Using Physx with an ATI Card

[SoldierX77]

So I got my 5970, but when I try to play Mirror's Edge with Physx on, I lag like none other. Is there a way to download it, my drivers are all fully up to date.

Thanks.

 

[Snipeye]

Someone will correct me on this, but PhysX is used by nVidia cards, not AMD. And since nVidia bought Ageia, the company that originally designed the PhysX cards, I don't see them releasing the coding software to AMD so they can use it in their cards. You'll have to keep it off unless you use an nVidia card.

 

[The Slayer]

just wondering what is PhysX? I heard so much about this in vid cards, so i'm actually wondering

 

[shadows5631]

Someone will correct me on this, but PhysX is used by nVidia cards, not AMD. And since nVidia bought Ageia, the company that originally designed the PhysX cards, I don't see them releasing the coding software to AMD so they can use it in their cards. You'll have to keep it off unless you use an nVidia card.

Somewhat correct. Nvidia tried to persuade ATI into using Physx as well, but they refused. You cannot use Physx with an ATI card alone, but you can buy an Nvidia card (assuming you have 2 PCIe slots) and use it for just Physx.

 

[NixJedi]

PhysX is a proprietary realtime physics engine middleware SDK. The term PhysX can also refer to the PPU expansion card designed by Ageia to accelerate PhysX-enabled video games. Video games supporting hardware acceleration by PhysX can be accelerated by either a PhysX PPU or a CUDA-enabled GeForce GPU (which has at least 32 CUDA cores), thus offloading physics calculations from the CPU, allowing it to perform other tasks instead — resulting in a smoother gaming experience and additional visual effects. Middleware physics engines allow game developers to avoid writing their own code to handle the complex physics interactions possible in modern games.

Example:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG5qDeWHNmk[/ame]

Without the addition of PhysX it's safe to say his CPU wouldn't have been able to handle determining the physics calculations for that many objects simultaneously.

A good comparison that shows *some* of the advantage:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0xRJt8rcmY[/ame]

 

[SoldierX77]

Thing is, on my old computer (which also used two 4970's (ATI)), that had Physx, so I was curious I would enable it on this computer figuring I could. I do have 2 PCI slots, but they're occupied with two 5970's. >:|

 

[Snipeye]

Soldier, did your old PC have a PhysX card too? That would help explain why you were able to run PhysX on the old PC, but not the new one.

I did some research and it appears that nVidia installs failsafes to make sure that PhysX doesn't run as well on non-nVidia cards. Of course, people would issue a patch when they can figure out how to circumvent those blocks.

 

[reflex99]

Ok, i have a similar deal.

I have a 6870, and a GT 240 for PhysX, using GenL patch and 256.96 drivers.

In mirrors edge, when ever any physX object gets rendered, my framerate will drop like no other. I get about 10FPS down from my normal 60.

With PhysX off, everything is fine.

I'm going to wager that it is a bug in the Mirror's code, because MafiaII and fluidmark both run fine

 

[SoldierX77]

Yeah same here, Mafia 2 works perfect for me, with PhysX set to highest.

 

[Ma$termind]

Example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG5qDeWHNmk

Without the addition of PhysX it's safe to say his CPU wouldn't have been able to handle determining the physics calculations for that many objects simultaneously.

CryEngine 2 doesn't use PhysX, nor was that footage captured in realtime. He used the CryEngine 2 editor to capture each individual frame, then sped it up to make it look like it was done in realtime. In reality he was getting 0.4–3.0 FPS during capture (with his CPU under heavy load).

EDIT:
/Facepalm for necropost...
Feel free to point and laugh.

 

[Snipeye]

CryEngine 2 doesn't use PhysX, nor was that footage captured in realtime. He used the CryEngine 2 editor to capture each individual frame, then sped it up to make it look like it was done in realtime. In reality he was getting 0.4?3.0 FPS during capture (with his CPU under heavy load).

EDIT:
/Facepalm for necropost...
Feel free to point and laugh.

*points and laugh*

Don't worry. There's been a number of necroposts that happened in the past 12 hours.

Plus, did we ever figure this problem out?