I have been reading a lot in the press latley about these Physx drivers Nvidia had released as beta, which as we have covered before were not given to futuremark so they are not valid as benchmark drivers.
My question is. Who cares and why? 3dm and Vantage are synthetic benchmarks and its all down to how the card handles actual games in the real world at the end of the day. As these drivers do increase performance in the tests i have seen why would anyone not want to use them ? Im guessing ATI are working on a version ? Also i cant see how these drivers can be kept out of things even if futuremark say they are not official (im guessing Nvidia will submit a set soon). The amount of performance increase is there and reviews will have to at least include then for comparison wouldnt they ?

Your thoughts and any info please.
Mactronix

I'd use them, but I don't have PhysX-based games

The problem is, they decrease fps in actual games. Most games are gpu limited, not cpu limited. It's better to have physics calculations done on cpu that is mostly idle instead of the gpu that is already working high load. When you're running a game, it doesn't matter if that quad core is working at 10% or 30% load, it won't impact frame rates. If you keep that already underused cpu idle while tax the already busy gpu, frame rates will decrease.

In other words, Gpu based physics calculations only improve synthetic benchmarks, while tanking real world performance.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] /page4.asp

this graph is misleading......becoz it dint show fps when physX is off......upon turning on physX, ur fps will take a hit of upto 40%...

Yea I know PhysX reduces performance, but it does so much less when running on the GPU. Therefore if you are going to use it, you should offload it from the CPU as much as possible.

So am i getting this right then ?
The Physx reduces the load on the CPU. But for a top end system that needs the card running at its best it causes a reduction in FPS at high res, because obviously the card is doing more. So that leads me to thinking that at lower resolutions or on a machine with a highend GPU and a lower than ideal spec CPU this would help reduce any CPU restrictions in the system. (bottlenecks)

So long story short Nvidia are billing these drivers as something they are not ? or is it the industry that has been hoodwincked into doing it for them ? I have seen reviews like the firingsquad ones that show increases in the performance and i have seen magazine reviews that are getting upset about the increase and are sugesting Nvidia are trying to cheat in the FPS wars again, 3dm Vantage etc.

Again your thoughts or any info apreciated.

Mactronix

@mactronix, I haven't had a chance to play with them yet. but I have been wondering whether I will have access to the showcase level in GRAW2, I,ll get back to you.

the main problem i would think is that i believe they are using Ageia's own people to help develop this. anyone who remembers the scams they pulled upon the physx card's release will know they are more untrustworthy than nvidia are.

treat everything with a good deal of scepticism IMO unless there is undeniable proof that they are not rigging things like they did with their own PPU.

Err, such as?

alot of test done to make sure that even if the system is fooled into thinking that gpu is being used even when it is the cpu you get the same results as if the system thinks the cpu is being used.

making sure anything like profiles are not used to optimise in favour of the gpu like what happened with cell factor and the ppu.

tbh, i won't really trust them myself, they have shown their true colours in the past and anything which is derived from them is just not honest, i am talking about ageia here but you wouldn't know it.

Ok thanks for the info so far guys. Im with strangestranger on this i wont trust them untill its proven one way or another. Im still surprised the industry seems to b esucked in by this though.
@ mousemonkey, Yes it will be interesting to know if you will get access to things origonally designed to run with the add in card, could open up a small back catalogue of titles for some people.

Mactronix

It works

One thing, everyones always saying, there arent any challenging games out now to really push alot of these newer top end cards. To me, thatd be a perfect scenario to use phsx, as youd still have acceptable fps, while having physx as well