Hack Released to Enable PhysX on Windows 7 with ATI GPU Present

[EastCoasthandle]

right, but the ati crowd thinks physx is a joke and a marketing sceme. so why even bother with any of it?

I wouldn't classify those with AMD card for rendering and a nvidia card for physx as part of those who do not. This IMO is a different group of consumers.

 

[WarEagleAU]

I actually think this is pretty damn cool. I've wanted to try out Nvidia Dedicated GPUs (not IGPs like on my wife's laptop) for a minute now, just to be like "Wow, this is a Nvidia Graphics Card!" Now maybe I can snag up a 9800 GT or low 200 series here soon.

 

[Kreij]

Physics processing is not a joke to either NV or ATI users. It is what we will see more and more of as games progress.
Nvidia went the their route and ATI went their's.
The problem is that physics processing should be an open standard that works for everyone, on any card, in any game. We will see what unfolds in the future as the battle looks to be a lose/lose for anyone who demands a proprietary standard that only runs on their hardware.

Just my opinion

 

[Kaleid]

As long as you only can purchase physics acceleration through one company I'll ignore it.
And I'm not too fond of the idea of having two heat producing graphic cards inside the computer.

I think the GPU's either need a cheaper extra GPU to calculate stuff so that is always available even if you purchase one card or that physics acc. only take off when multi-CPU systems are common.

 

[ZoneDymo]

wait wait wait, i thought the ati crowd said physx is a joke and a marketing scheme. so why hack it for ati cards...

Generalise some more, will you?

Side question, can people still use AGEIA made PhysX cards?

 

[air_ii]

Generalise some more, will you?

Side question, can people still use AGEIA made PhysX cards?

No, they can't. Not with new PhysX stuff, anyway.

 

[Kaleid]

No, they can't. Not with new PhysX stuff, anyway.

All the more reason to wait with this much longer..

 

[Selene]

thank god, now can we move on and stop the nonsence posts about it.

 

[Kreij]

Quite some time ago there was a discussion here on TPU about the future of dedicated physics cards. The consensus was that it belonged on the mobo, not on the GPU, so that it was GPU independent. There are some issues their (buss latency) but no more that having a dedicated card.

The GPU is well suited for doing physics, but not if everyone has their own proprietary standard and the game companies are coerced into using one method or another.

As I said, we will see how this all works out.

 

[Regeneration]

It has happened. Those ASUS/BFG Ageia PhysX cards won't work (with recent drivers), if the drivers see an ATI GPU. As for legality, NVIDIA can do what it wants with its hardware/software.

No. This is not correct. They can’t do whatever they want to.

You put a product on the shelves that meant to do a specific task/mission and advertise it. You list its minimum requirements on the box and on your website.

You can’t come up after a few months/years and introduce some new exaggerated restrictions via software updates that weren’t listed in the minimum requirements after a lot of people already bought this product.

This is absolutely illegal. Nvidia made a terrible mistake and opened its front door for lawsuits from its customers and its rivals. They will probably revert it and remove these restrictions - for their own good.

If you bought a DVD player and it suddenly stopped working for no reason, then you are entitled for a refund/replacement. This fact covered by billions of legal precedences all around the globe.

 

[btarunr]

right, but the ati crowd thinks physx is a joke and a marketing sceme. so why even bother with any of it?

Like I said, EPen1smark Vantage. If it never had anything to do with PhysX, If I were an ATI user, I wouldn't even bother with any of it.

 

[cauby]

This could definetly force Nvidia to re-think it's moves,because it's really freaking dumb to disable phsyx on AGEIA PPU!!!!
Hell,phsyx was born out of Ageia!!

 

[Kreij]

No. This is not correct. They can’t do whatever they want.

You put a product on the shelves that meant to do a specific task/mission and advertise it. You list its minimum requirements on the box.

You can’t come up after a few months/years and introduce some new exaggerated restrictions by software updates that weren’t listed in the minimum requirements after a lot of people bought this product.

This is absolutely illegal. Nvidia made a terrible mistake and opened its front door for lawsuits from its customers and its rivals. They will probably revert it and remove these restrictions - for their own good.

If you bought a DVD player and it suddenly stopped working for no reason, then you are entitled for a refund/replacement. This fact covered by billions of legal precedences all around the globe.

Hi Regen !!

Technically (and legally) they can. If they push a product into end-of-life status they are no longer required by law to support it with "new and improved" updates.

They do, however, have to announce the ending of support for the product. Whether they have done this or not, I cannot say as it could be buried in some small print tattooed to some lawyer's a$$.

 

[W1zzard]

I'd be curious what invida charges for licensing cuda/physx.

if you are a serious developer they actually help you out with coding and give you money if you use those technologies in your product

 

[wiak]

all heil the user community!

 

[Regeneration]

Technically (and legally) they can. If they push a product into end-of-life status they are no longer required by law to support it with "new and improved" updates.

They are not allowed to break it on purpose. So according to your outlook, they are also allowed to send a malicious code and terminate legacy GeForce GPUs via drivers.

The law protects consumers from such abusive behavior.

 

[btarunr]

No. This is not correct. They can’t do whatever they want to.

You put a product on the shelves that meant to do a specific task/mission and advertise it. You list its minimum requirements on the box and on your website.

You can’t come up after a few months/years and introduce some new exaggerated restrictions via software updates that weren’t listed in the minimum requirements after a lot of people already bought this product.

