How to Activate Hardware PhysX to play with an ATI Video Card

[waffleironhead]

this quote from the link keysplayr posted was amusing to me

"Well thank you so much Nvidia. I hope more companies pick up on your brilliant strategy for the sake of us customers. AMD and Intel could for example disable support for Nvidia graphics cards for their processors. After all, the CPU and GPU is interdependent and it?s hard and expensive for them to test their processors with all possible configurations involving Nvidia cards. I?m sure they want to be able to ensure a great experience for their own customers, and the only way I can see that happening is to disable Nvidia hardware. It?s good to know that Nvidia will support such a decision completely."

 

[Creig]

Originally posted by: waffleironhead
this quote from the link keysplayr posted was amusing to me

"Well thank you so much Nvidia. I hope more companies pick up on your brilliant strategy for the sake of us customers. AMD and Intel could for example disable support for Nvidia graphics cards for their processors. After all, the CPU and GPU is interdependent and it?s hard and expensive for them to test their processors with all possible configurations involving Nvidia cards. I?m sure they want to be able to ensure a great experience for their own customers, and the only way I can see that happening is to disable Nvidia hardware. It?s good to know that Nvidia will support such a decision completely."

An Nvidia video card vendorID lockout on all computers with an Intel or AMD CPU (ie - ALL systems). Now there's an interesting idea. I would LOVE to see Nvidia's reaction to that one.

 

[linkgoron]

Originally posted by: waffleironhead
this quote from the link keysplayr posted was amusing to me

"Well thank you so much Nvidia. I hope more companies pick up on your brilliant strategy for the sake of us customers. AMD and Intel could for example disable support for Nvidia graphics cards for their processors. After all, the CPU and GPU is interdependent and it?s hard and expensive for them to test their processors with all possible configurations involving Nvidia cards. I?m sure they want to be able to ensure a great experience for their own customers, and the only way I can see that happening is to disable Nvidia hardware. It?s good to know that Nvidia will support such a decision completely."

:thumbsup:
Would you agree with something like this Keys?

I love how people hacked the drivers to let it work.
Just like Batman AA.

 

[Wreckage]

The irony is how ATI fans constantly bash Physx and yet are trying desperately to get it.

 

[Creig]

Originally posted by: Wreckage
The irony is how ATI fans constantly bash Physx and yet are trying desperately to get it.

The true irony is that Nvidia is desperately trying to get people to use PhysX, yet is deliberately decreasing the number of people who have the correct hardware combination necessary to run it.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: Wreckage
The irony is how ATI fans constantly bash Physx and yet are trying desperately to get it.

I thought they they ALSO owned an Nvidia card too for PhysyX,so you are saying they are no longer Nvidia fan because they have an ATI card too,oh the irony

 

[linkgoron]

Originally posted by: Wreckage
The irony is how ATI fans constantly bash Physx and yet are trying desperately to get it.

I think the irony is that people support these actions by nvidia, especially PR LIES.
Seriously, if hackers can easily enable Physx+Ati Graphics, it just goes to show that nvidia is blocking it intentionally, and no anything technical.

Also, I'd say the Physx bashing is not about Physx itself, and more about the anti-competitive nature of Nvidia's actions.

Why can't I run Physx on the cpu instead of the Gpu on Batman AA (aka disabling features for ATI users)? This is about getting features, that are disabled on purpose. For FREE.

If I want the best graphics currently availiable (aka 5870), or have a good ATI graphics (4870 etc) card and want more features, why wouldn't I buy a cheap nvidia card for Physx? How is that being an ATi fan? I'm a performance+IQ fan.

Again, physx in itself isn't the problem here. It's the anti-competitive nature of Nvidia's actions. Disabling features, disabling Ati+nvidia Gpu, disabling PP+ati, etc.

 

[dflynchimp]

Originally posted by: Wreckage
The irony is how ATI fans constantly bash Physx and yet is trying desperately to get it.

