"Inevitable Bleak Outcome for nVidia's Cuda + Physx Strategy"

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Scali

Banned
Dec 3, 2004
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Originally posted by: Pantalaimon
Blu ray is not a Sony only format. They maybe the most visible, but they were not the only one developing it. The format was jointly developed by Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) which includes among others: Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, LG, Sharp, Sony.

The situation is the same though:
You have two camps, each with their own incompatible solution.
In the end, one wins.
 

Adul

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
32,999
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91
danny.tangtam.com
Originally posted by: bryanW1995
Originally posted by: AstroManLuca
It's so true. This is the reason that all of Sony's proprietary music and video formats died without ever putting up a fight. I think the main point he's making is that nVidia is reaching too much. They're getting too greedy and trying to use PhysX as a way of selling hardware, without realizing that PhysX will never take off if only a certain percentage of video cards can use it. Even if it does show up in a lot more games in the future, it'll STILL never take off because no game developer is going to limit themselves to developing for nVidia only, and they'll have to ensure that even their PhysX-enabled games will still run great and look great on non-nVidia platforms.

Using proprietary standards to push your own hardware is so passe anyway. Everything's going to be done with OpenCL in the future. nVidia can either port it or let it die, because they're not going to make any money from it.

cough *blu ray* cough

well sony had to get one sooner or later :)
 

Keysplayr

Elite Member
Jan 16, 2003
21,219
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Originally posted by: Qbah
I only have a comment to the below, the rest I find we just have different views and talking more about it won't change anything.

Originally posted by: Scali
I don't understand the question. PhysX is free, and nVidia and ATi cards are pretty evenly matched in price and performance, right? So why would I have to recommend a more expensive card? Why couldn't I recommend a similarly priced card because it offers PhysX? Why does it have to be a more expensive card?

It would be foolish to recommend the one without PhysX, if both cost the same. But that state is now - not a month and earlier ago, when nVidia supporters were pushing GeForce cards cause they can do PhysX - it didn't matter that you had to pay much more for an nVidia card and the Radeon had a similar performance (if not better - 9800GTX vs HD4850).

And over the last half a year, who could keep up with the price war? It seemed every other week one would undercut the other, huge rebate deals come and go, etc. etc. It's not like it's a static market. At the same price, go for the PhysX card. Even at a small price premium? Would say 20.00 more be out of the question for PhysX? Do you think PhysX is completely worthless? Maybe you do, but many others do not. And then there are the cheaper competitors. GTX216 for example very competitive in price to 48701GB. Very cheap right now. GTX275. Competitive in 4890 pricing excluding ludicrous deals on the 4890.

Would you pay 20.00 more for the card that can run AA? Or would you opt for the cheaper card and run AA via software? Not the exact same thing, but similar. Anyway, all this will be moot at Windows 7 retail arrival and the next gen cards I think.
 

Pantalaimon

Senior member
Feb 6, 2006
341
40
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Originally posted by: Scali
Originally posted by: Pantalaimon
Blu ray is not a Sony only format. They maybe the most visible, but they were not the only one developing it. The format was jointly developed by Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) which includes among others: Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, LG, Sharp, Sony.

The situation is the same though:
You have two camps, each with their own incompatible solution.
In the end, one wins.

The one that had the most industry support (hardware and software) won. Toshiba was the sole manufacturer of HD-DVD players, where as in the blu ray camp the BDA had/have a slew of other manufacturers and they managed to persuade the retail channel and the studios to support them, and in some cases even drop HD-DVD support altogheter.

I don't see nvidia being able to do the same in this industry with PhysX if it remains locked to nvidia's hardware.
 

SlowSpyder

Lifer
Jan 12, 2005
17,305
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Interesting article. Right now, regardless of how the pro-Nvidia crowd wants to spin it, Physx seems to be doing little more than treading water. I've seen what it adds to games so far, and it is little more than fluff. I think Physx could still take off, but it really needs a killer app... a very good game that truely is a better experience because of Physx, that you would miss out on without it. So far barrels bobbing in water and debri blowing around in the wind just isn't it.

Yea, Physx is real, and you can buy it and experience games that use it right now. But to me it's just one unique feature that Nvidia has. AMD has a handful of unique features that you can only use with their hardware too. If Physx is ever going to become 'the' feature to have, then it will have to be used for more than adding fluff to a game.
 

Genx87

Lifer
Apr 8, 2002
41,091
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It is only locked to Nvidia hardware by choice of the competition.
Physx is able to be run on CPU's as well and it is free. The free part really makes it attrative to developers.

And guess what. I am sure once MS decides to create a physics API in direct X Nvidia will be right on top of it. In the meantime they will reap the benefits of having a viable physics acceleration advantage on their GPU.

