AMD: Developers Use PhysX Only For The Cash
AMD said that a Nvidia marketing scheme pays game developers to implement PhysX whether they want it or not.
In a recent interview with THINQ, AMD’s senior manager of developer relations Richard Huddy slammed Nvidia and its PhysX technology, claiming that the rival company is forcefully shoving the technology down cash-strapped developer throats and paying them off at the same time. Huddy claims that Nvidia's marketing deal gives it the right to implement PhysX elements into a game whether the developer wants it or not.
According to the interview, Huddy spends a lot of time with developers and has concluded that most do not want Nvidia involved in game development. "The problem with [the marketing deal] is obviously that the game developer doesn’t actually want it," he said. "They’re not doing it because they want it; they’re doing it because they’re paid to do it. So we have a rather artificial situation at the moment where you see PhysX in games, but it isn’t because the game developer wants it in there."
Huddy goes on to claim that developers outside Epic Games don't want to implement GPU-accelerated PhysX into their games. "I’m not aware of any GPU-accelerated PhysX code which is there because the games developer wanted it with the exception of the Unreal stuff," he added. "I don’t know of any games company that’s actually said 'you know what, I really want GPU-accelerated PhysX, I’d like to tie myself to Nvidia and that sounds like a great plan.'"
Of course, Huddy also thinks that AMD's open approach to GPU-accelerated physics will eventually force Nvidia's proprietary PhysX into the virtual graveyard along with A3D and the infamous GLide API. "If you go back ten years or so to when GLide was there as a proprietary 3D graphics API, it could have coexisted, but instead of putting their effort into getting D3D to go well, 3dfx focused on GLide," he said. "As a result, they found themselves competing with a proprietary standard against an open standard, and they lost. It's the way it is with many of the standards we work with."
To read more, check out the interview here.
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Not surprising since Nvidia seems to be falling behind and grasping at straws to catch up...
Wait... Didn't DirectX won over OpenGL???
Sounds like PR to me but it does have a valid point, why limit yourself more then you have to especially with the gpu manufacturer that is 6 months behind?
i agree , they have nothing better to do than come out with a renamed/revamped version of their older chips...shame...just a waste of resources!
When the 5870s came out I was more than happy to jump ship to ATI because of practices like this. At the very least they could allow an Nvidia card running PhysX to do so in the same system that has another brand card running graphics. They are doing nothing but hurting their customers and reputation. We all see how far they got with SLI only running on nforce boards.
Title is somewhat misleading.
I dont think is relevant at all, its not like PhysX is actually going to boost sales. Price to performance is what matters not PhysX. NV is behind ATM, PhysX is not going to save the company, lower pricing and not screwing up is what they should be focusing on.
oh and waiting for fermi to go out so my next radeo 5xxx card can get cheaper.
Nvidia just cant keep up with the rate at which ATI pumps out new cards. In order for Nvidia to keep its customer base from switching, its hamstringing ATI's cards by paying game developers to simply not fully support ati's hardware capabilities. The game utilizes the gpu hardware. If nvidia controls the game developer, they will never have to worry about ATI becoming "king of the hill" in the gpu world.
umm, so? The developer gets some cash, and Nvidia users get some extra fizz and pop in their games.. sounds like win win to me.
When you get Intel involved in game development look what happens. I remember I had a nice Pentium 100 and then games started requiring MMX. That sucked at first but eventually I bought a P233mmx. Just not right away. I don't like being forced into a product.
Nvidia physx? Does it even do anything? I own an nvidia card but I don't care if a game has physx or not.
OvrClkr, lower pricing indeed. I will never spend over $200 on a video card again. I learned that the hard way with the ti4600. All it is now is a paper weight. $300 and I didn't get a lot of use out of it. You can buy more useful stuff for 300 bucks.
Sheesh this web site sure has a ton of java errors. I can barely even post half the time.
whoa whoa whoa... your telling me Game Developers are making games... for MONEY?!?!?! My mind has officially been blown...
When you get Intel involved in game development look what happens. I remember I had a nice Pentium 100 and then games started requiring MMX. That sucked at first but eventually I bought a P233mmx. Just not right away. I don't like being forced into a product.Nvidia physx? Does it even do anything? I own an nvidia card but I don't care if a game has physx or not.
MMX added a very important instruction set that would vastly increase performance in the areas you're talking about. If a game was made to require a P166mmx, it would be unplayable on a P100 without mmx. It's nothing about trying to force features on people.
Physx allows certain physics effects to be rendered realtime by hardware instead of by using slow software methods. Unfortunately for us, it's an Nvidia-exclusive thing so they basically pay off devs to add it to the game only for Nvidia cards where other cards could realistically do hardware physics for those sometimes-nice effects. Like recently I played Mirror's Edge and saw the physx effects on youtube and some of it looked pretty nice, but certainly no reason to switch from ati to nvidia.
Sheesh this web site sure has a ton of java errors. I can barely even post half the time.
I know... but I found out that.... if I stay away from IE... everything works perfectly no matter is the FireFox or Safari. I guess there is a reason why IE's Acid3 score is so low....
