AMD lurves Physx on Radeon
Gets by with a little help from its friends
CONTRARY TO WHAT you may have read around the wibble last week, the folks at DAAMIT are very happy indeed to have Nvidia's Physx standard running on ATI hardware. Mostly.
Whilst the green team has made plenty of hay out of the fact that Nvidia Geforce GPUs can now process physics routines in games like Unreal Tournament 3 (and benchmarks like 3D Mark Vantage), amateur coders have had fun in the past few weeks trying to get the same routines running on AMD hardware - with the full support of Nvidia.
The chaps at NGOHQ.com report that they got both software tools and developer assistance time from Nvidia to help get Physx running on ATI hardware - presumably since Graphzilla considers this not just a marketshare bonus for Physx, but a major kick of sand in the face to Howling Hector, Dodgy Dirk and his crew, who not only couldn't afford to buy Ageia, but can barely afford to buy a sandwich at the moment after losing $2.5bn of its $3.2bn of ATI goodwill.
In a bid to get back some goodwill – albeit rather less than a few billion – ATI has now decided to help the amateur coders do their thang.
"We think that it is great that people continue to use our products in creative ways," Julia Clark, AMD PR manager, told Nordic Hardware.
Well, when we say 'help', what we actually mean is that words of encouragement are forthcoming from AMD, even if no practical help is. Well, you have to start somewhere right? With Nvidia and AMD both supporting Physx, could that mean that Intel's Havok standard gets sidelined?
Not if the Greater Spotted 'zilla has anything to do with it. µ
Comments
Just a front
AMD currently doesn't want Physx to run on their GPUs, simply because if it did, it would instantly become a de facto standard. And it's clearly not in AMD's interest to have a standard controlled by NVIDIA!Sure, they say that it's great, obviously they're not going to blame someone for developing something for Radeons, but if they really thought it was in their interest, they would help him very actively. Scratch that, if they thought Physx on Radeons was a good idea, they would have done it already!
standard?
Please, Havok is the standard. It's used by more triple A games than Physx. I doubt ATI cares at all that it can be run on their cards.They like it ... really
No I think they really do like it....It serves a purpose and is free....
consider it as a stop gap while they continue to develop their havoc physics
With this they can still win games with physics...
The reason why they are not helping them code is they would have to pay a license fee to Nvidia...
They just are not going to do that...
So while this is not going to help their long term plans... it surely doesn't hurt... besides they can't mind the publicity it pulls from Nvidia.
The enemy of my enemy is....
Unless AMD is going to try and develop their own Physics standard (which would be very unrealistic since they lack both funds and industry acceptance for it), they only have two options, Havok with Intel or Physx with Nvidia. Either way they go, they are in bed with their enemy.....or their enemy's enemy. Personally I think it's a good thing since you can now still own a AMD system and effectively run Havok (CPU) or Physx (GPU)based titles.Not that simple
It's not that simple, Alexko. AMD said that they have full access to Havok, without any restraints and will look into it for both, CPU and GPU. Obviously with Quadcores becoming popular, most games won't use more than two cores. So AMD want's to use the "free" cores for Havok. And if it makes sense, outsource more work to the GPU.Nvidias PhysX is for the GPU only and this solution forces the GPU to calculate PhysX and the graphics at the same time. Obviously the more of one thing has to be calculated, the less of the other can be done. This means that resolution, eyecandy, amount of polygons etc. will change how much PhysX will be possible. At certain resolutions is has already been shown that e.g. a GeForce 9800 GTX can't do any PhysX at all, because it's fully loaded with gfx work.
Taking one or two cores of a quadcore (or maybe even one of a dual core) for those calculations will secure constantly available performance regarding those calculations. Guess what programmers will prefer?
Is It Merely Overclocking TOOL?
Every system has points that could run faster. Often really increasing scores.I have NEVER Seen explanation of exactly HOW Physics Works. Yet, when PhysX is added to already Overclocked card, Nothing increases in score.
Bringing Up Question, Is ALL That Code just Internal Overcloking. Simply taking card, & resetting core/Memory to fastest capable positions. Nothing More?
That Goes with My Theory that Physics Comes when machinery actually running quite smoothly, as alternative to figuring out Next Generation of Code.Cheap Hupla For Not So Bright Crowd.
drashek
whatever
Could there be a difference in supporting Physx officially vs unofficially from Ati's point of view!?What the hell is "lurves"?
Whatchoo talkin about Willis?BOTH!
It's obvious AMD will be gunning to Havok as its primary standard, but if they have the only cards of the market that supports BOTH nvidia and intel then they have a unique position that intel nor nvidia can fill!The Lurve Triangle
With the resent indications from Microsoft it would appear that the PhysX API is destine to become bigger in the future. From AMD's hardware point of view, yea great, but we only need to support the API whatever direction that goes. All the action about the PhysX PPU has certainly pronounced that additional hardware is required to create more content, process more content, and render more content. The APIs will change over time and locking into one is fool hardy. Nvidia needs to sidle up to whichever CPU happens to be installed, they have no choice there. Intel, may be driving down the same road as AMD cramming more onto a dye. PhysX is all about compute compute compute every last piece of Shrapnel and object imaginable, which in turn creates more things to render. But, like the stock market the past does not always predict the future. There are a lot of havoc games out there and a lot of shops still using the engine. will that continue time only knows.lol
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lurveswhen do ya get it
I want a new socket and cpu from AMD not physics crap..............Saywaat?
@GrunchyLuves + Lures = Luvres?
Bad pun anyhoo.
@Questioner
That is some of the most inconsistent dribble I've had the chance to read during this week... no make it this month 0_0
nice...what about us with G80 cards??
Great for ATI guys to get Physx support on their cards...but about us with nVidia G80 cards?? i got a 8800 GTS 640mb and i am sure it can handle the extra Physx instructions..and the G92 was just a die-shrink nothing new, so i hope nVidia will realease drivers with Physx support for all of us with G80s.Physics API
An ideal solution to the problem with the current choice of physics APIs would be for one, both or a new technology to be implemented in the next DirectX version.Ideally AMD, would be trying to help develop a new physics processing tech in conjunction with Microsoft. They already seem to have a better relationship with Microsoft than Nvidia at the moment, simply because of them still being the only ones with DirectX 10.1 support.
Havok would probably be the better choice than PhysX if they were to go with an existing API technology as it is already being supported or at least under development by both Intel and AMD. There are more games out that utilize Havok physics processing as well.