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.

Comments

Get it while you can

[fastest fascist]

NVIDIA Cease-and-desist e-mails going out in 3...2...1...

Re:Get it while you can

[Splab]

No, hopefully they will realize it's illegal before the EU helps them on their way.

Re:Get it while you can

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, like what if your motherboard has an onboard ATI video chip are you screwed since you can't remove it?

Re:Get it while you can

[Asic Eng]

Isn't Nvidia illegally hacking the user's computer? The distribution of software which purports to be a driver update but in reality deliberately breaks functionality of the user's system - sounds like malware on the face of it.

Re:Get it while you can

[Jurily]

No, hopefully they will realize it's illegal before the EU helps them on their way.

Yeah, it's only a matter of decades now.

Re:Get it while you can

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't Microsoft be handing out their own kind of cease-and-desist... revoking nVidia's driver certificate?

Re:Get it while you can

[Tawnos]

They don't do the deep plumbing hacks as often any more, most of what they used to do is now forbidden in order to be compliant with Connecting and Configuring Displays. This is why Vista disabled heterogeneous systems, because prior to our implementation of a unified persistence database and monitor setup APIs, each vendor provided their own solutions, and most were incompatible across vendors. That is largely fixed now, and though we find some places of code that still need fixes, we work hard with the IHVs to ensure your description of their drivers is no longer true.

Re:Get it while you can

[Monsuco]

I doubt it's illegal. What do you think software license agreements are for?

Hell if I know, I didn't read it.

Incomprehensible?

[Rewind]

In addition, for some incomprehensible reasons,

Greedy maybe, but incomprehensible? I think it is pretty easy to understand, they want you to go buy another nVIDIA card. I don't agree with it either, but thats just a silly word choice.

Re:Incomprehensible?

[dimeglio]

So can we return our NVIDIA card because of that un-wanted feature? Choice to control our hardware should not be up to NVIDIA. The patch in question does not circumvent copy protection nor does it infringe on copyrights. This isn't an iPhone for goodness sake, it's a freaking computer. What's next, delete all registry entries under ATI?

Re:Incomprehensible?

[Rewind]

Really? I don't see how it is difficult to understand at all. Someone decided they want to try and force users to go all NVIDIA. I don't agree with it, but I can see how some suit would think it is a great idea.

Re:Incomprehensible?

[Ihmhi]

As the ingenuity of GenL shows, it's not up to them. No matter what a company comes up with to try to get things to go their way, there is someone out there equally as smart and creative (if not more) that will break it.

Nvidia should make a sensible compromise

[ShooterNeo]

Why don't they just put an option to disable this check in a configuration file, with a comment above it that says : UNSUPPORTED FEATURE, ENABLE AT OWN RISK. It would cost a negligible amount of programmer time (I assume there will be people reading this comment that could write in this feature in under 10 minutes)and it could HELP nvidia. If it's possible to get more value out of Nvidia products, even if you also have a competitor's card in your machine, you are going to increase sales for nvidia products in the long run. Furthermore, if the effective install base for PhysX is larger, there's a greater chance that it will become a standard.

Hate to say it, but a lawsuit is coming.

[Bruha]

If a users buys hardware to perform a function they expect it to perform said function. Nvidia comes along and disables the function because for whatever reason you have a competitor's graphics card inside the system. I know some people who do this because a ATI card may be better at certain tasks outside of games. Either way Nvidia should be held accountable, the license you agreed to by opening the box says nothing about installing competitors cards into your machine. In fact I do not see how they can dictate what hardware you put into your box. It's been held that auto makers can not void your warranty for using non manufacturer parts or if they say it will the law states they have to provide the part for free. How is this any different than mixing champion and bosch ignition parts. "We refuse to spark because the distributior cap is nor our brand"

Component and "not supported" messages

[Laebshade]

I had a similar problem with a driver update for Nvidia, though it had nothing to do with using another video card. My HTPC setup connects my PC with an 8600GT with component cables to my TV, an old, Samsung flat-screen CRT. I bought it used for cheap, the color is fantastic, and it does 640x480p. In combination with the horizontal/vertical TV adjustments, I also used the equivelant adjustments built into the Nvidia software to get the perfect screen size with no overscan.

For about a year I had been using it in that setup. I usually check the nvidia website for driver updates, and had been through at least 2 since I set it up with no problems. The latest driver update, 190.62, suddenly disabled the prized feature I was using, stating it was not supported with my particular setup. I had to downgrade to the earlier version to get it working correctly.

I'm not sure if Nvidia did this on purpose to try to get me to upgrade to a newer/better card, or if it was just some unintentional bug that was overlooked, but I've learned not to always upgrade to the newest driver.

Re:Component and "not supported" messages

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. Any TV set computer should be looked at like an appliance, and viewed with the attitude of if it isn't broke, don't fix it.

Re:Component and "not supported" messages

[antdude]

NVIDIA pisses me off. They removed the TV out's fullscreen video overlay so I couldn't watch videos fullscreen with the newer drivers and cards. I also use my computer like a media center. A lot of people complained about this in NVIDIA's forum. NVIDIA readme said this was done for DRM. Bah!

