Do nvidia drivers still have DRM?

[taltamir]

I never got a proper answer when I asked in anandtech, maybe someone here knows, maybe kyle will be willing to test it for us...
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2086312&highlight=nvidia+driver+drm

Basically the gist of it is:
Nvidia has driver level DRM which:
1. Disables physX if an ATI GPU is detected, even an ATI IGP
2. Disables SLI if the bios does not contain encrypted keys that prove the mobo maker paid nvidia 5$ for the privilege of supporting SLI.

They have actually been working quite hard to close the holes in the DRM, as cracked drivers were made to bypass it.

Then nvidia released beta driver 257 http://www.anandtech.com/show/3744/...terogeneous-gpu-physx-its-a-bug-not-a-feature
which did not contain the DRM preventing physX on machines with ATI chips. nvidia explained that it was a mistake and they will replace the download with a DRMed one ASAP. Then they went back on it and stated that "due to overwhelming support they decided to leave the beta driver with those options enabled" (and a BS explanation how they DRM it to ensure quality...). However, there has been confusion on whether or not they mean that only that specific beta driver would remain DRM free, or that from now on all beta drivers will be DRM free.

Well, there have been several releases since, so what is the current situation? can you use physX if there is an ATI GPU in your system? it should be fairly easy to test if you have a forbidden setup.
Can someone please confirm if the current beta drivers have the DRM or not? I am dying to know which way nVidia went.

Also, it would be nice to know if those specific drivers only lacked the hetrogenous computing DRM, or if they also fail to test for SLI mobo bios keys

 

[cyclone3d]

The newest beta and the newest whql both work with the hybrid physx patch/hack. Just do a google search on it.

The Nvidia card must be in the first PCI-e slot, but you can run the ATI card as the main display card.

 

[jiminator]

lol, SLI sucks and Physx sucks, talk about two dud products. If you need SLI, you paid too much, and if you need physx, well, games that actually use it in a useful manner are hard to find.

 

[eddieck]

lol, SLI sucks and Physx sucks, talk about two dud products. If you need SLI, you paid too much, and if you need physx, well, games that actually use it in a useful manner are hard to find.

You're right. SLI sucks very much. I mean, GTX 460 SLI isn't faster than 5870 CF or anything, right?

I'm not trying to defend NV because their tactics are bullshit. But it's also bullshit to say SLI sucks completely.

 

[ghost6303]

However, there has been confusion on whether or not they mean that only that specific beta driver would remain DRM free, or that from now on all beta drivers will be DRM free.

i didnt know there was any confusion on the issue- it was a while back that the beta drivers that allowed physics with mixed cards were accidentally put online. they were quickly removed, though there are still copies all over, just not on nvidias site. it was a mistake on their part, not a move to give their customers what they wanted and have been demanding.

they have no plans to change their minds. if you use ATI hardware, physics is disabled on any nvidia product that might also be in the system. only way around it is to hack the drivers.

 

[jiminator]

You're right. SLI sucks very much. I mean, GTX 460 SLI isn't faster than 5870 CF or anything, right?

I'm not trying to defend NV because their tactics are bullshit. But it's also bullshit to say SLI sucks completely.

lets see, does not work with all games, is not 2x improvement. about all cases you are better off getting a single card this year and a 2x as fast card 15 months later. The money spent is the same. Biggest joke to me is the people that spent $1200 to $1500 on triple SLI for what is now obsolete video cards. The cards depreciate too fast IMO to make SLI worthwhile.

 

[dandragonrage]

lets see, does not work with all games, is not 2x improvement. about all cases you are better off getting a single card this year and a 2x as fast card 15 months later. The money spent is the same. Biggest joke to me is the people that spent $1200 to $1500 on triple SLI for what is now obsolete video cards. The cards depreciate too fast IMO to make SLI worthwhile.

Someone from Nvidia came to your house and pointed a gun to your head and made you order 3 video cards? Somebody alert the press!

I also think that SLI is lame but it beats the crap out of CF.

 

[unhap]

This was definitely one of the shadier moves by nvidia.

 

[Kangg]

lol, SLI sucks and Physx sucks, talk about two dud products. If you need SLI, you paid too much, and if you need physx, well, games that actually use it in a useful manner are hard to find.

WTF, join the 21st century man.SLI rocks, physx, not so much.

 

[heatlesssun]

lets see, does not work with all games, is not 2x improvement. about all cases you are better off getting a single card this year and a 2x as fast card 15 months later. The money spent is the same. Biggest joke to me is the people that spent $1200 to $1500 on triple SLI for what is now obsolete video cards. The cards depreciate too fast IMO to make SLI worthwhile.

