Patch Makes Nvidia Play Nice With ATI

Hacked patch saved the day for multi-GPU PhysX fans.

Last week we talked about a Nvidia drivers, starting with version 186, that disable GPU PhysX acceleration when ATI hardware is also present in the system.

Nvidia gave several reasons of why it decided to cripple its own hardware when in the presence of competing hardware, but in the end, it was just about business.

"For a variety of reasons – some development expense some quality assurance and some business reasons NVIDIA will not support GPU accelerated Physx with NVIDIA GPUs while GPU rendering is happening on non- NVIDIA GPUs," Nvidia's customer service wrote to a user. "I’m sorry for any inconvenience caused but I hope you can understand."

Of course, the setup of having both Nvidia and ATI GPUs in one system are exceptionally rare, making this a very special case – but still a very annoying one, especially for those hardcore enough to employ an Nvidia GPU just for PhysX.

Luckily, someone has created an experimental patch at lifts the handcuffing of Nvidia GPUs when an ATI Radeon is in the vicinity. Those with such specialized systems can thank GenL of the NGOHQ Forums.

This patch, of course, is for Windows 7 users as it's the only platform that'll support configuration for multiple GPUs. Check it out here.