Nvidia: Hybrid PhysX Is Technically Impossible

[Scorpio[pt]]

Nvidia Corporation has published the following on its PhysX FAQ:
"Can I use an NVIDIA GPU as a PhysX processor and a non-NVIDIA GPU for regular display graphics? No. There are multiple technical connections between PhysX processing and graphics that require tight collaboration between the two technologies. To deliver a good experience for users, NVIDIA PhysX technology has been fully verified and enabled using only NVIDIA GPUs for graphics."

Source1 : http://www.ngohq.com/news/17778-nvid...mpossible.html

Source2 : http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx_faq.html

can i ask what are they are smoking?
i guess i am doing a miracle by having a 5870+9600 setup


i was in doubt of creating a new thread or using an existing one if a mod decides that its not the place please move or merge

[xlink]

looks like I'll never have physX then.

[Manicdan]

so thats why physx never worked before nvidia bought them, o wait, nm

[Helloworld_98]

yet just weeks ago they said they'd do PhysX on OpenCL

[TurboDiv]

I guess OpenCL support will be there just so it can be marked that its available. The performance of it will be another story...

[Peakr]

nVidia is suffering from Steve Jobs syndrome.

[Mechanical Man]

You american guys should sue nVidia as group sue thingy. Reason constant lieing to comsumer.

[Katanai]

Stop the Nvidia hate already. You are reading that statement wrong:

"Can I use an NVIDIA GPU as a PhysX processor and a non-NVIDIA GPU for regular display graphics? No. There are multiple technical connections between PhysX processing and graphics that require tight collaboration between the two technologies. To deliver a good experience for users, NVIDIA PhysX technology has been fully verified and enabled using only NVIDIA GPUs for graphics."

I've bolded the important part. That's their reason behind it. Just to make you understand: physx is just as much about hardware as it is about software. For example, physx may work now with the current ATI cards and drivers. But what if, let's say, a new ATI driver or card breaks this compatibility. What should Nvidia do then? Invest money and time to fix something their main competitor broke? Why should they do that? And why should they help their competitor in the first place? Physx is a selling point for Nvidia hardware. Why should they share that with ATI? If Nvidia would allow right now, through a new driver physx to work with ATI cards they would instantly loose sales as people would upgrade to ATI cards and not Nvidia. I don't know how many people are held back on the green team by physx but if it's only one guy, in Korea somewhere, that would buy a 5870 instead of a GTX470 and keep his 8800GT for physx, they would loose a couple of hundred dollars to ATI. Why would they do that? Aren't you asking much of them here?

[[XC]Atomicpineapple]

Stop the Nvidia hate already. You are reading that statement wrong:

"Can I use an NVIDIA GPU as a PhysX processor and a non-NVIDIA GPU for regular display graphics? No. There are multiple technical connections between PhysX processing and graphics that require tight collaboration between the two technologies. To deliver a good experience for users, NVIDIA PhysX technology has been fully verified and enabled using only NVIDIA GPUs for graphics."

I've bolded the important part. That's their reason behind it. Just to make you understand: physx is just as much about hardware as it is about software. For example, physx may work now with the current ATI cards and drivers. But what if, let's say, a new ATI driver or card breaks this compatibility. What should Nvidia do then? Invest money and time to fix something their main competitor broke? Why should they do that? And why should they help their competitor in the first place? Physx is a selling point for Nvidia hardware. Why should they share that with ATI? If Nvidia would allow right now, through a new driver physx to work with ATI cards they would instantly loose sales as people would upgrade to ATI cards and not Nvidia. I don't know how many people are held back on the green team by physx but if it's only one guy, in Korea somewhere, that would buy a 5870 instead of a GTX470 and keep his 8800GT for physx, they would loose a couple of hundred dollars to ATI. Why would they do that? Aren't you asking much of them here?

Alternatively, how many 5XXX owners would buy an nVidia card for physx, thus making nvidia money? Also how about people who bought an nvidia card that was advertised as able to do physx before nvidia started locking physx down? Now they've lost a feature that they paid full price for, potentially by doing something as single as chucking the card in a 785G mobo.

[Piotrsama]

These guys need their dose of FTC.
Wonder why it's taking so long...

