Nvidia Soon to Release WHQL Certified PhysX Drivers
Posted 07/24/08 at 10:02:36 AM by Chris Moody
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Nvidia is preparing to release their WHQL certified PhysX driver on August 5th for GeForce 8, 9, and GTX series videocards. The new ForceWare driver will expand PhysX support to currently available PhysX titles like Ghost Recon 2: Advanced Warfighter, Warmonger and Cell Factor: Revolution.
WHQL or Windows Hardware Quality Labs is a testing process that when passed allows vendors to use a "Certified for Windows" logo, which certifies that the hardware or software has had testing by Microsoft to ensure compatibility with Windows. Many vendors like being able to hang that logo on their products, so we will see more videocards touting PhysX support and the Windows certified logo hitting big box store shelves soon.
Nvidia acquired PhysX when they bought Ageia. PhysX is now part of CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) that Nvidia developed. CUDA may take off in a big way if some driver modders succeed in getting it to run on Radeon videocards. No word yet if ATI plans to support the project at all.
Yet another reason to upgrade my trusty 7900GT. Is PhysX support enough to make you upgrade your older card?
*AGP and PHYSX*
Submitted by kingtiger01 on Thu, 07/31/2008 - 3:33am
Im glad there finally Enabling Physx for GPU's. ive been waiting ever since they Acquired AGEIA, so its long awaited for me. but, i have a 8800 GTS, so given its a benifit. Not Everyone does though, so given, i think they should Code a wrapper for G70 Series GPU support. makes more sense to me.
**Response to another Comment**
And as for Pentuim 4/AMD Athlon XP Users out there that still get pummled with "How can you play any games on that"
I still have my Older P4 3.0 Prescott(478) rig, with 2gb of DDR 533(GIEL P), 7800 GS-OC, and DFI LAN-PARTY 875b Rev.B ...
theres one thing i have to say... Who owns Dual/Qaud CPU's and runs SLI/Crossfire Settups and still cant run Crysis at High Spec. with greater than a 16fps?
i think you bought crap hardware to begin with because with that system i get 24-30FPS in high-spec. so really you need to go back over your specs.
and... Read..
Single Cores are Still BETTER AT GAMING, because VERY FEW games actually support SMP/Multi-threading or Support SLI/Crossfire.
So, dont Demien other without the facts.
mm
Submitted by whisp on Fri, 07/25/2008 - 12:26pm
This is awesome, but I'll wait to see if games come out that actually use it, and by use it I mean more then a few additional dust particles (see ghost recon side by side comparison)
atm physx is equivelant to dx10 in the sense that it's a good step forward but to date, nothing worth upgrading for.
"we Plan for Tomorrow, but we Live for Today"
Submitted by billysundays on Fri, 07/25/2008 - 6:14pm
actually, there's already an extensive list of games using PhysX. "Cell Factor: Revolution" might be a poorly designed game, but as a game specifically made to utilize ageia's PPU with physics effects that crippled CPUs, it would be the perfect game to benchmark the physics-accelerating capabilities of nvidia's GPUs as soon as its PhysX drivers are released, which is what i hope MaxPC will be doing soon enough. they could even compare the difference in framerates with and without the PhysX drivers on a game like UT3 for conclusive results, and if those results are positive it would mean that nvidia would undeniably have the best physics solution around, the only hardware accelerated physics solution, featured on all its future generation videocards. if that's the case, why wouldn't there be wide spread adoption of PhysX in the game development industry.
Here in the driver mod world
Submitted by Humpfester on Thu, 07/24/2008 - 1:58pm
Here in the driver mod world , we're having a ball 'cause Nvidia ain't helping with driver releases at this point. 'bout time is all I say. Nividia get off your lazy ^#@!!!!
Submitted by billysundays on Thu, 07/24/2008 - 9:36am
if the videocards, with physx drivers, can pull off that flowing, destructable cloth trick found in "Cell Factor: Revolution" at reasonable framerates than i'll be thoroughly impressed and enthused about what's to come. it was ageia's best trick to demonstrate the neccessity for a dedicated physx card, so doing it using videocards would prove that that was bullsh*t, and that we can expect to see more impressive physics than what Havoc and intel's multiprocs can do.
Don't miss the point on
Submitted by BeVar on Thu, 07/24/2008 - 11:26am
Don't miss the point on this.... Nvidia developed software to use on their processors (regardless of GPU or CPU) called CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture). Intel is having a cow over this, just not broadcasting it. The Nvidia processors in the G200 series have nearly 3 times the power the Core (Intel) processors have.
Submitted by StealthSilver on Thu, 07/24/2008 - 9:00am
The drivers that allow the GTX 200 series cards to operate physics can be modified work with any G92-and-up card. This includes the 8800GT.
The problem with PhysX used
Submitted by Nuxes on Thu, 07/24/2008 - 8:30am
The problem with PhysX used to be that <1% of gamers had a dedicated PhysX card, so developers didn't have much of an incentive to make games that take advantage of it. According to the Valve survey, about 15% of people have an 8-series or better and would be capable of running a PhysX enhanced game.
Not really.
Submitted by Talcum X on Thu, 07/24/2008 - 8:00am
We would need wide spread PhysX supportive games to choose one card from another. Besides, I would need an entire rebuild to upgrade my aged P4 AGP setup. But it runs just fine with a 7600 GT. No plans on upgrading until I get the other bills taken care of next year, and I get the wife's new rig built. But she doesnt play "real" games (Bejeweled) so her rig may be rather cheap compared to what I will build for myself.
***********
Every morning is the dawn of a new error.
Bejeweled...is that a wife
Submitted by Haipyng on Thu, 07/24/2008 - 8:20am
Bejeweled...is that a wife thing? Mine loves that game...and several other Popcap games. Likewise has no interest in what I play.
I generally believe in giving her my hand me downs (which she doesn't like) even though they generally run circles around the bargain boxes you can buy.
Yeah, but how much more
Submitted by Cache on Thu, 07/24/2008 - 8:19am
Yeah, but how much more work is the P4 really going to put out, especially as games continue to push graphics higher and higher? Sure, you might be able to play some games at 20 frames a second with everything at its lowest setting, but for how much longer?
Besides, this is more about taking a future direction, for good or ill, and it's refreshing to have a major videocard manufacturer taking a new approach in what their cards can do versus the 'faster, more processors 'approach. Don't get me wrong--I love a faster card--but this is kind of the icing on the cake.
IF, of course, it works as advertised and has widespread industry support.
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