Quote: Next Tuesday NVIDIA will introduce a new set of GeForce drivers, PhysX driver and a PhysX pack. All GeForce series 8 and newer cards will get full PhysX support with a little help of the guys from Ageia and NVIDIA's CUDA team. We take a peek at what is released next week, what can you expect, what combo's are possible and obviously our opinion on the entire PhysX experience.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/physx-by-nvidia-review/

This sounds pretty cool to me. It's sounds like the biggest push for PhysX yet. And while it is just speculation, it sounds like it will work with any dual card setup, as long as one of them is a 8 series Nvidia card (minimum). That means all you ATI fans could still benefit from this technology. Use your High-End ATI card for Video and get the cheapest Nvidia 8 series card for PhysX.

Interesting article, the guy hates UT, but was impressed by Nurien. That's just not right.

I wouldn't expect Nvidia to play nice with anything ATI related though. I remember something about "cease and desist" when someone managed to get SLI working on a crossfire board.

But if the rumors that Nvidia is getting out of the mobo market are true and Intels Larrabee graphics chip turns out to be as powerful as the rumors hint at...it's going to be a very interesting year.

Well I hunted around and found the New PhysX Driver 8.07.18 You can download it here.
Download Nvidia PhysX Driver 8.07.18 Driver for Windows XP/Vista - Softpedia

I played around with all of the possible configurations and created a Graph for your viewing pleasure
In order to test the driver (in Vista) with just one card doing the PhysX calculations I had to use this work around. It should be fixed in a future Driver

Quote: Originally Posted by Guru3D.com Now there's a thing you will need to be aware of in the Multi GPU mode, it's actually a Vista limitation but a second monitor must be attached to enable PhysX running on the second GeForce GPU. You must extend your Windows Vista desktop onto that monitor. To bypass that issue, most monitors have a standard VGA and a DVI connector, right? Just use both. This limitation is related to the Windows Vista display driver model (WDDM). This limitation does not exist in Windows XP. In NVIDIA's upcoming drivers, they will be offering a workaround to improve the experience for Vista users.

That driver states that it is for 9500 and higher. Are you sure it works with 8 series cards?

It should work with any card that has a G92 core so it should include some of them though I can't remember which ones have it aside from the 8800GT & GTS.

I installed it with my 8800GT and when I check it in control panel is says "No Acceleration" and any other options are grayed out.

As far as I can tell it should work. Everything I can find says that it's compatible. Did you uninstall your old drivers first?

It isn't a stand alone driver package, it's an add on to your current driver. I'm running the latest WHQL driver dated 7 July, I guess I'll just have to wait until the final is released by nVidia.

That's the problem. You have to be running the latest beta drivers for it to work I think. I'm downloading them now to check.

Sorry Guys, I was in a hurry when I posted this yesterday. I was about to leave the house for the Jaguar vs. Falcon game :-) I guess I should also specify that you also need to be using the 177.79 Beta Driver from Nvidia. It's available for all flavors of Windows :-) And this Driver combination works for ALL 8 series cards (or it's suppose to).

Windows XP GeForce Release 177
Vista 32-bit GeForce Release 177
Vista 64-bit GeForce Release 177
PhysX 8.07.18 Download Nvidia PhysX Driver 8.07.18 Driver for Windows XP/Vista - Softpedia

I wish I had an ATI card to test out. Maybe someone will check this out with an ATI and Nvidia Card? It may take a little driver manipulation and the CUDA Tools may be needed Download CUDA Code - complete and free toolkit for creating derivative works
But if anyone has a ATI card they want to send me I will return it

Quote: Originally Posted by BigAkita It isn't a stand alone driver package, it's an add on to your current driver. I'm running the latest WHQL driver dated 7 July, I guess I'll just have to wait until the final is released by nVidia.

Nvidia will be releasing a PhysX Driver Package that includes everything, even a free game and some demos. It is suppose to be available on the 12th but dates can always change.

So once we have the driver installed what benefits? (aside from 3DMark). I tried it with UT3 and didn't really notice anything.

Quote: Originally Posted by eascarface So once we have the driver installed what benefits? (aside from 3DMark). I tried it with UT3 and didn't really notice anything.

You need the UT3 PhysX Mod pack to see a difference
Unreal Tournament 3 by Midway

When Nvidia offically releases the New Driver pack it will come with a Full PhysX Game, a PhysX Game Demo, the UT3 PhysX Mod patch, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 PhysX Patch and a few new Technology Demos.

It is just a start for now, but more will follow

Quote: Originally Posted by Slaymate It is just a start for now, but more will follow

Yeah half the fun of this isn't that I now basically own a physx card, but that since a lot of us will there will hopefully be more push to support it. I don't really think this'll be same revolution we saw with 3d accelerators, but I could see it making the PC Games market a little more interesting

Sorry for the double post, but one thing I never understood: why was this never done on dual (or more) core CPUs? Especially when more games support SLI than dual cores. For single cores I tried running one of those physx demos and it became clear pretty fast why you wouldn't want to do THAT, but is there something about the architecture that suits GPUs more than CPUs or something?

Quote: Originally Posted by AntiM Interesting article, the guy hates UT, but was impressed by Nurien. That's just not right. I wouldn't expect Nvidia to play nice with anything ATI related though. I remember something about "cease and desist" when someone managed to get SLI working on a crossfire board. But if the rumors that Nvidia is getting out of the mobo market are true and Intels Larrabee graphics chip turns out to be as powerful as the rumors hint at...it's going to be a very interesting year.

I don't remember that exactly, but i DO know that the HP blackbird is one of the only PCs that can run dual Crossfire or SLI cards.

Quote: Originally Posted by SexyPants Sorry for the double post, but one thing I never understood: why was this never done on dual (or more) core CPUs? Especially when more games support SLI than dual cores. For single cores I tried running one of those physx demos and it became clear pretty fast why you wouldn't want to do THAT, but is there something about the architecture that suits GPUs more than CPUs or something?

I'm sure there is sometime specific about the architecture that helps it do these calculations faster, but I'm not up on that at the moment. I'll have to do a little studing

I messed around with these today and wasn't terribly impressed. Pretty slow FPS all around... even after I turned SLI back on (whoops). Meanwhile the physics effects I saw were mostly pretty exaggerated or not very detailed.

I'm not actually entirely sure I've got it working either. Can these demos run in "software mode?"

Perfect example of why Physics is just the reson to make dual core gpu's.

Intels Larrabee(IL) is a good example of how to explain. IL is a pentium cpu modded to support vector processing. Which is what most GPU's do well right now, only because games have been coded for this type of algorithim. If you have time check out anandtechs IL article, which extremely goes down to how cpu's and gpu's aren't identical is most ways.(and is way long)

Making a 8800 into a physics card screams that they should just make a dual core card, and/or have a similar to the x2 card with the second gpu as physX.

This is a pretty neat way to make PhysX affordale, but also a nice way to make the price point make sense. I can see nVidia making there cards not so cheap for this added benifit...

Here's a Link to the downloads

Force Within: Download

Here's a UK link for our European members

Force Within: Download

I downloaded everything. It's cool but don't expect anything earth shattering at the moment. But it is an advance look at what to expect in the future. The Nurien Tech Demo gives the best example of the possibilities in my opinion

Does it work well fit GPU folding?