NVIDIA responds to ATi's PhysX claims

[Rollo]

Richard Huddy of ATi recently stated in an interview that ATi believes NVIDIA has disabled CPU acceleration of PhysX:

http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/intervi...ent-and-dx11/5

The other thing is that all these CPU cores we have are underutilised and I'm going to take another pop at Nvidia here. When they bought Ageia, they had a fairly respectable multicore implementation of PhysX. If you look at it now it basically runs predominantly on one, or at most, two cores. That's pretty shabby! I wonder why Nvidia has done that?

One time Ageia, and now NVIDIA employee Nadeem Mohammed took the time to respond:

http://blogs.nvidia.com/ntersect/201...platforms.html

I have been a member of the PhysX team, first with AEGIA, and then with NVIDIA, and I can honestly say that since the merger with NVIDIA there have been no changes to the SDK code which purposely reduces the software performance of PhysX or its use of CPU multi-cores.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

With Intel CPUs there seems to be some issues at least with Sacred 2 and PhysX:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/17618/13

[shaithis]

Oh look, nVidia getting all holier-then-thou about Physx....

I applaud their audacity.

[Rollo]

Oh look, nVidia getting all holier-then-thou about Physx....

I applaud their audacity.

Where is the audacity in denying you've done something you've been publicly accused of doing, when you haven't done it Shaithis?

Would you feel the same if a NVIDIA rep accused ATi of purposely crippling games and they responded they had not? Somehow I don't think so.

Even Huddy admits that the reason NVIDIA makes PhysX specific to their hardware is that NVIDIA doesn't want to spend the money doing QA on their hardware. I wonder if ATi would spend the money to QA NVIDIA hardware?

[Madness_3d]

With Intel CPUs there seems to be some issues at least with Sacred 2 and PhysX:

I remember mirrors edge had to be patched to fix lag induced by physx

[Rollo]

I remember mirrors edge had to be patched to fix lag induced by physx

Oh noes. OTOH Mirrors Edge has PhysX and that beats not having it.

[shaithis]

Where is the audacity in denying you've done something you've been publicly accused of doing, when you haven't done it Shaithis?

Would you feel the same if a NVIDIA rep accused ATi of purposely crippling games and they responded they had not? Somehow I don't think so.

Even Huddy admits that the reason NVIDIA makes PhysX specific to their hardware is that NVIDIA doesn't want to spend the money doing QA on their hardware. I wonder if ATi would spend the money to QA NVIDIA hardware?

Re-read my post.....perhaps then you will realise it wasn't this incident I was alluding to.

As I said, the audacity of them to get all "holier-then-thou" over Physx was my issue........because they would never do anything at all underhanded as far as Physx went....would they? Some thing like, I don't know.....maybe, disabling Physx when they see a competitors card in the system?

[Rollo]

Re-read my post.....perhaps then you will realise it wasn't this incident I was alluding to.

As I said, the audacity of them to get all "holier-then-thou" over Physx was my issue........because they would never do anything at all underhanded as far as Physx went....would they? Some thing like, I don't know.....maybe, disabling Physx when they see a competitors card in the system?

Like Mr. Huddy said, they don't want to spend the money on QA for ATi products, and don't want a sub par experience associated with their product.

They paid big money to purchase Ageia, they pay big money to work with devs to bring the better gaming experience to their customers, why would they pay more money so their competitor's customers can benefit?

I don't know what business you are in, but usually what business involves is trying to differentiate your product so people will buy from you, not your competitor.

That's probably why Sony didn't work to make BluRay compatible with HD players, and why Nintendo doesn't work to make their games play on PS3s and XBoxes. It's not an unknown concept in the business world.

If ATi users would like to enjoy the benefits of NVIDIA's investment, they'll have to do so on NVIDIA products. NVIDIA probably won't send their techs over to ATi to help them develop their 3d efforts either.

[MadduckUK]

That's probably why Sony didn't work to make BluRay compatible with HD players,

so if you want to watch bluray films you need a sony player?

[Fraz]

Rollo: despite your pro-Nvidia intentions, you really only ever achieve the opposite effect in people.

I like Nvidia stuff a lot, but when I see your forum threads, a little bit more of that love dies each time.

