PPU PhysX disabled for ATI too?

[BFG10K]

Originally posted by: Keysplayr

PhysX has been disabled when ATI cards are present in the system. Why are any of you surprised? What would be the point of disabling only Nvidia GPU's running PhysX alongside an ATI card and still let PhysX PPU's do it? If they had, might as well have never blocked PhsyX in the first place.

So just to confirm that discrete PPUs are now being blocked too?

Wow, just wow. Are they also disabled if a GMA is used in the system?

So what?s the reason for this? When it was just nVidia GPUs we were told it?s because ?rendering is sophisticated? or some-such. What?s the excuse for a discrete card that was designed for the sole purpose of, ya?know, offering discrete physics?

What?s next? Disabling software PhysX when non-nVidia cards are detected? nForce motherboards disabling themselves when they detect a non-nVidia video card? Does the word ?discrete? or ?add-in board? even exist in nVidia?s vocabulary anymore?

Just imagine if ATi had actually invested money into PhysX and now the rug was pulled out from under them.

After antics like this I cannot understand how anyone can argue that proprietary standards controlled by vendor-lock are a good thing. Everyone with a PPU now essentially has a paper-weight if they have an ATi card.

 

[Idontcare]

In some ways I see parallels between what NV is doing here with Physx and what they did with SLI mobo-support.

They really pursued an interesting revenue model with SLI, culminating with software-based certification on Intel platforms and nothing comparable on AMD platforms.

To whatever extent that worked, the SLI model and how it bifurcated with Intel vs. AMD platforms, it appears to have worked well enough to their satisfaction to be a model they implement with Physx.

Its not a path I would have chosen had they asked me as a consumer, but they didn't. (I know, amazing isn't it :laugh

NV has clearly got some decision makers inhouse that are keen to "unlock shareholder equity"...the whole SLI approach shows that...so its not really surprising to me that those decision makers have elected to institute a Physx program like this.

Whether it will turn out to be folly is something only time will tell. Effectively limiting SLI to Intel platforms did not turn out to be folly, or at least not so much so that we can blame that decision solely as the roots of NV's EPS issues.

I am glad I don't own a Physx PPU though, if I did then I'd surely be super pissed/irritated by NV's move here. Not sure if I'd have any legal grounds to claim my user rights have been violated but that doesn't mean my having a lack of rights would suddenly make me a happy NV/Physx customer.

That is one issue with owning product of a company that gets bought out...product support under the new company is not guaranteed, many times you have just as much consumer rights as if the company had gone bankrupt versus being bought out. You get no guarantees on these things, which is a PITA.

 

[GaiaHunter]

Sincerely, this is only accelerating physX death.

And it shows AMD was right on not hoping on board.

Who's to tell some lovely morning those 4850 you had to do the physX or take off some load of your GT300 (or whatever future card) wouldn't be cut off by the new drivers since nVidia no longer considered the 4850 a good enough physX card, worth time and testing?

Originally posted by: Idontcare
Whether it will turn out to be folly is something only time will tell. Effectively limiting SLI to Intel platforms did not turn out to be folly

I don't really think the situations are comparable at the present situation.

Limiting SLI, to the best and more expensive platform, especially considering that at the time AMD had the underwhelming phenom, and anyone with resources to go SLI most likely has the resources/want to go Intel for the extra performance, plus adding to that Intel has 90% of the marketshare...

Even though I'm not that excited with physX effects I've seen so far, I could be tempted, in the right circumstances, to buy a cheap nVidia card to pair with an ATI card. Now, I and no one in that situation will be.

As you say, time will tell.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Originally posted by: Keysplayr

PhysX has been disabled when ATI cards are present in the system. Why are any of you surprised? What would be the point of disabling only Nvidia GPU's running PhysX alongside an ATI card and still let PhysX PPU's do it? If they had, might as well have never blocked PhsyX in the first place.

So just to confirm that discrete PPUs are now being blocked too?

Wow, just wow. Are they also disabled if a GMA is used in the system?

So what?s the reason for this? When it was just nVidia GPUs we were told it?s because ?rendering is sophisticated? or some-such. What?s the excuse for a discrete card that was designed for the sole purpose of, ya?know, offering discrete physics?

