Forcing PhysX on NON-GeForce 8 cards

[neilthecellist]

Is it possible?

I would like to test this out. If anyone out there has a GeForce 8 card and installed the latest Nvidia GeForce 8 Drivers (should include CUDA or something like that) can you link me to nvcuda.dll , nxCooking.dll and nxCharacter.dll ? I'm going to see if I can force it on my GeForce 7900 GS .

[Other internet users have claimed to have gotten PhysX to work on their non-GeForce 8 cards.]

 

[jibbo]

No, this is not possible. CUDA cannot run on cards in the 7-series. It only runs on the 8-series and newer.

 

[neilthecellist]

What about ATI users who got PhysX to work?

 

[Fuzz]

ATI cards are programmable with CTM coding. Newer GeForce cards are programmable with Cuda. As far as I know there is no way to direct computation resources to anything but the video output on older GeForce cards.

 

[flapjackboy]

[Other internet users have claimed to have gotten PhysX to work on their non-GeForce 8 cards.]

My guess would be that they like to think of themselves as "UBER 1337 HAX0RZ LOL!!1!!1!!!111!oneone" and are going around telling people they've managed it through some dubious, but plausible sounding method.

If it were possible, nVidia would have said that the drivers would support 7 series cards.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

You could probably fake the driver into thinking you have an 8 series card as some other people have done, however this isn't actually benefiting you, since the card can't be programmed directly.

 

[pine]

Does the GeForce 8 series have any kind of built-in hardware for PhysX, or is it just a driver workaround? How would performance be affected on an 8800 GT (my card)?

I know there was a big thread about this before but I read through it and didn't get a clear idea of how those PhysX drivers actually work on the newer Geforces.

 

[flapjackboy]

The GeForce 8 series and later cards are based on the CUDA platform which enables software to utilise the GPU for non graphical processing tasks, such as physics processing.

Without the CUDA architecture, or something similar such as those ATI cards with CTM it would not be possible to run Physx on a GPU.

 

[neilthecellist]

WHOA WAIT

I just installed nvcuda.dll and PhysXCore.dll, along with nxCooking.dll from a [questionable internet source]. I placed those files into \Unreal Tournament\Binaries (made backups of original files just in-case).

The UT3 PhysX map pack works now. Pissy FPS (4-15 FPS). However, some maps such as Nowhere and LegoLand (with heavily destroyable environments) suddenly work. I can shoot rockets and blow sh*t up (seriously, blocks fly all over the place...)

...But I notice one small problem: The more sh*t I blow up, the higher the chance UT3 crashes. Of course, it takes like an hour, maybe even two hours, before I get one single crash, but I've noticed that after getting Hardware Physics to work that I started getting crashes.

And no, when I replaced the DLL files with my backups, there were no more physics. Shooting a wall wouldn't make bricks fly over the place and block my way. Falling signs wouldn't kill me (well, they wouldn't fall to begin with)...

One small peculiarity is that sometimes physics animations don't complete. For instance, a sign in Heat Ray PhysX might start to fall when shot at, but sometimes the sign will disappear before it even touches the ground. Other times, it falls and bounces a bit before stopping. And even other times, it'll fall, not even bounce once and completely disappear.

I notice the same thing with bricks. Bricks will blow up and scatter all over the place, but not always. Sometimes they fly over the place, sometimes they disappear before even hitting the ground. Can anyone hypothesize why this is happening?

 

[JaFO]

perhaps the new dll's fool the engine into thinking you can run physics, but the card still doesn't.
As a result the effect you are getting is that if 'normal' cards were allowed to run those levels.
The crashes probably are the result of the engine calling any of the 'special' functions that don't exist in your driver/hardware, which causes an access violation or a similar error. As a resultthe program will crash.

Keep in mind if the source is as 'questionable' as you claim it to be then there is a chance the dll was used to install a trojan or other nasty on your system.

 

[_Lynx]

I heard that about week Nvidia released their beta driver with PhysX support, some enthusiast made an ATI driver allowing PhysX acceeleration on latest ATI cards

 

[flapjackboy]

Indeed they did, because ATI have a similar technology to CUDA on their recent cards called Close To Metal (CTM) and it was a relatively simple job to port the driver across to the ATI platform.

neil, will you please just accept that pre-GF8 cards do not have the required hardware to be able to run the PhysX drivers and that any method that you might have found on the internet will be questionable at best and downright dangerous to install on your system at worst.

The PhysX drivers weren't designed to run on 7 series cards. FACT. End of discussion.

 

[Fuzz]

Enabling PhysX without a PhysX compatible GeForce card probably makes the CPU do all the work. When odd things happen like objects disappearing is probably due to limitations in memory and computation resources. Crashes are probably caused by calculations involving disappeared objects which are nessesary to carry out the operation.

If GeForce 7 cards can't be programmed then PhysX can't be executed on them because they didn't have PhysX implemented to begin with.

PhysX is great on some maps like CTF-Tornado and DM-Nowhere. I would like to see more smalltime PhysX in regular maps, but it should be optional to widen the market. DM-HeatRayPhysX is really heavy and tough to render on new computers also. On regular maps you might want to turn it off anyway.

I think software PhysX is a great alternative, if you have a quad core processor. Basically emulating a PhysX card for your games. Don't know how well that can work, but still interesting.

 

[Crowze]

That's exactly how it works if hardware acceleration isn't available.