People how build rigs like this don't do it worrying about next year, they do it have a fantastic gaming experience. Do you honestly think gaming on my sig rig sucks? LOL!

 

[taltamir]

i didnt know there was any confusion on the issue- it was a while back that the beta drivers that allowed physics with mixed cards were accidentally put online. they were quickly removed

no, they weren't removed. nvidia said they will remove them, then backtracked and said they will leave them as is due to popular demand.
So is this a "one time only" deal or all beta drivers?

does anyone here actually run an AMD+nVidia setup?

 

[cyclone3d]

The newest beta and the newest whql both work with the hybrid physx patch/hack. Just do a google search on it.

The Nvidia card must be in the first PCI-e slot, but you can run the ATI card as the main display card.

no, they weren't removed. nvidia said they will remove them, then backtracked and said they will leave them as is due to popular demand.
So is this a "one time only" deal or all beta drivers?

does anyone here actually run an AMD+nVidia setup?

Did you not read the first repsonse to the thread?

See sig.. I have ATI+Nvidia

 

[ghost6303]

no, they weren't removed. nvidia said they will remove them, then backtracked and said they will leave them as is due to popular demand.

link me to where they said this, or where the drivers are still hosted on nvidia's site.

 

[jiminator]

There were beta drivers. They are no longer available. Nvidias explanation for everything (including why cpu physix is unoptimized) has always been that the platform is open source and anyone can develop for it. Personally I think it is a waste.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

There were beta drivers. They are no longer available. Nvidias explanation for everything (including why cpu physix is unoptimized) has always been that the platform is open source and anyone can develop for it. Personally I think it is a waste.

yeah its open source til you decide to use it then have to slap the "Nvidia" physX logo on your game because its so open source.. its so open source that you have to give Nvidia free advertising.. mmhmm yep..

(no this wasnt directed at you juminator, just commenting on how open source physX really is)

 

[Gorankar]

Open Source is not what PhysX is. It is a free license to use it in your game, if certain marketing requirements are met.

 

[visionviper]

lets see, does not work with all games, is not 2x improvement. about all cases you are better off getting a single card this year and a 2x as fast card 15 months later. The money spent is the same. Biggest joke to me is the people that spent $1200 to $1500 on triple SLI for what is now obsolete video cards. The cards depreciate too fast IMO to make SLI worthwhile.

I game at 1680x1050, so single card solutions are absolutely perfect for me but if you have a lot of money to spend and you get yourself a nice, large, high resolution monitor then a single card will just not be able to cope and you need to use SLI or CF.

 

[ghost6303]

very few, if any, processors scale exactly linearly. it takes CPU cycles to coordinate the data load between two separate chips and the extra latency involved with being in two separate physical locations. so i dont think its fair or even valid to say SLI/xfire sucks just because 2 cards doesnt give twice the arbitrary benchmark scores that a single card would give.

 

[taltamir]

http://www.+++++.com/news/17916-nvidia-driver-bug-removes-hybrid-physx-blockage-updated.html
EDIT: HardOCP censored out the website name from my link for some reason, so you will have to google it for yourself, google "Nvidia Driver Bug Removes Hybrid PhysX Blockage", it will be the first result.

Update #1: This is a bug! confirmed by Nvidia. "Yes, this is a bug in the latest build of PhysX that was packaged with the driver. We'll be fixing this issue ASAP - the WHQL driver launching in early June won't have this issue."

Update #2: Nvidia's Tom Petersen has commented on our article through the nTersect blog: "A lot of you have been asking about PhysX and the 257.15 beta driver we posted on Monday. First off it is true that PhysX is enabled when running on NVIDIA GPUs when AMD GPUs are used in the same system. PhysX is a compelling technology that makes PC games great – I am not surprised our fans are eager for it. When using this beta driver no additional hacks are required to enable PhysX. While it was not intentional, due to the overwhelming positive response to the beta driver we have decided to leave the beta up with support enabled.

I saw this same two updates on about 3 other tech sites, all claim to have personally contacted nvidia, were told it is a bug and that the file will be removed, then later nvidia put it back up and said it will remain due to popular demand.

However, they MIGHT have since silently replaced it with a version that adds the DRM right back in one the heat died down, I don't know, you can test by download it from nvidia yourself if you have both card types:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-257.15-beta.html

@cyclone3d: Can you please try installing the newest beta WITHOUT the hack and telling me if it works or doesn't? if it doesn't work without the hack than that means that DRM is back in full force and that driver v257.15 was a one time thing they were kinda pushed into after accidentally releasing it unDRMed.