What?s next? Disabling software PhysX when non-nVidia cards are detected? nForce motherboards disabling themselves when they detect a non-nVidia video card? Does the word ?discrete? or ?add-in board? even exist in nVidia?s vocabulary anymore?

Just imagine if ATi had actually invested money into PhysX and now the rug was pulled out from under them.

After antics like this I cannot understand how anyone can argue that proprietary standards controlled by vendor-lock are a good thing. Everyone with a PPU now essentially has a paper-weight if they have an ATi card.

That's just it, I don't know. I don't have a PPU. But I think it is logical to conclude that ALL of PhysX is blocked, not just NVGPUs.

"Just imagine if ATi had actually invested money into PhysX and now the rug was pulled out from under them. "

Is that really what you think would happen? If ATI had supported PhysX that Nvidia would have cut them off? What are you thinking? First of all, if ATI did support PhysX, wouldn't that mean it would have to be licensed to AMD by Nvidia? Would there not be contracts? Would there not be support? You're letting your own anger twist your thoughts if you believe what you're saying.

 

[MrK6]

This will probably cave in under them, just like NVIDIA chipsets only for SLI support.

 

[nismotigerwvu]

Originally posted by: Keysplayr
Ah, the Demerjian clan.
How can I help?
PhysX has been disabled when ATI cards are present in the system. Why are any of you surprised? What would be the point of disabling only Nvidia GPU's running PhysX alongside an ATI card and still let PhysX PPU's do it? If they had, might as well have never blocked PhsyX in the first place.

And as for the people who purchased the Ageia PPU long before Nvidia bought the company? They should have been able to see the future and buy an Nvidia product instead right? And the very instant the buyout occured they should have set out and bought like 50 geforces right? Oy.....

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: nismotigerwvu

Originally posted by: Keysplayr
Ah, the Demerjian clan.
How can I help?
PhysX has been disabled when ATI cards are present in the system. Why are any of you surprised? What would be the point of disabling only Nvidia GPU's running PhysX alongside an ATI card and still let PhysX PPU's do it? If they had, might as well have never blocked PhsyX in the first place.

And as for the people who purchased the Ageia PPU long before Nvidia bought the company? They should have been able to see the future and buy an Nvidia product instead right? And the very instant the buyout occured they should have set out and bought like 50 geforces right? Oy.....

The drama is strong with this one.

 

[crazylegs]

Originally posted by: Keysplayr

Originally posted by: nismotigerwvu

Originally posted by: Keysplayr
Ah, the Demerjian clan.
How can I help?
PhysX has been disabled when ATI cards are present in the system. Why are any of you surprised? What would be the point of disabling only Nvidia GPU's running PhysX alongside an ATI card and still let PhysX PPU's do it? If they had, might as well have never blocked PhsyX in the first place.

And as for the people who purchased the Ageia PPU long before Nvidia bought the company? They should have been able to see the future and buy an Nvidia product instead right? And the very instant the buyout occured they should have set out and bought like 50 geforces right? Oy.....

The drama is strong with this one.

Yet he has made a valid point.

 

[TemjinGold]

Wait, hang on... If you have a PPU AND an ATi card, why would you have an nVidia card? And if you don't have an nVidia card, why are you using nVidia drivers? Don't you need to be using nVidia drivers for the PPU to be blocked? Am I missing something here (i.e. do you need nVidia for drivers to the PPU)?

 

[Red Irish]

Originally posted by: Keysplayr
It's a double edged sword really. There are some aspects about it that I do support, and others that I don't. I can understand it because I don't think ATI should benefit from Nvidia's labors and expense in PhysX development, and Nvidia and ATI "are" competitors. And at the same time, I have trouble with it because the end users who intended on using Nvidia GPU's to run PhysX with their ATI cards as the primary, no longer can.

Keys, in all honestly, I think you have a problem calling a spade a spade. Nvidia, given that it has been unable to keep pace with ATI's pricing/performance in recent months has stooped to paying people to turn off features when a competitor card is detected. How can this possibly benefit the end user? Do we want to reach the stage where we have to ask if a given game is an "ATI game" or an "NVidia game"?