I'm sorry, nvidia built the first video card? That's funny, I owned one of, if not the first nvidia cards in the form of a Viper V550 long after 3dfx cards were ruling the world. It was hell just trying to find games that supported it. They built the first GPU is what you meant?
There's a significant difference between saying "hey, look at our feature, we think it's pretty good, want to include it?" and saying "hey, we have a couple of moneybags with your name on it if you include this feature that only works with our card." That's what this article is about.
How would you feel if there were games with ATI-exclusive features? Or even literally games that wouldn't work unless you had an ATI card? Obviously that's more extreme, and that couldn't currently happen because marketshare is too spread between the two, but what if someone had 95% of the marketshare and could logistically do such a thing?
I'm not condemning Nvidia by any means, but it's still shady practice and we should be aware of such and not just ignore such things. Nvidia bought the Physx stuff and are now making their return off it. But considering that it's been shown to work fine on ATI hardware in the past (I believe, correct me if I'm wrong), it's essentially paying devs to unlock effects for only their product even though it would work fine with others. This goes much further than say, paying to get the free Nvidia ad in front of the game.
Wait... Didn't DirectX won over OpenGL???
That's because OpenGL was stalled due to a bunch of influencial CAD firms whom wanted to say they were using the latest version of Open GL while doing the minimum amount of work to do so. As a result of that continuous bickering Open GL is too bloated and moves too slow. It is considerably behind DX11 in terms of capability.
Meh, typical vendors going at each other. I think AMD is right up to a point, but they really haven't sponsored an effort for an Open Standard alternative. With DX11 and Direct Compute, they have little excuse to not have a GPU accelerated Physics API.
Wait... Didn't DirectX won over OpenGL???
Yes it did on Windows, as did IE win over Netscape. But as it is a closed source system as more and more people switch to Macs and Linux then OpenGl will rise from the ashes and regain it's crown. Just as Firefox did against IE. The rise of small Arm based systems with 3D capability will be a boost to the OpenGL devlopers they will have OpenGL ES and where will DirectX be?
That's because OpenGL was stalled due to a bunch of influencial CAD firms whom wanted to say they were using the latest version of Open GL while doing the minimum amount of work to do so. As a result of that continuous bickering Open GL is too bloated and moves too slow. It is considerably behind DX11 in terms of capability.
That's no longer the case as OpenGL spec updates are released more often than newer versions of DirectX.
I can see his point but your either going to calculate physics on the gpu or the cpu, but with gpu PhysX its an option, cpu there is less of a choice and you are stuck with a game that you cant play until you pony up for a new proc. look at bfbc2 cpu bound the game would benefit the end user with the physical calcs done on the gpu opposed to the cpu.
fizzle and pop I read above. well yeah it does make a difference imo, dark void is proof of that, that game is terrible but you add PhysX and its a better experience to me, and I actually want to play the game.
Batman is the same way, the extra little effects of volumetric fog and interaction with things like papers and leaves on the ground as im running past make a difference to me.
I think alot of devs are controlled by their publishers and dont want to implement any thing new, just copy, paste and reskin. get it out the door and make piles of $$$, and if it doesn't do well not much is lost. mw2 is proof of that.
As for shoving it down their throats Idk about that. I see it as being no different than supporting SLI or Cross fire. its just something the hardware dev offers as an option, and with out software support we dont move forward. I think they need to focus on the end user witch is the same for both parties.
I just have one question for ati- How come they didn't want physics?Nvidia is doing physic right- 1. anyone who played "cellfactor" knows that fluid and cloth simulations completely flunk on the cpu. GPU is the best way to run physics because it runs much much faster. 2. It's good they are pushing developers to implement physx- cuz physx means less scripting, which means doing the same thing in a game results in different results, wich means if you play the same game almost exactly the same, you may get different results, depending on different physical factors in the game, ie rain, traction, gravity, force, ect.. It makes the game more interesting, more real, and more playable. 3. Physics weren't taken seriously until nvidia came into the picture. Where was ati?I used to be a atifanboy- but about 8 years ago I switched, cuz I got sick of playing the numbers game, ati cards always have better specs, but they always give you less. Now it's nvidia for life for me. And I think it's funny that ati fans find it acceptable to let something slide as huge as physics. This is where nvidia shines, because nvidia is a company that stands by it's motto " the way it's meant to be played". Because real life has physics, and is in 3d, and nvidia built the first graphics cards, and was always first, nvidia knows what real gamers really want. This article shows ati = mad because no cash cow and they are trying to spoil nvidia's party. Boohoo ati....bad ati, bad..
