AMD to PhysX: 'Acceptable Under Conditions'

[From_Nowhere]

AMD isn't officially supporting it because it would be a bad for business. It would lead to CUDA/PhysX becoming the only (de facto) GPGPU/Physics code, and would "flush" what AMD is doing with FireStream and Havok Physics down the toilet.

Either way, the progress of [graphics & physics] technology is going to be interesting this coming year.

 

[phanbuey]

I think ATI is taking the proper stance here. Of course Physx is gonna run better on NV cards. Who would've though that CUDA runs better on the hardware it's coded for?

ATI just doesn't want NV to use it against them in advertising, in exchange for letting it happen.

How would you know how well ATI codes drivers? In my experience, their drivers are every bit as good as NV's.

Same as above goes for you. And did you just admit to being an AMD/NV fanboy? Yeah, that really validates your opinion. /sarcasm

lol I just sent back a 4870 because of the drivers - random stuttering whenever overclocked past the CCC limit even if overdrive was disabled... and the 2900XT was terrible at inception because of drivers. Ive had ATI cards... even my x300 on my laptop doesnt do dual monitor bc of drivers... and lets face it

If NV can make a card that has a maximum bandwith of .6 tera go as fast as a card with 1.2 tera, you gotta admit software's got something to do with it... ATI drivers are crap.

 

[Megasty]

lol I just sent back a 4870 because of the drivers - random stuttering whenever overclocked past the CCC limit even if overdrive was disabled... and the 2900XT was terrible at inception because of drivers. Ive had ATI cards... even my x300 on my laptop doesnt do dual monitor bc of drivers... and lets face it

If NV can make a card that has a maximum bandwith of .6 tera go as fast as a card with 1.2 tera, you gotta admit software's got something to do with it... ATI drivers are crap.

AMD has admitted that the drivers for the 4800 series are extremely immature, even though I've had no problem with them, especially with OCing. I was able to get my 4870 at a playable 835/1120 w/o mods. AMD & NV achieve their performance in 2 different ways. NV with transistors & AMD with shaders. Obviously the more shaders the card have the more FLOPs it will put out, even if the transistors are lower in number & less powerful.

 

[Mussels]

yeah last page i was talking about widescreen scaling.

For example: you have a 1440x900 monitor. you play a game at 1280x1024 because it doesnt support widescreen... you get a stretched, blurry image.
ATI have an option thats meant to fix it, but it only works if the new res is the same aspect ratio as the native res... which is kinda pointless. if it was widescreen already you wouldnt need scaling disabled.
Its just a niggling thing they never got around to fixing, although i noticed the options changed on my 3450 in cat 8.6, so i'm open for someone to test it.

 

[Hayder_Master]

believe me guys what i am said yesterday, ati prepare for something this is only for news and diversion , wait for ati nuclear strike , they hide something , this is my guesses just i expect before for when nvidia 8800 and 9800 take all area , ati below the away with hd 4000 , now ati try do something solve physics problem , and i think it is software to run physics on gpu just like the guy from Israel who is do it before , and by the way do you knows nvidia take this guy and now he work for them , but ati have the idea now , they work on it

 

[Wile E]

lol I just sent back a 4870 because of the drivers - random stuttering whenever overclocked past the CCC limit even if overdrive was disabled... and the 2900XT was terrible at inception because of drivers. Ive had ATI cards... even my x300 on my laptop doesnt do dual monitor bc of drivers... and lets face it

If NV can make a card that has a maximum bandwith of .6 tera go as fast as a card with 1.2 tera, you gotta admit software's got something to do with it... ATI drivers are crap.

The OC issue you encountered sounds more like user error, pushing it too far, or a hardware problem to me. Nobody else on these forums with the 4870 seem to be complaining about it.

And upon release the 2900 was not terrible. I bought mine launch day. They worked fine. Was there more performance to be had from later revisions? Sure there was. But if you paid attention to NV's 8800 drivers when they first released, they performed like crap too, and had all kinds of bugs, not letting many games even start. Don't even get me started on the 7950GX2.

And bandwidth ratings have nothing to do with the performance differences. Are the 4800 series drivers a little immature? Sure. But so are the G200 drivers. More performance will come from both in driver revisions for both camps. The performance differences come from architectural differences, not the drivers.

So, in short, ATI's drivers are just fine. Both NV and ATI have just as many driver issues.

 

[Mussels]

The OC issue you encountered sounds more like user error, pushing it too far, or a hardware problem to me. Nobody else on these forums with the 4870 seem to be complaining about it.

And upon release the 2900 was not terrible. I bought mine launch day. They worked fine. Was there more performance to be had from later revisions? Sure there was. But if you paid attention to NV's 8800 drivers when they first released, they performed like crap too, and had all kinds of bugs, not letting many games even start. Don't even get me started on the 7950GX2.

