PhysX layer running on AMD Radeon 3870, utility available "soon"
By Joshua Fruhlinger 
posted Jun 29th 2008 2:08AM
posted Jun 29th 2008 2:08AM
As if overnight, Eran Badit of NGOHQ.com has PhysX running on the AMD Radeon 3870. Badit said that the hack was "easy," and NGOHQ.com will distribute the utility after a bit more testing. As for performance, he hit a 22,606 CPU score in 3D mark Vantage, which is nothing to sneeze at. He swears that AMD isn't involved in any of this, and that the utility release will be entirely independent.[Via TGDaily]
Which is nothing to sneeze at?!?!
5Ghz Quads get about that much. While it is about the same compared to a Nvidia card running PhysX it's amazing compared to CPUs.
Impressive... Most impressive.
Yeah, all the benchmarking is impressive but I installed PhysX today and didn't get anything except a hotter card with the same performance....
Of course, I do have a laptop and 8600m GT and I heard somewhere that PhysX was only useful for Desktop cards....
Can someone set me straight on all this???
8600 is your problem only for 8800 cards and up
I thought that it was going to be for all Nvidia 8000 series cards...
If it is for the 8800 and up, than that just sucks!
This might sound like bs, but as I was reading "This is nothing to sneeze at", I actually launched a big wet sneeze.
I'm not reading your posts any more, might make me do other things you write =/
@Daza
at least they didn't say "which is nothing to crap your pants at."
@bryon after looking into it your card should be supported with a future firmware update
http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_learn_products.html
all of these theoretically should be able to since the physx coding layer is based on cuda
So many redundant cores on our single/dual quad-core setups yet we're putting this PhysX crap in there to boost physics...
I sneezed also.
.....anyone know if this sort of thing will be available for OS X (or, Snow Leopard?)
yeah sory but apple doesnt let you use the required cards that are required.
"required cards that are required" gawd i suck at grammer
The required cards that are required.
lol.
It's the art of fighting without fighting.
8600m GT is Cuda compatible, and so is he 8800 for Mac Pros.
OSX isnot cuda compatible
department of redundancy department
Obvious statement is obvious.
lol...good one.
Apple users wont be seeing this for God knows how long, 1+ year at best.
Even then, so what?
You want to enable physics in Quake 3? Zork perhaps?
CUDA is the name for Nvidia's C language extensions and SDK for programming their GPUs. AMD has a similar system. I'm not sure if the CUDA SDK is currently available for OSX.
Apple's announced OpenCL framework is going to provide an abstraction layer over the top of both nVidia's and AMD's system so future OSX Snow Leopard software is able to take advantage of the GPU (and multi-core CPUs) for parallel processing. By Integrating this functionality directly into the operating system as an API, Apple is making it MUCH easier for developers to take advantage of this technology. This should mean that a lot more professional and consumer software will be able to take advantage of GPU processing.
Using Google or simply going to NVIDIA's CUDA website provides links to the OSX versions CUDA driver, CUDA toolkit, and CUDA SDK.
OSX 10.2.5 or greater is required, and the correct hardware too (such as 8600M GT found in a MacBook Pro).
loosely_coupled correctly points out that 'Snow Leopard' (OSX 10.6) will include OpenCL which works on both ATi and NVIDIA GPUs, and is a core technology of 'Grand Central' which is the new thread management system designed to spread load over multiple CPU cores and GPU shaders.
Guys... I think AMD is back...
HELLO amd had nothing to do with this
but yes if they can get this to work on a 48XX card then amd is back at least for this generation (not that they went already but this just solidifies it)
Do NOT count on it.
All it takes is for nVidia to pester the PhyX engine with proprietary, geforce-only calls and functions.
Mac user need not apply. But as if they care since they live in their own little bubble world where if it isn't Mac, its irrelevant.
You're irrelevant. Does that count?
mac users can apply if they use bootcamp
os x users need not apply due to CUDA not being available on os x yet
get your facts straight moronic fanboi
@DefPo3t
Could you split those hairs any thinner?
@Pochi
Apple is coming up with OpenCL for next OS release. Let's see what they will do out of it.
ihar
That would be bitchin if Apple could get OpenCL out the door.
Physics processing support for Quake 3 can't come fast enough !!
phsx cards are available in laptops but only select high range ones
When are people going to support physx completely? It's been available for a long time, but no one cares. Only with these cards and the Nvidia 260 / 280 seem to be pushing it harder. When they added some physx love with Unreal 3's (I think it was unreal 3) in that special level, it wasnt the physx card mostly, but the enormous mad hours to code every brick. Someone explain to me how physx will survive when the newer Nvidia 280's basically contain a GPU and CPU....
Because now lots of people have physx cards?
you don't need to "code every brick". Did you know computers are good at repetitive and random things?
Nvidia bought PhysX you see, and now they made drivers that use the GPU (like the 280's) instead of a dedicated PhysX card, and as a response someone hacked it to also work on ATI cards (allegedly).
Unless AMD can get in on the Physx love, don't ever expect it to be completely adopted, as you're just further forking code between the two GPU powerhouses, since you'd have to make separate code for AMD.
I loved CUDA, in theory, but hate the fact that it looks like they're heading down the monopolistic road of making developers go their way or the highway in terms of high-performance/efficiency coding.
oops, forgot to hit the reply for ShadowKain
Yeah it's really annoying how they now separate EVERYTHING, you need to decide what mobo, what RAM, what CPU, if you want SLI or crossfire, if you want CUDA or DX10.1, every day things seem more compartmentalized and it's getting really tiresome, soon they can close down the ISO committee completely, the industry did away with sanity and interoperability.
Bullshit.
CUDA binaries do NOT just fly easily from one TOTALLY DIFFERENT architecture to another.
This is like someone saying OH YEAH I MOVED THIS EXTREMELY TIME SENSITIVE CODE FROM ARM TO x86 WITHOUT AN EMULATOR AND NOW IT RUNS FASTER, IT WAS EASY LOL.
There is a disassembler for CUDA binaries but then they would need an assembler for AMD video cards. And detailed knowledge of EXACTLY how they work (which is NDAed). And since they claim AMD were not involved, somehow I doubt that.