Mix ATI & Nvidia? Lose PhysX
Nvidia has confirmed that systems mixing ATI GPUs for graphics rendering and Nvidia GPUs for physics rendering will have PhysX disabled.
SlashGear reports that Nvidia's graphics drivers deliberately disable support for on-GPU PhysX physics processing when they detect an ATI graphics card present in the system - something that has apparently been happening since version 186 of the driver bundle.
The issue crops up on systems that have an ATI card for graphics rendering along with an Nvidia card for dedicated PhysX handling - a somewhat unlikely combination, but one that will appeal to those who miss the days of dedicated PhysX acceleration cards prior to Nvidia's purchase of Ageia back in 2008.
Sadly, all that cleverness turns out to be for naught: in an e-mail to a member of the NGOHQ forums, Nvidia has confirmed that on-GPU PhysX processing is disabled on all Nvidia hardware if the system also contains an ATI graphics card.
The e-mail states that the functionality is disabled for "a variety of reasons - some development expense[,] some quality assurance and some business reasons" with the upshot being that "Nvidia will not support GPU accelerated PhysX with Nvidia GPUs while GPU rendering is happening on non-Nvidia GPUs."
For now, if you want the fastest possible PhysX rendering while retaining an ATI card as your primary graphics rendering device it looks like you'll have to trawl the markets for one of the increasingly rare dedicated Ageia cards - at least until Nvidia changes its stance and re-enables support in the driver.
Do you think that Nvidia is being disingenuous with its reasons for disabling support for PhysX rendering in this case, or is the combination of ATI and Nvidia hardware so rare as to make the issue almost non-existent? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyThis is sort of expected, tho I never really ever heard of anyone doing this. Anyhow just get one of the first nVidia integrated Physics and use an older driver... I guess.
Well now I know. Cheeky buggers.
My friend and I were discussing this only the other day as I want to bung a 8400GS into my system so that I could use it as a PhysX card. He told me that nVIDIA are stopping that from happening but I part of me didn't want to believe him. Hopefully Lucid will release an add-in card of their Hydra 200 or something as I doubt we'll see a 775 board with the chip on board.
I hate you nVIDIA, I hate you!
McDonald's wouldn't start selling Whoppers just because some customers don't want to go to both "restaurants".
Analogy fail. Seriously how is it even remotely the same.
You have two graphics cards, one nVidia, one ATI. nVidia decide to purposefully disable a feature on their card if it detects an ATI one. That is not the same as McD and BK not selling each others items.
Just get over it with all your constant moaning.
+1 for perplekks45
That's not the same thing at all.
It's like McDonald's trying to tell you what you are allowed to do with your food once you've bought it. "No eating our Burgers with KFC chips"
As if they could even begin to think of saying that. Once you've bought your food and left the shop it's none of their business.
Same for nVidia, it's not any of their business what card you're using for rendering games.
Imagine if M-Audio suddenly decided that their audio cards had to be disabled if they realised your midi keyboard was from behringer?
It's about time nVidia get slapped with an anti-competitive lawsuit. They've been getting away with far too much lately.
They own the rights to PhysX so it's their IP and they're allowed to protect it. If they don't think one of their cards should be used as a dedicated PhysX card then they can stop including it in their drivers. People who really want it just use older drivers and stop whining or grab an old Ageia card.
After all this decision affects less than 1% of the graphics market. Big deal.
Remind me of who HAS had a Havok GPU accelerated game?
ATi GPUs (AMD) were the first ones to demonstrate GPU accelerated Havok physics which is to be ran using OpenCL and direct computer on ANY capable GPU.
There are only video demos of GPU Havok Physics.
They can do what they wish with their software or property within reason. What if they suddenly decided to issue a driver that severely gimped their older cards to make their newer ones appear faster in comparison?
Perfectly fine according to you.
When you buy something you should be able to do what ever you like with it.
When they're taking something away when competition's hardware is detected, that is completely wrong.
It's none of nVidia's business what other hardware is in your PC.
I don't see iPods needing Macs to charge or interface with.
