Nvidia supports PhysX effort on ATI Radeon

[wingless]

HA!....HAHA!....HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHA! (I'm a little early in the morning)

Ok so heres the news: http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/content-view-38283-135.html
and the news is good.

I'm amazed that Nvidia is offering the NGOHQ.com guy a job for this. I guess hes been making drivers for them long enough to get paid for it finally LOL. This is great news for AMD because it shows their GPU hardware is PWNAGE on all levels and will get the best of both worlds. This is great news for Nvidia because it will allow them to rape ATI with CUDA software and allow them to have full control over ATI GPGPU performance (a very bad thing for AMD). This is good news for me because I bought a 4870 yesterday and have a spare 2900XT in a box.

I still think this is a dirty move on Nvidia's part to get CUDA more widely accepted over Brook+/OpenCL so they can gain control over the GPGPU software market. In the short term it will make ATI GPUs look great but coiuld hurt AMD in the long run. I personally want Intel's Havok efforts to work better with ATI hardware for physics.

 

[Automata]

VERY nice. I might jump to ATI....

 

[wingless]

VERY nice. I might jump to ATI....

You're up early.....oh crap its almost 9am!! Nevermind.

Anyways, do you have an SLI motherboard? If you do then just get another 9800GTX. As I said yesterday (about 100 times), I'm very very pleased with my HD4870 purchase. Theres just nothing wrong with the card (yet). I don't even feel the need to wait for a 1GB version to come out. Its just plain fast.

I've never been this satisfied with a hardware upgrade. Well, maybe going from an AthlonXP to a 4200+ X2 was pretty cool, but still not as good as this upgrade. I can't describe in words how good it feels to have a GPU thats 100%+ faster than my previous one (my 2900XT). Now it will have both Havok AND PhysX physics capability? What a magnificent device.

 

[deathman20]

\o/ That rocks. I dislike nVidia's driver side of things and really think its stupid on there part for more or less creating war with Intel but I give them huge props for this.

Helping out ATI, thats a huge step forward. While eventually looks like nVidia will be loosing the mobo market for Intel CPU's due to no NB onboard guess they have to spread there reach else where and quick which means this. I personally couldn't be happier, I was leaning ATI on this release even before the results came in due to the fact I personally like how they deal with drivers better than nVidia. This just more or less seals the deal even more so than before.

Now the question is, will nVidia implement something in the code to slow down pyhsics processing on ATI's GPU's? If they end up better in that arena than nVidia's offerings in general might hurt there market as well. That will be the real question in the long run of things to come. Oooh so eager to see physx in action in some games, really hope it improves performance.

 

[Automata]

Early? It is 9 now, I work at 8 >.>

Nah, I have a P5E3 Premium on the way and have a P5Q Deluxe right now, so...no SLi

 

[chrome-187]

how will this allow nvidia to rape ati? are the nvidia cards going to support havoc? which series nvidia cards support physics? this kinda confuses me cuz all in your one post you say its awesome for ati but then again u say nvidia will rape ati...so which is it?

 

[wingless]

how will this allow nvidia to rape ati? are the nvidia cards going to support havoc? which series nvidia cards support physics? this kinda confuses me cuz all in your one post you say its awesome for ati but then again u say nvidia will rape ati...so which is it?

Re-read my post. Read carefully. Use those critical thinking skills you were taught in our poor educational system. LOL, jkjk...

What I meant was as this is good for ATI in the short term, in the long run this makes Nvidia's CUDA more acceptable in the eyes of developers. If CUDA gets a foothold then Nvidia will ultimately be in control of the GPGPU software market. They'll have control over it like Intel has control over x86. So in the long run that could be BAD for ATI, as they have a good thing going with Brook+ and OpenCL. OpenCL happens to run on both Nvidia and ATI hardware as well but without one single company controlling it. I've read differing news about CUDA. On one hand its supposed to be an open standard as well, but on the other hand its controlled by Nvidia, plain and simple.

 

[Daleon]

Yeah, there is a difference between "it works" on Ati hardware and "it works well" on Ati hardware. Turning on physx can often be crippling for hardware as it is. Were likely to see much bigger performance hits running it on Ati hardware than NV hardware in which case it just gives something else for NV to tout in their benchs.

 

[Mr.Guvernment]

NVIDIA is trying to get ATI on it's side knowing it has made an enemy with Intel.

 

[Farinorco]

Yeah, it's known that NVIDIA wants CUDA running on ATi cards...

As wingless said, NVIDIA wants ATi cards supporting CUDA and PhysX. This way, they could generalise the use of CUDA for GPGPU, so they would have a direct control over this aspect. That's what AMD doesn't want to happen, and the reason why they rejected the offering to support CUDA and PhysX for free... and they rejected to help this guy/s with that.

What I don't see completely, is what is NVIDIA getting with an unofficial CUDA support on ATi cards... Would it be enough for developers to start using CUDA as if everybody has support for it? Or would it be a pressure to AMD to officially support CUDA once shown that ATi cards can perfectly run it?

