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NVidia Cripples PhysX "Open" API
An anonymous reader writes "In a foot-meet-bullet type move, NVidia is going to disable PhysX engine if you are using a display adapter other than one that came from their company. This despite the fact that you may have an NVidia card on your system specifically to do this type of processing. 'For a variety of reasons some development expense, some quality assurance and some business reasons Nvidia will not support GPU accelerated PhysX with Nvidia GPUs while GPU rendering is happening on non-Nvidia GPUs.' Time to say hello to Microsoft dx physics or Intel's Havok engine."
Why is this not anti-trust? When you paid for the nVidia card to put into your machine why should its functions depend on whether or not a competitors hardware is present? What if Windows said uh-oh you have Linux installed on another partition, disabling Windows...
Shh.
Stop things like this from working?
Who on earth has a graphics card from two different manufacturers? Regardless though, it means they've directly tied PhysX to their hardware, and I just don't care for them anymore. ATI all the way baby!
I'm currently avoiding PhysX due to the fact that the license requires that credit be given to nVidia/PhysX in any advertisement that mentions the advertised product's physics capabilities. It's a real shame, because I hear that PhysX has pretty robust physics implementation.
The current state of physics acceleration reminds me of the days when hardware-accelerated 3D graphics (except for high-end OpenGL stuff) were only supported through manufacturer-specific APIs. Hopefully, DirectX physics will be good enough that PhysX will ultimately become mostly irrelevant to game developers -- I'm just not convinced that Microsoft can pull it off.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Between the full stack (CPU+Chipset+GPU) provided by AMD and the full stack that will be Intel (with Larrabee in 2010) Nvidia has no future in either Chipsets or GPUs. Any other outcome is a bet against integration and in electronics integration always wins.
Good thing too; both Intel and AMD are vastly more open (at least recently) with their hardware.
Techspot AMD has been working hard to develop Open Physics. Furthermore Bullet Physics has been shown running on Cuda. So that sounds to me like doom for physx...
I'm always impressed by Havok. Whenever I pick up a game that uses it I always smile as I know I'm going to enjoy the physics if nothing else.
This is a bonehead move from nVidia as they've essentially just killed PhysX.
Or, they're strengthened PhysX position and on the way their gfx cards too. When company buys some technology, its never without a reason.
I don't see what the big deal is. They currently only support their cloth simulation on the GPU, so whether or not GPU is being used doesn't affect rigid body physics at all. Havok is ridiculously expensive and they've dropped GPU support for their HavokFX system. I wouldn't discount PhysX based on this announcement alone unless all you care about is cloth.
You really can't blame them for dropping support for CRTs. If you can even buy them anymore, you'd have to be insane to want to.
Yeah, but I have every right to stop being their customer as well. nVidia burned me twice in the last two years. Once on an m1330 laptop, where their chips were spec'd out wrong thermally, so they would basically melt themselves if OEMs followed nVidia's recommended cooling. nVidia worked hard to bury the issue, preventing people like myself from getting a legitimate replacement of the lemon we were sold. The other time, they REFUSED to add dual monitor support for desktop (not games, just DESKTOP) if you were running SLI on a 7xxx series graphics card. You could get it... if you upgraded to SLI 8xxx cards. Considering that the formerly excellent quality of their drivers is now in the gutter (and headed downhilll for a long time to get there), I saw no more reason to put up with them.
My desktop has an ATI graphics card now. My wallet did the talking, and it said "Fuck you, nVidia." The more shit they pull like this, I hope other people vote with their wallets as well. Punish this behavior: boycott nVidia.
If you think about it, physx works on all 8 series and up.
That's a $30 card for physx support. I wonder if I can do this since I have a spare x16 port on my machine.
I don't really know if this will work though.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Yeah it really sucks that some major vendors work together to deliver you a platform inde-fscking-pendant solution that speeds up your computer at no extra freaking costs, patents and other crap. What hidden agenda are you pushing?
Here be signatures
Add to that open source drivers if you're a Linux user and Coreboot support (maybe a little offtopic) and you know why AMD is 'The smarter choice' (yes copied that right from their marketing department).
Here be signatures
Well, ATI cards have some issues still. One that comes to mind:
WoW under wine. The minimap displays solid white because of an issue with pixel buffers in the ATI Catalyst drivers.
Not saying ATI sucks, but they do still have some issues that need to be addressed, particularly on the Linux side of the pond.
2: I've considered using a mix of ATI and nVidia cards on my primary machine, which is also where I play games. Why? I'd like to move from having dual displays to having three, and I ostensibly do have enough hardware to do so. But due to nVidia's driver limitations, I'd have to turn off SLI in order to make all of the DVI outputs live at the same time, and I don't want to turn off SLI.
Currently, the way around this problem is to install another GPU of a different brand. In this way, one can utilize SLI on a single monitor, and use the other GPU for one or more secondary monitors.
And soon, it looks like that configuration will carry an additional caveat. Hooray.
Kid-proof tablet..
As of last month. They just added that back. A bit too late (plus I'm still unwilling to infect my system with Vista, AND buy their $200 glasses when my old ones were exactly the same hardware, just to get it working again).