ATI + Nvidia PhysX configurations are banned with newest drivers

how can "nothing" be more competitive than "something" ? :3eyes:

 

When that something give Nvidia what they want and hurts ATI. Are you still confused? :rpg:

 

but "nothing" doesn't help much either, doesn't it ? as a customer I would prefer "something", that's for sure.

 

But they are still losing money while Nvidia are showing a profit, even with some of the hardware setback that have cost them hundreds of millions.

Your missing the point, MS and Sony lost billions with the hardware for the PS3 and 360, and then they world went into financial meltdown, it will take a good few years before the whole world is properly out of the recession, so i still think we are 3-4 years away from a new Playstation at least.

 

The point is not to allow GPU PhysX to become a standard, or it's game over for ATI. So again it's kind of the only move they have right now.

 

Point is their gaining market share without PhysX. I'm not going to make this over who making more money or not.

Just because new hardware comes out doesn't mean that new titles aren't going to be made for the older consoles. There's new titles still coming out for the PS2.
http://www.gamefly.com/ps2/

 

But PhysX hasn't even kicked off properly yet, it will with Batman:AA, a game which had my console buddys goin, thats the first time i've saw PC having better graphics, and with another four games coming before the end of the year, ATI need to start paying developers to not support it.

That is true, but Sony can't afford to bring out new hardware yet, Crytek said a year ago, that it would be 2012, think thats the earliest it will be.

 

I seriously don't see how ATI can do anything right now except focus on bring another good generation of cards. It's kind of like a game of Chess, where ATI is trying for a stalemate by not moving to PhysX and hoping Nvidia will mess up on a move.

GITG isn't going anywhere right now.

Not yet but at the end of 2011 it's possible. They'll still make plenty on PS3 titles for yrs after just like the PS2.

 

Good point, suppose there isn't much else they can do, and Nvidia do have a good track record of messing up lol.

I'd love to see one sooner, since i game mostly on the PC on a 1080p TV, when i go back to consoles, the drop in resolution is always noticeable and disappointing.

 

You're confusing what "life-cycle" means. What it means is that the console is fully supported, not the time between new console versions. The N64 and Gamecube are both bad examples, and the N64 was limited the day it came out by its format, and Nintendo mismanaged the Gamecube from the start.

Sony has constantly used 10 years as its mark; the PS1 lasted from 95 to mid 2004 in terms of game development, the PS2 came out 2000 and is STILL getting dozens of new releases per month. I see no reason why that will stop, especially since niether console has nearly the library the PS1 or PS2 had at this point in their lifespans...

 

We were talking about when the next generation of consoles would come out, of which later I pointed out that PS2 still has new titles.
Nexgen consoles usually come out every 5-6 yrs. That would make the next xbox around nov 2010 or 2011, which is only about 1-2 yrs away.

Just because new hardware comes out doesn't mean that new titles aren't going to be made for the older consoles. There's new titles still coming out for the PS2.

 

^^ But you see, that's not Sony's definition. Sony defines the life cycle as the time the console is fully supported; for the PS1, that 1995-2005, PS2 2000-2010, and PS3 2006-2015.

Also note, consoles have never taken this long to turn profits before, and after all the HW related issues, I doubt M$ is in a hurry to start from scratch. Sony wasted a ton of $$ trying to make the PS3 replace a home PC (why else allow mice, keyboards, and a linux install?), and are quite happy breaking even for now. Throw in the relativly low software support for each console, and you see why niether company wants to start from scratch.

The only thing I've heard about is an updated HD compatable Wii. Other then that, I've seen no evidence whatsoever of either M$ or Sony reading a new console.

 

I'm just gonna state that I'm looking for a new GPU, and physx has come into my buying decision. I was looking at GTX 275 and 4890 cards and thought "4890 may have a tad more performance, but will I notice it? No, but I will notice no physx effects". Sad but true. Nvidia have a huge advantage with this imo.

 

How about a Ati card and a Ageia pci card? Is that disabled now too? Is performance the same? I dont know just wondering. Cheap used ones on ebay.

 

I support NVIDIA 100% on this. They develop hardware and software, and it makes business sense to do this. How many help line calls do you think they get based on ATI + Gforce Physics? There may have been limits to what could have been done designing software that worked on a non-nvidia gpu. It also could just be a simple one-fingered salute to ATI. Software will support it from time to time, but its going to be quite a while until more/greater titles use it. What nvidia needs is for one of the major franchises to utilize this in an upcoming title. Half life 3 or Doom 4 as hypothetical examples using physics would cause a massive influx of nvidia users. A few good titles like that would "trick" users to thinking that nvidia is better. People with nvidia gpu would get better FPS or Better IQ than the ATI users. As for me, I use nvidia only because I have never once had an ati card. Nvidia never did me wrong, so I wont change. I do love AMD for the same reason, but thats neither here nor there.

 

I fully understand NVIDIA disabling support for ATI+NVIDIA GPU combination for a variety of reasons (Troubleshooting problems, tricking the drivers and some other things such as sales when people buy expensive ATI cards and low-end NVIDIA cards for example, just a guess though.)

I'm not totally OK with the disabling of the AGEIA PPU though, it still works up to the latest PhysX redist version and SDK version 2.8.2 (Upcoming 2.8.3 mentioned in the latest release notes won't support it and that's fine as it's outdated now.) as the PPU is a separate card despite being outdated, ofcourse I might be a bit biased as I use one myself and to be honest it's been disabled for quite some time now.
(Newer 9.x versions are required for later titles, 8.09.04 is the latest PhysX redist to have drivers and demos for the PPU plus allow ATI and AGEIA PPU to work together, latest PhysX redist version still support it but only for offloading from a NVIDIA GPU which makes it a bit redundant as nearly any recent GPU can handle PhysX and the game.)

It's OK though as it's a outdated hardware by now, was fun while it lasted though to increase visual effects but as of yet no game has really utilized PhysX fully aside from a few extra effects, Cryostasis and Batman does pretty well though.
(Cell Factor did OK as well but was pretty bad overall, more like a test title for PhysX utilization - well it kinda was - but it really took advantage of what PhysX could do with full destructibility and acceleration, seems even the blood effects were PhysX driven from what I heard later on, hehe.)

 

I'm sure nvidia disabled the agiea cards for more reasons other than it being old hardware. Honestly it wasn't really able to keep up with a lot of physX effects even in the games that were compatible with it.

I bought one of these cards 6 months or so before nvidia bought the company and released physX over GPU. And in the 4 games I owned at the time that supported the card it was almost too much for the card to keep up. UT3's PhysX enhanced levels were unplayable and almost all PhysX demos were barely any better off with the card enabled. Now granted I've made some graphical hardware upgrades since I've bought that card and I'm sure that has a lot to do with the level of performance I get PhysX wise now, but honestly in games like Mirror's Edge or Batman, the agiea card wouldn't be able to keep up.

 

i wouldnt care for their crappy physx junk anyways... it doesnt affect gameplay at all just adds some crap physics that u can actually see even possible in a console like ps3, which its cpu is more than powerfull enough to do all the physics job effects, well... the ones similar to date that is, it also is just a matter of legal issues as someone can easelly mod it to work with ati gpus too, probally fake detect nvidia hardware would be to easy, but im sure there is a way even if most of the code have to be redesigned.

 

Oh, are you so sure about that?

Play Batman:AA with PhysX enabled on an ATI platform with an i7 920 overclocked to 4ghz, and it's still not powerful enough to run the physics at any playable framerate. You're saying that a 3 year old console is more powerful than an i7? I think not.

And btw, the physx effects are really cool in that game. They really do add a lot.