Go suck an egg, nVidia!

Please read the following, thanks.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/09/30/202201/NVidia-Cripples-PhysX-Open-API?from=rss

Yeah, I'm not happy. I'm an nVidia lover but this is just plain bad business. When you put more work into limiting what users can do you're only shooting yourself in the foot. WE KNOW it's not required that the gpu handle graphics duties, and we know having an ati card in the system won't hinder this, so... WTF?

Why gimp a tech that was supposed to go open anyway?

they want to keep people from getting an ATI card as their main GPU and then adding a cheaper nvidia card just for physX

i think its dumb but i really don't care being that i run nvidia and i probably will for a long time

If we ***** about it, it will fix it right? No, wait.. ???

jdf_warrior said:

If we ***** about it, it will fix it right? No, wait.. ???

Click to expand...

They just DID fix it. I don't know how much it cost Nvidia to buy AGEIA but I'm sure it wasn't peanuts. Why would they just give the technology away for free to a rival? I'm surprised it ever worked with an ATI main GPU.

Notice the timing on this - shortly before Win 7 release where multiple video drivers are officially supported and ought not to be too troublesome. Vista did not allow this, XP did but only really because it didn't have a good driver model so it was rolling the dice. So it's pretty clear they're doing this to reduce the chance of people doing what WAS a great and flexible idea. What's funny about it is that it may damage them anyway, PhysX on GPU often involves a big hit so people who might have chosen a single ATi GPU and bought a secondary NV GPU won't now.

Personally I'm a single GPU person and not much of a hardcore gamer to care a lot any more but this is a **** move by NV. I actually prefer NV too because I find the control panel system better than CCC and because there are more better choices in AIB partners. What they really ought to do is come out with pure PhysX cards using older GPUs but there's no point if they're going to be poopyheads like this.

Oh yeah don't forget - they also artifically limit non-NV PhysX to one CPU core. Just great in these days of $100 quad cores and CPUs with 8 threads huh Hmm I wonder if that makes non-NV PhysX look worse?

I see this as a last gasp stand against OpenCL and DirectCompute physics. I do hope the more open standards win out in this case. Let NV keep their superoptimized CUDA for HPC apps where there's big bucks and people are willing to be boned by vendor tie-in pay lots for the service. Leave the consumer space to open standards.

How do the other physics standards compare visually and performance wise? It doesn't matter what Nvidia paid for AGEIA if the competition is free and lags only slightly because its bound to have a wider community of people supporting and developing for it if the choice becomes physics for NV only or Physics for all using open source..

What if you just use an older driver?

Richard Huddy Touches on the ethos behind some of the marketing and management decisions that have been hurting the PC gaming market IMO.

http://tv.hexus.net/show/2008/09/Interview_with_AMD_s_Richard_Huddy/