nvidia is leaving heterogeneous physx support in beta drivers

[tviceman]

http://www.ngohq.com/news/17916-nvidia-driver-bug-removes-hybrid-physx-blockage-updated.html

Long story short: They are not re-releasing beta drivers with the physx block right now, and also hint that future beta drivers may not have physx blocked on heterogeneous setups. WHQL drivers, though, will.

IMO, this strategy should have been utilized when Nvidia initially started to block physx with AMD GPU's present.

 

[taltamir]

nice, good to hear that

 

[Dark4ng3l]

Now they will just introduce bugs in the games themselves at a future date when they no longer need to sell their excess stock of DX10 low end hardware.

 

[tviceman]

Now they will just introduce bugs in the games themselves at a future date when they no longer need to sell their excess stock of DX10 low end hardware.

Awesome. Great reply. I can see it was well thought out and not at all biased or ludicrous in anyway.

 

[taltamir]

Awesome. Great reply. I can see it was well thought out and not at all biased or ludicrous in anyway.

or... just a cynical response based on history.
Both companies have a history of "cheating" in benchmarks or in games (producing inferior quality at higher FPS).
then there are the methods which nvidia used to prevent people from using physX with an ATI card, which included introducing game specific "bugs" on purpose if an ATI card was detected, such as inverting the gravity. And you only saw those if you used a hacked driver that removed the mechanism that prevented physX from running with an ATI card in the first place.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

Awesome. Great reply. I can see it was well thought out and not at all biased or ludicrous in anyway.

You do realize that they have done exactly that before right?

 

[taltamir]

You do realize that they have done exactly that before right?

what is the saying... "He who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it."

The only "ludicrous" thing is that it actually happened. If it has been done in the past, expect it to be done again in the future.

 

[tviceman]

Now they will just introduce bugs in the games themselves at a future date when they no longer need to sell their excess stock of DX10 low end hardware.

You do realize that they have done exactly that before right?

You are saying nvidia sent engineers out to developers and coded bugs into games that made the game not work on low end hardware?

 

[taltamir]

You are saying nvidia sent engineers out to developers and coded bugs into games that made the game not work on low end hardware?

no, they put game specific bugs in the DRIVERS...
the drivers CAN and DO recognize game executables.

 

[Voo]

You are saying nvidia sent engineers out to developers and coded bugs into games that made the game not work on low end hardware?

No, he's saying that Nvidia introduced bugs in their own drivers that would happen if you used hacked drivers to run a physix card with an Ati card. Which they actually did

 

[taltamir]

No, he's saying that Nvidia introduced bugs in their own drivers that would happen if you used hacked drivers to run a physix card with an Ati card. Which they actually did

they did that... but there were also "bugs" where certain games would not have certain features working to improve FPS measurement... for example, anyone recall crisys AA not being implemented properly resulting in slightly lower AA quality but at better FPS (as if you selected a lower end AA scheme) just in time for a batch of reviews to use those drivers to review new hardware generation?

 

[Attic]

I don't like how nVidia has handled themselves as a company before hearing about this crap. I like em less now.

Low class and shady.

 

[taltamir]

I don't like how nVidia has handled themselves as a company before hearing about this crap. I like em less now.

Low class and shady.

to be fair... AMD (after buying ATI), ATI (before AMD purchase) and others (SIG for example) have done similar things.
This isn't nVidia only bahvior...

however, in the past ~2 years AMD has been very nice... combating lower performance with better PR... and it seems that they are currently the "nicest" company around as far as tech goes.

Intel and nVidia are much more likely to be shafting you / cheating / etc, (at least, now in 2010... this might change in the next few years)

 

[Attic]

nVidia showing off a fake fermi in late 09 was where I really started to question the powers at the company.

