Nvidia for Better Or Worse

Some recent controversy has been stirred up with PhysX though thanks to Windows 7 and its ability to run multiple graphics drivers on the same system - a feature that existed in Windows XP but was not available in Windows Vista. Since PhysX was never officially supported by NVIDIA on Windows XP, NVIDIA never had to deal with the dilemma of running PhysX in a multi-vendor system. With Windows 7 a user could in theory have a Radeon HD 4890 installed for graphics rendering and a GeForce 9800 GT for PhysX hardware acceleration - and in fact with early drivers this was possible. Now however, NVIDIA has disabled that feature as of the 185.85 driver set and caused uproar with consumers.
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If Nvidia, in a show of good faith would re-enable PhysX support for systems with non-Nvidia GPUs that would be a great show of faith to gamers and help remove the tarnish on their less than reputable recent business practices imo. Will they do it? Probably not, but it would be a step in the right direction if they did. Consumers should not be prohibited from using the features of products that they have already paid for.
 
vjcsmoke said:
If Nvidia, in a show of good faith would re-enable PhysX support for systems with non-Nvidia GPUs that would be a great show of faith to gamers and help remove the tarnish on their less than reputable recent business practices imo. Will they do it? Probably not, but it would be a step in the right direction if they did.
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I hope they do that, but I'm not expecting them to either. And, while it would certainly improve their image among gamers, I honestly think that enabling Physx support for ATI + NV configurations would lose them a lot of sales.

Think about it. . . I bet we'd see LOTS of gamers go upgrade to a 5870/5850, and use their current Nvidia card (GTX260 or what have you) for a dedicated Physx card. For gamers who really love Physx, there would be one less reason for them to choose Nvidia as their next upgrade.
 
Why do people assume Nvidia is obligated to provide PhysX support for their competitor's cards? They paid to acquire it as a selling point for their cards,they own the technology,they have every right to make it exclusive.From a business viewpoint,it's only common sense.
 
Finally a good article about what nvidia is doing. Ya nvidia disable ati card from using the physx was a bad move. But Nvidia really been a leader in technology but not aimed just for gamers.
 
michael.pa2 said:
Why do people assume Nvidia is obligated to provide PhysX support for their competitor's cards? They paid to acquire it as a selling point for their cards,they own the technology,they have every right to make it exclusive.From a business viewpoint,it's only common sense.
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please use your brain before opening your mouth, it is not about nvidia providing support for ATI cards, but it is nvidia disabling the support of the user's OWN nvidia card.
 
michael.pa2 said:
Why do people assume Nvidia is obligated to provide PhysX support for their competitor's cards? They paid to acquire it as a selling point for their cards,they own the technology,they have every right to make it exclusive.From a business viewpoint,it's only common sense.
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Well they still have a nvidia card for physx, while having an ati card for rendering.

They disable that feature, that is what got peopel upset.
 
michael.pa2 said:
Why do people assume Nvidia is obligated to provide PhysX support for their competitor's cards? They paid to acquire it as a selling point for their cards,they own the technology,they have every right to make it exclusive.From a business viewpoint,it's only common sense.
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They don't have to provide ANYTHING. It's about Nvidia disabling Physx if it sees an ATI GPU in your system. Nobody expects Nvidia to provide Physx drivers for ATI cards, but it is pretty shady that they went out of there way to disable Physx on NVIDIA cards when you have an ATI card as your primary.
 
smartpatrol said:
I honestly think that enabling Physx support for ATI + NV configurations would lose them a lot of sales.
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No, not really. PhysX isn't much of a selling point for Nvidia graphics cards at this point. Sure they would like it to be but no one should be basing their purchasing decisions on something as trivial as that. I'm going to buy from whoever has the best performing card at a good price. If I can run PhysX in a couple games, great. If I can't, well it's no big deal either.

I think Nvidia knows they bought a turd with Aegia, and at this point they're trying to recoup whatever lost value they can before the industry eventually moves to an open standards physics API. The problem is they're rubbing a lot of their customers the wrong way in the process.
 
bangmal said:
please use your brain before opening your mouth, it is not about nvidia providing support for ATI cards, but it is nvidia disabling the support of the user's OWN nvidia card.
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His point is valid. It's so much that it can't be done and I would LOVE to see nVidia support multi-vendor setups, it's that there's GOING to support issues with this technology and then nVidia would have to deal other vendors drivers in addition to their own. That costs money and provides little to nVidia in return other than good will. Good will that would actually HURT their sales.

While it sounds great in theory its not that simple.
 
Remerber ati just does not want to license physx support in their own gpu. Maybe ati gpu really can't run physx because their stream method isn't that good compared to cuda?
 