 

aka1nas

Diamond Member
Aug 30, 2001
4,335
1
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Originally posted by: SlowSpyder
Interesting article. Right now, regardless of how the pro-Nvidia crowd wants to spin it, Physx seems to be doing little more than treading water. I've seen what it adds to games so far, and it is little more than fluff. I think Physx could still take off, but it really needs a killer app... a very good game that truely is a better experience because of Physx, that you would miss out on without it. So far barrels bobbing in water and debri blowing around in the wind just isn't it.

Yea, Physx is real, and you can buy it and experience games that use it right now. But to me it's just one unique feature that Nvidia has. AMD has a handful of unique features that you can only use with their hardware too. If Physx is ever going to become 'the' feature to have, then it will have to be used for more than adding fluff to a game.

Now that Apex has been out for a bit, we might start seeing more of that as developers can make PhysX effects that can be auto-scaled (Apex is a framework for PhysX that will automatically do LoD on your effects). This would let you basically just have a detail slider in your game options for Physics detail. Prior to this, if a developer wanted to support multiple levels of PhysX performance, they had to make more and less intensive/accurate versions of an effect manually.
 

Keysplayr

Elite Member
Jan 16, 2003
21,219
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Originally posted by: Pantalaimon
cough *blu ray* cough

Blu ray is not a Sony only format. They maybe the most visible, but they were not the only one developing it. The format was jointly developed by Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) which includes among others: Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, LG, Sharp, Sony.

Exactly. On the Blu-Ray team was Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, LG, Sharp.

On the HD-DVD team we had Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo, Microsoft, RCA

Think of Sony and Toshiba as the "starters" of the Blu-Ray HD-DVD technologies (without actually getting to the actual individuals like Shuji Nakamura:

"At the Optical Media Global Industry Awards 2006, Optical Disc Systems (ODS!) magazine honoured Dr. Shuji Nakamura with the Global Innovation Leader Award for his commitment and dedication to the development of the Blue Laser Diode that has resulted in the next generation optical media formats for High definition. The Awards function took place at the 6th Disc-Tech Expo at the Raja Bagh Lawns, Taj Palace Convention Centre on April 6, 2006."

.... and then think of all the others, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, LG, NEC, Sanyo, Microsoft, RCA.... as the developers who adopted the technology and improved it or worked to get it to market.

Same thing with Nvidia, and the dozens of devs that have signed on to develop PhysX games. What would PhysX be, if there were no devs to write games for it?
 

cm123

Senior member
Jul 3, 2003
489
2
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Originally posted by: thilan29
http://www.edbordenblog.com/20...utcome-of-nvidias.html

This is just one person's opinion though...not gospel.


Well in a way would this not be great for Nvidia? After all if Cuda is per say gone and with much of it in OpenCL - would that not mean Nvidia has had bit of jump in the game?

Personally have to say that working with a beta OS and beta drivers, Nvidia hardware is doing really well with openCL based OS today already, sure as games come out and things move forward could change, that is true for AMD as well.

Maybe question is, what does AMD cards do in OpenCL better than Nvidia? How about the cards coming in next 30 to 180 days?

...and as far as things like PhysX slowing the game down, well if playing at 140+fps and takes down 20fps, then clearly why not take the better looking game in most cases - means see the sniper farther down the way or whatever right? This being said, for me I'd rather take an open standard in this area...




 

Pantalaimon

Senior member
Feb 6, 2006
341
40
91
Exactly. On the Blu-Ray team was Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, LG, Sharp. On the HD-DVD team we had Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo, Microsoft, RCA

Except on the HD-DVD side there was basically only *one* company manufacturing the players. There were some lesser known HD-DVD players on the market, but they were just rebadged Toshiba players.

On the blu ray side you have many companies manufacturing the players. There's at least Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, LG, Pioneer, and Philips.

So blu ray, the side with the most manufacturers managed to get the most software and retail support, burying the HD-DVD side who had only one manufacturer.
 

Scali

Banned
Dec 3, 2004
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Originally posted by: Pantalaimon
I don't see nvidia being able to do the same in this industry with PhysX if it remains locked to nvidia's hardware.

Except it isn't.
PhysX runs on CPUs aswell, and it also supports all the major consoles... which get ever more important to developers.
 

aka1nas

Diamond Member
Aug 30, 2001
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Originally posted by: Scali
Originally posted by: Pantalaimon
I don't see nvidia being able to do the same in this industry with PhysX if it remains locked to nvidia's hardware.

Except it isn't.
PhysX runs on CPUs aswell, and it also supports all the major consoles... which get ever more important to developers.

I think that's a major point. Right now, PhysX will run on just about anything but an AMD GPU.

AMD deserves a big raspberry for this, especially since they haven't even released beta OpenCL drivers yet.
 

SirPauly

Diamond Member
Apr 28, 2009
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Originally posted by: PantalaimonI don't see nvidia being able to do the same in this industry with PhysX if it remains locked to nvidia's hardware.