I'm probably missing out on some of the tech news, but can you provide a link to where ATI specifically states that it wouldn't mind or are pursuing support for PhysX on its hardware?

The people who are wanting physX on ATI hardware are the end users like me who don't care about company politics and simply want the best performance and feature set for the money. As for ATI the one major complaint I can think of coming from them was the AA support for Batman: Arkham Asylum. As for PhysX I think you need to provide some evidence to back up your claim that they are "desperately" trying to get it. From what I see ATI seems to be content with backing Havok...

 

[Dribble]

Originally posted by: Creig
I agree with everything in your post. Well, everything except for saying I'm getting angry over this. I'm actually quite bemused by it. Nvidia seems ready to doom PhysX to failure rather than allow it to work alongside an ATi card which would allow greater market penetration. I've said for years that Nvidia makes some nice hardware. Their business practices, however, leave a lot to be desired.

+1

If physx worked with a secondary nvidia card on Ati, then it gets past most of the proprietary solution problems - the ati users can then just stick in an nvidia card and have physx. That would make physx available to pretty well everyone meaning it would take over, while still maintaining a clear advantage for nvidia (you still need a nvidia card for physx, and those with a powerful main nvidia card don't need to bother).

What's likely to happen now is physx flounders along with game support only where nvidia really pushes, and we the gamers suffer (which makes us mad -> dislike nvidia -> buy ati). We will be force to wait until some competition arrives in which case nvidia will probably magically go back on there decision, or port it to opencl. This however will have wasted years when we could have been having fun physics enhanced gaming.

Keys if you could convince your lord and master the foolishness of it's ways we would greatly appreciate it

 

[waffleironhead]

Originally posted by: Dribble

Originally posted by: Creig
I agree with everything in your post. Well, everything except for saying I'm getting angry over this. I'm actually quite bemused by it. Nvidia seems ready to doom PhysX to failure rather than allow it to work alongside an ATi card which would allow greater market penetration. I've said for years that Nvidia makes some nice hardware. Their business practices, however, leave a lot to be desired.

+1

If physx worked with a secondary nvidia card on Ati, then it gets past most of the proprietary solution problems - the ati users can then just stick in an nvidia card and have physx. That would make physx available to pretty well everyone meaning it would take over, while still maintaining a clear advantage for nvidia (you still need a nvidia card for physx, and those with a powerful main nvidia card don't need to bother).

What's likely to happen now is physx flounders along with game support only where nvidia really pushes, and we the gamers suffer (which makes us mad -> dislike nvidia -> buy ati). We will be force to wait until some competition arrives in which case nvidia will probably magically go back on there decision, or port it to opencl. This however will have wasted years when we could have been having fun physics enhanced gaming.

Keys if you could convince your lord and master the foolishness of it's ways we would greatly appreciate it

I think you guys have hit this on the head. instead of increasing their sales by allowing current ATI users to purchase and use a nV card as a physx device, nV has decided they want all or nothing in regards to sales. Which in effect makes me think they are actually going to lose sales over this lockout.

 

[v8envy]

No developer is going to make PhysX a requirement for their title. These lock-out shenanigans assure it. So, NV's actions are harmful to PC gaming in that we're not going to see game-changing physics until there is a standard solution game developers can be assured runs on a vast majority of gaming hardware.

In other words, an OpenCL physics library and OpenCL compatible hardware out for years. So, probably 2012 at the earliest.

Going down the road of "this game works fully on an Nvidia machine" or "this game only works well on an ATI machine" probably seems like a wet dream to marketing departments of either company short term. It should be obvious such an approach would utterly kill what's left of the PC gaming market long term. ATI gets it, but NV seems not to.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: waffleironhead

I think you guys have hit this on the head. instead of increasing their sales by allowing current ATI users to purchase and use a nV card as a physx device, nV has decided they want all or nothing in regards to sales. Which in effect makes me think they are actually going to lose sales over this lockout.

