NVIDIA uncorking PhysX support for GeForce cards on August 12th

It's arriving a month later than anticipated, but at least it's arriving (we hope). According to a first look at PhysX on NVIDIA's GeForce cards, The Tech Report is reporting (ahem) that the graphical outfit will dish out new drivers that add PhysX support on August 12th. The new software will allow owners of GeForce 8, GeForce 9 and GeForce GTX 200-series cards to use PhysX acceleration without shelling out any additional coinage, which means that you all will surely be giving it a shot just for kicks, right? Keep next Tuesday clear -- you and Unreal Tournament 3 have a date, like it or not.

[Via UberReview]

[Eric B. @ Aug 7th 2008 10:35AM]

ALL those fluids! I need to go to the bathroom now.

[Flashpoint @ Aug 7th 2008 10:42AM]

I knew that PhysX card add-on was never going to get anywhere. It doesn't make sense to have a buyer add a card for nothing more than Physx, it makes more sense to either have those instructions calculated on the CPU itself or to integrate it into a video card.

My only wonder is, how long till alot of games actually support it. That could take 3 ~5 years. Even worse, imagine having to rebuild your entire gaming rig for CYSIS II cause that Quad Core, Geforce 280, 4GB of RAM and Vista Extreme was no longer enough to meet the medium requirements. Imagine being forced to get PhysX just to play.

[JonFitt @ Aug 18th 2008 2:47PM]

I would hardly say PhysX didn't go anywhere; PhysX is the middleware as well as the card, and it's going to work with every Nvidia GPU from now on. Hardly going nowhere.
Those who have played games for longer will remember that the original 3dfx cards were additional processing units that still required VGA graphics cards. Many people bemoaned buying additional cards just for a graphics boost when software rendering was still an option.
What happened there? The VGA cards absorbed the GPU and we haven't looked back.

[jay.viz @ Aug 7th 2008 11:24AM]

@Flashpoint
"I knew that PhysX card add-on was never going to get anywhere."
You mean now that it's everywhere thanks to nvidia?
Now it makes more sense more than ever to get one now that game makers can fairly rely on the fact that any computer that has a decent nvidia video card will at least support it.

"My only wonder is, how long till alot of games actually support it." Probably about the same amount of time it's going to take for the 8800GT to be the minimum requirement.

[Dillon @ Aug 7th 2008 11:40AM]

All those fluids are belong to toilet

[Zorque @ Aug 7th 2008 12:22PM]

I'm pretty sure what Flashpoint meant was the dedicated PhysX card, and I agree that those are incredibly stupid to make or own. When you've got a quad-core CPU and a GPU with over 80 cores, you can probably get away with not having an entire other processor solely for PhysX.

[zom @ Aug 7th 2008 12:53PM]

I totally remember when my Monster 3D was the bomb, so it makes sense to see PhysX become integrated eventually for it to really take off.

[BananaBoat @ Aug 8th 2008 12:02AM]

Even with this support, I won't be switching back to the GTX 260 from my HD 4870. Considering that you now need to shell out 400-500 dollars for an Nvidia card to match the performance of a 300 dollar ATI card (or you could get two 4850's for 400 dollars, and destroy the 400-500 dollar GTX 280) I don't see much benefit in it.

They go nuts with the physics and the CUDA (ATI goes nuts with their version of GPU-CPU as well) when really all I want is cards that aren't over a foot long. I had to take a saw to the drive cage of my mid tower to make the 260 fit (would have needed to do it for the 4870 too, but I had already done it for the 260 when I got it). Making cards so long that people with HP/Dell/Gateway etc cases can't fit them seems counter intuitive (Will need to spend another hundred on a full tower before I can fit a second card for Crossfire =/)

[JeffNunn @ Aug 11th 2008 12:20AM]

@BananaBoat

Look up prices and read a benchmark, idiot. 2 4850's are NOT faster than a GTX 280 if you had taken the 30 seconds it takes to Google that. In fact 2 4870's are equal to 1 GTX 280. A GTX 280 costs $430. 2 4870's costs $525-550. You act like the price never changed from the release date, which shows your incompetence again. You can get a GTX 260 for less money than a 4870. I got mine for $230 from the Egg with a coupon off of a forum and a MIR. You know how I found those? I wasn't an idiot and I took the 30 seconds it takes to Google it.

[Sudo @ Aug 7th 2008 10:35AM]

Oh joy.

