AMD's Roy Taylor: PhysX/Cuda doomed?

[BallaTheFeared]

It's funny how every few months PhysX gets a huge discussion, comical considering how unimportant it is

 

[Mr Expert]

It's funny how every few months PhysX gets a huge discussion, comical considering how unimportant it is

It's most likely about how important it should have been and never was.

 

[SirPauly]

nvidia took a big risk when they bought out the Physx tech from Ageia but the fact is they don't need it to prosper cause as we can see it's not even being used in any tangible way in recent times. I just can't understand why all the fanboys and nvidia themselves keep trying to paint a sinking ship.

The latest content would disagree with you from a GPU point-of-view! Popular titles like Arma 3 take advantage of the strengths of CPU PhysX.

The future growth of nVidia may be in the hands of Tegra and heterogeneous computing -- and having robust, flexible physic software tools makes a lot of sense.

While some are tying to sink the ship with words -- nVidia may be working hard to improve their software tools and potentially innovate physics!

Ultimately, the market decides!

 

[NIGELG]

It's funny how every few months PhysX gets a huge discussion, comical considering how unimportant it is

It's worth a discussion because there was so much promise in the tech....but sadly it has failed thanks to it's mismanagement and poor implementations.

 

[SirPauly]

How has it failed?

nVidia has a tremendous lead in discrete leadership -- GPU physics in actual content - especially as of late -- tools are more mature for multi platform and device ( Geforce, CPU, console, tegra, etc.) -- still innovating physics.

It's worth discussing and would actually see this failure like some claim actually have more competition!

 

[SirPauly]

The effects I'm mentioning are from this Youtube video.

There was a previous thread, forgot which part of the Anandtech forums, that pointed out different games that had similar/comparable particle effects WITHOUT needing PhysX.

Have you tried Hawken with PhysX on? The CPU does a nice job here in comparison with the GPU!

 

[NIGELG]

How has it failed?

nVidia has a tremendous lead in discrete leadership -- GPU physics in actual content - especially as of late -- tools are more mature for multi platform and device ( Geforce, CPU, console, tegra, etc.) -- still innovating physics.

It's worth discussing and would actually see this failure like some claim actually have more competition!

What is the ratio of GPU PhysX titles to NON GPU PhysX titles since 2006?I am sure it is less than 1%......

Epic fail.

 

[boxleitnerb]

It's still more than any other solution has - namely 0.

 

[Keysplayr]

Start a thread with a poll to see who used the PhysX driver hack to get an Nvidia card to run PhysX in their AMD GPU rig. That should tell you how much of a fail PhysX is. Please guys. No one is fooled.

 

[NIGELG]

It's still more than any other solution has - namely 0.

Lol...


It means not much people give a damn or want it or not much developers are interested.


If something is that good or innovative or desirable or lovely or whatever more people will have it,buy it ,want it,adopt it,use it etc etc.


Epic fail.

 

[NIGELG]

Start a thread with a poll to see who used the PhysX driver hack to get an Nvidia card to run PhysX in their AMD GPU rig. That should tell you how much of a fail PhysX is. Please guys. No one is fooled.

Yes a lot of people are fooled to the point of delusion.

I have never used any hack to get GPU PhysX.

Why don't you start a poll?You will definitely be distressed at the results.

 

[railven]

Start a thread with a poll to see who used the PhysX driver hack to get an Nvidia card to run PhysX in their AMD GPU rig. That should tell you how much of a fail PhysX is. Please guys. No one is fooled.

As someone who has done this, I think me having to do this is an example of Nvidia's failure to market and promote PhysX_GPU acceleration. I own the hardware (which I paid money for) why are they not letting me use it with my whatever primary card I have?

The fact that hacks that remove the hardware checks show that it works just tells me Nvidia is missing out on a whole section of buyers.

They can easily promote PhysX GPU cards and sell them as standalones. Then we'd really see adoption rates go up, in my opinion.

