Physx - deliberately crippled on CPUs

Archer

Archer

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Interesting read
To sum it up, nvidia went out of their way to make sure that physx could not run on anything that does not come from nvidia itself. A modern day CPU should be able to run physx easily, but nvidia have coded physx in such a way that it can not make full use of any CPU. In fact, should the code be optimised properly, a CPU should run it orders of magnitude faster than any GPU out there today.
 
yeah, would be nice if my i7 cpu, running only on 2 cores and 15% usage in most games, could use the rest for physx :)
 
Archer said:
Interesting read
To sum it up, nvidia went out of their way to make sure that physx could not run on anything that does not come from nvidia itself. A modern day CPU should be able to run physx easily, but nvidia have coded physx in such a way that it can not make full use of any CPU. In fact, should the code be optimised properly, a CPU should run it orders of magnitude faster than any GPU out there today.
Click to expand...

Patches are available [for the drivers], that bypass the non Nvidia GPU checks.
 
turisimo said:
Patches are available [for the drivers], that bypass the non Nvidia GPU checks.
Click to expand...

Thats only for running physx on a nvidia card with an ati card present. Not for actually running the code on a CPU properly. Nvidia has spent too much money on developing all of its closed solutions and now has to protect them and its becoming a PR nightmare. Open source ftw, the sooner nvidia learns that the better for them
 
@ Archer

go into the forum on that site for more help and info.....
 
Does the patch enable physx to be processed on the CPU where it would run quite smoothly with minimal load? No. Can you run physx on an ati card? No. So what I said in my previous post is 100% correct. The patch can only be used if you have the following config: ATI card as main GPU, nvidia card as pure physx GPU. Hence PR nightmare etc etc
 
Archer said:
Thats only for running physx on a nvidia card with an ati card present. Not for actually running the code on a CPU properly. Nvidia has spent too much money on developing all of its closed solutions and now has to protect them and its becoming a PR nightmare. Open source ftw, the sooner nvidia learns that the better for them
Click to expand...

anyway parallel processing GPU's still handle graphics better than general purpose CPU's.....
 
Are you angry at Nvidia trying to keep an upper hand in the market? It's find though, with AMD making up lost market share, and Nvidia doing some really weird things and having some strange business plans, I think physics will fall by the waste side in a few years. Havok is more universal, and more game developers will opt for it. Why would you want to be bias to one graphics card, even if they are paying you to do it? you're only inhibiting your games popularity :p.
 
Not angry, just trying to enlighten people. They can make up their own mind. But agreed, physx will (hopefully) fall away soon.
 
To use SSE efficiently the code need to be crafted specially for it, the compiler can't exploit the vector in SSE, for that it need human input, someone that know what the code should do.

That is not an easy job (Trust me I know what I'm talking about) and I totally understand why NVidia wont put energy into that, especially considering they have no interest making the PhysX's software engine faster on X86...

So NVidia did not intentionally disable SSE in PhysX, they simply did not put the time and money to optimize it for SSE, that's a big difference.
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There are two sides to it. It's not as simple as recompiling the code - Nvidia would have to invest specifically in SSE, which obviously they're unwilling to do given that physx exclusivity is a source of income and product differentiation for them.
 
Yes, don't blame Nvidia. Blame the game developers for implenting it into to their games. There is alternatives which produces the same effect. Bad Company 2 probably has the best physics I've seen in long time, all run from the CPU.
 
Penquin said:
Yes, don't blame Nvidia. Blame the game developers for implenting it into to their games. There is alternatives which produces the same effect. Bad Company 2 probably has the best physics I've seen in long time, all run from the CPU.
Click to expand...

The game developers get huge financial assistance from nvidia to put physx in their games. So wouldnt put all the blame at their feet either.
 
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