[TangoEchoXray @ Aug 7th 2008 10:36AM]

Yeah, this is cool, but it my apparently faulty 8600mGT gonna 'splode when I try this?

[Magallanes @ Aug 7th 2008 10:40AM]

AFAIK you can fix this problem manually controlling the fan speed.

[GSpruce @ Aug 7th 2008 10:50AM]

Meh, I have an ASUS lapptop (bad with vendor drivers and updates so I use laptopvideo2go), the fans are always crankin full when any sort of 3d ness is going on, and its still enough to burn the legs.

[Platinum_Skeet @ Aug 7th 2008 12:48PM]

Cooling Stand?

[robothouse @ Aug 7th 2008 10:36AM]

Oh. Corking....water....I see what you did there.

[ChuChu @ Aug 7th 2008 10:37AM]

Look, I'm down with the whole PhysX concept in theory but I'm already trying to scrape every last bit of framerate I can out of my 8800 and there is no way I am giving that up for realistic physics. I will sacrifice every last bit of eye candy at the altar of framerate when it comes to multiplayer online gaming.

[jay.viz @ Aug 7th 2008 10:47AM]

My frame rate seemed to go up in UT3. Maybe the CPU was bottlenecking, and not the card?

[Dillon @ Aug 7th 2008 11:41AM]

"no way I am giving that up for realistic physics."

Newton would hate you.

[ChuChu @ Aug 7th 2008 11:55AM]

"Newton would hate you."


Of course he would hate me - I would be whooping his ass on the leaderboard because I would be getting 60+ FPS with fake physics while he would be getting 22 FPS with lovely water particles and complaining about "damn cheaters and aimbots". :p

[Dean @ Aug 7th 2008 9:03PM]

UT3 is definitely very processor intensive, when I play that game, my proc floats near 100%, crysis doesn't do that, so i feel for some titles (UT3 included) the physx rendering on the geforce can be beneficial, and hey, you can't argue with free...

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Aug 7th 2008 10:44AM]

What about older cards? I still have gf7800

[Joshua Walters @ Aug 7th 2008 3:41PM]

No dice.

Not supported.

Buy a newer card.

[jay.viz @ Aug 7th 2008 10:44AM]

You can already get it to work if you have a G92 or higher. You just need the physx software and the beta drivers.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx_8.06.12_whql.html
Vista: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_177.79_beta.html
Vista x64: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_177.79_beta.html

You have to go into the physx control panel and select geforce.
It works for me on Vista x64. It should work on XP too, but I can only post 3 urls.

[xcrunk @ Aug 7th 2008 10:53AM]

1. Will using this "feature", take away from the graphics? I could only assume that the physx processing will take some horsepower away from the graphics overall.

2. Will I be able to use my old PCIX GPU and dedicate that to processing physx instructions?

3. What games will feature this?

[E71 @ Aug 7th 2008 11:17AM]

PhysX can kiss my grits. I'm in favor of multi-core CPUs designating a core or two for physics processing.

[Kurian @ Aug 7th 2008 11:48AM]

No they cant. They will take much longer to process a given physics "function" that a dedicated PPU which has the function implemented in hardware.

Just like Walkmans last MUCH MUCH longer when playing Atrac3 than MP3. Atrac3 is decoded by a hardware LSI circuit. There is no need for a general purpose "brain" to run at full power.

CUDA does it from a raw power point of view.

[Jeff @ Aug 7th 2008 11:49AM]

Same. most of us have big, powerful, and fairly cheap CPUs doing absolutely nothing as it is .

[ChuChu @ Aug 7th 2008 11:53AM]

I am guessing the GPU is probably more efficient at doing PhysX than your CPU. Your CPU is designed for general purpose computing and is not nearly as good at certain tasks where a specialized type of CPU would be better -> GPU, DSP, etc.

[E71 @ Aug 7th 2008 12:28PM]

But when the 8-core CPUs start rolling in, you're going to have a lot of cores that are virtually redundant.

What's a core gotta do around here to get some work?

[Chris @ Aug 7th 2008 11:20AM]

Any word if the Linux drivers will support this as well?

[Kris Quigley @ Aug 7th 2008 11:51PM]

I was wanting to ask the same thing!

[Ignatius @ Aug 7th 2008 11:51AM]

Let the crashing begin!

[DoomGaZer @ Aug 7th 2008 12:07PM]

Ok, how long now until ATI has this feature.........or wait........would that be Havok?

