Who's waiting for Nvidia Fermi

[matty-hodgson]

Eh? Sorry, lost you there mate :/

You said you wouldn't blame NVIDIA if someone used a registry hack, you'd blame the user. but they wouldn't have used a registry hack. so what would you blame instead? (this is if they allowed ATI and NVIDIA to work with PhysX)

[scaryjim]

Well, no. that's not right, cos the registry hack wouldn't have to happen, it'd just work out the box, then what would you blame? the registry hack.. oh wait, it didn't need to happen. so null point!

Eh? Sorry, lost you there mate :/

I believe matty was pointing out that if NVidia enabled PhysX support as default with ATI cards in the system there wouldn't be a registry hack to blame.

But it wouldn't even take a registry hack.
All it needs is a single boolean option in the graphics card properties: enable Hardware PhysX support. It's default is enabled when the card detects it's in an all NVidia system, and disabled when it detects the presence of other vendor's graphics card. Users can simply go into the card's properties dialogues (or whatever NVidia's catalyst control centre equivalent is (and would you believe I own 2 nvidia graphics cards? )) and simply tick the checkbox if they want PhysX support alongside their HD 5850. A warning box pops up saying "We have detected that you've made a pact with the devil and bought an ATI graphics card - if you use PhysX your computer is likely to explode and we won't take any respoinsibility for it! Are you sure you want to enable PhysX?"* and if the user clicks OK then it's reasonable to assume that they know what they're getting themselves into. NVidia are covered from a QA point of view, and I can buy a cheapy DDR2 GT220 to process all those pretty PhysX effects. It'd be pretty simple to implement and it would make a *lot* of people who currently dislike NVidia feel somewhat more inclined to buy their hardware. I don't get how they can think their current approach is good business practice...

*this is a suggested wording only, and may be changed in the final implementtion

[shaithis]

It's all moot anyway. There is absolutely no reason for nvidia to disable it for QA reasons.

If there was ever an issue, it would be a core driver issue causing clashed which would have to be rectified anyway, Physx or no Physx.

Funny how they ONLY disable CUDA/Physx. They still let you use the nVidia card alongside your ATI card for other tasks......Why isn't that also disabled for "QA reasons"?

Answer: CUDA is not disabled for QA reasons.....what a shocker!

[jim]

I believe matty was pointing out that if NVidia enabled PhysX support as default with ATI cards in the system there wouldn't be a registry hack to blame.

But it wouldn't even take a registry hack.
All it needs is a single boolean option in the graphics card properties: enable Hardware PhysX support. It's default is enabled when the card detects it's in an all NVidia system, and disabled when it detects the presence of other vendor's graphics card. Users can simply go into the card's properties dialogues (or whatever NVidia's catalyst control centre equivalent is (and would you believe I own 2 nvidia graphics cards? )) and simply tick the checkbox if they want PhysX support alongside their HD 5850. A warning box pops up saying "We have detected that you've made a pact with the devil and bought an ATI graphics card - if you use PhysX your computer is likely to explode and we won't take any respoinsibility for it! Are you sure you want to enable PhysX?"* and if the user clicks OK then it's reasonable to assume that they know what they're getting themselves into. NVidia are covered from a QA point of view, and I can buy a cheapy DDR2 GT220 to process all those pretty PhysX effects. It'd be pretty simple to implement and it would make a *lot* of people who currently dislike NVidia feel somewhat more inclined to buy their hardware. I don't get how they can think their current approach is good business practice...

*this is a suggested wording only, and may be changed in the final implementtion

Yeah, that's what I was implying.

nVidia could have used a registry setting instead, that was very easy to hack - so people can use it, but it's evidently unsupported. Or equally they could've had an "unsupported" tickbox as scaryjim suggested.

Instead they've been trying to prevent people from using ATI cards with the vigour of Securom preventing piracy, which implies to me that "unsupported" really isn't the crux of the issue here.