Anything that potentially hurts the end user can only be a bad thing and the industry is in a bad enough state without artificially introduced incompatibilities. Furthermore, these measures will affect many customers who paid money for an Nvidia card, which says quite a bit about their customer support and the importance they place on their clients.

I do not favour one company over the other, but, whilst I understand the reasoning behind such moves, as a customer I can see little to justify Nvidia's actions and I sincerely hope that it is not a sign of things to come.

 

[dug777]

If this is correct, it does seem to be a remarkably unreasonable and unfriendly thing to have done:

- You have an ATI card.

- You've bought a PhysX PPU which was advertised to deliver the PhysX experience with either ATI or nVidia cards (at least, I presume this to be the case).

- PhysX was then bought by nVidia.

- nVidia then amends PhysX software to prevent you from using your PhysX PPU in a manner it was marketed as being able to operate (i.e. deliver the PhysX experience if either an ATI or nVidia card is in the system).

That doesn't seem very fair or reasonable to me, and I struggle to see how anyone can say that it is, and believe it. In addition, given the points made about a PPU being a bit on the slow side these days, it just comes over as plain spiteful

 

[Dribble]

Originally posted by: dug777
That doesn't seem very fair or reasonable to me, and I struggle to see how anyone can say that it is, and believe it.

+1

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: dug777
That doesn't seem very fair or reasonable to me, and I struggle to see how anyone can say that it is, and believe it. In addition, given the points made about a PPU being a bit on the slow side these days, it just comes over as plain spiteful

Is it fair/reasonable that I can't play my XBOX games on a playstation?

Was it spiteful of Microsoft to restrict compatibility of XBOX game discs to my playing them only on Microsoft XBOX platforms?

What about the new PS3 that doesn't retain backwards compatibility with PS2 games whereas the older/original PS3 did? Was that fair and reasonable of Sony to do? Was it spiteful for them to do that?

Or was it simply a cost-cutting measure so they could get PS3 sales going again by lowering cost and sales price?

For some reason we can accept the world we live in, the corrals placed on consumers and our ability to access the products we purchase in other product segments, but when it crosses over into the desktop platform with discrete GPU's it becomes this holy ground where moralistic/ethical issues are battle worthy.

 

[Shmee]

this is a pitty, I guess I will have to be careful as to what I put in computer if I have a hydra. Hopefully using nvidia drivers with hydra and whatever cards I want will be a non issue. Or at least have an easy workaround.

 

[Modular]

Wow, just wow.

I bought my first Ati card last year when the 4850 was brand new. Even at that time I was supportive of nVidia and would have bought one of their cards had they had something competitive for the price at the time. But now I just cannot fathom supporting them, or even moreso, I cannot fathom trying to defend decisions they make like this.

This comes down to nothing more than screwing consumers for their profit. In my opinion, they are making dedicated PPU's obsolete on purpose solely to force people to buy new cards. There are some who call this "a good business decision" but those of us with any brains understand that in order to run a successful business, you need to have satisfied customers, and those customers must come first. Decisions like this make me run to the red side.

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: dug777
That doesn't seem very fair or reasonable to me, and I struggle to see how anyone can say that it is, and believe it. In addition, given the points made about a PPU being a bit on the slow side these days, it just comes over as plain spiteful

Is it fair/reasonable that I can't play my XBOX games on a playstation?

Was it spiteful of Microsoft to restrict compatibility of XBOX game discs to my playing them only on Microsoft XBOX platforms?

What about the new PS3 that doesn't retain backwards compatibility with PS2 games whereas the older/original PS3 did? Was that fair and reasonable of Sony to do? Was it spiteful for them to do that?

Or was it simply a cost-cutting measure so they could get PS3 sales going again by lowering cost and sales price?

For some reason we can accept the world we live in, the corrals placed on consumers and our ability to access the products we purchase in other product segments, but when it crosses over into the desktop platform with discrete GPU's it becomes this holy ground where moralistic/ethical issues are battle worthy.

With all due respect, I think this is a different circumstance to any of those you describe.

1) You knew that when you bought it, and had no reason to expect otherwise.
2) Likewise.
3) Sony didn't take away anything you had by not including backwards compatibility, and it wasn't something you had any right to expect to happen when you bought your PS2 games.

I honestly don't think I'm making a special category here for GPU related toys.

