*ckblock it - the hydra chip only allocates different directx calls to different chips - there is nothing wrong in that as all the cards handle is directx calls, the hydra chip just reduces the number of calls an individual card has to make, so there is no compatability issue there (it's the same thing as reducing draw distance or disabling the showing of certain effects in-game, less directx calls - the only issue would be with AA across boundaries but i'm sure luicid would be able to workaround that issue. Luicid would have no effect on how the nvidia cards would work - the nvidia drivers still decode the directx calls and render an image - this would be no different if luicid was there or not - the problem comes as nvidia's chipsets and SLi liscencing would be significantly reduced if luicid became popular, as well as nvidia's ability to block dual ati cards from working on nvidia chipsets.

Here's to hoping luicid can release soon, i'd really like to see if it is more efficient than SLi/crossfire

You might not believe it, but they did offer it for free. You are basing your opinion in things that are and have always been wrong. They have always been FUD, like:

- Assassin's Creed and DX10.1. You want proofs of that Nvidia offered PhysX for free, but you are willing to believe that BS against what the developer said with no proofs. Nvidia had nothing to do with that, if they didn't want dx10.1 the game would have never been released with dx10.1!!! it's not as if they couldn't buy an Ati DX10.1 card, test how it performed and take out DX10.1 from the game before they launched. Proof of that is that the same develper released just a few months later FarCry 2, that not only had DX10.1, but also had implemented into DX10 the same special AA feature that was the only thing that was better in the 10.1 version of AC.

- Batman and AA: discussed many times, Unreal engine has no AA, that AA was specifically programmed for Nvidia, it even says Nvidia AA in the menu. The developer asked AMD to send some engineers to help QA assurance that AA for Ati cards. AMD didn't even want to hear about them from the start because it was a TWIMTBP game.

- Blocking PhysX is because of the same and I explain that above.

- Lucid is because of the same.

 

[PP Mguire]

Man after my own heart. My next rig will be Intel/Nvidia for sure.

Well you saw what i did. i5/Nvidia ftw. Ive never been happier with my PC. (Besides when my dad upgraded my P1 to a Duron 950mhz with DDR back in the day.......but thats besides the point)

I dont see why people get all jumbled up about what this or that company does in the end. As long as YOU the CONSUMER dont get affected then it shouldnt matter. All i care about is products being released in a timely manner and prices dont skyrocket more than they already have. (It goes for any computer company in my books)

Like he said that's months (almost a full year) after AMD refused to take PhysX for free. They had no reason not to adopt it except they would be much slower at doing GPU physics. As for why they don't allow Physx when Ati is doing the rendering is easy: AMD is not willing to help them with optimizations and QA, and there's no way that Nvidia can QA on AMD cards themselves, so they can ensure it works well. The guy that has hacked that has all his community to test and even if the solution is not perfect it doesn't matter, no one will blame him. On top of that anyone using the hack is an enthusiast, so he knows how this things work. If Nvidia allowed for Ati+Nvidia for PhysX and something went wrong on the Ati front that affected how PhysX was working, they would be blamed and this time by the mainstream public, which is incapable of understanding anything, but "It just doesn't work".



You might not believe it, but they did offer it for free. You are basing your opinion in things that are and have always been wrong. They have always been FUD, like:

- Assassin's Creed and DX10.1. You want proofs of that Nvidia offered PhysX for free, but you are willing to believe that BS against what the developer said with no proofs. Nvidia had nothing to do with that, if they didn't want dx10.1 the game would have never been released with dx10.1!!! it's not as if they couldn't buy an Ati DX10.1 card, test how it performed and take out DX10.1 from the game before they launched. Proof of that is that the same develper released just a few months later FarCry 2, that not only had DX10.1, but also had implemented into DX10 the same special AA feature that was the only thing that was better in the 10.1 version of AC.

- Batman and AA: discussed many times, Unreal engine has no AA, that AA was specifically programmed for Nvidia, it even says Nvidia AA in the menu. The developer asked AMD to send some engineers to help QA assurance that AA for Ati cards. AMD didn't even want to hear about them from the start because it was a TWIMTBP game.

- Blocking PhysX is because of the same and I explain that above.

- Lucid is because of the same.

This is exactly why i didnt get into the batman flamethread. I dont see why ATI can have 10.1 features where as Nvidia cant have their own AA in a game. A SINGLE GAME.