As been mentioned it isn't locked at all and also scalable to boot through Apex. While some have been locking onto ATI vs nVidia -- nVidia is creating quite the tool set.


 

Wreckage

Banned
Jul 1, 2005
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Originally posted by: Scali
Originally posted by: Pantalaimon
I don't see nvidia being able to do the same in this industry with PhysX if it remains locked to nvidia's hardware.

Except it isn't.
PhysX runs on CPUs aswell, and it also supports all the major consoles... which get ever more important to developers.

DirectX is locked into Microsoft's operating system. How come people don't complain about that?

With the recent trend in marketshare for NVIDIA it may not matter much that they are the only ones with PhysX, because everyone is buying their cards anyway.
 

Munky

Diamond Member
Feb 5, 2005
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Originally posted by: Scali
Originally posted by: Pantalaimon
I don't see nvidia being able to do the same in this industry with PhysX if it remains locked to nvidia's hardware.

Except it isn't.
PhysX runs on CPUs aswell, and it also supports all the major consoles... which get ever more important to developers.

I don't have the patience to rehash all the arguments I made in the previous huge PhysX thread, but you just don't get the picture (or you do get it but it doesn't agree with your agenda). The fact that Physx happens to run on CPU's and consoles is of no consequence to NV, because that functionality was already in place before NV got involved. Moreover, all those other platforms can just as easily support Havok or other physics engines.

If you want to bring GPU-accelerated physics to the PC, you don't do a half-assed attempt that's blatantly reliant on your proprietary standards (CUDA), and then expect your competitors to adopt your standards. NV is simply using PhysX as a pawn to boost their HW sales, since it only works on their GPU's. They are using software they own to further sales of their hardware. AMD is a competitor to NV, and they'd be crazy to adopt a physics API which is owned by a competitor.

If NV truly wanted to promote GPU-accelerated physics, they would have based it on a cross-platform framework instead of CUDA.
 

Scali

Banned
Dec 3, 2004
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Originally posted by: munky
I don't have the patience to rehash all the arguments I made in the previous huge PhysX thread, but you just don't get the picture. The fact that Physx happens to run on CPU's and consoles is of no consequence to NV, because that functionality was already in place before NV got involved. Moreover, all those other platforms can just as easily support Havok or other physics engines.

Except Havok costs money, PhysX doesn't.

Originally posted by: munky
If you want to bring GPU-accelerated physics to the PC, you don't do a half-assed attempt that's blatantly reliant on your proprietary standards (CUDA), and then expect your competitors to adopt your standards.

If there are no other standards, you have little choice but to make your own.

Originally posted by: munky
NV is simply using PhysX as a pawn to boost their HW sales, since it only works on their GPU's. They are using software they own to further sales of their hardware. AMD is a competitor to NV, and they'd be crazy to adopt a physics API which is owned by a competitor.

Haha, I've heard that one before.
Perhaps you forgot that AMD is also a competitor to Intel, yet they adopted Intel's Havok API?
So AMD is crazy?

Originally posted by: munky
If NV truly wanted to promote GPU-accelerated physics, they would have based it on a cross-platform framework instead of CUDA.

Which one? There isn't any, as mentioned MANY times before in this thread.
 

Pantalaimon

Senior member
Feb 6, 2006
341
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.
Looks like a Samsung Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Player. So now you can't say Toshiba was the only one making HD-DVD players. I could look for more examples, but one is all I needed.

These players cost more than a single HD-DVD or blu ray player. These players were never sold in large quantities when they were available compared to the stand-alone player. Consumers weren't interested in combo players.

You still can't deny that the camp that had wider industry support won, even if you factor in Samsung's and LG's combo players.

DirectX is locked into Microsoft's operating system. How come people don't complain about that?

Does Microsoft manufacture video cards?
 

Pantalaimon

Senior member
Feb 6, 2006
341
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91
Perhaps you forgot that AMD is also a competitor to Intel, yet they adopted Intel's Havok API? So AMD is crazy

The enemy of my enemy is my friend in this case. Seems like AMD's graphics division consider Intel's Havok as the lesser of the 2 evils.
 

Wreckage

Banned
Jul 1, 2005
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Originally posted by: Pantalaimon


Does Microsoft manufacture video cards?

So that makes it OK?

It's clear (at least on this forum) that it's not whether PhysX is a good thing or not. It all boils down to red vs green.
 

Scali

Banned
Dec 3, 2004
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Originally posted by: Pantalaimon
Perhaps you forgot that AMD is also a competitor to Intel, yet they adopted Intel's Havok API? So AMD is crazy

The enemy of my enemy is my friend in this case. Seems like AMD's graphics division consider Intel's Havok as the lesser of the 2 evils.