'In a really pathetic display, Nvidia actually faked the introduction of its latest video card, because it simply doesn't have boards to show.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/...-Fermi-Boards-At-GPU-Tech-Conference?from=rss


Given the company is capable of the those kind of actions i'm not surprised at the other ways it goes about conducting business, ie) vendor lockouts, physx crap, focus group member shenagians, endless rebranding of old cards to trick consumers.,,.. ect.


At this point i'd be willing to pay for getting less with an AMD product rather than supporting nVidia.

 

[thilanliyan]

Is it that they are leaving it in for JUST THIS driver? Or for all betas from now on?

 

[taltamir]

Is it that they are leaving it in for JUST THIS driver? Or for all betas from now on?

good catch, interesting question.

 

[HurleyBird]

That is indeed the million dollar question. I'm thinking they won't, but hoping they do.

 

[tweakboy]

YAP, the latest WHQL or BETA callem what you want has phsyx config you can choose your video card to pssyhic sorry spelling. or you can have phsyx handled by CPU.


If you have a strong enough CPU you dont need phsyic card , let the CPU do the work, thanks ,, questions let me know..

 

[FragKrag]

If they actually do, I might actually buy an older gen Nvidia card like the GTS 250 and wait for the ATi refresh

 

[Patrick Wolf]

YAP, the latest WHQL or BETA callem what you want has phsyx config you can choose your video card to pssyhic sorry spelling. or you can have phsyx handled by CPU.


If you have a strong enough CPU you dont need phsyic card , let the CPU do the work, thanks ,, questions let me know..

Yeah, they you give the option now, but performance is still gonna tank because that's how NV designed it.

 

[toyota]

YAP, the latest WHQL or BETA callem what you want has phsyx config you can choose your video card to pssyhic sorry spelling. or you can have phsyx handled by CPU.


If you have a strong enough CPU you dont need phsyic card , let the CPU do the work, thanks ,, questions let me know..

the strongest cpu made cant really handle full hardware physx because Nvidia saw to that. go run Batman with very high physx on an i7 and you will be looking at 20-25fps.

 

[sandorski]

Hmm, so is it worth taking the risk of future support/functionality to go and buy a NVidia card for dedicated PhysX use? I'm not sure, but if $50(ish) can purchase sufficient GPU power to do so, I suppose one could get their $s worth even if some future Titles don't work with Old Drivers.

Somewhat tempting. I'd be more confident if NVidia just came out and Marketed the Mix/Match functionality for PhysX instead of quietly slipping it in the back door through its' Beta Drivers.

 

[3DVagabond]

Hmm, so is it worth taking the risk of future support/functionality to go and buy a NVidia card for dedicated PhysX use? I'm not sure, but if $50(ish) can purchase sufficient GPU power to do so, I suppose one could get their $s worth even if some future Titles don't work with Old Drivers.

Somewhat tempting. I'd be more confident if NVidia just came out and Marketed the Mix/Match functionality for PhysX instead of quietly slipping it in the back door through its' Beta Drivers.

No! They've stated it was not intentional. You shouldn't expect to see it happen again, unless by accident.

Looking at it another way though... Do you need the latest and greatest, most up to date drivers, just for the card to do the PhysX? I wouldn't think so. These drivers, or the hacked drivers, should be fine, shouldn't they?

 

[sandorski]

No! They've stated it was not intentional. You shouldn't expect to see it happen again, unless by accident.

Looking at it another way though... Do you need the latest and greatest, most up to date drivers, just for the card to do the PhysX? I wouldn't think so. These drivers, or the hacked drivers, should be fine, shouldn't they?

Eventually you most likely would, at least for some Games. Anything that works with the current Driver would continue to do so though.

 

[Dark Shroud]

If they continued to do this with the beta drivers an passive cooled GTS 240 would be tempting.

I just seriously doubt they will continue this "bug" with future beta packages. Until this block is removed in the WHQL driver packages I won't be adding an Nvidia GPU to any of my systems. With Nvidia's track record they probably would sabotage the set-up somehow, let alone trying to blame it on ATI.