I was thinking, as there has been some discussion that PhysX in a mixed video card environment (NVIDIA + ATI) is virtually impossible because the OS doesn't take kindly to multiple video drivers installed...
PhysX is based on CUDA no? I vaguely recall a product from NVIDIA... maybe it was Tesla? That wasn't a video product at all, but rather more of a pure CUDA product.
This leads me to the question, if NVIDIA could put out a ... erm ... "non-video" product like Tesla, would they not also be able to fairly simply create discrete CUDA/PhysX drivers as well, thereby allowing ATI cards to drive video and the NVIDIA cards to drive PhysX?
Of course this hypothetically situation would likely be answered with "Well why the hell would they want that? I mean they want to sell you a video card for video!" Well the reason is simple, aside from their greed in trying to go vendor lock-in until the ATI PhysX driver is hacked out, they have an absolutely great potential market for all those 8400's, 8500's and 8600's sitting on store shelves collecting dust and eating into their margins. It would be the PPU for the masses, doing what AEGIA only dreamed they could do.
Mayhaps keys and Rollo can look into this and see if NVIDIA's magic crystal 8-ball says anything other than "Outlook not so good."
PhysX is based on CUDA no? I vaguely recall a product from NVIDIA... maybe it was Tesla? That wasn't a video product at all, but rather more of a pure CUDA product.
This leads me to the question, if NVIDIA could put out a ... erm ... "non-video" product like Tesla, would they not also be able to fairly simply create discrete CUDA/PhysX drivers as well, thereby allowing ATI cards to drive video and the NVIDIA cards to drive PhysX?
Of course this hypothetically situation would likely be answered with "Well why the hell would they want that? I mean they want to sell you a video card for video!" Well the reason is simple, aside from their greed in trying to go vendor lock-in until the ATI PhysX driver is hacked out, they have an absolutely great potential market for all those 8400's, 8500's and 8600's sitting on store shelves collecting dust and eating into their margins. It would be the PPU for the masses, doing what AEGIA only dreamed they could do.
Mayhaps keys and Rollo can look into this and see if NVIDIA's magic crystal 8-ball says anything other than "Outlook not so good."
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