TheBuzzer said:
Remerber ati just does not want to license physx support in their own gpu. Maybe ati gpu really can't run physx because their stream method isn't that good compared to cuda?
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ATI doesn't do PhysX because it would then have to pay a licensing fee to Nvidia for each video card they sold that did PhysX. The same way that any motherboard manufacturer that supports SLI must pay a licensing fee to Nvidia. It doesn't make sense for ATI to give dollars to a competitor for every card that they sell.

I'm not asking Nvidia to devote resources to making sure PhysX works with ATI cards. I'm asking them to stop DISABLING PhysX whenever their video card senses a competitor's card in the computer system. That's a big difference. I just want to be able to USE all the capabilities of the video card that I PAID FOR.
 
heatlesssun said:
His point is valid. It's so much that it can't be done and I would LOVE to see nVidia support multi-vendor setups, it's that there's GOING to support issues with this technology and then nVidia would have to deal other vendors drivers in addition to their own. That costs money and provides little to nVidia in return other than good will. Good will that would actually HURT their sales.

While it sounds great in theory its not that simple.
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That's not true at all, Nvidia is under no pressure to support a multi-vendor setup. That is absolutely 100% not what this is about. They can put out all the press releases in the world claiming otherwise, but it doesn't change the fact that this is about them locking out other vendors and users just for the sake of locking them out. There is no defensible position Nvidia can take on this issue that doesn't make them look like they are going out of their way to break configurations based solely on the fact that a competitors product is present.
 
Put it this way, how would people feel if the new XFX-750 power supply they just bought suddenly decides not to provide juice to video cards that are Sapphire branded? People would say that makes no sense and call it bad business practices. How is what Nvidia doing much different?
 
vjcsmoke said:
Put it this way, how would people feel if the new XFX-750 power supply they just bought suddenly decides not to provide juice to video cards that are Sapphire branded? People would say that makes no sense and call it bad business practices. How is what Nvidia doing much different?
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As long as it still powers vibrators. :D
 
vjcsmoke said:
ATI doesn't do PhysX because it would then have to pay a licensing fee to Nvidia for each video card they sold that did PhysX. The same way that any motherboard manufacturer that supports SLI must pay a licensing fee to Nvidia. It doesn't make sense for ATI to give dollars to a competitor for every card that they sell.
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Exactly. Why the hell would ATI pay money to Nvidia just to support NV's proprietary standard? All that would do is guarantee that Physx would become THE GPU physics standard, and ATI would be paying royalties forever. Plus, you know NV would make it run better on their own GPUs.

It would be amazingly stupid for ATI to license Physx. The only way that would happen is if Physx becomes so popular that ATI needs it to be competitive. And of course, such a situation would be great for NV but bad for ATI and for gamers in general.
 
heatlesssun said:
His point is valid. It's so much that it can't be done and I would LOVE to see nVidia support multi-vendor setups, it's that there's GOING to support issues with this technology and then nVidia would have to deal other vendors drivers in addition to their own. That costs money and provides little to nVidia in return other than good will. Good will that would actually HURT their sales.

While it sounds great in theory its not that simple.
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Unfortunately, that argument becomes quite flimsy when your able to run a simple patch and voila, you have ATI doing video rendering and your Nvidia card of choice doing the PhysX. I just don't buy it. If I patched PhysX and it was running with bugs or wierd performance issues then yes I would agree with your statement, but that isn't the case.
 
tesfaye said:
Unfortunately, that argument becomes quite flimsy when your able to run a simple patch and voila, you have ATI doing video rendering and your Nvidia card of choice doing the PhysX. I just don't buy it. If I patched PhysX and it was running with bugs or wierd performance issues then yes I would agree with your statement, but that isn't the case.
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Why do Nvidia card owners need to jump through the hoops of getting a PATCH from someone else to get the video card to do something it was supposed to do in the first place? That argument does not compute. It's only a BAD business practice when Nvidia finally figures a way to stop people from getting around their LOCK OUT?
 
heatlesssun said:
His point is valid. It's so much that it can't be done and I would LOVE to see nVidia support multi-vendor setups, it's that there's GOING to support issues with this technology and then nVidia would have to deal other vendors drivers in addition to their own. That costs money and provides little to nVidia in return other than good will. Good will that would actually HURT their sales.

While it sounds great in theory its not that simple.
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Well, others have pointed it out as well already, but really physics calculation and 3D rendering are two different tasks taking place on two different pieces of hardware in a setup where you are using a dedicated nVidia card for PhsyX and it makes as much sense to claim they can't work together as it would if Intel were to announce they only support Larrabee usage with their processors.

They share a PCI Express bus, but then so might a network card add in, or a RAID card. Luckily that's all based on standards, so unless there is an inherently faulty, and nonstandard design component to nVidia's cards then talking to them to do physics will not interfere with another add in component rendering graphics.