And bandwidth ratings have nothing to do with the performance differences. Are the 4800 series drivers a little immature? Sure. But so are the G200 drivers. More performance will come from both in driver revisions for both camps. The performance differences come from architectural differences, not the drivers.

So, in short, ATI's drivers are just fine. Both NV and ATI have just as many driver issues.

as an early owner of an 8800GTX, i agree. BOTH Companies have cards that suck ass at launch, and become great later. 8800GTX crashed a lot at launch, ati 2xx0 series had severe DX10 problems at launch.

Its fairly even overall, to be honest.

 

[phanbuey]

as an early owner of an 8800GTX, i agree. BOTH Companies have cards that suck ass at launch, and become great later. 8800GTX crashed a lot at launch, ati 2xx0 series had severe DX10 problems at launch.

Its fairly even overall, to be honest.

meh... maybe im just bitter about sending the 4870 back. And it was the drivers, not user error... i know because when i uninstalled CCC and installed just the driver alone through device manager the stutter would go away.

Back on topic tho, CUDA or Firestream - whichever needs to become an industry standard ASAP... Intel entering the market with larrabee spells trouble for both companies and threatens to stifle their GPU computing pipedream.

It would be nice to see one of these standards become the next x86. AMD would be where it is today if it went up to intel and said "X86 is acceptable under conditions".

 

[imperialreign]

yeah last page i was talking about widescreen scaling.

For example: you have a 1440x900 monitor. you play a game at 1280x1024 because it doesnt support widescreen... you get a stretched, blurry image.
ATI have an option thats meant to fix it, but it only works if the new res is the same aspect ratio as the native res... which is kinda pointless. if it was widescreen already you wouldnt need scaling disabled.
Its just a niggling thing they never got around to fixing, although i noticed the options changed on my 3450 in cat 8.6, so i'm open for someone to test it.

That clears it up a lot - TBH, I've never heard of any issue like this, and haven't really messed with the LCD settings too much as I've been able to run most games at 1440x900

but only scaling to a different res of the same aspect ration is a little stoopid, IMO; considering the majority of widescreens tend to be 16:10, and there are only a handful of 16:10 resolutions, y'know?

 

[Mussels]

That clears it up a lot - TBH, I've never heard of any issue like this, and haven't really messed with the LCD settings too much as I've been able to run most games at 1440x900

but only scaling to a different res of the same aspect ration is a little stoopid, IMO; considering the majority of widescreens tend to be 16:10, and there are only a handful of 16:10 resolutions, y'know?

battlefield 2 was the big biatch, as was 2142 (2142 recently got it fixed in a patch)

They only did 4:3 resolutions (and 5:4, a la 1280x1024). The consensus was that widescreen users were cheating, so widescreen users had to disable scaling to get a non-blurry picture.

Nvidia user got black bars, ATI users got told to get a new screen. seriously thats what ATI support told me when i emailed them, "buy a new screen with its own scaling options"

 

[usntom]

ok wile E
http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=227&threadid=96962&enterthread=y

if you can read theirs quite a few title posts showes problems with drivers. but hey
we nvidia peeps dont mind sarcasm from ati poor cant get a driver to work so it crashes. your bench marks are fast but to hold a nice
long lead spend a little more time quarterly like nvidia does bringing out new drivers for its cards.. now thats sarcasm girly

 

[usntom]

lol I just sent back a 4870 because of the drivers - random stuttering whenever overclocked past the CCC limit even if overdrive was disabled... and the 2900XT was terrible at inception because of drivers. Ive had ATI cards... even my x300 on my laptop doesnt do dual monitor bc of drivers... and lets face it

If NV can make a card that has a maximum bandwith of .6 tera go as fast as a card with 1.2 tera, you gotta admit software's got something to do with it... ATI drivers are crap.

see he knows whats up wile E !!!! i build computers for a hobby and practically all ATI cards
i put in case i useally get a call asking to put in a nvidia card

 

[Mussels]

see he knows whats up wile E !!!! i build computers for a hobby and practically all ATI cards
i put in case i useally get a call asking to put in a nvidia card

well the forum you quoted is full of idiots. 'OMG ATI CARD ON NVIDIA CHIPSET! LOWER FPS!'

later down is an intelligent post, which shows that the guy installed dodgy beta drivers known to have problems - user error and not ATI's fault at all. betas are betas, after all.

Oh and guess what... i use Nvidia, so i'm no fanboi here. both companies have screwups, the idea is to choose the best products from either company - not to spout crap and twist everything to justify your own purchases.

 

[Wile E]

see he knows whats up wile E !!!! i build computers for a hobby and practically all ATI cards
i put in case i useally get a call asking to put in a nvidia card

I'm willing to bet I have more experience building than you do. I've been building rigs since the 286 days.

