Does ATI and nvidia PhysX Drivers

[Sinster]

play well with each other?

I jumped ship 8800GTX and went with ATI 4870.. I have a BFG PhysX card and wonder if they play nice together. I like my physX..

 

[GotNoRice]

I ran my BFG PhysX card for a very long time after I got it in 2006 with my Radeon X850 with no issues at all. I'm currently running it along side my Radeon 4850, also with no issues.

 

[Bdbtoys]

Just download the PhysX drivers only and you will be fine.

 

[Crispy002]

I'd imagine they would but I don't have a physX setup so listen to the others

 

[Aquineas]

Works fine with 4870x2

 

[vwguy]

AFIK physx is Nvidia property. ATI is picking up havok i believe. there is no hardware scaling for AMD gpus. it's rendered in software.

 

[Nenu]

AFIK physx is Nvidia property. ATI is picking up havok i believe. there is no hardware scaling for AMD gpus. it's rendered in software.

The OP has a PhysX card.
From post #1

I have a BFG PhysX card and wonder if they play nice together

 

[les_garten]

Works fine with 4870x2

I have the same card, can you describe the Games and the difference the card does in your experience?

 

[Bdbtoys]

Some of the games can be found over here , but these two are my favorites...

Infernal (awesome fire effects w/ PhysX).
UT3 (nice effects in the PhysX levels).

 

[SuperGee]

my favo
Graw 1+2 with max physX polish or effects
Graw2 ageia island map. Gameplay physics

 

[zuppy]

wait, i have a ques. i always wondered, wahts physX ? is it a seperate card or does it come with the gpu u have?

 

[GotNoRice]

wait, i have a ques. i always wondered, wahts physX ? is it a seperate card or does it come with the gpu u have?

PhysX is just software, similar to DirectX. It is a proprietary realtime physics engine middleware origionally called Novodex and was accelerated entirely on the CPU (similar to the havok engine, etc). Ageia bought Novodex and renamed it PhysX.

Back in 2006 Ageia released stand alone PhysX accelerators so that they could offload the acceleration of the PhysX engine from the CPU, these were the origional PPU's.

More recently, Nvidia bought Ageia and made it so that PhysX could be calculated via Cuda, which is the programming language that Geforce 8-series and above can use. It was after this point that PhysX could be accelerated using your Geforce Card.

 

[zuppy]

but does it help in anything? like improve my gameplay or what?

 

[Nenu]

but does it help in anything? like improve my gameplay or what?

If the game supports hardware PhysX then a card that accelerates hardware PhysX may give you an improvement.
Check the websites for the games you own, then check opinions.
Post #9 is useful.

 

[Bdbtoys]

but does it help in anything? like improve my gameplay or what?

Yes and No... To answer the general question... "Yes" but with conditions.

To understand, I have to expand on what GotNoRice was saying. The PhysX (API) is physics software that was made to handle the physics in games without each game maker having to reinvent the wheel with having to program the physics on each game. Later on Ageia made PhysX computations able to be done from a PPU instead of the CPU (Which was more efficient than running with the CPU). However not all PhysX implementations can use the PPU, so sometimes you may have a PPU but you are not seeing any benefit because it's running off the CPU (the program is still using PhysX in software mode).

Here are some examples...

• If the game supports Hardware & Software PhysX and you have a PPU... then Yes you will see bigger gains than without.
• If the game supports Hardware & Software PhysX and you don't have a PPU (Game 1)... You see everything that can be seen if you had a PPU but everthing runs considerably slower (because the CPU is performing the calculations).
• or If the game supports Hardware & Software PhysX and you don't have a PPU (Game 2)... You don't see the amount of detail than if you had a PPU but it runs about the same speed (because they know that Game 1 speeds are unplayable so they cut back on the effects so it can be).
• If the game supports only Software PhysX and you have a PPU... then No, the PPU will not be used and it will work as if it was not in your system.

The main benefits of using the PPU is to get...

• More detructable environments
• More detailed effects
• Better interaction between objects
• More items on-screen taking advantage of those interactions (things don't seem as scripted when something happens)
• The 4 listed above without slowdowns

What not to expect...

• Better frames per second on a game that doesn't use Hardware PhysX (sorry, but it just won't happen).