Well considering most ATI fans are buying used\older cards, I doubt it's of much concern.

Not to mention PhysX cards accounted for as much as 67% of the market over the last few years. Again. Not much concern.

Why should they support a hack? Why should they have to deal with something that won't even work on Vista? You don't see ATI running out to get their customers physics even though they clearly want it.

If you want PhysX so bad contact ATI or just stop buying ATI. Really very simple solution.

 

[dflynchimp]

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: waffleironhead

I think you guys have hit this on the head. instead of increasing their sales by allowing current ATI users to purchase and use a nV card as a physx device, nV has decided they want all or nothing in regards to sales. Which in effect makes me think they are actually going to lose sales over this lockout.

Well considering most ATI fans are buying used\older cards, I doubt it's of much concern.

Not to mention PhysX cards accounted for as much as 67% of the market over the last few years. Again. Not much concern.

Why should they support a hack? Why should they have to deal with something that won't even work on Vista? You don't see ATI running out to get their customers physics even though they clearly want it.

If you want PhysX so bad contact ATI or just stop buying ATI. Really very simple solution.

It's not a question of supporting a hack. Nvidia obviously isn't obligated to do any such thing.

But actively blocking out or disabling the hack is a deliberate effort on their part and speaks volumes of their intent regarding PhysX. I'm not saying that this is illegal nor am I saying that we should villify Nvidia for doing so, I'm just telling it like it is.

And as stated before the reason ATI isn't running to PhysX is the same reason Nvidia is backing it. They're both forcing their customers to make a perchasing decision based on the supported feature set and performance.

It is as you said, if someone really wanted PhysX they should buy Nvidia hardware to run it, but in the event that someone cracks the code allowing PhysX on ATI hardware or on ATI+Nvidia mix n' match, they should be free to make that choice too.

Of course cracking the code is a round about way to acquire PhysX, and the risk of having it disabled or blocked by Nvidia is also part of the decision to use ATI hardware. Again, this is up to the customer to decide.

The bottom line is do not villify either company for their support of difference proprietary physics engines. They're simply doing what they think will beat out the competition.

 

[GaiaHunter]

http://www.hardocp.com/article..._physx_gameplay_review

 

[dflynchimp]

Originally posted by: GaiaHunter
http://www.hardocp.com/article..._physx_gameplay_review

those benchmarks are irrelevant to this thread as the ATI tests in there have PhysX disabled.

Edit: I take back what I said, as part of the benchmark does show ATI+Nvidia Mix n match. Jumped the gun there after viewing only the first few graphs. My bad.

 

[akugami]

Originally posted by: Keysplayr

Originally posted by: SRoode


Keys, I have nothing against you at all, and I admire your contributions to this board.

However, I did not find your trivial reply to my serious statement funny at all. In fact, I find (IMHO) what nVidia is doing with their new drivers quite disturbing.

And, thank you for your advice. I will not try to make cole slaw with my video cards.

Well, maybe this will help you understand Nvidia's official position on why they are doing what they are doing. Maybe it won't. But it's here for you to read anyway.

http://physxinfo.com/news/330/...-physx-configurations/

Saw the link in your other thread but didn't want to threadcrap there so I'll comment here.

I think it was more of a business decision than technical. I know nVidia stated the numerous configs possible that needed to be tested but it's not exactly hard to say to the world that ATI+nVidia(PhysX) requires Windows 7 and a 5xx0 series forward and disable anything previous. You cut down the number of possible combinations significantly. Let's face it, Windows is the predominant OS and games are always on Windows first with the others as secondary thoughts. You don't really need to support the other five OS's which are likely just Mac, Linux, Unix, XP and Vista.

I see it as more of a business reason for nVidia locking out ATI on PhysX. It is their (nVidia's) right to do so. I don't agree with it and think it's a bad decision but it is what it is. Considering nVidia's other shenanigans lately it's going to take a lot to convince me that the locking out was done for technical reasons. I'm sure that technical reasons did factor into it but the major reason IMHO was business related.