 

[bore_u2_death]

lets see, does not work with all games, is not 2x improvement. about all cases you are better off getting a single card this year and a 2x as fast card 15 months later. The money spent is the same. Biggest joke to me is the people that spent $1200 to $1500 on triple SLI for what is now obsolete video cards. The cards depreciate too fast IMO to make SLI worthwhile.

1) No it's not a 2x improvement, but in most benchmarks I've read with GTX 460 SLI for example 1.9x scaling is ridiculous.

2) One of the best applications of SLI is to buy a single card that handles your resolution well now. Once newer games come out that stress your single card solution, SLI as an option becomes cheaper than the first card was, while still providing nearly double performance.

3) A person with a single GPU who does SLI or CF is still getting performance from the first purchase. 160 now + 120 in a year < 160 now + 300 for a new different GPU, and the single GPU would still be slower than the SLI solution.

 

[cyclone3d]

Downloading them now..... they are from way back on June 29th though... unless there are some newer leaked betas.

I really haven't been keeping track of the betas as the whql drivers work fine with the hack.

I'll test out the beta/no hack thing in the morning.

 

[taltamir]

thank you, I really appreciate it.

 

[cyclone3d]

It looks like the 258.69 Beta driver set has the block enabled.

3dMark Vantage still uses the GPU PhysX acceleration, but other programs that support Nvidia PhysX don't see any PhysX hardware.

I tried the PhysX screensaver and a couple of PhysX demos and neither saw the hardware.

Guess it is back to the newest WHQL drivers + hack.

 

[InvisiBill]

I saw this same two updates on about 3 other tech sites, all claim to have personally contacted nvidia, were told it is a bug and that the file will be removed, then later nvidia put it back up and said it will remain due to popular demand.

However, they MIGHT have since silently replaced it with a version that adds the DRM right back in one the heat died down, I don't know, you can test by download it from nvidia yourself if you have both card types:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-257.15-beta.html

@cyclone3d: Can you please try installing the newest beta WITHOUT the hack and telling me if it works or doesn't? if it doesn't work without the hack than that means that DRM is back in full force and that driver v257.15 was a one time thing they were kinda pushed into after accidentally releasing it unDRMed.

My understanding on this situation is that Nvidia realized they screwed up and released drivers without the ATI-blocking code. Their first reaction was to pull the drivers down. After seeing so many people who wanted them, they decided to leave those "bugged" files up. I did not interpret anything they said to mean that they would no longer be blocking ATI in the future, just that they decided not to pull down this one version that accidentally allowed it.

At the time, I grabbed all the 257.15 files just in case. From my post at http://www.+++++.com/graphic-cards/17706-hybrid-physx-mod-v1-03-v1-04ff-15.html#post94184:

Just for reference, here are the digital signature timestamps and MD5 sums from the files I downloaded last night. I verified that the Win7 x64 package works on my system (HD5870 and 9800GT each connected to one physical monitor), but don't have the means to test the other versions.

257.15_desktop_win7_winvista_32bit_english_beta.exe
Saturday, May 22, 2010 12:12:17 AM
084cee266b2cfa5fab5facfda1acf863

257.15_desktop_win7_winvista_64bit_english_beta.exe
Saturday, May 22, 2010 12:12:37 AM
0b45373dd0a5269e57304e3439f91b9c

257.15_desktop_winxp_32bit_english_beta.exe
Saturday, May 22, 2010 12:25:53 AM
4dbf5b17a552059b63ab488d47d4e47a

257.15_desktop_winxp_64bit_english_beta.exe
Saturday, May 22, 2010 12:26:05 AM
9d070929e5b47c49db2d78ce02010846

If the digital signature timestamp is based on the local system's clock, Nvidia may be able to give the revised packages the same timestamp with a lot of work. If the timestamp is based on some other clock, then it may be completely impossible for Nvidia to mimic the older timestamp, which means these timestamps would guarantee you have the older files. Either way, the MD5 would definitely guarantee whether or not newer downloads match the ones I did.

You should be able to easily check those MD5s against the currently posted files to see if they've been changed.

I'm still using the "broken" 257.15 drivers so that I don't have to mess with any hacks. I haven't run into any issues, though I don't really have any newer games either.

 

[taltamir]

@cyclone3d: thank you, this confirms that they are putting their DRM in newer betas. So it was a one time deal.

@InvisiBill: thank you, I confirmed that the md5 hashes match for a copy downloaded today on 11-6-2010 from nvidia.com and the original DRM-free release.
This means that nvidia has indeed left the 257.15 beta driver DRM free on their website as they said they would (it makes sense, since it was already released to the world and hosted elsewhere.)

This clears up all questions I had about the issue.