I think they're going to regret that decision.
With PhysX they could have conquered the GPU physics market together with nVidia, making fast CPUs unimportant to gamers. Which means AMD could sell their slower and cheaper CPUs to gamers and offer physics acceleration. Win-win.

With Havok, they are most probably held on a leash by Intel, so they can't release anything before Intel is ready (read: Larrabee), and Intel won't allow them to outperform their solution either... because I surely don't think Intel is crazy.
And obviously they will make sure that nVidia's GPUs won't be doing all that well either, despite OpenCL.
Heck, we're talking about Intel here... they've just been fined over 1 billion euros because of shady business practices... You think AMD should trust THEM? :)
 

Pantalaimon

Senior member
Feb 6, 2006
341
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91
Originally posted by: Scali
Originally posted by: Pantalaimon
Perhaps you forgot that AMD is also a competitor to Intel, yet they adopted Intel's Havok API? So AMD is crazy

The enemy of my enemy is my friend in this case. Seems like AMD's graphics division consider Intel's Havok as the lesser of the 2 evils.

I think they're going to regret that decision.
With PhysX they could have conquered the GPU physics market together with nVidia, making fast CPUs unimportant to gamers. Which means AMD could sell their slower and cheaper CPUs to gamers and offer physics acceleration. Win-win.

With Havok, they are most probably held on a leash by Intel, so they can't release anything before Intel is ready (read: Larrabee), and Intel won't allow them to outperform their solution either... because I surely don't think Intel is crazy.
And obviously they will make sure that nVidia's GPUs won't be doing all that well either, despite OpenCL.
Heck, we're talking about Intel here... they've just been fined over 1 billion euros because of shady business practices... You think AMD should trust THEM? :)

You're forgetting that if they ally against Intel, Intel could potentially crush them in the CPU business leaving them with only the GPU business. Where as if they go with Intel in this area they can still be in the CPU business and potentially do well also in the GPU business. So it's a choice between losing one business and maybe do well in one, or maybe do well in both businesses.

So that makes it OK?

Of course it does for AMD. Microsoft is not their competitor. As far as I know DirectX does not care whether it runs on ATI or NVIDIA hardware. Where as with PhysX and its ties to NVIDIA, who's to tell if NVIDIA optimises it so that it always run better on its cards but not on ATI even if ATI were to go with PhysX.
 

SlowSpyder

Lifer
Jan 12, 2005
17,305
1,002
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Originally posted by: Wreckage
Originally posted by: Pantalaimon


Does Microsoft manufacture video cards?

So that makes it OK?

It's clear (at least on this forum) that it's not whether PhysX is a good thing or not. It all boils down to red vs green.

I think it's easy to tell the true current state of Physx just be reading these types of posts. If Physx was doing so well, and was such a game changer you'd think it wouldn't need so many green fans in forums pushing it's merits so hard... it would sell itself.

 

Keysplayr

Elite Member
Jan 16, 2003
21,219
56
91
Originally posted by: Pantalaimon
.
Looks like a Samsung Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Player. So now you can't say Toshiba was the only one making HD-DVD players. I could look for more examples, but one is all I needed.

These players cost more than a single HD-DVD or blu ray player. These players were never sold in large quantities when they were available compared to the stand-alone player. Consumers weren't interested in combo players.

You still can't deny that the camp that had wider industry support won, even if you factor in Samsung's and LG's combo players.

DirectX is locked into Microsoft's operating system. How come people don't complain about that?

Does Microsoft manufacture video cards?

So you go from, "Only Toshiba rebrands were the only HD-DVD players around" to "but but but, they cost more!" WTF?
 

Genx87

Lifer
Apr 8, 2002
41,091
513
126
Originally posted by: munky
Originally posted by: Scali
Originally posted by: Pantalaimon
I don't see nvidia being able to do the same in this industry with PhysX if it remains locked to nvidia's hardware.

Except it isn't.
PhysX runs on CPUs aswell, and it also supports all the major consoles... which get ever more important to developers.

I don't have the patience to rehash all the arguments I made in the previous huge PhysX thread, but you just don't get the picture (or you do get it but it doesn't agree with your agenda). The fact that Physx happens to run on CPU's and consoles is of no consequence to NV, because that functionality was already in place before NV got involved. Moreover, all those other platforms can just as easily support Havok or other physics engines.

If you want to bring GPU-accelerated physics to the PC, you don't do a half-assed attempt that's blatantly reliant on your proprietary standards (CUDA), and then expect your competitors to adopt your standards. NV is simply using PhysX as a pawn to boost their HW sales, since it only works on their GPU's. They are using software they own to further sales of their hardware. AMD is a competitor to NV, and they'd be crazy to adopt a physics API which is owned by a competitor.

If NV truly wanted to promote GPU-accelerated physics, they would have based it on a cross-platform framework instead of CUDA.

Uh isnt AMD using their competitor Intel's Havok???????????????????????????????????????????????????????