NVIDIA helping to bring PhysX to AMD hardware, whatever next?

Earlier this month we reported that NGOHQ.com had hacked NVIDIA's PhysX layer to run on an AMD Radeon HD 3870. We were expecting NVIDIA to get just a touch upset, but that's anything but the case.

In a progress update posted on the NGOHQ website, the team behind the project confirms its unexpected allies by stating:

"NVIDIA is now helping us with the project and it seems they are giving us their blessings. It’s very impressive, inspiring and motivating to see NVIDIA's view on this. Why they help us? My best guess would be: They probably want to take on Intel with CUDA and to deal with the latest Havok threat from both AMD and Intel."

If NVIDIA keeps this up, it's bound to accumulate some more friends in the enthusiast scene. AMD, on the other hand, isn't playing nice. According the NGOHQ, it's still struggling to get its hands on Radeon HD 4800 hardware, and AMD isn't willing to provide it.

Nonetheless, the PhysX hack is said to be "going as planned" and though there's no specific date for a beta release, it shouldn't be too far away.

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I guess AMD don't want to be nice because they feel embarrassed that a third party has done what they should have done first…. Guessing AMD will wait till they have their own drivers before handing over any secrets to third parties.

Polar opposite of Creative eh? nVidia keep on surprising me. Not necessarily in a good or bad way, but they've made many decisions in recent time that simply stumped me. NGOHQ did provide a credible reason as to why nVidia is doing what it's doing, but it's nevertheless something I was not expecting. I suspect other companies in their position would just turn a blind eye and allow it to happen (except Creative who would summon their lawyers), but I don't think any would divert their resources to the modding community.

Nvidia have said since that they bought Ageia that would allow other (ie ATI) GPU's to run the Physx API.

Havok has the advantge that it will do physics on any PC as they all have an x86 CPU. If only Nvidia did Physx then you cut off ATI card owners, so the developers won't use. If they can say to the developers, ATI card or Nvidia card, doesn't matter then developers will use Physx as well.

It really is as simple as that as to why Nvidia will work with someone to get Physx API ported to ATI GPU. You can be 100% of the Physx API supporting games, but developers won't use Physx if cuts off a large part of the market for the game.

Well, this is pretty cool to hear, even though PhysX isn't utilized very often. I use mainly nVidia GPUs, but its good to see them sharing the technology… :)

i know, maybe because they know that physx will run slower on ati cards, hence nvidia can use it to sway people into buying nvidia cards, since developers are going to be using physx because both nvidia and ati cards can run it

NVIDIA helping to bring PhysX to AMD hardware, whatever next?

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