Phantom, you're a bit off on your analysis, Havok pre-existed Ageia for a long time, but neither nvidia nor ATI implemented GPU physics at the time. It wasn't until a couple of years ago that this started to be what it is now. Before, companies would license a physics engine, or build their own. What happened was both nvidia and ATI found out that their processors could be used to calculate this stuff better than a cpu. Havok got bought up by Intel, and Ageia got bought up by nvidia. Ageia was a newcomer at the time, trying to push their physics API. Both of these were proprietary, but both companies were small. Had the situation ended well, both Ageia and Havok would have licensed their APIs to both ATI and nvidia, and it would simply be application controlled. A simple enable GPU physx/Havok physics would have done it. What has happened, is that Both of the biggest Physics APIs became proprietary in a different way. Physx has become exclusive to nvidia cards (minus a hack, but that's a different issue), and Havok still needs to be licensed, and since Larabee didn't happen, you don't see it implemented on Intel video cards, nor do you see it on other vendors cards. Rather than moving toward a more open solution, we've moved toward a closed one, one that excludes a large number of people for having bought a particular brand of GPU. This stuff isn't anti-competitve, but it seems like the actions of people who want control of the market in a kind of underhanded way. Both nvidia and ATI could implement Physx on their graphics cards, but having it owned by one of the two major GPU companies makes it a bit different to license. Now, ATI has to pay their competitor to implement it in the same way, when both are capable of running the API...Ownership of Ageia has changed it from something wonderfully cool, into something else, a leveraging agent in the marketplace...Being able to enable physics on the GPU isn't something exclusive to nvidia, they just bought a company with a large share of the market.
Ohim: I just jumped off the nvidia bandwagon over this stuff, it's changed from something cool into something ugly, sad thing.
Sorry about the big block o'text, and to whoever designed the comments section, you forgot the edit button.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] physx-cash >_>
Can somebody enlighten me what's so bad about PhysX? It can run on the CPU and on the GPU, can it not?
So with PhysX 50% of gamers get fast GPU physics (Nvidia users), 50% get slow CPU physics (ATI users).
If a CPU-only solution like Havok is used, 100% of gamers get slow CPU physics.
So is this just envy (I can't have fast GPU physics, so neither should you!) or am I interpreting the situation incorrectly?
Can somebody enlighten me what's so bad about PhysX? It can run on the CPU and on the GPU, can it not?So with PhysX 50% of gamers get fast GPU physics (Nvidia users), 50% get slow CPU physics (ATI users).If a CPU-only solution like Havok is used, 100% of gamers get slow CPU physics.So is this just envy (I can't have fast GPU physics, so neither should you!) or am I interpreting the situation incorrectly?
I don't think physx can run playable at all off the cpu. The problem is that Nvidia is allegedly paying developers to add features in this way that will only work on their graphics cards, despite the underlying processes being very possible on cards from either company. Have you not been reading through these comments before posting? Or did you just skip straight to the post after reading the article perhaps?
Yes, physx is currently the best and most accessible physics system and I can't blame Nvidia for wanting to get their money worth. A better open system needs to be implemented and encouraged. But if physx was actually that good and worthwhile and easy enough to develop for, devs would include the option in their games WITHOUT needed to be paid off. The article is more or less claiming that they would choose to not include company-specific features if they didn't have nvidia-publisher agreements requiring it. And I can't see how anyone could objectively think that such feature-specific agreements are good for the consumer in any fashion.
Despite what certain obvious trolls/children of nvidia employees would want you to think, it's most certainly a bad thing. And it would certainly be the same if say, ATI and Microsoft hit a deal for exclusive DX11 rights and then ATI paid devs to include DX11 effects in their games at the expense of users of the other cards, who could just as easily use the features but aren't allowed to.
Nvidia physx? Does it even do anything? I own an nvidia card but I don't care if a game has physx or not.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhUV2zKttOA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEy5Sv5GBzA
second one is kinda old though
I dont think is relevant at all, its not like PhysX is actually going to boost sales. Price to performance is what matters not PhysX. NV is behind ATM, PhysX is not going to save the company, lower pricing and not screwing up is what they should be focusing on.
LOL@not gonna save the company. It seems you don't come to this site as often as you should.
What's sad is this site informs you about what's going on, yet the comment section is full of made up hoopla. It might as well be anyway. Comments full of fanboys and wannabe PR and analysts. If any of us right minded people replied to all the bull***t comments on sites like these, we would have to quit our jobs. Fudzilla has the right idea. NO COMMENTS. And whats the point of having comments, when too many times, it's the writer that is attacked, or two people that are both wrong, trying to battle it out to see who's the smartest. 8 times out of 10, both fail. Imagine how big and heavy your local newspaper would be if it had a comment section. Then imagine what f***ing good it would do. Comment sections are like politics. 90% of people that use/talk about them, know very little, but think anything is better than nothing... which is what makes me wanna choke a b***h. aka Y'all.
Dstln: I think AMD struck a deal a few months ago with havok but dont quote me on that.
Nvidia has just as much right to push devs to use their physx as AMD does to use their tech (lets say eyefinity). If Nvidia is paying people to use their physx or doing what ageia did and giving it away for free that's much cheaper than the 250,000 for havok and much faster than writing their own physics engine (i.e. crysis). Of course AMD is going to be pissed off that nvidia has a faster card (though not the 60% we originally saw) coming out AND better physics... it just serves to marginalize amd's market share even more.
I hope AMD invest on promoting their ATi Stream technology... I really need some proper video editing software that can run super resolution, deinterlacing and encoding on ATI GPU.