[scaryjim]

If ATi users would like to enjoy the benefits of NVIDIA's investment, they'll have to do so on NVIDIA products.

You appear to be either missing or avoiding the point. ATI users *cannot* enjoy PhysX on Nvidia products, because PhysX is disabled when NVidia's drivers detect an ATI graphics card in the system. Many ATI users would *love* to enjoy the benefits of PhysX on a dedicated PhysX card bought from NVidia. If I connect both a Wii and an XBox to my home network, I'm pretty sure the Wii won't stop playing Gamecube games. Bluray may not be compatible with HD-DVD, but if I put both drives in my computer I'm pretty sure the BD would still play blurays. Yet if I install both NVidia and ATI cards in my system, the NVidia card suddenly becomes unable to process PhysX effects?

I was under the impression that making sales and keeping customers happy were important for a business. NVidia are actually losing sales and creating a lot of negative customer feeling by not allowing PhysX to run alongside ATI primary graphics. Hardly good business practice...

[Rollo]

You appear to be either missing or avoiding the point. ATI users *cannot* enjoy PhysX on Nvidia products, because PhysX is disabled when NVidia's drivers detect an ATI graphics card in the system. Many ATI users would *love* to enjoy the benefits of PhysX on a dedicated PhysX card bought from NVidia. If I connect both a Wii and an XBox to my home network, I'm pretty sure the Wii won't stop playing Gamecube games. Bluray may not be compatible with HD-DVD, but if I put both drives in my computer I'm pretty sure the BD would still play blurays. Yet if I install both NVidia and ATI cards in my system, the NVidia card suddenly becomes unable to process PhysX effects?

I was under the impression that making sales and keeping customers happy were important for a business. NVidia are actually losing sales and creating a lot of negative customer feeling by not allowing PhysX to run alongside ATI primary graphics. Hardly good business practice...

As NVIDIA is the market leader and ATi never seems to surpass them in marketshare, it would seem that it IS good business practice. Apparently their customers don't care about the issue as much as ATi customers.

ATi customers who would love PhysX should sell their ATi cards on Ebay and buy a comparable NVIDIA card so they can enjoy PhysX. They'll hav to wait a few more weeks if they want a comparable DX11 card, but NVIDIA will have you covered their very soon as well.

By limiting PhysX to NVIDIA only graphics configs and doing QA only on the hardware they have control over, NVIDIAis providing gamers with the most reliable and stable physics enhanced gaming experience, and ensuring ATi and the developers don't get negative PR that might be associated with mixed config crashes.

[dangel]

AAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!


Dear god I hope you're well paid.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

[Fraz]

As NVIDIA is the market leader and ATi never seems to surpass them in marketshare, it would seem that it IS good business practice. Apparently their customers don't care about the issue as much as ATi customers.

ATi customers who would love PhysX should sell their ATi cards on Ebay and buy a comparable NVIDIA card so they can enjoy PhysX. They'll hav to wait a few more weeks if they want a comparable DX11 card, but NVIDIA will have you covered their very soon as well.

By limiting PhysX to NVIDIA only graphics configs and doing QA only on the hardware they have control over, NVIDIAis providing gamers with the most reliable and stable physics enhanced gaming experience, and ensuring ATi and the developers don't get negative PR that might be associated with mixed config crashes.

Man, you are alarmingly brainwashed. You just DO NOT UNDERSTAND what a complete FAIL you are at convincing people that Nvidia is the greatest thing in the entire universe.

In fact, I'm going to order an ATI card *right now* just to spite you.

Rollo: The Nvidia equivalent of the Hitler youth.

[Rollo]

Man, you are alarmingly brainwashed. You just DO NOT UNDERSTAND what a complete FAIL you are at convincing people that Nvidia is the greatest thing in the entire universe.

In fact, I'm going to order an ATI card *right now* just to spite you.

Rollo: The Nvidia equivalent of the Hitler youth.

LOL

Errr....what do I care whose card you buy? I'm a team leader at a software company. I think you should order 100 ATi cards to really get me good- they could use the cash.

BTW- I don't see you guys disagreeing with my opinions offering any counter points.

Every coin has two sides-
That ATi user might see NVIDIA limiting the spread of PhysX, the NVIDIA user can see it as they are the only company bringing the world PhysX.