Need opinions! AMD running PhysX?

[romulus47plus1]

Right now we know nVidia cards have all these CUDA and PhysX support stuff, and more and more games are supporting PhysX, and games like Mirror's edge and Cryostasis are serious titles.
Question: What is AMD/ATI's future in this? You think AMD/ATI will support PhysX in the future?
There are articles saying that people will port PhysX into AMD/ATI cards, but all of them are few months old already, no recent updates.
I remember reading an article that it's more of a game of politics, since porting and running PhysX on AMD/ATI cards is actually not a tough thing.
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38137/135/
What say you? Opinions opinions!

 

[romulus47plus1]

bumps.

 

[turboflame]

If PhysX became ultra popular then ATI will probably go ahead and buy a license from Nvidia to enable it on their own cards.

Right now Havok is still much more widely used though, PhysX might just die out.

 

[L1qu1d]

well Havok is a much simpler engine on the system. PhysX has potential, romulus has a point, its been adopted by pretty big titles.
I remember what sold me about havok was the hl series. HUGE titles If source ever decided to go physx (highly unlikely) it would turn into the new havok

Thats opinon not fact. And yes if anything ATI would either counter with another type of physics, or just buy licensing.

I am surprised that physX doesn't lag my laptop in Mirror's Edge like it does in GRAW 2

 

[romulus47plus1]

NVidia cards run Havok with no problem, but AMD/ATI cards run PhysX like ****!
Physics Half Life 2 looks simple, though those in Cryostasis(by PhysX) demonstration is beautiful man, they are even using it to count how water would fall and gather around and all, something I haven't see Havok doing.
Also 9800GTX deals good fps with the game, 4850 goes below 10 fps.
http://en.expreview.com/2008/12/19/review-of-cryostasis-sleep-of-reason.html
I hope they hear AMD/ATI users's cries and do good ports of it or AMD themselves just sign up for CUDA.

 

[jfurterer]

I looked into this recently and here is an interesting article about it. Read the comments below it's a very interesting and informative discussion.
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2008/12/11/amd-exec-says-physx-will-die/1

After reading that whole thing I was able to distill a few things.

1. nV is creating allot of incentives for members of TWIMTBP to develop PhysX into their titles. TWIMTBP members cannot advertise with AMD/ATI
2. AMD/ATI will never put a nV PhysX logo on their GPU packaging so they will never adopt it with the current Marketing set up.
3. nV blames AMD for not coming on board, AMD blames nV for not letting them in.
4. DX11 could give ATI some free access to PhysX as nV plans to fully support DX11 and OpenCL.
5. Intel's Larrabee "may" make all of this moot if they actually "revolutionize" the GPU industry. However nV said this about Larrabee: "like a GPU from 2006" so who knows about Larrabee.

Because of all this PhysX has three roads it could go down.
A. AMD/ATI through DX11 and a possible marketing deal with nV supports it and we get some crazy kickass physics in games and can get more life from our old cards by using them as PhysX card.
B. It's a freebee to nV users that adds mostly an enhanced visual experience as game developers will not make interaction points that depend on PhysX support if users of AMD/ATI cards can't play it. (EXAMPLE: say in Mirror's Edge you had to shoot a flag and then jump and grab it and gravity would then "tear" it dropping you safely down to another area.)
C. It will die with DX11 as Microsoft announces a standard or in some way undermines Physx possibly with a partnership with Intel.

As to which out come it will be I cannot say. It looks like AMD is going to stall and wait for DX11. At which point we'll either see a real introduction of real time physics processing in games either on the GPU or the CPU or both. Until then I wouldn't expect allot of innovation in physics in gameplay. Physics will remain an immersion element, an eye-candy element that some games, utilizing PhysX, will be more effective at if your running a nV card.

Also if you currently own a PhysX enabled GPU card you can use it in the future as a dedicated PhysX card. Here is a review of a GTX295 with a 9800GTX+ as a dedicated PhysX card running Mirror's Edge:
http://www.bjorn3d.com/read_pf.php?cID=1476

Pretty impressive.

 

[jfurterer]

NVidia cards run Havok with no problem, but AMD/ATI cards run PhysX like ****!

The reason for that as I understand it is that AMD/ATI has not licensed PhysX so all the PhysX calculations are sent to the CPU via nV's driver to port CUDA and PhysX to the CPU. Since you take something that is designed to run on the GPU and port it across the bus to the CPU you get crappo frame rates. I do give nV credit for trying however it was clearly done so that they could market PhysX in game titles as supporting ALL GPUs even when the truth is that only nV GPU's can run it.

 

[romulus47plus1]

You are pretty impressive too.
Feels awkward having your profile put as a newbie but you know a lot and can pour out tons of useful infos.
Anyway, I was going to buy a 4830 or a 4850 like next week or something, but now I feel so dumb. I hate waiting either. And in my place 9800GTX+ is overpriced, while the 9800GT is priced often similarly to the 4850.

PS: 9600GT often priced similarly to 4830 too, but 9600GSO(G92) is cheap, maybe they want to clear stocks or something, but I don't think I want a 9600GSO. Not futureproof enough and cant play at high resos.

 

[meodowla]

Thats what ATi couldn't do..

 

[jfurterer]

Anyway, I was going to buy a 4830 or a 4850 like next week or something, but now I feel so dumb. I hate waiting either. And in my place 9800GTX+ is overpriced, while the 9800GT is priced often similarly to the 4850.

Unfortunately I don't think their is a nV solution in the sub $150-$140 price range that would out perform an ATI solution. But if you want to experience Physx you need to pick up an nV. I'd suggest getting something like the 8800 GS or GT for a cheap as you can find if you need to have a card now, simply so that in a few months you could pick up a GTX260 or 9800GTX+ and use the 8800 as a dedicated PhysX card with your new one. But if PhysX isn't important then don't bother with nV.

I've been around THG for along time I just never had a reason to post. Now that I'm stuck in front of the computer monitoring emails and waiting for video encoding to complete or a scene render out of 3dmax I have time to kill

So I decided to start sharing my thoughts on all this awesome kick butt sweeta$$ teknOlagee that I obsess over way to much

 

[meodowla]

I think nvidia droped price of 9800GTX+ to compete with HD4850.. Check the market..

 

[L1qu1d]

wait can't you just grab some crappy Nvidia card, and grab the 4850 and use the crappy nvidia card as a physx card?

 

[jfurterer]

I don't think Windows will run two different Video Drivers, but I could be wrong about that. Also I'm not sure how the nV drivers could talk to the ATI drivers.

Also the 8000 series is the lowest series to support PhysX, I think the 8600s are as low as you can go.

It's exactly situations like this where the customer, us gamers really loose out in a political/marketing technology war like this. PhysX is great for games... but since nV/ATI/Intel can't get along we loose out. nV is betting that PhysX will attract people to the nV platform, ATI is betting it will die with DX11, and Intel isn't saying much other then "We're coming for both of you". So who knows.

 

[meodowla]

I think, use a PhysX card(PPU) with ATi HD4850(GPU) would be better choice if you wanna use PhysX.

 

[turboflame]

I think nvidia droped price of 9800GTX+ to compete with HD4850.. Check the market..

It's still around $10-$20 more expensive.

I think, use a PhysX card(PPU) with ATi HD4850(GPU) would be better choice if you wanna use PhysX.

A slightly overpriced Nvidia card is still a way better deal than one of those PPU cards.

 

[jfurterer]

I agree if you want PhysX now the 9800GTX+ is the card to get on a budget. Plus it's performance as a dedicated PhysX card paired with a GTX295 is very impressive so their is a little future proofing there.