In this instance, nVidia has quite verifiably taken away something you had, an ability that your product was advertised to have, and which, quite explicitly, made you buy the product. You wouldn't own a PPU and an ATI card unless you knew they'd work together when you bought the PPU.

Just my 2c at the end of the day :beer:

 

[Red Irish]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: dug777
That doesn't seem very fair or reasonable to me, and I struggle to see how anyone can say that it is, and believe it. In addition, given the points made about a PPU being a bit on the slow side these days, it just comes over as plain spiteful

Is it fair/reasonable that I can't play my XBOX games on a playstation?

Was it spiteful of Microsoft to restrict compatibility of XBOX game discs to my playing them only on Microsoft XBOX platforms?

What about the new PS3 that doesn't retain backwards compatibility with PS2 games whereas the older/original PS3 did? Was that fair and reasonable of Sony to do? Was it spiteful for them to do that?

Or was it simply a cost-cutting measure so they could get PS3 sales going again by lowering cost and sales price?

For some reason we can accept the world we live in, the corrals placed on consumers and our ability to access the products we purchase in other product segments, but when it crosses over into the desktop platform with discrete GPU's it becomes this holy ground where moralistic/ethical issues are battle worthy.

If it does cross over to the desktop platform, customers will inevitably suffer. It's not a question of morality or ethical values. It's a bad move, period. Why create division and incompatibilities where none previously existed? Why make clients who bought your product suffer because you are unable to keep pace with your competitor and are forced to resort to gimmicks that only attain exclusivity when such exclusivity is artificially introduced.

Your argument is akin to the answer I often receive when I state that I am not in favour of bullfighting: foxhunting is just as bad. A similar argument is often given to people complaining about a broken leg: well I broke my arm.

Complaining about legs and bulls is not invalidated because foxes and arms also exist. In other words, providing further examples of poor company practice will not exonerate Nvidia.

 

[mhouck]

As I have owned an 8800 and a 9800GX2 and been very satisfied w/ both cards and now have a 4890, I think I consider myself fairly neutral between both card companies.

I have to say I am beyond disappointed. I am not in the market for a new GPU for the next year or so but I will definitely keep this development in mind when I do make a purchase. Guaranteed it has not tipped me in favor of nvidia.

I understand executives think consumers generally don't follow these issues that closely and want to be able to say that they have more features than the other team, but pc manufacturers will. If dell sold a system in 2002 and charged $300 for a ppu upgrade and now the end user finds that their system doesn't support the feature they bought, there will be some outcry. Dell will be pissed. This goes for all other manufacturers that offered the cards. This would not just be computer savants trying to take advantage of ati + nvidia driver loop hole.

I just don't see the marginal benefit of an exclusive 1+ feature pursuading a margin of the population out weighing the customer loyalty/institutional fall out. That's just my doomsday senario. FWIW

 

[Lonyo]

Stuff like this makes me glad (yes, glad), that we have MS to try and sort out the crap.
It's nothing particularly new. Back in ye olden dayes we had OGL, Glide, etc. and then MS came out with super crappy D3D/DX.
Eventually (now) DX is great for everyone and gives nice standardisation which is vendor neutral (assuming that developers don't decide to be asses).
Now with DirectCompute hopefully we will manage the same thing for hardware accelerated physics (from various middleware providers, e.g. DMM, Havok, PhysX).

Praise Microsoft
Let's hope that NV fails this generation and also has to reduce its bribery expenditure to developers to make them implement features in vendor specific manners. We have nice standardised APIs etc for a reason.

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: dug777
That doesn't seem very fair or reasonable to me, and I struggle to see how anyone can say that it is, and believe it. In addition, given the points made about a PPU being a bit on the slow side these days, it just comes over as plain spiteful

Is it fair/reasonable that I can't play my XBOX games on a playstation?

Was it spiteful of Microsoft to restrict compatibility of XBOX game discs to my playing them only on Microsoft XBOX platforms?

What about the new PS3 that doesn't retain backwards compatibility with PS2 games whereas the older/original PS3 did? Was that fair and reasonable of Sony to do? Was it spiteful for them to do that?

Or was it simply a cost-cutting measure so they could get PS3 sales going again by lowering cost and sales price?

