NVIDIA Adds PhysX GPU Acceleration Support Under Linux

[ua=42]

The problem is PhisX in NVIDIA only for accelleration and their CPU fallback is slow as #*$&.

[gotwig]

Wow, the most useless vendor lock-in has arrived to Linux where there are exactly zero games using it.

NVIDIA should have opensourced and licensed it to everyone, including AMD, but their greed killed this promising project.

Kids, ignore ^ this troll.

Borderlands 2, metro LL

[_SXX_]

Why doesn't amd support physX?

Might be because it's proprietary closed source software of competitive company that make it depend on their own proprietary standard called CUDA which is their main way to implement vendor lock-in? Of course it's not why.

AMD don't support physx because it's a bad company.

[tuke81]

I thought games could be forced-enabled to use GPU PhysX, either via NVIDIA's control panel, or by editing one of the ini files for the game? Chivalry: Medieval Warfare is one that I can name that was like that.

Well I'm not sure if it's possible to force hardware physx for all physx games, but it might be possible if the game has engine that supports hardware physX. Still most of physx games are software physx, which runs on cpu:

http://physxinfo.com/index.php?p=gam&f=cpu

Apparently Chivalry: Medieval Warfare uses unreal engine and has options to use hardware PhysX so it's possible with that game although the game does not advertise it.

[tuke81]

The problem is PhisX in NVIDIA only for accelleration and their CPU fallback is slow as #*$&.

Afaik that was a big problem few years back. It was mainly due old cpu code in physX which was made by ageia(x87 no multithreading).

Newer physx sdk:s supports sse and multithreading by default so if cpu fall back is slow nowadays and physics aren't threaded correctly I would blame more lazy game-dev that does not know how to use sdk correctly. And of course there are physic effects, which just are more suited for gpu(needs greater parallel computation than you can get with today's cpus).

[DarkFoss]

Great news! I'm keeping my fingers crossed for 3D Vision support in Linux!

Well if it wasn't for Helixmod Nvidia 3D would be doa on windows.G'luck.

http://helixmod.blogspot.com/2014/07/decline-of-3d-vision.html

[birdie]

Kids, ignore ^ this troll.

Borderlands 2, metro LL

That's like TWO games. OMG! How I could have missed them!!

[grndzro]

Physx was based on x87 code. Catalyst was patched by someone and it ran Physx just fine. Then NV updated Physx not allowing the workaround.
NV is the only one to blame for Physx not working on AMD hardware. It should be canned in favor of havok, or another open source project.

[johnc]

That's like TWO games. OMG! How I could have missed them!!

But there are only a total of like four games on Linux.

[Ferdinand]

Afaik that was a big problem few years back. It was mainly due old cpu code in physX which was made by ageia(x87 no multithreading).

Newer physx sdk:s supports sse and multithreading by default so if cpu fall back is slow nowadays and physics aren't threaded correctly I would blame more lazy game-dev that does not know how to use sdk correctly. And of course there are physic effects, which just are more suited for gpu(needs greater parallel computation than you can get with today's cpus).

If that was true you should be able to use at least one cpu core for 100% physx. I haven't seen a game do that. I also went from a 6870 to a 660ti and the only physx change I saw was in Arkham City where the city got dirtier with flyers and batman stumbling over carpet.