[LightSpeed]

I have a question. The people who bought an ageia card before nv bought them, what happens to their support? im sure they were able to run ATI + ageia before, are they locked down as well?

It would certainly suck for me if i bought an ageia only to be locked down a couple of months later...

[Katanai]

Alternatively, how many 5XXX owners would buy an nVidia card for physx, thus making nvidia money? Also how about people who bought an nvidia card that was advertised as able to do physx before nvidia started locking physx down? Now they've lost a feature that they paid full price for, potentially by doing something as single as chucking the card in a 785G mobo.

Not many. Most would buy second hand cards or use what they already have or if they would buy new cards they wouldn't buy expensive ones and Nvidia would still loose money in the end. As for your second question. Did they pay that full price to Nvidia? As I see it, it's very simple really. PhysX is a technology owned by Nvidia. If you want to use it, buy Nvidia hardware! You can look at it in another way. PhysX is free, Nvidia doesn't charge anything for it. You can look at it as a gift to their loyal customers. If you buy anything from their competitors, it sucks for you! No more treats! I don't see anything wrong with that. It's just some explosions and bling really. I don't see what all this fuss is about. You guys all have ATI cards and on every occasion you have you bash Nvidia on the internet. Yet here you are crying like little kids: Nvidia doesn't give us eyecandy. Boohoohoo!

Haha!

[Final8ty]

Not many. Most would buy second hand cards or use what they already have or if they would buy new cards they wouldn't buy expensive ones and Nvidia would still loose money in the end. As for your second question. Did they pay that full price to Nvidia? As I see it, it's very simple really. PhysX is a technology owned by Nvidia. If you want to use it, buy Nvidia hardware! You can look at it in another way. PhysX is free, Nvidia doesn't charge anything for it. You can look at it as a gift to their loyal customers. If you buy anything from their competitors, it sucks for you! No more treats! I don't see anything wrong with that. It's just some explosions and bling really. I don't see what all this fuss is about. You guys all have ATI cards and on every occasion you have you bash Nvidia on the internet. Yet here you are crying like little kids: Nvidia doesn't give us eyecandy. Boohoohoo!

Haha!

Sounds like what Intel was doing & fined in court.

[zanzabar]

@katanai, its not about hardware or software its about marketing. like u said, why add anything that could help your competion, the only problem with that is that this practice has been illegal to block functionality when other companies hardware is present it happened with intel trying to block HT with via chipsets and it happened with IBM back in the 80's. i can see why they would not want to, but by blocking ati/amd out and to go and only block them and not s3/via or intel they are being ati competative, and they are sacrificing sales and adoption rates as i could see ati users buying phsyX cards. if u look back at agea they had mostly ati users for the PPU and with NV removing support for the PPU on ati cards and bullying devs to not use multithreaded phsyX and to make the lowest physX load to much for a single cpu thread they are focing phsyX to not be used in a meaningful way.

phsyX also runs on cuda so there is no way that the cpu phsyX can be supported but the gpu cannot, the PPU/gpu for phsyX dose no rendering or anything but fractal style int computations so if ati finds a way to break a non graphics api from working the cpu version would also not work, its an all or nothing situation. if there really is a problem with phsyX and ati cards just ban the whole the api for compatibility that way physX can die already this no GPGPU cuda physX for ati users is just uncompetitive and illegal.

You american guys should sue nVidia as group sue thingy. Reason constant lieing to comsumer.

that could happen it would only cover people who have older NV gpus with cuda and agea PPUs, the main problem would be that the public is stupid so they wouldent understand anything about the case and then an appellate judge would be worthless as the case would happen in the bay aria and then u have the judge that rules anything apple dose is correct and never rules in favor of any consumer group unless he will be removed if he dose not.

[KoHaN69]

Why would we expect nVidia to provide Customer Service for ATI cards?
They said they only test nvidia gpu + nvidia physX

If we could install both hassle-free (just install both drivers and check PhysX) - the customers would expect nvidia to support them if something was wrong in a game.

But nvidia doesn't want to do that, because ATI's drivers could be breaking some graphics/physx effects in a game - how could nvidia be responsible?!

