Tuesday, July 15th 2008
AMD to PhysX: 'Acceptable Under Conditions'
Following the NGOHQ episode with devising software that lets users accelerate GPU-based NVIDIA PhysX API on Radeon accelerators, and with NVIDIA coming in support of such an effort, a general opinion was made that NVIDIA sought an industry-wide domination of CUDA as the de-facto general purporse graphics processing (GPGPU) architecture, with putting their investment of acquiring Ageia Technologies to good use by pushing the PhysX API. Although it comes as a good news for AMD that their graphics cards that are already optimized for Havoc physics could now support PhysX acceleration, it's not in the best interests of the company that they allow the growth of CUDA and components based on it to this extent, since AMD has its own FireStream line of products and a GPGPU architecture in the making.
TG Daily spoke with Richard Huddy, Manager of Worldwide Developer Relations, and Godfrey Cheng, Director of Product Marketing, two key individuals with AMD. When it comes to the most interesting question of PhysX implementation on Radeon, Mr. Cheng says that AMD has no problems encouraging the use of feature-enhancing 'middleware', and that they have no arguments in NVIDIA going ahead with propogating their PhysX middleware as long as they don't put Radeon accelerators into a unfair disadvantage.
A clever stand, AMD says it doesn't mind PhysX if it performs the way is should, as long as PhysX isn't used to show performance advantages with NVIDIA products, or to put it coarsely "PhysX works best on GeForce", AMD doesn't have a problem in letting NVIDIA release their middleware that allows Radeon users PhysX. They would rather not allow PhysX at all than to see a "PhysX works best on GeForce" public opinion. Another clever use of words by Cheng was terming PhysX as middleware, portreying it as 'something optional', with clear undertones of downplaying it. In other words, AMD won't fall on its knees begging NVIDIA for PhysX, and there might not be a license of technology that NVIDIA would sell to AMD. So AMD leaves it to the users to install and use middleware from any reliable source, even if it has to be NVIDIA. Pretty nifty for higher 3DMark scores and more accurate 'crate-breaking'.
Source:
TG Daily
TG Daily spoke with Richard Huddy, Manager of Worldwide Developer Relations, and Godfrey Cheng, Director of Product Marketing, two key individuals with AMD. When it comes to the most interesting question of PhysX implementation on Radeon, Mr. Cheng says that AMD has no problems encouraging the use of feature-enhancing 'middleware', and that they have no arguments in NVIDIA going ahead with propogating their PhysX middleware as long as they don't put Radeon accelerators into a unfair disadvantage.
A clever stand, AMD says it doesn't mind PhysX if it performs the way is should, as long as PhysX isn't used to show performance advantages with NVIDIA products, or to put it coarsely "PhysX works best on GeForce", AMD doesn't have a problem in letting NVIDIA release their middleware that allows Radeon users PhysX. They would rather not allow PhysX at all than to see a "PhysX works best on GeForce" public opinion. Another clever use of words by Cheng was terming PhysX as middleware, portreying it as 'something optional', with clear undertones of downplaying it. In other words, AMD won't fall on its knees begging NVIDIA for PhysX, and there might not be a license of technology that NVIDIA would sell to AMD. So AMD leaves it to the users to install and use middleware from any reliable source, even if it has to be NVIDIA. Pretty nifty for higher 3DMark scores and more accurate 'crate-breaking'.
45 Comments on AMD to PhysX: 'Acceptable Under Conditions'
If NV can make a card that has a maximum bandwith of .6 tera go as fast as a card with 1.2 tera, you gotta admit software's got something to do with it... ATI drivers are crap.
For example: you have a 1440x900 monitor. you play a game at 1280x1024 because it doesnt support widescreen... you get a stretched, blurry image.
ATI have an option thats meant to fix it, but it only works if the new res is the same aspect ratio as the native res... which is kinda pointless. if it was widescreen already you wouldnt need scaling disabled.
Its just a niggling thing they never got around to fixing, although i noticed the options changed on my 3450 in cat 8.6, so i'm open for someone to test it.
And upon release the 2900 was not terrible. I bought mine launch day. They worked fine. Was there more performance to be had from later revisions? Sure there was. But if you paid attention to NV's 8800 drivers when they first released, they performed like crap too, and had all kinds of bugs, not letting many games even start. Don't even get me started on the 7950GX2.
And bandwidth ratings have nothing to do with the performance differences. Are the 4800 series drivers a little immature? Sure. But so are the G200 drivers. More performance will come from both in driver revisions for both camps. The performance differences come from architectural differences, not the drivers.
So, in short, ATI's drivers are just fine. Both NV and ATI have just as many driver issues.
Its fairly even overall, to be honest.
Back on topic tho, CUDA or Firestream - whichever needs to become an industry standard ASAP... Intel entering the market with larrabee spells trouble for both companies and threatens to stifle their GPU computing pipedream.
It would be nice to see one of these standards become the next x86. AMD would be where it is today if it went up to intel and said "X86 is acceptable under conditions".
but only scaling to a different res of the same aspect ration is a little stoopid, IMO; considering the majority of widescreens tend to be 16:10, and there are only a handful of 16:10 resolutions, y'know?
They only did 4:3 resolutions (and 5:4, a la 1280x1024). The consensus was that widescreen users were cheating, so widescreen users had to disable scaling to get a non-blurry picture.
Nvidia user got black bars, ATI users got told to get a new screen. seriously thats what ATI support told me when i emailed them, "buy a new screen with its own scaling options"
forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=227&threadid=96962&enterthread=y
if you can read theirs quite a few title posts showes problems with drivers. but hey
we nvidia peeps dont mind sarcasm from ati poor cant get a driver to work so it crashes:nutkick:. your bench marks are fast but to hold a nice
long lead spend a little more time quarterly like nvidia does bringing out new drivers for its cards.. now thats sarcasm girly:pimp:
i put in case i useally get a call asking to put in a nvidia card:D:roll:
later down is an intelligent post, which shows that the guy installed dodgy beta drivers known to have problems - user error and not ATI's fault at all. betas are betas, after all.
Oh and guess what... i use Nvidia, so i'm no fanboi here. both companies have screwups, the idea is to choose the best products from either company - not to spout crap and twist everything to justify your own purchases.
And as for driver bugs, here ya go: forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showforum=33
Just as many bug posts there.
For the record, look at my specs. I have an nVidia card in my main rig. These drivers have bugs just like any other company's drivers. I also own a 2900XT that sometimes sees duty in my secondary rig. The drivers are completely equal.
oldcomputers.net/trs80i.html so far i've built over 400 computers more or less.
i'm not a programmer but i do know the in's and outs of ms-dos to the command prompts
sometimes you need a little programming knowledge to build computers now. heck harddrives
back then were cassett tape..
My first building experience is with 286's. I built and sold custom computers with a friend all thru the 90's as well. Did quite well until DIY became a bit more popular, and made it a little harder to find clients. I've continued to build on my own here and there tho, as friends, family or co-workers need machines. My build total is in the hundreds as well. Tho maybe not quite 400. Your posting style led me to believe you were much younger than you apparently are.
But, regardless, that doesn't change the fact that both ATI and nVidia have just as many driver problems. Dig around the nVidia forums and see for yourself.