Mmmmm. Let's see how all this ends...

 

[chrome-187]

yea u know nvidia has a hidden egenda...this would be like someone just giving you a brand new car with no strings attached...that just doesn't happen...im sure they have something up there sleeve...nvida to get ati on there side, really isn't ati, its AMD which is intels competitor cpu wise but a friend gpu wise...this is all messed up...they compete in one end of the market but work together in another...so wtf?

 

[Automata]

Chrome, they have challenged Intel and are just looking for partners.

 

[deathman20]

AMD is more or less is in a great position...
First off Intel wants to promote Havok, so it will gladly work with AMD to shut nVidia up
nVidia wants to work with ATI/AMD for the GPU sector to promote its physx on GPU's to shut Intel up.

Its a win win for AMD currently since they sit in the middle and can use both technologies freely from the looks of it.

 

[wingless]

AMD is more or less is in a great position...
First off Intel wants to promote Havok, so it will gladly work with AMD to shut nVidia up
nVidia wants to work with ATI/AMD for the GPU sector to promote its physx on GPU's to shut Intel up.

Its a win win for AMD currently since they sit in the middle and can use both technologies freely from the looks of it.

Its a win-win in the short term for AMD. For the same reasons you just listed, I think both Nvidia and Intel could screw AMD in a big way eventually. AMD should in no way be dependent on software from it's competitors! I hope Hector and the rest of AMD are paying attention. They have a chance to make sure they come out on top in this situation but if they don't jump on it ASAP they could lose it all. Intel and Nvidia could pull the rug from underneath them if they're not careful.

Since I'm in the financial services industry and hold a degree in Finance, I know two things hold true with American corporations.

1) All actions are motivated by greed (their obligation is to their stakeholders ie creditors, shareholders, etc.)
2) Any charitable or nice action relates to #1. Theres always an ulterior motive.

AMD has to think like a prisoner: Rape or get raped. They better not drop the soap this time (K10 TLB)....

(note to self: cut down on Counter Strike so you stop using terms like PWN and RAPE. Its not professional.)

 

[deathman20]

Its a win-win in the short term for AMD. For the same reasons you just listed, I think both Nvidia and Intel could screw AMD in a big way eventually. AMD should in no way be dependent on software from it's competitors! I hope Hector and the rest of AMD are paying attention. They have a chance to make sure they come out on top in this situation but if they don't jump on it ASAP they could lose it all. Intel and Nvidia could pull the rug from underneath them if they're not careful.

Since I'm in the financial services industry and hold a degree in Finance, I know two things hold true with American corporations.

1) All actions are motivated by greed (their obligation is to their stakeholders ie creditors, shareholders, etc.)
2) Any charitable or nice action relates to #1. Theres always an ulterior motive.

AMD has to think like a prisoner: Rape or get raped. They better not drop the soap this time (K10 TLB)....

(note to self: cut down on Counter Strike so you stop using terms like PWN and RAPE. Its not professional.)

Yes yes short term only. Physics on the GPU is just a side thing its an added bonus, but if someone else can implement it without ATI/AMD being involved all the better which is what ATI/AMD has to play currently. If not and they help well nVidia can put out that its officially supported which is exactly what ATI/AMD want to avoid.

Time will tell and we won't be seeing the full brunt of this til 09... thats when we'll start feeling it.

Note: PWNed Actually all those are used in most online gaming senerio's so if you play other games you will still use it

 

[Farinorco]

The only thing that could make a good thing for AMD to support CUDA/PhysX is if the rumours about introducing a new "compute shader" type in DirectX 11 are true, and they are what I suppose they are XD

If those compute shaders are a way to program GPGPU and they're included in a standard like DX11, is probable that at the moment of it being released to developers, GPGPU starts to be done through DX11, at least Windows apps. Even more, it would probably force the appearance (I'm not sure I'm using the correct word/expression here ) of other equivalent open standard mainly for other platforms.

If this was true, AMD could benefit from the short-term effects of having PhysX/CUDA support, and get rid of the long-term harm they could take...

But I don't know, I suppose they know it better than I, and its obvious that AMD doesn't want that support, and NVIDIA wants the opposite...

 

[Shiggity]

WTB next gen games so I can actually get excited about what high end physics can actually do. All this talk is just talk until I see some nice results.

/rant

 

[Neural Net]

Well Nvidia needs as much market penetration as it can get, having PhysX running on just its cards is not enough, especially when it's up against the market share of Havok on Intel, AMD and ATI products. Havok will probably win, especially with Nehalem around the corner.

 

[vixro]

Diablo 3 uses the Havok physics engine. That right there is a huge win for AMD.

 

[secure]

All I know is that, who ever amd shoots in the foot, will either screw them, or help them, either in the short term or long term. But on the other hand this is great news for us, although I just hope these programmers start to learn to code more efficently or else this will just bog down our new computers yet again sigh. Looks like we will be needing the next mega ultra terahertz video proc soon