I supposed every side will have its closed minded fanbois.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Like he said that's months (almost a full year) after AMD refused to take PhysX for free. They had no reason not to adopt it except they would be much slower at doing GPU physics. As for why they don't allow Physx when Ati is doing the rendering is easy: AMD is not willing to help them with optimizations and QA, and there's no way that Nvidia can QA on AMD cards themselves, so they can ensure it works well. The guy that has hacked that has all his community to test and even if the solution is not perfect it doesn't matter, no one will blame him. On top of that anyone using the hack is an enthusiast, so he knows how this things work. If Nvidia allowed for Ati+Nvidia for PhysX and something went wrong on the Ati front that affected how PhysX was working, they would be blamed and this time by the mainstream public, which is incapable of understanding anything, but "It just doesn't work".



You might not believe it, but they did offer it for free. You are basing your opinion in things that are and have always been wrong. They have always been FUD, like:

- Assassin's Creed and DX10.1. You want proofs of that Nvidia offered PhysX for free, but you are willing to believe that BS against what the developer said with no proofs. Nvidia had nothing to do with that, if they didn't want dx10.1 the game would have never been released with dx10.1!!! it's not as if they couldn't buy an Ati DX10.1 card, test how it performed and take out DX10.1 from the game before they launched. Proof of that is that the same develper released just a few months later FarCry 2, that not only had DX10.1, but also had implemented into DX10 the same special AA feature that was the only thing that was better in the 10.1 version of AC.

- Batman and AA: discussed many times, Unreal engine has no AA, that AA was specifically programmed for Nvidia, it even says Nvidia AA in the menu. The developer asked AMD to send some engineers to help QA assurance that AA for Ati cards. AMD didn't even want to hear about them from the start because it was a TWIMTBP game.

- Blocking PhysX is because of the same and I explain that above.

- Lucid is because of the same.

NOTHING is for free my friend. Thats the only proof I need. Why would a company buy something and then GIVE it to their competitor?

 

[Munki]

Well my point is I don't like buying products from a crooked company. Their business problems directly affect consumers like me. I wouldn't go buy an Apple Ipod from a crackhead, because he stole it. Im willing to pay more, just not to a crooked company. I dont know if that made any sense.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Well my point is I don't like buying products from a crooked company. Their business problems directly affect consumers like me. I wouldn't go buy an Apple Ipod from a crackhead, because he stole it. Im willing to pay more, just not to a crooked company. I dont know if that made any sense.

Yeah. Its called principle.

 

[theubersmurf]

You might not believe it, but they did offer it for free.

Provide evidence of this claim.

 

[PP Mguire]

Well my point is I don't like buying products from a crooked company. Their business problems directly affect consumers like me. I wouldn't go buy an Apple Ipod from a crackhead, because he stole it. Im willing to pay more, just not to a crooked company. I dont know if that made any sense.

Every computer company is crooked in its own way. I proved this with AMD/ATI a while back during 5000 launch. So if you base your purchases on that then you should go to custom building your own computer from scratch designing your own parts.

 

[iLLz]

I hope someone has the guts (and resources) to sue NVIDIA for their practices in regards to SLI and PhysX. Their selfish behavior has to stop, now.

I wonder what Intel is going to do with Larrabee. Are they going to embrace Hydra or invent something on their own for multi-GPU technology. Because of Larrabee, I think it will be Intel that decides this feud between NVIDIA and Lucid if Lucid doesn't act on their own behalf.

Intel invested in LucidLogix to help them get Hydra up and running. I believe they invested a cool $100 Million a while back.

 

[PP Mguire]

Intel ftw.

 

[Munki]

Every computer company is crooked in its own way. I proved this with AMD/ATI a while back during 5000 launch. So if you base your purchases on that then you should go to custom building your own computer from scratch designing your own parts.

This is a constant thing with Nvidia, I could understand it within reason, but this is getting out of hand.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Provide evidence of this claim.

No hes right. They did offer it but the details were never fully disclosed. Just a lot of PR BS basically.

 

[PP Mguire]

This is a constant thing with Nvidia, I could understand it within reason, but this is getting out of hand.

Its a constant thing with any company that has been in this discussion. Light is on Nvidia because they are a major hammer in the industry. Only reason. Same goes for Intel and their own lawsuite.

 

[Benetanegia]

NOTHING is for free my friend. Thats the only proof I need. Why would a company buy something and then GIVE it to their competitor?

So that it becomes widely used?

 

[Munki]

Its a constant thing with any company that has been in this discussion. Light is on Nvidia because they are a major hammer in the industry. Only reason. Same goes for Intel and their own lawsuite.

Okay then. Im going back to my hot pockets.