Physics is fun in games, be it chopping down trees with heavy fire in Crysis or FarCry2 or the joy of levelling entire buildings in Silent Storm to deny your enemies cover.  What isn’t fun is slapping down $100+ for a PPU to find out that there are a total of 2 maps that support that particular physics engine or that the sum effect of having that PPU is that paper and dust react to wind in a slightly more interesting way than without the $100+ PPU.  nVIDIA wanted to make the PPU more approachable, to do so they let you slap in any of their recent cards into a second PCIe slot and you could have whatever physics, or PhysX, the game supported as well as letting those who bought the older Ageia cards use theirs as well. 

It seemed like maybe PhysX would be allowed to hang with the cool kids and become desirable for gamers, until it announced it would only be willing to form exclusive relationships.  Any scent that you might be hanging out with that AMD crowd on the side and PhysX turned greener than the competitions logo and shut you down completely.  It would even take those old Ageia privileges away.  Thankfully, someone has figured out the electronic equivalent of a few drinks and some roses which will woo back your PhysX, even if it has to share the bed with a AMD card or two.  Drop by NGOHQ for your silicon bribe; your results may vary.


“As you may or may not know, Windows 7 allows two display drivers to be used at once – like in Windows XP. Therefore, it is possible to use an Nvidia card for PhysX and ATI card for graphics rendering. Sadly, since the release of 186 graphics drivers, Nvidia has decided to block this feature anytime a Non-Nvidia GPU is present in the system (Even IGPs). In addition, for some incomprehensible reasons, the latest version of PhysX System Software also prevents PPU cards (such as BFG PPU) from working if a Non-Nvidia GPU is present. The following is Nvidia’s explanation behind their actions:”

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