Of course, if it was an issue that effected you, I'd bet your stance on this would suddenly become the opposite.
They loose customer satisfaction and sales for this move. Supporting physx is already hard if you take into count that you need an NVIDIA card to use it. Even more so if you are stuck to NVIDIA cards forever. And with Directx compute becoming a norm even more so.
Even if they don't give support for allowing physicx work along side any other graphics card they didn't need to disable physicx for non nvidia cards. A simple warranty would be sufficient to save them from the legal side.
But there is another thing. I think NVIDIA isn't quite ready for the next gen. Why? Because of the letter they sent to the press that there was little to no interest in DirectX 11 right now and that it didn't make sense buying one of the new ATI cards.
NVIDIA has just seen what ATI's next gen card is, and sends this type of statement? I think they did this because they have compared ATI's offering with what they are internaly building and realised that ATI is better. So they're trying to pass the idea that next gen graphics card isn't worth it.
I got two NVIDIA gtx 260-216 in SLI. I am planning to upgrade to a DirectX 11 graphics card once the two companies have their offerings on the table and when a decently priced Directx 11 card is able to surprass my current system. I am planning to use one of the GTX 260 on a media center PC I have. And the other one I would use for physix with a future DX11 card. But this way I think I'm going to sell it.
There is no point in maintaining a second graphics card just for physix if you have so many limitations.
But that's the point, when you have a geforce card as the main renderer, then it's fine, you can use a secondary geforce card for PhysX.
Loads of people use their old 8800GTs/9600GTs for PhysX with the latest cards for the rendering side.
It's something nVidia actively push.
They just want to give the impression that Geforce means PhysX.
This is why proprietary standards fail quick. Only part of the market can make use of them.
Until there is an open Physics API that runs on all GPUs regardless of the manufacturer, PhysX will never be more than a gimmick.
And both nVidia and AMD already screw with you if you have an older card: There are hardly any bug fixes or optimizations for newer games for older cards, are there?
I don't know where you live but clearly there is no competitive market around. Otherwise you'd know that by playing by the rules you won't be very successful.
Sad but true.
//edit: Havok is OpenCL based, so technically it is OPENly available and, as you already said, nobody uses it. It's a gimmick just like PhysX but nVidia at least use it. Of course it's a restriction and of course everything should be open for everyone but we'd hardly race ahead with that kind of speed in development if there wasn't that much pressure of competition.
Most of what nVidia does is damage control, but in the process they generally highlight even more wrongs they've been committing.
My point wasn't whether they want to or not, but if they do or don't. Of course they'd love to do that, but they'd never get away with it. Which is why I don't understand how nVidia gets away with so much.
They're destroying their own reputation with each stunt like this.
I don't think it's ethically correct or very smart marketing-wise to do something like that but I can see why they do it. It makes sense business-wise.
This surely goes against the law. I bet someone could sue for this and i'm sure its only a matter of time before they do.
Lets start a boycott Phys-X and Nvidia until they enable theier cards to do what they are supposed to do.
You do realize that AMD has an active license to use Havok on their full line of products, right?
Why don't you all start asking about why we can't combine AMD and nVidia graphics cards for renderin in some kind of Cross-SLI?
Check out the Lucid Hyrda 200 chipset.
Bonus my ass! They actively advertise it and use it to make themselves look superior "Ooooh our video cards support PhysX, can yours?".
Alas, that's the way of the fanboy, when it's good for them, then X feature is THE BEST in the world but when it hurts them/makes them look bad then it's a "just a bonus", give me a f***ing break
To be honest, I wouldn't mind seeing ATI suddenly emerge with a better alternative to Physx just to teach Nvidia a lesson!
If I was Intel I would absolutely NOT help AMD with their GPU's and to be honest I think this is why there are next to no games announced using AMD GPU accelerated Havok. Remember that Intel has just ponied up over a billion Euros because of AMD and the Antitrust case.
Why in hell would they help AMD GPU's is beyond me.
I'll build a new PC around/shortly after Christmas and right now it looks like AMD might be the company to receive most of my money.