 

[96Firebird]

Let's say AMD and Nvidia strike a deal to allow AMD/Nvidia mixed for GPU PhysX. Who develops the drivers? When there are driver issues, who is to blame? Who has to put the work in to fix the issues? Is it worth it for Nvidia to allow this if it causes more problems than sales?

 

[NIGELG]

Let's say AMD and Nvidia strike a deal to allow AMD/Nvidia mixed for GPU PhysX. Who develops the drivers? When there are driver issues, who is to blame? Who has to put the work in to fix the issues? Is it worth it for Nvidia to allow this if it causes more problems than sales?

Nvidia's Disclaimer could be ''Use mixed gpu PhysX at your own risk''.

Nvidia's arrogance means they only want GPU physX IN PURE nVIDIA RIGS no matter what.....

 

[railven]

Let's say AMD and Nvidia strike a deal to allow AMD/Nvidia mixed for GPU PhysX. Who develops the drivers? When there are driver issues, who is to blame? Who has to put the work in to fix the issues? Is it worth it for Nvidia to allow this if it causes more problems than sales?

I'd figure an Nvidia branded product would be worked on by Nvidia. What does AMD have to do with this?

The current PhysX hack is a registry modifier that removes hardware checks. This works for like 95% of PhysX_GPU games and 100% of the PhysX_GPU games I've played (I can't vouch for Hawken.)

If you ever try PhysX Hacks you'd see how easy it is to make AMD+NV cards work and ask yourself "Why is NV blocking this?"

 

[Mr Expert]

Yes a lot of people are fooled to the point of delusion.

I have never used any hack to get GPU PhysX.

Why don't you start a poll?You will definitely be distressed at the results.

Physx is like a virus I avoid it like the plauge.

 

[Mr Expert]

Ultimately, the market decides!

It did and no game developers want to pay for Physx.

 

[boxleitnerb]

Lol...


It means not much people give a damn or want it or not much developers are interested.


If something is that good or innovative or desirable or lovely or whatever more people will have it,buy it ,want it,adopt it,use it etc etc.


Epic fail.

Do you think your posts are better if you use empty lines and repeatedly cry "epic fail"? I think not. Besides, if anything is epic fail, it's Bullet and Havok@GPU because they have not been able to accelerate a single game. GPU-PhysX has almost 30. Simple math, my friend, simple math.

It did and no game developers want to pay for Physx.

And no game developer wants to develop GPU-based physics simulations with Havok or Bullet. So what's that all about? Maybe the devs are all cheap and lazy in that regard and don't care about advanced physics in general?

 

[AnandThenMan]

Let's say AMD and Nvidia strike a deal to allow AMD/Nvidia mixed for GPU PhysX. Who develops the drivers? When there are driver issues, who is to blame? Who has to put the work in to fix the issues? Is it worth it for Nvidia to allow this if it causes more problems than sales?

Let's say Intel, Nvidia and AMD strike a deal to allow their hardware to work in the same system. Who develops the drivers? What if there are incompatibility issues between the video card and the PCIe bus for example? Who is to blame? Who fixes the issues? Oh wait that has been how the PC has worked from the beginning.

Standards exist for this very reason, so you CAN mix and match hardware and it will work, that's what a PC IS. Nvidia seems to think they can waltz in and take advantage of the common platform, then turn around and claim they can't support the platform because it doesn't adhere to their idea of how the hardware should be configured.

Anyone that makes the claim that Nvidia is not allowing PhysX to run when an AMD GPU is in the same system because of support issues is completely clueless. The unavoidable proof of this is when the hack is applied, it works perfectly. And this is not the only example, Nvidia made the idiotic claim that Batman's anti-aliasing was turned off on ATI hardware because of support issues. Oh but then they changed their tune and said it was because of legal reasons. All the while it actually ran perfectly!

Nvidia also nixed DX10.1 support in Assassins Creed claiming yep you guess it, "support issues" but in reality it gave ATI cards an advantage Nvidia could not realize at the time because they didn't have hardware support. This is a very clear pattern with Nvidia.