This is absolutely illegal. Nvidia made a terrible mistake and opened its front door for lawsuits from its customers and its rivals. They will probably revert it and remove these restrictions - for their own good.

If you bought a DVD player and it suddenly stopped working for no reason, then you are entitled for a refund/replacement. This fact covered by billions of legal precedences all around the globe.

Take it easy. Ageia PhysX cards were never guaranteed to work under Windows 7 by Ageia/NVIDIA. I'm not taking sides here. We're all helpless one way or the other, and I agree with your work to a large extant.

And oh..once my DVD player's warranty period is over, a refund is the last thing I'd expect from its manufacturer if it abruptly fails.
I know that in this case, the manufacturer broke into my house, and broke my DVD player.

 

[Bo_Fox]

Nvidia should know that it is hurting the gamers with ATI cards who already have a dedicated card for PhysX. With Vista, it was not allowed, so Nvidia didnt do anything about it, but then Nvidia put in a code to block it in Win7 (which allowed 2 different GPU's to operate at the same time).

Those who play Mirror's Edge or Batman are left out in the cold if they have ATI cards.

Here's a note to you game developers who design such games:

No matter how much Nvidia is paying you to use PhysX instead of Havok or some other great game engines that allow for awesome physics utilized by the CPU (Crysis, Ghostbusters, etc..), please do not take the bait from Nvidia and then leave out nearly half of the gamers with a crippled version of your game.

PhysX already cripples it in the first place with a few gimmick effects. Usually, when PhysX is being used, it means that the game will not be allowed to have as good overall built-in physics effects as Crysis for example, and that the game will have to be designed in such a way to be played without PhysX for nearly 1/2 of the gamers out there. Once again, it means that while the game will be somewhat crippled without those PhysX effects, you will have to make sure that those additional physics effects are not so integrated into the game that it makes the game dependent on it.

A good game should depend on the physics. Usually, the better the physics are, the better the game could be by depending on it. Half Life 2 depended on it to a great degree, which earned it its reputation. Crysis also depended on integrated physics, in that the basic physic effects were always there no matter how much we tried to dumb down the settings. Games with such good engines never ever needed PhysX to begin with.

The gimmick PhysX effects could have been done using CPU-based algorithms with nearly or exactly the same stimulations so that we could enjoy Mirror's Edge or Batman on both ATI and Nvidia cards with much better performance than what Nvidia's PhysX would have ever allowed for with top-end Nvidia cards in the first place. It would have resulted in greater sale revenues in the long run than with Nvidia's TWIMTBP bribes. Also, you would have never been discouraged to build in some of the physics effects into the game so that the game depends on it, without having to worry about breaking the game for those with ATI cards. For example, Mirror's Edge could have actually depended on the flags and breaking glass that were done with cpu-based physics.

There you go, dear developers.

 

[air_ii]

I suppose if you were offered, say, 100k, you'd tell them to shove it ? (No, I don't know how much they pay).

Besides additional PhysX effects in Batman are a joke to me, anyway. I'm still waiting for a game that'd really convince that it's worthwile to spend extra $$$ on a physics capable hardware.

 

[Kreij]

They are not allowed to break it on purpose. So according to your outlook, they are also allowed to send a malicious code and terminate legacy GeForce GPUs via drivers.

The law protects consumers from such abusive behavior.

Forgive me, Regen, I did not mean to start an argument on the symatics of legal doctrine and precidence. It serves no purpose on a forum such as TPU.

I truly hope that this will all wash out with an open standard for physics that work for eveyone. Especially me.

 

[Regeneration]

But to be honest, this is a good thing – it opened my eyes. It took me months, but only now I realized that we shouldn't help Nvidia standardize PhysX. We should ignore and boycott it until it either dies or opens up for everyone. If I were GenL, I’d remove the patch and tell everyone to ignore PhysX. A good PC game would remain good with or without PhysX.

 

[HellasVagabond]

I would expect Legal Action by NVIDIA since it is their Technology so do not expect for this hack to survive long....Not to mention that Microsoft will certainly ban it from future updates....

 

[erocker]

I would expect Legal Action by NVIDIA since it is their Technology so do not expect for this hack to survive long....Not to mention that Microsoft will certainly ban it from future updates....

I wouldn't, unless they want to fall on their sword and alienate more customers. Since MS and ATi have a pretty good releationship right now I don't expect MS to do anything about it. Either way I don't expect physX in its current form to last much longer. *Well, Nvidia will probablly ask them to take it down first.

 

[wiak]

However, ATi is still working with HAVOK on it all... right now, both companies hate Nvidia, so working together to oust them from the market will be beneficial...

The downside is- once Nvidia caves in... it will just be Intel vs ATi in the GPU market.

more like AMD will have most of the cake, heck they are working with both havok (intel) and bullet to make them DirectCompute/OpenCL complaint

and NVIDIA will HAVE to comply to Intel/AMD physics rules, why? who the heck wants to program for ONE GPU vendor when there is a bunch more like ATi, S3 Graphics, Intel, Matrox that are basicly most of the market

one thing DirectCompute and OpenCL will arrive soon with Windows 7, and PhysX is then dead, most new games will use DirectCompute as its a part of DirectX 11 and is a open windows only standard, same goes for OpenCL thats an open open standard

 

[PP Mguire]

It will last a good long while and probably beat any other kind of phisics standard. Why you ask? Well like Rhino was saying if this was such a joke then why even bother with a hack for it? Apparently its more real then people think and more people want it even though they dont want to admit it. SO yea, with that being said id say PhysX is around to stay.