If you're trying to say PhysX is a main selling point for most nVidia customers though, you're either blind or lying to yourself. It's a gimmick. Nice to have but not the dicisive feature. End of story.
Anyway, I don't like that nVidia are doing the naughty and locking PhysX out - but they are entirely within their rights to, they own the tech. Still, it seems what they're trying to do is force people to upgrade from nVidia hardware to nVidia hardware (using the older card as a dedicated PhysX card) which might well backfire. Time will tell, however.
Regardless, so long as you don't use the latest drivers, you can get away with ATi graphics and nVidia PhysX - to the best of my knowledge, the 182.xx drivers still allow the use of PhysX when an ATi card is present as the graphics card.
my thoughts exactly, especially as i'm one of those ATI users who was considering getting a GeForce card just for PhysX. Now though, you can bet i'm not going to run nVidia cards only in my system just so i can have PhysX, i'm just not going to bother at all. It would have been a far better decision strategically to allow it, as it opens up an entire new market to nvidia which they now will never have
Lets see how quickly nvidia backpedals on this after finding out what proportion of ATI owners were willing to by a GeForce card to just get physx
I'll have to give that ago, I just can't help but think that they'll lose custom over this.
On a seperate note i tried to use my old 8800 ultra as a physx card along with gtx 280 for a gpu and couldnt make it work, my PSU is only 700W would that be the problem ? Ive looked all over nvidia's site for a guide but cant see anything.
I doubt I'd lose sleep over you legions of angry AMD fans.
I think this will cause a lot of ill feeling towards nvidia which could have been avoided, only a small minority of users have an ATI/nVidia combo, and leaving it unlocked may have created extra sales from ATI users wanting a 2nd (NV) card for PhysX...
You're really not getting the issue here, are you?
There's no catering to be done here. NVIDIA is actively going out of their way to stop people from using NVIDIA cards in the same system as an ATI card for the express purpose of running PhysX instead of allowing it and just not actively supporting it.
People honestly aren't upset about not being able to run PhysX in the two games that implement it to any effect, they're upset about being denied choice simply because NVIDIA is currently reeling and would like to deny ATI all the sales it possibly can.
The problem is that they're failing miserably at their whole plan! I can guarantee that there are very few people willing to give up the extra performance currently provided by ATI simply to enable PhysX, so NVIDIA isn't going to get even the few low-end sales that they might have otherwise.
Honestly, the whole situation is tantamount to a little kid throwing a temper tantrum because he's only going to get a small ice cream instead of a big one.
Yeah because no one has to ever RMA an nVidia card multiple times.
**** happens, deal with it.
This QA you talk about, does that apply to laptops too? Or are you another one who pretends the whole mobile GPU failure thing didn't happen?
But now I think ATI look to have the best option for me when I next upgrade, because I would like to use all 3 of my monitors side by side as one big monitor! ;)
2 games total it affects 0.1% or less of people. Direct x 11 more
ms junk. The 5870 great performance at a huge price
I know plenty of peolple still on 8800 gtxs that can still handle
every modern game at the resolution they game at 1280 1024 19 inch moniters
are still the norm were most foke live.
Ati and nvidia are fighting for the 10% top end. were 60-70% of all graphics
sales are in the below £ 100 sector
But imagine if Intel bought nvidia, and then next thing you know if you have an AMD CPU your nvidia graphics card runs at half speed or switches off or something. That would suck, and is anti competitive, which at it's heart what this physx thing is.
Andy
Some enterprising hacker will find a way around if, if they haven't already, just as they did with the SLI encryption.
That's gotta be the funniest thing I have heard all day! Thanks.
this move really sealed the deal for me.. tired of nvidia, been tired of them for awhile.. I'm buying this christmas and having a look at that lucid board hopefully
Not really.. PhysX is part of the "Made for nVidia" and obviously if you're not using nVidia cards for video & PhysX then you're not getting the nVidia experience, and if something goes wrong because of the ATI/nVidia mixing, nVidia don't want to have to deal with it because it wasn't intended to work in that way.