Nvidia locks out PhysX on systems with AMD hardware because they want it to be an exclusive, a bullet point, call it what you want. This is the ONLY reason, period.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

And no game developer wants to develop GPU-based physics simulations with Havok or Bullet. So what's that all about? Maybe the devs are all cheap and lazy in that regard and don't care about advanced physics in general?

PhysX is still the most common form of physics that I'm aware of.

A quick check on Havok shows 0 titles released this year for PC use it :|

 

[cmdrdredd]

Let's say Intel, Nvidia and AMD strike a deal to allow their hardware to work in the same system. Who develops the drivers? What if there are incompatibility issues between the video card and the PCIe bus for example? Who is to blame? Who fixes the issues? Oh wait that has been how the PC has worked from the beginning.

Standards exist for this very reason, so you CAN mix and match hardware and it will work, that's what a PC IS. Nvidia seems to think they can waltz in and take advantage of the common platform, then turn around and claim they can't support the platform because it doesn't adhere to their idea of how the hardware should be configured.

Anyone that makes the claim that Nvidia is not allowing PhysX to run when an AMD GPU is in the same system because of support issues is completely clueless. The unavoidable proof of this is when the hack is applied, it works perfectly. And this is not the only example, Nvidia made the idiotic claim that Batman's anti-aliasing was turned off on ATI hardware because of support issues. Oh but then they changed their tune and said it was because of legal reasons. All the while it actually ran perfectly!

Nvidia also nixed DX10.1 support in Assassins Creed claiming yep you guess it, "support issues" but in reality it gave ATI cards an advantage Nvidia could not realize at the time because they didn't have hardware support. This is a very clear pattern with Nvidia.

Nvidia locks out PhysX on systems with AMD hardware because they want it to be an exclusive, a bullet point, call it what you want. This is the ONLY reason, period.

And......who cares? Nvidia is here to make money like any business. One of the ways they do this is by touting features you cannot get on the competitor's brand. It is not new at all. The fact is that nvidia owns the physx property. They bought ageia. So they are very much free to do whatever they want with it.

Here is a rhetorical question... If AMD bought Ageia instead and did the same exact thing, would we be having the same hissy fits over the locking out of nvidia hardware?

 

[AnandThenMan]

And......who cares? Nvidia is here to make money like any business. One of the ways they do this is by touting features you cannot get on the competitor's brand. It is not new at all.

But then you are not agreeing with Nvidia at all. They claim support issues, are you saying Nvidia is lying?

Here is a rhetorical question... If AMD bought Ageia instead and did the same exact thing, would we be having the same hissy fits over the locking out of nvidia hardware?

This is not a question rhetorical or not, but you attempting to justify what NV is doing by saying, oh but the other guy would do the same they are all just as bad.

 

[96Firebird]

Standards exist for this very reason, so you CAN mix and match hardware and it will work, that's what a PC IS. Nvidia seems to think they can waltz in and take advantage of the common platform, then turn around and claim they can't support the platform because it doesn't adhere to their idea of how the hardware should be configured.

Who creates the standard for multiple-brand video cards working simultaneously?

 

[cmdrdredd]

But then you are not agreeing with Nvidia at all. They claim support issues, are you saying Nvidia is lying?

Read my edited post. I hit send too quickly.

 

[cmdrdredd]

But then you are not agreeing with Nvidia at all. They claim support issues, are you saying Nvidia is lying?

This is not a question rhetorical or not, but you attempting to justify what NV is doing by saying, oh but the other guy would do the same they are all just as bad.

Am I wrong? Everyone is saying nvidia is evil here, well put the shoe on the other foot and think about it. Would it be terrible then? To me it would be the same. It is an added feature for one piece of hardware. I didn't buy my 670s because of physx and I would not buy a pair of 7970s or anything if they did physx and not the 670.

I see nothing wrong either way. They own the tech so they can market it however they feel and I don't lose sleep.