I went to ATI and happy now. I hope ATI never pulls this feature.

Performance against cost

[stimpleton]

Playing devils advocate here I can sort of see Nvidia's beef.

Their attitude to features and drivers is quite progressive and starts back with the old TNT32 when competing with voodoo. IMHO, we now have a similar situation where ATI is making good performing card at cheap prices yet are not maintaining the robust driver feature set of NVidia.

If a game is having a few glitches with shadows, chances are its with an ATI card.

NVidia's point of difference are their drivers, and I can at least see engineers being a bit miffed.

Re:Performance against cost

[hedwards]

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.

Re:Performance against cost

[Moryath]

If a game is having a few glitches with shadows, chances are its with an ATI card.

Funny. In my past experience, if a game is glitching on graphics in some way, chances are it's an Nvidia GPU. Doubly likely if it sounds like a someone turned on a vacuum cleaner inside your box whenever you start a game...

Re:Performance against cost

[causality]

Playing devils advocate here I can sort of see Nvidia's beef. Their attitude to features and drivers is quite progressive and starts back with the old TNT32 when competing with voodoo. IMHO, we now have a similar situation where ATI is making good performing card at cheap prices yet are not maintaining the robust driver feature set of NVidia. If a game is having a few glitches with shadows, chances are its with an ATI card. NVidia's point of difference are their drivers, and I can at least see engineers being a bit miffed.

If they honestly believed that ATI made inferior video hardware, they would feel no need to deliberately sabotage interoperability like this. That's especially true when merely a warning along the lines of "this feature works best with 100% nVidia hardware" would have been sufficient. No, this kind of deliberate and underhanded bullshit is the action of a company that has no confidence in its ability to compete in an open market on a level playing field. Personally I like nVidia's products and I am not eager to see another lawsuit in an already-litigious society. However, I hope they do get sued over this (by either their customers or the government) and I hope they lose big. This kind of shit needs to be made as expensive and unprofitable as possible.

Re:Performance against cost

[characterZer0]

They do not necessarily believe that ATI makes inferior hardware, they believe that ATI makes inferior software.

Understandable in a sense.

[Sj0]

This seems like a lose-lose scenario for NVidia. Either they support other GPUs and risk getting smacked down with conspiracy theories or "lol nvidia is crap" when the famously shitty drivers from companies like S3 break PhysX, or they lock out competitors GPUs to maintain their reputation and get smacked down with conspiracy theories or "lol nvidia is crap".

But it does seem like win-win for nvidia in a sense if they take the first option. If PhysX takes off but ATI has a better gpu, then Nvidia still gets a sale from the hardcore crowd who want an accelerator. If Nvidia has the better gpu, then Nvidia gets the sale anyway.

It's a smart idea becoming an essential part to all PCs.

Shoot all marketers!

[Anonymous Coward]

I swear, all tie-wearing brainless drones that come up with such bullshit need to be shot in the head!

I'm sick of those mouth-breathers standing in the way of good engineering.

Where could the world be if those slimy bastards wouldn't be holding back the bright people?

Nvidia PCI cards do not work when ATI card present

[xiando]

My old box had two NVidia cards, one AGP and one PCI. That worked great. Current box has motherboard with AMD (ATI) IGP. XOrg lets me use just the NV PCI card or just the AMD PCI-E IGP, but I can not use both at the same time using the free radeon driver and the nvidia blob - and the blob is the only choice here since TV-out would be the whole point of using this card. This may not be nvidias fault, but I suspect that it is since their driver is a binary blob. I also feel like complaining that I never got the NVidia card to do tv-out or 3D using free software, those features require the binary blob. The AMD IGP does OpenGL 3D (using 2.6.32-rc1-git6/xorg git) and multihead HDMI+VGA all (ab)using free software, no binary blob required. I will never buy a NVidia product until or unless they provide some documentation and source, they are pretty much the only big player who has not done so at this point. AMDs half-assed documentation release gave us free software support for 3D and faster 2D than their binary blob in a very short time.

Purely out of curiosity...

[jimicus]

Why is it necessary for the nvidia driver to even know what other graphics cards are available?

Don't jailbreak it

[syousef]

Just don't buy it in the first place. They want to make their product of limited use, let 'em. Someone else will fill the void. Hell they may even change their minds. But only if we don't buy their crap.

Also disables the stand alone PPU?

[brandorf]

I hadn't noticed this when the original story broke. But this change also apparently disables Physx processing on Physx dedicated physics cards, i.e. the things Agiea was making before Nvidia bought them out. I know those weren't the most popular addon, but I happen to know of a school with a computer lab full of those Physx cards, and the majority of them have ATI/AMD cards for graphics. For them at least, this update renders all those standalone cards useless.

Two Battles to Watch

[Nom du Keyboard]

So now I've got 2 battles to follow this week:

1: Apple iTunes verses Palm Pre.
2: Nvidia PhysX verses the whole rest of the non-Nvidia world.