PlanetSide Universe - View Single Post - How PhysX runs on Nvidia and AMD (ATI) systems
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Old 2012-08-19, 06:06 PM   [Ignore Me] #127
julfo
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Re: How PhysX runs on Nvidia and AMD (ATI) systems


Originally Posted by JawsOfLife View Post
Thanks for the link bro, I have no problem being proven wrong if it means the truth is promoted

Love Toms, and it is an interesting read. This is a very tricky situation, though. Is purposefully nerfing the CPU potential of PhysX so that an nVidia GPU is the best option by far to play the games on very ethical conduct? Decidedly not. Would nVidia cards be so compelling if the CPU performance more closely matched it? No it wouldn't. So it is a balance between monopolizing great GPU physics performance and selling more cards while still not screwing over everyone who has other brands. It is a tough call, and I don't see a clear solution to the problem. Why would nVidia upgrade the code to x86 if it would lose them money? They wouldn't, that's a silly concept. And again, PhysX IS open source for developers to optimize, if they so desire.
No problem And thank you for constructing an intelligent response. I know many people (including myself) would have flipped out. It's refreshing to find someone who doesn't.

I think you've more or less hit the nail on the head here. nVidia are walking a fine line right now between making their product more desirable (physX wooo!), and making it something that the general populace despises (because of what could be viewed as underhand tactics). At the moment they're doing an admirable job of it.

Right now I'm using AMD rather than nVidia. I bought a 7970. The thing that made me pause before making this decision was physX. nVidia are clearly succeeding to some degree.

It is a difficult situation, and there aren't any clear solutions. As you said, nVidia are unlikely to upgrade to x86, it would be silly for them to do so. At the end of the day, it has to be said that really the onus is on the developers of the game to use physX to the best degree. It is possible, with some work, to convert physX to x86/SSE, and assuming the developers implement threading properly, there should be negligible difference between GPU and CPU (as the post above nicely demonstrated).

Even if they don't (although I have the utmost confidence in the Dev Team) there is still another solution for most AMD users: Hacked nVidia drivers with a dedicated nVidia card for physX offloading. Using the modified 1.05ff drivers one can create a "hybrid" set-up which is comparable to a single card nVidia set-up. I personally don't think physX is anything to worry about. Others disagree, and they're welcome to.
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This means there will be changes in gameplay between Planetside 1 and Planetside 2.
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Last edited by julfo; 2012-08-19 at 06:07 PM.
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