How the GPU Accelerates Effects in Borderlands 2
By - Source: Tom's Hardware US
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38 comments
GPUs make things pretty.
GTC Session: Post Mortem: GPU Accelerated Effects in Borderlands 2
Jim Sanders, Director of Visual Effects and Technical Art at Gearbox Software, and Kevin Newkirk, a technical artist from Nvidia, take a look at the usage of GPU-accelerated effects in Borderlands 2. They look at how and why they were implemented, but also take some time to do a comparison between the PC version of the game with GPU-accelerated effects, and the console version, which lacks those effects. They also take a quick peek at how the original visuals for Borderlands were developed and why they decided to give the game the slightly different look and feel.
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Is artificially crippled by nVidia, when detecting AMD GPU.
Code itself is from a third party, bought by nVidia.
That alone is a reason for a sane consumer to wish this proprietary crap died.
After switching to NV 5xx from ATI 5 series I love physx it is great in the games that support it.
BUT I did play Borderlands 2 and frankly the difference between the two cards to me (full settings both cards 7850/GTX570) I was nearly unable to notice any difference.
Works great on a Nvidia GPU.
Works shitty on a AMD GPU.
I'm more interested in CUDA, but this is a nice show off demo and presentation of PhysX, wish they did a more recent game, oh wait, there isn't a recent game to show PhysX on, because it's useless as less than 1% of games have PhysX effects.
It makes Nvidia fanboys feel better about themselves.
Is artificially crippled by nVidia, when detecting AMD GPU.
Code itself is from a third party, bought by nVidia.
That alone is a reason for a sane consumer to wish this proprietary crap died.
After switching to NV 5xx from ATI 5 series I love physx it is great in the games that support it.
BUT I did play Borderlands 2 and frankly the difference between the two cards to me (full settings both cards 7850/GTX570) I was nearly unable to notice any difference.
Why support your competitors?
I really don't know how you can claim that your two (so I assume SLI) 670s' performance take a hit while PhysX is on. On my 670 (single card) I run full quality PhysX and everything on max (though, in DX9 mode) in BAC and there's no framerate drop. True, I have vsync on so it's always capped at 60 frames, but the point is that even with PhysX turned on, it's still at 60 frames. Maybe your problem is that you're running Batman in DX11 mode, which is useless, pointless and that's when performance goes way, way down because it's a horribly implemented "feature" (thanks to Rocksteady Studios).
Unfair monopoly practices?
particle physic on
debree on
everything else, off...
i have a phenom 955 black and i have a 5770 hd, i play with just particle physics (a place in the game where i can only make particles) and the game played great, but my god, did the debree staying around just add so much to the over all feel of the game... like a battle went on there...
Guessing Gearbox got a huge check from nvidia for this one. Oh and unless you are on an i5 you really can't set physx to medium, the performance hit is far to big.
It's not about supporting it, it's about being jackasses about the tech. When they approached AMD for "licensing", I'm pretty sure Jen didn't want a "fair" deal with AMD, so AMD blew them away and went with OSS alternatives (at the time).
If you notice, nVidia is in a position where they could contribute a lot to Bullet, but they don't. They could make PhysX OSS, but they won't. They could move from CUDA to OCL, but they won't.
They're desperately trying to push down consumers throats 3D, CUDA and PhysX, where among those 3, CUDA is the least useless tech they provide (actually, it is very good).
TL;DR: No, it's about them being assholes with the tech.
Cheers!
It's not a monopoly if they developed it and it isn't the standard. ATi are free to develop their own physics if they want, but they don't invest in the development costs.
Some people prefer more, others prefer clean, it's a simple matter of preference. I'd personally prefer more eyecandy, and also less predictability in everything that occurs during my gaming session. In fact, since you can tone the eyecandy down a ton and still gain the benefits of the PhysX then I still think it's a step in the right progression.
There something really grammatically wrong with that title. What does it mean? Could someone correct it, please?