nVidia rolling out PhysX driver support for GeForce 8 and 9

[LoneWolf121188]

We knew driver-enabled PhysX support was due for NVIDIA's line some time soon, but HotHardware's reporting that GeForce 8 and 9-series owners will finally have it when ForceWare 177.39 ships alongside the GeForce 9800 GTX+ in July. The preliminary benchmarks seem to show some serious GPU performance gains for PhysX operations, so with any luck you'll soon be rendering Independence Day fireworks at greater framerates than ever previously imagined.

Nice! Hopefully Apple takes note of this and includes it in a future driver update for us MBP users.

 

[BMP1199]

What does this mean in lamens terms?

 

[Rivix]

What does this mean in lamens terms?

Zoom Zoom

At the very least we should be able to use this in Bootcamp.

 

[Eric.]

What does this mean in lamens terms?

Basically, video cards will be able to do some physics calculations that normally the CPU would have to do. Think exploding vehicles and those sort of things in games. Folding@home would probably be considered part of that too, I read that the GTX 200 series is going to be able to run it.

 

[MattZani]

Running the PhysX on a GPU like the 8600, which will already struggle with newer games that would support it, would add a serious hit to FPS, where as most games still run in single core mode, so the PhysX would have its own core to calculate in.

Agaisnt for MBP Owners, But for the 9800 GTX+, it will be great!

 

[Radio Monk33]

Er yeah, considering the GPU is going to be the bottleneck for most gaming, I don't want to put any more burden on it instead of the CPU..

 

[Yixian]

Which GeForce 9 series card are we expecting in the new MBPs anyway?

 

[MattZani]

If anything the 9600M GT, which is around an 8800 in power.

 

[Yixian]

If anything the 9600M GT, which is around an 8800 in power.

I heard someone say an HD 3600 would be more likely because of it's heat sink. How does the HD 3600 compare to the 9600M GT?

 

[Inconsequential]

Its only G92 core cards IIRC.

So no, no MBPs will be getting it and I don't know what core the MPs use.. although I suspect it will be G92.

[This is only from the fact that PC guys who downloaded the driver for their cards discovered only the new G92 cards allowed physics acceleration!]

 

[alphaod]

PhysX is crappy; I own the actual card; doesn't do any good at all!

I've been trying to sell mine for 2 years and no one wants it...

 

[The Flashing Fi]

Actually, I believe you'll only going to see any improvement if the game is coded to take advantage of the physx card. A lot of games don't even use it. It is often regarded as a pretty big waste of money (I think they were/are 250 bucks new with limited game support).

 

[Eric.]

Actually, I believe you'll only going to see any improvement if the game is coded to take advantage of the physx card. A lot of games don't even use it. It is often regarded as a pretty big waste of money (I think they were/are 250 bucks new with limited game support).

Yeah, it'll probably catch on more with it being in about half of all new video cards though.