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Nvidia fighting dirty with Physics

ubersonic

ubersonic

ubersonic

Soldato
Joined
26 May 2009
Posts
22,175
Dunno if this has been posted yet but according to various new sites it seems like Nvidia has been rigging its Physics software to "bog down" when running off the CPU (i.e when the is no Nvidia card just an ATi card) it turns out that its coded in x87 format which was discontinued by intel in 2005 and was replaced by SSE (then replaced by SSE2, SSE3, etc). Modern processors can still use x87 but its a legacy thing.

"Intel started using SSE in 2000 and AMD has supported it since 2003 so why Nvidia is choosing to run its Physics software using an obsolete instruction set from the 1990's is anyone's guess..."

Lol my guess would be they CBA making an updated version of the software when all it would do is improve ATi's performance lol
 
yep, it's very old news - and one of the reasons some of us dislike nVidia for reasons that have nothing to do wth fanboyism, and everything to do with recognition of unethical and uncompetitive practices.

It's not just that they are using an outdated format, but they also have it programmed to run only on one thread when run on the CPU - when, for instance, an i7 with 8 threads can achieve equivalent, sometimes even superior performance to a high performance graphic card for physics, when it can use all its cores.
 
ahh, thought it was new as two tech sites posted it today, tbh tho I don't see anything wrong with it, ATi should be grateful Nvidia have a system to cater for them in the first place, they should write a physics type application that works with their cards then games could contain code-paths for both and use the appropriate one
 
ubersonic said:
games could contain code-paths for both and use the appropriate one
Click to expand...

What a ludicrous proposal.. Let's make developers code for two different api's everytime they create an engine! You guys like doing twice as much work for the same pay, right?

As has been flogged like the proverbial horse, we either need an open api, or a proprietary one that isn't locked (like dx).
 
uv said:
What a ludicrous proposal.. Let's make developers code for two different api's everytime they create an engine! You guys like doing twice as much work for the same pay, right?

As has been flogged like the proverbial horse, we either need an open api, or a proprietary one that isn't locked (like dx).
Click to expand...

Erm, actually that's pretty normal, not so long ago games were coded in both DirectX and OpenGL (some games still are, i.e WoW) hell Unreal Tournament had OpenGL/DirectX/Software/S3/Glide API code-paths. Games like Doom 3 and Quake 4 (same engine I know) ran in OpenGL but had different codepaths tuned for Nvidia or ATi hardware. And Halflife 2 had DirectX 7, 8, 8.1 and 9 codepaths.

So giving games the option to take advantage of PhysicX if an Nvida GPU was present or use ATi's version if an Ati card was detected would be perfectly normal, ATi just need to get their finger out and catch up
 
ubersonic said:
Erm, actually that's pretty normal, not so long ago...
Click to expand...

The newest game in your list was released in 2005. It's no longer "the norm", and you cannot argue that an open api would be better for all gamers.
 
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