For some reason we can accept the world we live in, the corrals placed on consumers and our ability to access the products we purchase in other product segments, but when it crosses over into the desktop platform with discrete GPU's it becomes this holy ground where moralistic/ethical issues are battle worthy.

This is more like having an HP printer connected to your computer that is working fine for a couple years. Nvidia buys HP and then makes your printer not work if you have an ATI video card. The PhysX PPU was sold as a stand alone card completely unrelated to graphics cards that would work in any system.

 

[zebrax2]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: dug777
That doesn't seem very fair or reasonable to me, and I struggle to see how anyone can say that it is, and believe it. In addition, given the points made about a PPU being a bit on the slow side these days, it just comes over as plain spiteful

Is it fair/reasonable that I can't play my XBOX games on a playstation?

Was it spiteful of Microsoft to restrict compatibility of XBOX game discs to my playing them only on Microsoft XBOX platforms?

What about the new PS3 that doesn't retain backwards compatibility with PS2 games whereas the older/original PS3 did? Was that fair and reasonable of Sony to do? Was it spiteful for them to do that?

Or was it simply a cost-cutting measure so they could get PS3 sales going again by lowering cost and sales price?

For some reason we can accept the world we live in, the corrals placed on consumers and our ability to access the products we purchase in other product segments, but when it crosses over into the desktop platform with discrete GPU's it becomes this holy ground where moralistic/ethical issues are battle worthy.

1.) The games were advertised for XBOX
2.) Yes they did removed the BC but in return they reduced the price of the console plus they didn't disabled the feature on previous versions of the console (the ones with BC)
3.) Well we are in the Video Cards and Graphics section of the forum what do you expect?

 

[v8envy]

Glad I didn't get the PhysX PPU bandwagon. Hard to get inside the skulls of NV decision makers these days. "Hey, let's piss off existing customers by making their PhysX hardware arbitrarily incompatible. That'll make the crispy early adopters really get behind our not-yet standard!"

It's like they don't understand how trying to fragment the already weak and sickly PC gaming ecosystem with marketing driven incompatibility is only going to screw them in the long run.

The GT300 would have to be twice as fast as anything ATI has and cost half as much for me to consider it for this generation's upgrade. I loathe vendor lock-in, especially when it gets implemented well into the software/hardware's lifetime.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: zebrax2
2.) Yes they did removed the BC but in return they reduced the price of the console plus they didn't disabled the feature on previous versions of the console (the ones with BC)

I'm pretty sure the original PPU drivers still exist and have not had any of their features disabled.

You can still use your old PPU with its old drivers, nothing more than that was guaranteed when you bought the device from Ageia anyways.

And for all we know it is disabled in existing/future drivers because it costs money to continue to verify that future drivers with PPU integration (win7) do not introduce bugs that cause problems on AMd hardware.

So reducing the scope of PPU compatibility in future driver releases might have simply been done to reduce Nvidia's cost structure for future driver validation, not out of spite.

That was all my analogies to MS and Sony were intended to suggest. All this chatter about arms and foxes is really strawman arguing, feel free to do it but don't think it is going to convince me that Nvidia's decision here was based any less on simple economics, the same as employed by MS and Sony decision makers.

If your goal is to convince me that you feel any for-profit business entity is evil and spiteful for being competitive then rest-assured that you can convince that this is your opinion on capitalism.

Personally I see nothing more at play here than standard cost-cutting business decisions being made by a company that operates in a competitive market.

We don't have to like it, in fact the fact we weren't asked for input on the decision in advance of it being made/implemented pretty much tells you what Nvidia's decision makers think of our opinion on the matter. I personally don't like it, I would have liked to have seen Nvidia make more of an effort to maintain legacy compatibility even if it meant an elevated operating cost. But I'm not a shareholder, or an NV employee, so I can't fault NV for making decisions that best serve the interests they hold as a priority. But I don't think there was any spite in their decision making process.

 

[SunnyD]

So much for PhysX being an "open" platform, eh?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Idontcare
If your goal is to convince me that you feel any for-profit business entity is evil and spiteful for being anti-competitive then rest-assured that you can convince that this is your opinion on capitalism.

Fixed that for you.