Has Nvidia made the PhysX PCI card worthy???

[b1lk1]

Well guys, what do you think? Now that the current Nvidia lineup includes built in Ageia PhysX technology, are there going to be games coming to finally support the PCI PhysX cards properly as well? Does this make these cards actually worth something again? I am really intrigued by the thought of that.

 

[Kougar]

Intriging, but NVIDIA can't even design stable Folding@home CUDA drivers yet.

Trying to run both PhysX and the game on the same GPU at the same time is going to be worse than trying to run Vista's Aero Glass + Folding@Home GPU client at the same time... It'll mean something to me once NVIDIA fixes their drivers.

 

[b1lk1]

You missed my point. I am not talking about the graphics card doing the physics. I am talking about all those PCI based Phys-X cards out there that were relegated to obscurity by lack of game development. What I want to know is if those cards are now actually worth more than their weight in dog crap since there are lots of game devs that will whore up to Nvidia.

 

[Kougar]

Ah. Well, to be honest... If anything I think it doesn't really help them. NVIDIA folded their Phsyx tech into their GPUs, therefore there is no upgrade path, no reason to develop for the standalone PCI cards.

To do so would take some very different drivers and much more Q&A above and beyond the regular developmental costs. They don't even use the same bus.

 

[Merlin]

Intriging, but NVIDIA can't even design stable Folding@home CUDA drivers yet.

Trying to run both PhysX and the game on the same GPU at the same time is going to be worse than trying to run Vista's Aero Glass + Folding@Home GPU client at the same time... It'll mean something to me once NVIDIA fixes their drivers.

If I understand what Folding at home is, then you are sharing your computer on a network using some bandwidth, slowing your system down at some rate.
Most gamers playing online want all the bandwidth they can get.
In effect CUDA drivers and physics have nothing to do with folding.

Merlin

 

[Kougar]

Folding@home doesn't "share" your computer, you run a program that will use your CPU, GPU, or both to conduct simulations on protein folding. You can close it down like any other program, although with XP I could still game lag free with it running in the background.

In my opinion, they have everything to do with it. You have a single NVIDIA GPU... you want to run a game off it, but you also want to run Physx off the same GPU at the same time? How is that not "slowing your system down", or in NVIDIA's CUDA technoloy creating system instability?

Running CUDA, Physx, and games on the GPU is great, don't get me wrong. But NVIDIA needs to design stable drivers first. I had to find a hacked INF file to install 177.35 to fix the serious issues their 174.55 CUDA drivers have that were causing BSODs and overlay problems.