[Kax02 @ Aug 7th 2008 12:27PM]

AMD has Havok in their partnership with Intel but there have been a few brave souls who ventured into making the 3800 series work with the PhysX driver and NVIDIA ended up backing them to expand adoption rates. ngohq reported on it weeks ago.

[Roy @ Aug 7th 2008 6:47PM]

ATI does not have Havok. It is only CPU physics that Intel supports.

Both Nvidia and ATI can run Havok on INTEL CPU.

But only Nvidia can do real GPU physics on GeForce cards.

[BigD145 @ Aug 7th 2008 12:07PM]

I hope they release 64 bit at the same time they release 32 bit.

[9bit @ Aug 7th 2008 12:22PM]

Will this work on the equivalent Quadros?

[Chris @ Aug 7th 2008 12:52PM]

I thought it was already out!? (at least for GTX 200's) It doesn't really help me because when I tried to install the physx levels for UTIII they don't load and screw up the game to the point where I had to uninstall it

[ByronGman @ Aug 7th 2008 3:17PM]

I believe that the only way to enable PhysX right is to use beta drivers.

Try the new drivers when they come out and be sure to have the latest PhysX installed as well.

[Ryan @ Aug 7th 2008 12:53PM]

question: Any flight simulators that utilize the PhysX capabilities?

[Smak @ Aug 7th 2008 1:08PM]

Comment: Just ask your damn question. No need for a preface.

[Ed @ Aug 7th 2008 1:24PM]

they can add all the support and sexiness they want ... until Nvidia gets off their ass and fixes the RDP issue, I'll be sticking with 169.xx

[mackid105 @ Aug 7th 2008 1:41PM]

I've got a MacBook Pro anyone know if I'm going to have to go somewhere like laptopvideo2go.com to get these drivers on the Windows side of my computer or if Apple will release an update for Bootcamp, since none of the driver updates from Nvidia work.

[PhYmon @ Aug 9th 2008 8:08PM]

Actually u can try the drivers that are on laptop2go here is the link u have to download the driver and then download the modified INF, then extract the driver and put the modified INF into the folder already extracted.. then u are done..
URL http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showforum=88 hope i helped..

[Gornak @ Aug 7th 2008 2:00PM]

xcrunk, as far as question 3 goes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhysX

[Keith @ Aug 7th 2008 4:05PM]

I'm all for using the GPU for Physics, I all ways thought the GPU should be able to do same thing as a PhysX card since they are very similar and what does it mater if it uses part fo your GPU's power as long as it makes games look better and more realistic, isn't that what your GPU is for anyway. As for slowing down the frame rate on online gaming you could probably turn the Physics down or off.

I seem to have plenty of extra GPU power even on one of the newest games (Assassin's Creed) while all four cores of my prosesor were used up to 75% most of the time.

* Windows Vista Home Premium
* EVGA Nvidia nForce 680i SLI 775 A1 Version
* Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6600 2.40GHz
* Corsair Dominator 4GB PC2-8500 DDR2
* 2(SLI) EVGA Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS Superclocked
* Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty with 64MB of X-RAM.
* 2 Western Digital Raptor X 150GB 10,000 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drives in Raid 0 Array

[Wwhat @ Aug 7th 2008 5:06PM]

The ball's in your court now ATI, and we want action, not slides and promises and referral to 3rd parties and 'exclusive interviews' about some distant future where we all fly in spaceships and stuff.

[Dustin @ Aug 11th 2008 2:04AM]

I know it's not the same demo, but there is a decent quality nvidia physx fluid demo video on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFVOBQWBaCU

[jinx @ Aug 19th 2008 7:45AM]

GPU's are far more efficent at doing physics calculations then cpu's ever will be. GPU's have massive amounts of parrallel proccessing power. Its a neccesity as thats how you proccess graphics. It turns out that physics proccessing also works best on chips designed for parrallel proccessing. A CPU isnt designed to process things in parrallel. It can do it but i involves using much of the cpu's resources and involves long circuit paths through many transistors, ultimately slowing any physics output and chewing through the cpu's resources.

Anyway reports from some sites i have read indicate that you could soon use an oldish gpu card (8 series and above) as a dedicated Physics proccesing unit. That means you could possibly use your old 8600gt for physics while you brand new GTX280 does all the graphics on an SLI board. This isn't just good because old cards retain value and usefulness. It indicates that nvidia could also be getting set to realx the SLI conditions.