And as for driver bugs, here ya go: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showforum=33

Just as many bug posts there.

For the record, look at my specs. I have an nVidia card in my main rig. These drivers have bugs just like any other company's drivers. I also own a 2900XT that sometimes sees duty in my secondary rig. The drivers are completely equal.

 

[phanbuey]

I'm willing to bet I have more experience building than you do. I've been building rigs since the 286 days.

And as for driver bugs, here ya go: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showforum=33

Just as many bug posts there.

For the record, look at my specs. I have an nVidia card in my main rig. These drivers have bugs just like any other company's drivers. I also own a 2900XT that sometimes sees duty in my secondary rig. The drivers are completely equal.

Haha... I wouldnt doubt that... I remember reading a very entertaining TEC meltdown thread a while back .

 

[SHANE]

wow... acceptable under conditions... of course its gonna run better on Nvidia lol... not because nvidia made it so, but because ATI cant write a driver to save their life.

EDIT: although i do appreciate that they dont disallow it... But how is the "PhysX runs better on Nvidia" part gonna change??? If ATI doesnt support it, then PhysX runs better on Nvidia anyway, since ATI doesnt even have it. The only way they can avoid is if the DO support it, and it runs faster than on Nvidia hardware.

"WELL JUST TOO SAY" i have an agiea physx runing nicely with my 4870.mind u that aswell i got the lattest nvidia control panel for my physx 8.06...the odd thing is that i ran that phisx tweaker and it made more eye candy strangely...a true test is try warmonger(IT DEPENDS SOLEY ON PHYSIX)IF NONE WELL ENJOY 5 FPS A SECOND ..AND I DO AGREE ATI NEEDS TOO PLEASE, WITH BETTER DRIVER RELEASES..IM OK FOR NOW WITH 8.6

 

[Mussels]

"WELL JUST TOO SAY" i have an agiea physx runing nicely with my 4870.mind u that aswell i got the lattest nvidia control panel for my physx 8.06...the odd thing is that i ran that phisx tweaker and it made more eye candy strangely...a true test is try warmonger(IT DEPENDS SOLEY ON PHYSIX)IF NONE WELL ENJOY 5 FPS A SECOND ..AND I DO AGREE ATI NEEDS TOO PLEASE, WITH BETTER DRIVER RELEASES..IM OK FOR NOW WITH 8.6

no offense man, but that post is barely legible.

 

[usntom]

I'm willing to bet I have more experience building than you do. I've been building rigs since the 286 days.

And as for driver bugs, here ya go: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showforum=33

Just as many bug posts there.

For the record, look at my specs. I have an nVidia card in my main rig. These drivers have bugs just like any other company's drivers. I also own a 2900XT that sometimes sees duty in my secondary rig. The drivers are completely equal.

kind of dout that!!! i go back as far as this
http://oldcomputers.net/trs80i.html so far i've built over 400 computers more or less.
i'm not a programmer but i do know the in's and outs of ms-dos to the command prompts
sometimes you need a little programming knowledge to build computers now. heck harddrives
back then were cassett tape..

 

[Mussels]

kind of dout that!!! i go back as far as this
http://oldcomputers.net/trs80i.html so far i've built over 400 computers more or less.
i'm not a programmer but i do know the in's and outs of ms-dos to the command prompts
sometimes you need a little programming knowledge to build computers now. heck harddrives
back then were cassett tape..

and how much of that is irrelevant nowadays? i've been doing this since the 486, but i regularly keep in touch with product developers themselves (mostly OCZ these days) so i can keep my knowledge current. any fields i DONT know about, i keep in touch with people who do.

 

[Wile E]

kind of dout that!!! i go back as far as this
http://oldcomputers.net/trs80i.html so far i've built over 400 computers more or less.
i'm not a programmer but i do know the in's and outs of ms-dos to the command prompts
sometimes you need a little programming knowledge to build computers now. heck harddrives
back then were cassett tape..

Yeah, I had one too. That wasn't a build it yourself job tho. Also had an Atari 800. Can't remember which is older tho. I was rather young when we had those.

My first building experience is with 286's. I built and sold custom computers with a friend all thru the 90's as well. Did quite well until DIY became a bit more popular, and made it a little harder to find clients. I've continued to build on my own here and there tho, as friends, family or co-workers need machines. My build total is in the hundreds as well. Tho maybe not quite 400. Your posting style led me to believe you were much younger than you apparently are.

But, regardless, that doesn't change the fact that both ATI and nVidia have just as many driver problems. Dig around the nVidia forums and see for yourself.

 

[JRMBelgium]

ATI cards have way more shaders so in theory PhysX should run better on ATI.