Thus it's safer, easier, and better business logic for them to disable it for systems mixing ATI/nVidia.
I don't have a problem with what Nvidia did, that is as long as on their product packaging they put in big bold letters that it PhysX will not work when an ATI card is detected... Otherwise they are falsely advertising their product if you have to scour the internet to find out why your **** wont work when and ATI card is in your system also.
Word, what planet was that guy from? Nvidia has tight QA? What ever...
i still can't use it as a dedicated card.
I give advice to a lot of people who purchase new hardware, and I can't tell any of them to get Nvidia Hardware, be it mobos or graphics.
Intel or AMD all the way.
Nvidia is dead to me.
Even if they pull the fastest card out of a hat, they can keep it, and all the dev costs.
;)
+1 rep for that.
Yeah, I wonder how accurate that is. I've not opened my copy of Batman yet, so not had a chance to look at the readme... if newer PhysX games don't work on 'original' PhysX hardware, that's another reason to avoid PhysX like the plague in it's current 'closed' incarnation - what happens when nVidia decides they no longer wish to support 8 series or 9 series cards as PhysX processors? Or 'lower end' cards as PhysX processors?
Not yet got the full retail game though this is the demo.
FAIL!
I think nVIDIA could sell a lot more cards if they allowed them to work as Physx alongside an ATi card as GPU. I'd buy one.
I always bought ATI because their products were cheaper and almost as good as Nvidia. Plus every body had Nvidia so I wanted to be different. Well After watching Nvidia fall out of favor with Intel and remake the same card with a different name a dozen times, then down play the upcoming release of Directx 11 I'm glad I stuck with the red guys. Besides I have been paying attention to Physx every since those $299 Ageia cards came out and I have yet to see a game released using Physx that makes me say "Dam I gotta get that". Some good games released? Yeh! But the amount of Physx in the games has yet to MODE 7 my eyeballs.
Anyway I think Directx 11 will prove more viable to video games in the next 12 months than Physx will and if I'm wrong than Nvidia will still will be a loser cause by then ATI will offer a card with Physx. Nvidia get your act together and bring gamers together, cause having an Nvidia card in every rig whether it's rendering graphics or doing Physx sounds like profit to me.
That monopoly over PhysX can only be bad for customers in the end, it's not the kind of technology that should be owned by any GPU manufacturer. This is computers we are talking about folks, not video games consoles... Havok for the win!
if it is still disabled, alot of people are going to get quite pissed off
Unfortunately it's not very powerful and drops my minimum fps in Batman from a lovely figure....to 8.
some people might opt to skip ati alltogether and use nvidia for physics and graphics
and some might not buy a nvidia card now for dedicated physics because they want too stay with ati.
LOL very nice and accurate analogy :-D
nVidia spent the money. nVidia wants to maximize profits. Unless nVidia is a completely illogical company (there are some I can list) it is unlikely that they'd do something so stupid.
Think! Guy A has an AMD system, but he really wants PhysX. So he buys a nVidia card. nVidia earns.
Guy B has an AMD system, but he wants PhysX, but he still prefers AMD, so he slots both in, buying a cheaper nVidia card. ATI earns, and comparatively nVidia loses out.
Free rider = AMD if nVidia allows mixing, you know...
Physx works once the onboard GFX is disabled.
Better to buy a secondary NVIDIA card such as the 8800GT, 9500GT, etc, and use it for Physx. Oh, did NVIDIA block this? Good job it's been patched then, lol
&edit ah they did patch it.. think some guy did this in another thread on hardoc, mixed 2 drivers.. still whole thing really makes physx shine for what it really is.. a marketing tool
and not look like **** holes.
If you do, I'll take it all back and state the opposite from now on. ;)
//edit: Just had a "quick" read through the forum. Now I'm not so sure that that's what the "mod" does. If anybody could find out it'd be much appreciated.
Unless there's something in nVidia's EULA about nVidia Physix and ATi GPUs, you should be able to do what you want. If not, then supposedly you were "previously" warned.
The fix mentioned above seems like a nice find tho, way to go!