What they should do is ease off the restrictions, to make it more 'hackable' for us enthusiasts

/ati fanboy

I have a question. The people who bought an ageia card before nv bought them, what happens to their support? im sure they were able to run ATI + ageia before, are they locked down as well?

It would certainly suck for me if i bought an ageia only to be locked down a couple of months later...

AGEIA cards are no longer supported by the latest version of PhysX, they are antiquated, outdated and worthless.

[Final8ty]

Why would we expect nVidia to provide Customer Service for ATI cards?
They said they only test nvidia gpu + nvidia physX

If we could install both hassle-free (just install both drivers and check PhysX) - the customers would expect nvidia to support them if something was wrong in a game.

But nvidia doesn't want to do that, because ATI's drivers could be breaking some graphics/physx effects in a game - how could nvidia be responsible?!

What they should do is ease off the restrictions, to make it more 'hackable' for us enthusiasts

/ati fanboy

There is a differnce to not



AGEIA cards are no longer supported by the latest version of PhysX, they are antiquated, outdated and worthless.

There is a difference to not giving customer service to out right blocking.

[Katanai]

Sounds like what Intel was doing & fined in court.

Nope!

@katanai, its not about hardware or software its about marketing. like u said, why add anything that could help your competion, the only problem with that is that this practice has been illegal to block functionality when other companies hardware is present it happened with intel trying to block HT with via chipsets and it happened with IBM back in the 80's. i can see why they would not want to, but by blocking ati/amd out and to go and only block them and not s3/via or intel they are being ati competative, and they are sacrificing sales and adoption rates as i could see ati users buying phsyX cards. if u look back at agea they had mostly ati users for the PPU and with NV removing support for the PPU on ati cards and bullying devs to not use multithreaded phsyX and to make the lowest physX load to much for a single cpu thread they are focing phsyX to not be used in a meaningful way.

phsyX also runs on cuda so there is no way that the cpu phsyX can be supported but the gpu cannot, the PPU/gpu for phsyX dose no rendering or anything but fractal style int computations so if ati finds a way to break a non graphics api from working the cpu version would also not work, its an all or nothing situation. if there really is a problem with phsyX and ati cards just ban the whole the api for compatibility that way physX can die already this no GPGPU cuda physX for ati users is just uncompetitive and illegal.



that could happen it would only cover people who have older NV gpus with cuda and agea PPUs, the main problem would be that the public is stupid so they wouldent understand anything about the case and then an appellate judge would be worthless as the case would happen in the bay aria and then u have the judge that rules anything apple dose is correct and never rules in favor of any consumer group unless he will be removed if he dose not.

And nope again.

If people would buy Nvidia cards and use them with ATI hardware they would be compelled to offer support to them and make sure that it does work. Now what if "holy ATI" would break this compatibility themselves through drivers to hurt Nvidia's sales? What then? Would Nvidia be able "To deliver a good experience for users" ?

[Manicdan]

people reading marketing as truth is fail. the only reason they have a minimum gpu requirement for phsyx is so they can still get away with selling new cards. in their own FAQ they say they use remaining resources from each gpu in sli to handle it all, so its not a physical minimum, but a profitability idea set to screw over the end users. i bet in a 2 years or so, you need a 4xx card minimum for whatever reason they see fit to "deliver a good experience"

if nvidia wants phsyx to matter, tell the developers you paying to use physx to put so much realism in games that you need an 8800gt maxed out just to show off all the cool effects that can turn any game from crappy to scary realistic.

for the record, i dont hate physx, i just hate how nvidia is using it to provide nothing worthwhile. i will happily switch to the green team if i see a worthwhile experience im missing out on.

[Final8ty]

Nope!

yes

And nope again.

If people would buy Nvidia cards and use them with ATI hardware they would be compelled to offer support to them and make sure that it does work. Now what if "holy ATI" would break this compatibility themselves through drivers to hurt Nvidia's sales? What then? Would Nvidia be able "To deliver a good experience for users" ?

And nope.
Because all they have to have on the description of features is: Physx is only officially supported when used in conjunction with a NV video card. & that must be on the box.

[chuchnit]

But what if, let's say, a new ATI driver or card breaks this compatibility. What should Nvidia do then? Invest money and time to fix something their main competitor broke? Why should they do that?