 

[konakona]

From that link:

Nvidia: Today NVIDIA?s GPU and PhysX drivers are interconnected to optimize performance. In the future we expect this interdependence to deepen.

Sounds like they are very confident about their PhysX working best with an NV GPU, or thats what they are implying. Why are they (NV) locking themselves out of this marketing opportunity? If PhysX does work better with an NV card as implied, wouldn't it make a great showcase material to demonstrate NV GPU prowess in PhysX assisted environment

it is risky to run this configuration so we removed this capability in a recent driver release.

What's the worst running a PhysX card with an ATi GPU gonna do, blow up one's computer? People have been willfully overclocking their CPUs/GPUs at their volition, of course with a fair dose of self-liability mindset. Those few that are delusional enough to blame manufacturers for less than stellar overclocks or damage from excessive overclocking get chewed out by other forum members here. I am no PhysX expert, but I really doubt possible 'risks' involved in enabling physx in mixed GPU setting could be anywhere near as serious as with overclocking (which is very low with some common sense anyway). I think computer enthusiasts tend to be far more reasonable then NV gives credit for. In the end, I do believe that's just a cover-up, it is done for business reasons alone, 200%. It is all within their rights to do so, but as a consumer I have every reason to be disappointed by their bad decision (for us).

 

[darkswordsman17]

I liked most of the PhysX enabled stuff I saw in the videos for Batman and Sacred 2, but I honestly did not see anything that seemed like it wouldn't be possible on other current hardware. I can somewhat see the appeal of locking out others, but if your solution offers so much better performance, then why not show it by allowing your competition to run it...poorly? I'm assuming because its not nearly as embedded as they say and people would have ATi cards probably out performing nVidia's. Or maybe its something that a quad core would solve.

Hasn't Microsoft been working to enable easier low level physics processing? I was thinking that was one of the things DirectX 11 was supposed to help, making the whole PhysX situation pointless.

 

[GaiaHunter]

Originally posted by: konakona
From that link:

Nvidia: Today NVIDIA?s GPU and PhysX drivers are interconnected to optimize performance. In the future we expect this interdependence to deepen.

Sounds like they are very confident about their PhysX working best with an NV GPU, or thats what they are implying. Why are they (NV) locking themselves out of this marketing opportunity? If PhysX does work better with an NV card as implied, wouldn't it make a great showcase material to demonstrate NV GPU prowess in PhysX assisted environment

it is risky to run this configuration so we removed this capability in a recent driver release.

What's the worst running a PhysX card with an ATi GPU gonna do, blow up one's computer? People have been willfully overclocking their CPUs/GPUs at their volition, of course with a fair dose of self-liability mindset. Those few that are delusional enough to blame manufacturers for less than stellar overclocks or damage from excessive overclocking get chewed out by other forum members here. I am no PhysX expert, but I really doubt possible 'risks' involved in enabling physx in mixed GPU setting could be anywhere near as serious as with overclocking (which is very low with some common sense anyway). I think computer enthusiasts tend to be far more reasonable then NV gives credit for. In the end, I do believe that's just a cover-up, it is done for business reasons alone, 200%. It is all within their rights to do so, but as a consumer I have every reason to be disappointed by their bad decision (for us).

If you look at the link I posted up there, 5870 + GTS250 runs Batman AA better than GTX 285+GTS 250.

Originally posted by: darkswordsman17
I liked most of the PhysX enabled stuff I saw in the videos for Batman and Sacred 2, but I honestly did not see anything that seemed like it wouldn't be possible on other current hardware. I can somewhat see the appeal of locking out others, but if your solution offers so much better performance, then why not show it by allowing your competition to run it...poorly? I'm assuming because its not nearly as embedded as they say and people would have ATi cards probably out performing nVidia's. Or maybe its something that a quad core would solve.

