Nvidia Removes Hybrid PhysX Blockage

[Fëanor]

As you already know, Nvidia has robbed its customers by disabling the PhysX technology (GPU and PPU) anytime a Non-Nvidia GPU is present in the system (even IGPs) since the release of 186 GeForce drivers, to prevent consumers from using hybrid PhysX. As predicted, the community responded critically and eventually a user by name of GenL created a patch that removes the blockage and reclaims the feature. The following is Nvidia's explanation behind their actions:

"Physx is an open software standard any company can freely develop hardware or software that supports it. Nvidia supports GPU accelerated Physx on NVIDIA GPUs while using NVIDIA GPUs for graphics. NVIDIA performs extensive Engineering, Development, and QA work that makes Physx a great experience for customers. For a variety of reasons - some development expense some quality assurance and some business reasons NVIDIA will not support GPU accelerated Physx with NVIDIA GPUs while GPU rendering is happening on non- NVIDIA GPUs. I'm sorry for any inconvenience caused but I hope you can understand."

But now it seems that Nvidia has removed the hybrid PhysX blockage in the recent 257.15 GeForce drivers. However, it is still a mystery for us if it was done intentionally or perheps it is just a bug. "I'm seriously amazed. I've tested it by myself on Windows XP and Windows 7 x64 - it really works out of the box with 257.15. And even more surprising - timebomb issue is gone too. It would be at least one respectable deed by Nvidia, and my mod would be obsolete, which is great for everyone. So we better hope this is permanent." said GenL.

Awesome!

The 2nd hand 8800 GTS 512mb i bought should arrive withing the next 6 hours (according to the Track&Trace information) and i was preparing for a long and possibly frustrating night of labor to make that card work as a dedicated PhysX card along with my two HD4850's (in CrossfireX) when i read that news.

Personally i'm now much more likely to buy your upcoming GF104 card knowing that i could use as a dedicated PhysX card with any future ATI card, in fact i would have probably have bought a new GTS240 or GTS250 instead of an 2nd hand 8800 GTS if this changes had been announced earlier this week (I wasnt willing to buy a €100+ card and just hope that the Hacked drivers will function properly).

Good move nVidia!

 

[Fëanor]

NVIDIA Forceware 257 & Heterogeneous GPU PhysX: It's a Bug, Not a Feature

Our inbox quickly lit up this morning when we received notice about this NGOHQ article, discussing how NVIDIA had removed the heterogeneous GPU restriction on PhysX in their latest beta drivers. This struck us as a bit of an odd reversal of positions from NVIDIA, and now that we've had a chance to chat with them we finally know what's going on. As a quick matter of background, starting with the Forceware 186 series NVIDIA blocked GPU/PPU-accelerated PhysX from working on NVIDIA GPUs and AGEIA PPUs whenever a non-NVIDIA GPU was detected as being in the system. It's been a polarizing matter for the GPU community for nearly a year now, with a tug-of-war going on between projects editing the drivers to remove the block, and NVIDIA adding further checks in to their drivers to stop those efforts. In any case, there has been no sign that NVIDIA would be changing their position any time soon.
This brings us to this week's Forceware 257.15 beta drivers and today's clarification from NVIDIA. NGOHQ was correct in that the 257.15 drivers lacked the heterogeneous GPU restriction; however there has been a question of intentions. As we stated previously NVIDIA has held steady to their desire to keep PhysX on pure NVIDIA systems, so to make this change without publically announcing it odd - if only because it deprives them of the chance to sell cards as PhysX accelerators.
We just got done talking with NVIDIA about the matter and they clarified the issue for us. In what we expect is going to be a disappointment for many of you, the lack of a PhysX restriction on the current 257.15 beta drivers is a bug, not a feature - the restriction should have been in those drivers and it was not. NVIDIA will be reinstating the restriction in new downloads of the beta driver and in the WHQL build of these drivers.
Update: NVIDIA tells us that they will also be "fixing" the 257.15 beta driver on their site, so new downloads of that driver will have the restriction in place

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. -NVIDIA​

For those of you heterogeneous GPU users out there looking to use PhysX, there is some good news that can be salvaged from this however: this won't change the fact that previously downloaded copies of beta drivers lack this restriction. With these drivers you can still have heterogeneous GPUs with PhysX without modifying NVIDIA’s drivers, but you’ll be stuck on these drivers for the time being.

, really, good job in continuing one of your new philosophies of (along with rebranding the same GPU's 4 times) screwing the people whom bought your products if they dare to buy something not yours. Even though since you implemented it your market share dropped by over 8%. (obviously the dick move of blocking Hybrid PhysX is not the sole reason, but since your GPU's are good for little else than PhysX its certainly a reason for people not to pick one up and pair it with the better and cheaper ATI cards)

 

[Genocidicbunny]

I never saw the point in dropping in a separate PhysX GPU. My CPU and GPU can handle it just fine.

 

[Fëanor]

Considering that there are only a dozen or hardware PhysX titles, of which less than an handful are worth playing, i would not recommend the hassle of using hacked drivers to get Hybrid PhysX working to any ATI owners, unless you (like me) enjoy the challenge of getting it working.

The added value of PhysX is pretty minimal, certainly not enough to make up for the much lower price-performance of nVidia products compared to ATI's. In fact i would say while it was great fun to get Hybrid PhysX working, the greatest benefit of this experience has been the realization of how little PhysX is actually worth. The brilliant nVidia PR/Hype machine had convinced me that PhysX/Cuda was really awesome and pretty much indispensable for a great gaming experience, while in fact it has a pretty minimal visual impact.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Now CUDA itself is awesome, until OpenCL becomes finalized, its one of the best ways to get massively parallel software on consumer hardware.

PhysX on the other hand, I could have told you that a long time ago.

 

[Zelig]

Now CUDA itself is awesome, until OpenCL becomes finalized, its one of the best ways to get massively parallel software on consumer hardware.

And it's the only way I can play 1080p movies on my 5 year-old computer without rendering it useless for any other tasks!

 

[Fëanor]

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.

The fact remains that the investment to do a full QA cycle on this AMD/NVIDIA hybrid GPU configuration is beyond what NVIDIA can support at this time. The cost of maintaining AMD/NVIDIA hybrid configurations is larger than the development expense for PhysX, and I do expect that there are games and configurations where this type of system just won’t work. Please, don’t call me :>. Therefore our WHQL certified drivers will continue to have this support disabled."

+1 for nVidia

I can certainly understand that they don't want to spend money on making their product work with ATI products but i also hope this will mean that they will stop spending money and effort pro-actively making it more difficult for people to modify their drivers to make them work alongside ATI cards.

Ideally nVidia should simply allow people to turn on ''Hybrid PhisX" after agreeing on some kind of disclaimer that explains that Hybrid PhysX is not supported by nVidia, the cards, drivers and technology is in no way designed to work with ATI cards and that nVidia is not responsible for any damage and issues incurred by using Hybrid PhisX etc.