Physx On Ati Radeon?

[Mangaroca]

Hi,

I suppose my PC is above average (just upgraded my GPU to the "standard" and got a nice Radeon HD 7890), with a 6 core Phenom II and 16 GB quality RAM but still, the nVidia PhysX is unavailable for me in the options... Yes, I know it'd be working on a nVidia GPU but that's not the point. ATi vs nVidia struggle is 50 / 50 as far as I know and unless I don't understand how it works / what it does this game leaves half of the community with no PhysX effects. Are ATi cards able to produce PhysX effects? Is this option going to be supported somehow? How big is the difference between no-PhysX Warframe graphics and the one utilising it?

I'm slightly disappointed with this because I spent hard earned money on a GPU (I've been with ATi since I remember) that is "up to date" and I still can't run modern day games to their full potential... :/ I have never encountered such issues in any other games.

Regards All

Edited March 27, 2013 by Mangaroca

[Shion963]

Teeny tiny text, but yeah it's impossible for ATI cards to utilise Physx because all those particles are calculated with hardware only available in Nvidia cards.

Try googling Warframe Physx trailer, there's a vid on youtube that shows the difference of having Physx and not. IMHO It's entirely cosmetic and it runs fine without all those neat particles.

And hek, I've got a laptop with onboard ATI gpu, no chance of me 'just getting' an Nvidia card.

[Feindfeuer]

There was a work-around where you'd get a cheap nvidia card and let it handle all the physX stuff while your main GPU would run the actual game, like it was done with the stand-alone PhysX cards before nvidia bought them but I think that was 'fixed'. Older Agaia PhysX PPU cards are also no longer supoprted anymore (though they are ancient by now, so their performance wouldn't be that great anyway).

Maybe there are still some workarounds like that, but I'm not up to date on that, cause I'm an Nvidia user myself. Maybe that little info helps you find some up to date solutions on the net though.

[FirstToLast]

Because Nvidia bought out the Aegis Physix technology and intends to make use of the acquisition by giving their cards instruction sets and perhaps some physical features to enable it to work in a slightly different way to a 'just cgi' computational unit.

[Jakiller]

Teeny tiny text, but yeah it's impossible for ATI cards to utilise Physx because all those particles are calculated with hardware only available in Nvidia cards.

So how come Radeon users can see PhyX in Borderlands 2?

Edited March 27, 2013 by Jakiller

[Tvol]

*facepalm* There's a LOT of misinformation surrounding PhysX everywhere on the Internet.

First off, PhysX is an SDK (Software Development Kit) that sits between the engine and the hardware doing the physics calculations to make it easier for programmers to add physics to their engines. It has always, always primarily run on the CPU. As of version 3 of PhysX it handles mutltithreading better; if you have a multi-core CPU, the game will run through one (maybe two or more cores if the engine multithreads in and of itself) and PhysX will run its calculations in parallel on other cores. There is nothing precluding people with AMD GPUs from using PhysX.

What IS limited is the ability to use the GPGPU (general purpose, as in we can get instructions usually run on a CPU on the GPU; GPUs are built to be exceptionally fast for certain calculations) abilities of the GPUs for PhysX calculations. Nvidia has done all sorts of silly things to restrict this ability to Nvidia GPUs; the *only* benefit to be garnered here is if for whatever reason your framerate is CPU-limited and the GPU has plenty of time left to be doing physics calculations. Enabling the Nvidia physics option in-game should only change whether or not the PhysX calculations are carried-out on the GPU. Otherwise, the engine will put it all on the CPU by default.

I don't pretend to know for certain that the engine enables physics all the time (and a separate Physics setting drop-down menu would help relieve some of the confusion), but Warframe should be pushing all physics through the PhysX SDK regardless. I say this because of the relationship of DE to the Unreal engine, which also uses PhysX.

So again, all that check box *should* be doing is moving physics calculations already happening on your CPU to the GPU. Hell, there are even (third party, unofficial) patches for Windows 7 that can bypass the GPU check and get PhysX to run calculations on whatever GPU you please. There isn't anything proprietary on the Nvidia GPU that is required for PhysX.

Let me say that one more time: There is nothing proprietary on an Nvidia GPU that is required for PhysX.

[[DE]Glen]

There are two aspects to PhysX in the game: Physics and Effects. Phsyics is enabled all the time; Effects only run GPU-accelerated and optional.

[Tvol]

There are two aspects to PhysX in the game: Physics and Effects. Phsyics is enabled all the time; Effects only run GPU-accelerated and optional.

That's a clear answer. What exactly falls under "effects"? Are we talking about particles interacting with the environment/players? How much would be involved in getting that kind of PhysX purdyness to be available for us peeps with high-end CPUs but AMD GPUs?

I ask because in the past other engines have had similar functionality, not locking high-end effects to Nvidia hardware. (I know Nvidia has been tightening the noose on this for a while. Unfortunate, it is.)

Edited March 27, 2013 by Tvol

[razieltugh]

But guys i remember play darksector in my ATI radeon 3470 with physx drives and it works fine....

if i try an old physx drives it will work?

Edited April 30, 2013 by razieltugh