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Patch Re-Enables PhysX When ATI Card Is Present
An anonymous reader points us to a forum posting with the inevitable followup to NVIDIA's crippling of PhysX for users of any other display adapter. "Windows 7 allows two display drivers to be used at once — like in Windows XP. Therefore, it is possible to use an NVIDIA card for PhysX and ATI card for graphics rendering. Sadly, since the release of 186 graphics drivers, NVIDIA has decided to block this feature anytime a Non-NVIDIA GPU is present in the system. In addition, for some incomprehensible reasons, the latest version of PhysX System Software also prevents PPU cards from working if a Non-NVIDIA GPU is present. ... A forum member by the name of GenL has released an experimental beta patch [that] intercepts disable-PhysX-if-Radeon-is-present-code. So far, according to user comments the patch delivers successful results." The forum post has a link to the patch for Windows 7.
No, hopefully they will realize it's illegal before the EU helps them on their way.
It was quite progressive, but at this point they're pretty much the only ones that insist on binary blobs. Intel, as bad as there graphics cards were, did provide a whole lot of documentation and support for OSS years ago when nobody else of note was. These days AMD is working on releasing all the code they can. Which leaves nVidia in the sort of position where they'll write drivers for a platform but won't provide any of the source for developers to do it on their own if it's going to be a long wait.
Why is it necessary for the nvidia driver to even know what other graphics cards are available?