 

[neilthecellist]

Indeed they did, because ATI have a similar technology to CUDA on their recent cards called Close To Metal (CTM) and it was a relatively simple job to port the driver across to the ATI platform.

neil, will you please just accept that pre-GF8 cards do not have the required hardware to be able to run the PhysX drivers and that any method that you might have found on the internet will be questionable at best and downright dangerous to install on your system at worst.

The PhysX drivers weren't designed to run on 7 series cards. FACT. End of discussion.

Excuse you, no.

Back when AGEIA owned PhysX I was able to force the CPU to do PhysX. I was just wondering if I could get PhysX to work still. With the recent takeover of AGEIA by nvidia I was wondering if it were still possible.

 

[flapjackboy]

Excuse you, no.

Back when AGEIA owned PhysX I was able to force the CPU to do PhysX. I was just wondering if I could get PhysX to work still. With the recent takeover of AGEIA by nvidia I was wondering if it were still possible.

Um, your original post (I've quoted it below, just in case you've forgotten already)

Is it possible?

I would like to test this out. If anyone out there has a GeForce 8 card and installed the latest Nvidia GeForce 8 Drivers (should include CUDA or something like that) can you link me to nvcuda.dll , nxCooking.dll and nxCharacter.dll ? I'm going to see if I can force it on my GeForce 7900 GS .

[Other internet users have claimed to have gotten PhysX to work on their non-GeForce 8 cards.]

asked if you could force PhysX to run on your 7900 GS, not run in software mode on your CPU. There is a vast difference. You were told several times that it was not possible due to hardware limitations but you refused to accept this, went ahead and tried some dodgy method you found online somewhere and seemed confused when it made UT3 unstable.

No ****ing ****, Sherlock! You tried to shoehorn drivers not designed for your hardware onto your system, despite being told that the hardware would not support it and now you're having a go at me for calling you on being an idiot?

 

[Severin]

...
Back when AGEIA owned PhysX I was able to force the CPU to do PhysX. I was just wondering if I could get PhysX to work still. With the recent takeover of AGEIA by nvidia I was wondering if it were still possible.

Yes you can still run physics in NON-accelerated mode. If you want to see for yourself then go to the windows control panel have a look at the PhysX applet and under settings you will see if you are running in accelerated (you won't be) mode or not. Geforce 7 and below do not contain the silicon to be programmed for physics so any physics you do see will be calculated by the cpu. The graphics card will be doing nothing other than displaying the end result just the same as a Geforce2 or 3Dfx Voodoo card would if they could support Ut3.

 

[flapjackboy]

Thought I'd just add:

but I've noticed that after getting Hardware Physics to work that I started getting crashes.

You did not get hardware physics to work, that's why UT3 is unstable.

You copied some DLLs into a directory. That's it. You didn't give any indication that you installed the PhysX drivers properly and yet you're acting like you're some big 1337 h4xx0r and that we're all the n00bs for saying it couldn't be done.

It. Can't. Be. Done. Hardware PhysX acceleration needs either an Aegia card or a GF8 or later graphics card. That's it, end of story. Drop the discussion.

 

[neilthecellist]

Yes you can still run physics in NON-accelerated mode. If you want to see for yourself then go to the windows control panel have a look at the PhysX applet and under settings you will see if you are running in accelerated (you won't be) mode or not. Geforce 7 and below do not contain the silicon to be programmed for physics so any physics you do see will be calculated by the cpu. The graphics card will be doing nothing other than displaying the end result just the same as a Geforce2 or 3Dfx Voodoo card would if they could support Ut3.

I see. Thanks for the tips. But how is it that older PhysX drivers (previously owned by AGEIA) worked fine with UT3 without crashes, whereas the new "CUDA" nvidia drivers are suddenly causing marked instability? Is it again, because the DLL's are searching for something that I don't have on my GeForce 7 card that only a G-8 would have?

Also, I noticed that on some other discussion boards that some other people don't get crashes PERIOD on their cards, and some of them are on GeForce 7 or even older ATI's that don't support that alternate-not-CUDA-but-like-CUDA-somewhat feature.

 

[Fuzz]

Intel is bragging about how efficient their new processors are. You can run everything on them as you should, both GPU and PPU. For instance a server with 12 processor cores could easily do lots of stuff, but GeForce is much cheaper at the moment.

This forum newcomer sure sounds like a nVidia fan, shareholder, employee or official.

It seems to me you are trying to make UT3 assume that PhysX hardware resources are available and then the GeForce drivers direct everything in PhysX UT3 asks for to the CPU. With a really good CPU that should work. It's just ones and zeroes, no spells or magic are required. 128 GeForce processors are quite hard to compete with anyway. PhysX works better for me when I have GeForce PhysX turned on, but UT3 seems faster without PhysX hardware on regular maps.

If nVidia wanted to keep PhysX completely to themselves they really shouldn't release source codes and development kits the way they have done.

We shouldn't deny alternative solutions, since people still want to blow up things and try out the latest stuff.

If someone can find out how to run all heavy PhysX on the CPU then I would like to see for myself and compare the results. For instance, I can't play CTF-Lighthouse when everything falls apart. Perhaps if I lower all the detail settings, have to try that too. For those who doesn't know, I'm running a Quad Core processor with a GeForce 9800GTX+ and it still won't cut it on that particular map. Maybe 2GB of RAM ain't enough, but that's almost silly.