ATI and Physx?

Hi guys!

It's time for a hardware upgrade and I am wondering which graphics card I
should choose. At the moment I use a Geforce 8800 GTX. One thing that
bothers me with ATI cards is the lack of Physx. How does this work in a
game? Is there no physics calculation at all or is it done by the CPU? Physx
might not be the most important thing in a game but it adds greatly to the
immersion and feeling - in my opinion.

Thanx!
Chris

"Christian Atteneder" christian.atteneder(at)uta.at wrote in message
...
Hi guys!

It's time for a hardware upgrade and I am wondering which graphics card I
should choose. At the moment I use a Geforce 8800 GTX. One thing that
bothers me with ATI cards is the lack of Physx. How does this work in a
game? Is there no physics calculation at all or is it done by the CPU?
Physx
might not be the most important thing in a game but it adds greatly to the
immersion and feeling - in my opinion.

Thanx!
Chris



http://www.ngohq.com/news/16560-patc...s-present.html

If you've got Windows 7, you should be able to use the nvidia card for
PhysX, according to the link above, and perhaps get a new ATI card, and
have a blast at the new Eyefinity setup? I had the standalone PhysX card,
and all it seemed to do was overheat!

read this article and pay attention to the games that work better with PhysX..or
the ones that don't need it.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vid...oop-physx.html

now determine which games (and wether they need Physx)you play and buy
accordingly

peter

--
If you find a posting or message from me offensive,inappropriate
or disruptive,please ignore it.
If you dont know how to ignore a posting complain
to me and I will be only too happy to demonstrate :-)

"Christian Atteneder" christian.atteneder(at)uta.at wrote in message
...
Hi guys!

It's time for a hardware upgrade and I am wondering which graphics card I
should choose. At the moment I use a Geforce 8800 GTX. One thing that
bothers me with ATI cards is the lack of Physx. How does this work in a
game? Is there no physics calculation at all or is it done by the CPU? Physx
might not be the most important thing in a game but it adds greatly to the
immersion and feeling - in my opinion.

Thanx!
Chris

Am 22.02.2010 19:13, * Carl:

If you've got Windows 7, you should be able to use the nvidia card for
PhysX, according to the link above, and perhaps get a new ATI card, and
have a blast at the new Eyefinity setup? I had the standalone PhysX
card, and all it seemed to do was overheat!

Not anymore. Nvidia in its great wisdom has implemented a check for an
ATI card in their drivers which if an ATI card is present disables
PhysX/CUDA.

Benjamin

Am 22.02.2010 10:54, * Christian Atteneder:

It's time for a hardware upgrade and I am wondering which graphics card I
should choose. At the moment I use a Geforce 8800 GTX. One thing that
bothers me with ATI cards is the lack of Physx. How does this work in a
game? Is there no physics calculation at all or is it done by the CPU? Physx
might not be the most important thing in a game but it adds greatly to the
immersion and feeling - in my opinion.

If a game supports PhysX (which not many do) then it shows additional
physics effects if a Nvidia PhysX-enabled card is in the system. If not,
the games usually fall back to limited physics effects done by the CPU.

However, it is very doubtful how much longer PhysX in its current form
will survive. OpenCL is clearly the way to go for the future, and AMD
and HAVOK are currently working on an open Physics engine based on
OpenCL which will run on both AMD and Nvidia gfx cards. Either PhysX
will move to OpenCL as well (and then should work on ATI cards, too) or
won't have a very bright future.

IMHO much more important than PhysX support is actual game performance
and price/performance ratio.

Ben

Benjamin Gawert wrote:

Not anymore. Nvidia in its great wisdom has implemented a check for an
ATI card in their drivers which if an ATI card is present disables
PhysX/CUDA.

Yes, but you can get hacked drivers that remove that check. I downloaded
them but never got around to installing them because I don't think the
hassle is worth what I will gain.