ATI cards can now do PhysX!

[Mr Paul]

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=236899



Or maybe not quite yet

 

[elpedro]

Oh dear... tad misleading title

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18065805

 

[mdjmcnally]

There is a difference between physx and physics!

However someone has already unofficially ported physx so that works on ATI card anyway, and that was some time ago.

 

[Mr Paul]

Oh dear... tad misleading title

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18065805

Note really, the thread linked to does state PhysX

 

[sideeffects]

I was reading this earlier on in another forum they even tested it with Batman and got some improvement. I very much doupt that even beta ATI drivers would utilise physx but maybe some of the effects are opencl and not physx?

 

[Devil_Spawn]

i suspect the only reason for the performance increase is due to drivers being optimised better for batman?

 

[sideeffects]

After the driver update the game was displaying effects that were only viewable on physx/nvidia cards before.

So either

1)Some of the effects are not physx and are actually opencl.
2)ATI has made a wrapper to convert physx to opencl.
3)The effects should have always shown but a bug in the ATI drivers was preventing them from running.
4)The article is mistaken.

I'm going with 3 or 4 I do have the game and the beta drivers so I might try later.

 

[Axil]

I'm also going to go with options 3 + 4 it's more likely a bug fix than a implementation

 

[Mr Paul]

Yeah 3 or 4 sounds likely

 

[fornowagain]

And #4 it is...

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=4069254&postcount=63

Guys, I apologise if the article has misled or upset anyone, that was not the intention. I did not write the article, nor do I even have the Batman game or a 4890, one of our news team stumbled across the drivers and decided to try it for himself. It was the drop in CPU usage that was shown in the video that led him to the conclusion that there was some kind of physics happening and with hindsight, it probably shouldn't have been posted until it had been tested further. I have since removed the article from the site. You win some, you lose some and some you fail miserably

 

[elpedro]

Note really, the thread linked to does state PhysX

First off, running the game with the highest NVidia PhysX settings enabled produced the following screen shot.
Batman can be seen heading off into a wall of steam - unfortunately, this setting made the frame rate drop in parts briefly to a low of 12~20 FPS, but as the ATI cards aren't supposed to be able to show this anyway, I can live with that for now.

Pretty sure a modern CPU is capable of that kind of performance. Maybe "ATI can do PhysX badly" would have been better

Anyway, even running the normal setting of PhysX is bringing my 8600GT to it's knees (35~ FPS in places), getting an 8800GT off a mate soon which should fix that. Can run without PhysX maxed out with 8xAA never dipping below 60!