Isn't that what tons and tons of hardware companies do everyday? Intel/AMD/Microsoft changes some goofy crap and your soundcard don't work. It the soundcard companies responsibility to fix it. Customer service.

If Nvidia would allow right now, through a new driver physx to work with ATI cards they would instantly loose sales as people would upgrade to ATI cards and not Nvidia. I don't know how many people are held back on the green team by physx but if it's only one guy, in Korea somewhere, that would buy a 5870 instead of a GTX470 and keep his 8800GT for physx, they would loose a couple of hundred dollars to ATI. Why would they do that? Aren't you asking much of them here?

Instantly lose sales? Most of the people who use a dedicated physx card are enthusiast. They are somewhat tech literate. Plus Nvidia was how many months late to market with DX11? You can't blame people for jumping ship. Actually I would argue they are killing sales right now. They are putting a real bitter taste in a whole bunch of mouths right now. There was NO disclosure that physx required a nvidia card as display to function properly. That alone probably warrants a class action anti-trust lawsuit.


Nvidia's biggest problem is they wanna be like Apple. They want everything to be closed. IMO, if they would just open SLI up to all platforms they could sell more cards. The problem is their Apple business model makes them want a chipset license to close the market again and run a Monopoly per se. I owned a 680i. That board was built so generic and cost so much. Their margins must have been huge during the "good" years. The problem is ATI is competitive now. The world has changed in discrete graphics.


FWIW, I own both cards and like both. I enjoy benching nvidia more, and the gaming experience on ATI. I just think nvidia is a bs company, but their products are good.

[Katanai]

yes



And nope.
Because all they have to have on the description of features is: Physx is only officially supported when used in conjunction with NV video card. & that must be on the box.

Still, no free eyecandy for you guys. Beggars can't be choosers. Be glad it's still hackable. We can argue as long as we want, it's their tech and they can do whatever they want with it, especially when they are giving it out for free. If someone here has paid money for PhysX technology and the hardware is still under warranty or they were promised in writing that it will be supported forever and all future games will be compatible with it, raise your hand! And I will pay the legal fees for a lawsuit against Nvidia.

[CraptacularOne]

Still, no free eyecandy for you guys. Beggars can't be choosers. Be glad it's still hackable. We can argue as long as we want, it's their tech and they can do whatever they want with it, especially when they are giving it out for free. If someone here has paid money for PhysX technology and the hardware is still under warranty or they were promised in writing that it will be supported forever and all future games will be compatible with it, raise your hand! And I will pay the legal fees for a lawsuit against Nvidia.

Yeah, it's a devastating loss...you know, for all 3 games that PhysX is used that are worth playing?

[Manicdan]

Still, no free eyecandy for you guys. Beggars can't be choosers. Be glad it's still hackable. We can argue as long as we want, it's their tech and they can do whatever they want with it, especially when they are giving it out for free. If someone here has paid money for PhysX technology and the hardware is still under warranty or they were promised in writing that it will be supported forever and all future games will be compatible with it, raise your hand! And I will pay the legal fees for a lawsuit against Nvidia.

odd u dont believe in the phrase "no such thing as a free lunch"

nvidia spends alot of money on it, and that will end up coming from your wallet.

[Final8ty]

Still, no free eyecandy for you guys. Beggars can't be choosers. Be glad it's still hackable. We can argue as long as we want it's their tech and they can do whatever they want with it, especially when they are giving it out for free.

Im not begging for anything i thought this was a discussion about NV's stance & legal obligations & to there customers who bought there hardware which i have not bought so i have nothing to lose but this is not about me, this is about NV.

[Sadasius]

Still, no free eyecandy for you guys. Beggars can't be choosers. Be glad it's still hackable. We can argue as long as we want, it's their tech and they can do whatever they want with it, especially when they are giving it out for free. If someone here has paid money for PhysX technology and the hardware is still under warranty or they were promised in writing that it will be supported forever and all future games will be compatible with it, raise your hand! And I will pay the legal fees for a lawsuit against Nvidia.

I hope to hell they shut you out too because they hate the company that makes your RAM in your build! Then you will open your eyes to what people are saying.