Various parts of your computer work together all the time - open up device manager and take a look at all the various brands, and types of equipment that work together perfectly fine.
 
to the guys saying Nvidia had the right to block physx:

don't you think they should have told people this BEFORE we plunked out some serous dough for them? I'm sorry I don't have much of a use for physx but if it turns out that I can't fold after installing a 5800 (still in the air about that) I will be pissed. NO company has the right to tell me that I can't use their product if I decide to use a competitors as well. My Pontiac doesn't refuse to start just because I buy a ford, my graphics card should not stop working if I decide to use it as a math coprocessor.
 
As an nVidia owner I think it is dumb with what they are doing. I agree with those who are saying that NV doesn't have to go out of their way to make PhysX work with ATi, but stop going out of the way to make it not work. I was thinking about getting one or two 5870's and selling my 280's anyway.
 
I can see good and bad points with both points of view here... the good thing for me is that I dont really care cause I can only use Nvidia since ATI does not care for real 3d gaming (3d vision style).
I just need to start thinking about Intel now in order to have SLI because right now it would be nice to add another cheap GTX280 to my system instead of having to but a GTX295 :-(

Sometimes I wish there were so many "unique" set ups...dead ends suck.
 
i know that it isn't the issue, but is there some major problem with using pre- 185.85 drivers on win7? of course i know the real issue is continued support; i just want to know if there's some major barrier to using ATI and nVidia with slightly dated drivers.
 
The next logical step for Nvidia is to disable PhysX when their drivers detect an Intel chipset or processor. They are, after all, going to be competitors in the graphics market soon.
 
In a way I'm glad to see this happen. It's one more nail in GPU Physx's coffin. Hopefully the industry will move on from this little mistake and embrace physics software that isn't exclusive to one company's hardware.
 
Once again we end up on the same topic...gpu physx vs cpu....haven't you realized how much faster a GPU is for this compared to a traditional CPU?
Maybe we should go back to CPU ALL processing and forget video cards and everything else....
 
I'm currently running a GTX 285 and I'm playing through Batman: AA for a second time. Sure would be nice to be able to buy a Radeon 58xx for faster rendering and keep my GTX 285 installed so I don't lose out on the PhysX support in the game.
 
John Reynolds said:
I'm currently running a GTX 285 and I'm playing through Batman: AA for a second time. Sure would be nice to be able to buy a Radeon 58xx for faster rendering and keep my GTX 285 installed so I don't lose out on the PhysX support in the game.
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You can for now. Until Nvidia finds a way to completely lock out the workaround.
 
If they want more companies to use Physx, making your market smaller by cutting off ATi completely is ludicrous. It would be a smart business plan to only allow Nvidia cards as Physx processors, however cutting off Nvidia consumers just because they don't have both graphics and physx from Nvidia is bad business for them in the end. A smaller consumer base always makes your product less adoptable. If their next video cards aren't a huge triumph, and ATi video cards become more popular, physx will also become less of a success.
 
shaolin95 said:
Once again we end up on the same topic...gpu physx vs cpu....haven't you realized how much faster a GPU is for this compared to a traditional CPU?
Maybe we should go back to CPU ALL processing and forget video cards and everything else....
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I don't think you understand what this thread is about. No one has said anything remotely like what you're implying.
 
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I think 99% of the people out there don't know what physx is, and really don't care...as 99% of the people out there don't need it or use it.
 
astrallite said:
Nevermind, it seems to be true, PPU has been disabled, GenL at http://www.ngohq.com/graphic-cards/16223-nvidia-disables-physx-when-ati-card-is-present.html is still working on enabling PPU's but right now they aren't working.

That's kind of a bad joke, the product you bought (a PhysX card) no longer works as advertised because you have competitors products in your system!
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Wow. Has Nvidia been trying to get as much negative PR as possible over the last few weeks? First the downplaying of DX11, then the fake Fermi card, and now they disable Physx if a competitor's card is present. Unbelievable.

Then again, this is the kind of thing that makes the industry so entertaining to follow. Grab some popcorn :cool:
 
any who buys a card based on dx11 is a fool period. it is utterly pointless. its not 1996 its 2009 if it's not in a console dev kit, it's irrelevent.

I see no reason why ATI should free ride, when they were given a chance at a free license. and now after batman they have lost all credibilty. it's not Nvidia's job to pay thier egineers to get AA working on your cards and well as there's.

Where is the ATI that created the 9700?
 
ikarinokami said:
any who buys a card based on dx11 is a fool period. it is utterly pointless. its not 1996 its 2009 if it's not in a console dev kit, it's irrelevent.

I see no reason why ATI should free ride, when they were given a chance at a free license. and now after batman they have lost all credibilty. it's not Nvidia's job to pay thier egineers to get AA working on your cards and well as there's.

Where is the ATI that created the 9700?
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Troll much? Explain to me how it's OK for Nvidia to disable functions in a card you've paid for? The ATI that built the 9700? You mean the ATI that just handed nvidia it's ass with the 5870? All at a lower price point? Yeah, they are clearly sitting on their thumbs. Crawl back to your bridge.
 
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