NVIDIA has stated numerous times that they are willing to license PhysX to anyone, including AMD/ATI. I'm not sure how "easily" ATI could implement it though.

How are games and CUDA related? PhysX is an API with a HAL that supports CUDA. In addition to C for CUDA, you get C++ and OpenCL support. Devs are slow to adapt these technologies, but it is happening. Everything else being equal*, are you going to go with the card that has support for these extras, or for the card that doesn't? I don't see these features as a deal breaker, but they are certainly nice to have.

Batman AA whetted by tongue for PhysX, but the Super Sonic Sled Demo is what really sold it to me. It's a feature that can add a ton of realism to games. It frees up a developer from having to make a physics engine for their title, less work for devs = more likely to see it put into a game.

* According to the perf numbers I've seen, things aren't equal. The point of DX11 is a massive improvement to geometric realism through tessellation. And AMD's architecture doesn't hold a candle to NVIDIA's in terms of geometry perf. 2.03x to 6.47x faster in high geometry (this more of an abstract, there's more than just geometry perf to get a game running) than the 5870, are the numbers I've seen. I'm eager to see how a big DX11 title performs (Sorry ATI, DiRT2 just wasn't cutting it for me). The beauty of tessellation is that devs can build their geometry for hardware performance that doesn't yet exist, and smoothly scale it down to what's out, without a load of extra work (just move the slider). It will be a little while before we see a game that was built around DX11 tessellation, rather than just having it slapped into the game.

Anyone wanna loan me some ATI cards to bench against on the 26th? :P


Amorphous

Quote Originally Posted by damha View Post
Good points. Big assumption here that it will beat it by 20%. In the average case you might be looking at a much smaller difference, if at all.



If nvidia is getting physX through to you, it is not getting through to me. Sure it's something to say you have that others don't, but think about it. ATi can just easily allow physX on their GPUs but nvidia won't allow it. ATI won't do it now because they want to see it go down, maybe if it picks up later they will license it. It will take a few years for something to emerge as the dominant "physics" api. If there is a lesson we can learn from history it is that the first to buy raffle tickets aren't always the ones to win the raffle.

CUDA. Ok you have CUDA. I want to play games, but you have CUDA. Games, CUDA, games, CUDA, games, CUDA. How are they related again? Let's just say I hope they have that "15-20%" advantage because they will definitely need it.

I admit, I am not an "average" computer user. I don't see things the way regular users and I cannot recall the last time I struggled with CCC. I love all the features in CCC, I love the way its laid out. I also use nvidia drivers at work, I don't upgrade them as often but I do use them a bit differently at work. At work my primary concern is not gaming: stability, ease of use, multidisplay support. I like the features they have for multidisplay, but they are not well thought out. Nvidia drivers give more control over display settings, color/contrast/brightness/gamma, but no control for video playback, no deinterlacing options. At least with the release I have now.

I don't use dual GPU so I cannot comment on that, but to be fair I will say no clear advantage to nvidia or ATI in the driver department from my perspective and from my personal usage.