PhysX and Physics have the potential to be quite good and change the games immersion, but when it is restricted to one vendor, I think it will be hard to convince devs to do something impressive with it.

Additional the CPU has some power untapped. Look at the video showcasing the use of physics in a Ghostbusters scenario (the "loads of boxes and dolls").

 

[evolucion8]

While its true that PhysX hasn't delivered half of the promises made when nVidia bought it, the concept its quite good, but when a company that stands behind the technology takes harsh decisions like that, in the end will kill it, and that's a bad idea because now that DX11 is here and there's over 22 games in development which will support DX11, will means that PhysX will have its days numbered, a pity.

I actually waiting for a AGEIA PhysX card to test the patch with my ATi card with Batman AA and Mirrors Edge, specially because the AGEIA card is capable of better PhysX performance than using a 9600GT card which is far more expensive.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: evolucion8
While is true that PhysX hasn't offered half of the promises made when nVidia bought it, the concept its quite good, but when a company that stands behind the technology takes harsh decisions like that, in the end will kill it, and its a bad idea because now that DX11 is here and there's over 22 games in development which will support DX11, will means that PhysX will have its days numbered, a pity.

I actually waiting for a AGEIA PhysX card to test the patch with my ATi card with Batman AA and Mirrors Edge, specially because the AGEIA card is capable of better PhysX performance than using a 9600GT card which is far more expensive.

You serious?

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: Keysplayr
You serious?

http://www.pcgameshardware.com...-Nvidia-Physx/Reviews/

No, I'm just making that up.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: evolucion8

Originally posted by: Keysplayr
You serious?

http://www.pcgameshardware.com...-Nvidia-Physx/Reviews/

No, I'm just making that up.

I like their disclaimer.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: evolucion8
While its true that PhysX hasn't delivered half of the promises made when nVidia bought it, the concept its quite good, but when a company that stands behind the technology takes harsh decisions like that, in the end will kill it, and that's a bad idea because now that DX11 is here and there's over 22 games in development which will support DX11, will means that PhysX will have its days numbered, a pity.

You do know that PhysX will work with Dx11 right? No of course you don't, you always lack the information needed to make a factual post.

Of course with no real Dx11 games for years...your argument (as usual) is pointless.

That even sadder thing for your red tinted view is that soon NVIDIA will have a Dx11 card (even before any real games come out) and your team will still be lacking physics....among other things.

Thanks for playing.

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: Wreckage
You do know that PhysX will work with Dx11 right? No of course you don't, you always lack the information needed to make a factual post.

Of course with no real Dx11 games for years...your argument (as usual) is pointless.

That even sadder thing for your red tinted view is that soon NVIDIA will have a Dx11 card (even before any real games come out) and your team will still be lacking physics....among other things.

Thanks for playing.

Its obvious that PhysX will work with DX11 genious. There's DX11 games already like Battleforge which is now available, Dirt 2 which will be released this year along with STALKER Call of Prypiat, (Plus the ones that will come next year like Lord of the Rings online, Dungeons and Dragons: Eberron Unlimited, Genghis Khan plus new engines that will adopt DX11 support. But PhysX adoption will decrease greatly and unless if nVidia ports PhysX to OpenCL, it will die, wherever you like it or not. I have no team, unlike you I'm not a fanboy and I'm more realistic and bound to neutral ground.

Its sadder for you because your green team has no DX11 support until Q2 2010, its in 3rd place in single GPU performance, its out of chipset bussiness, obsolete in terms of features, behind image quality (AF quality is worse than the HD 5x00 series and also in Anti Aliasing), continuous rehashing of the same old and obsolete G92 chip fooling its loyal customers, bad pratices and arrogance like PhysX lock out, overpriced 8800 Ultra and GTX 280 and the famous Can of Whoop Ass.

Arguing with you makes me feel that I'm arguing with my 3 years old nephew. DX11 offers much more than nVidia can offer currently like Physics through DirectCompute (Havok and Bullets Phisic), your empty arguments are as green as your lies.