Physx drivers work on .... ATI!

[Gazz]

Jerusalem (Israel) – This one did not take long: We already knew that Nvidia is working on a CUDA version for x86 CPUs, but said it would leave a modification for ATI GPUs to others. Eran Badit of NGOHQ.com told us that he has done it already and was able to get the Nvidia PhysX layer to run on ATI Radeon cards.

After playing with Nvidia's CUDA SDK and PhysX SDK, Eran apparently got the PhysX layer to play along with Radeon cards. He mentioned that enabling PhysX support on Radeon cards is not particularly difficult, leading us to believe that physics on graphics cards may not so much be a technology problem but a game of politics.

Eran said that he will be offering the ATI PhysX-enabling utility on NGOHQ.com as soon as he gets his hands on more hardware to check the application on more than one graphics card. We are told that he is testing hardware already, which means that the software should be available “soon”.

On his first run, Eran got a 22,606 CPU score in 3D Mark Vantage, enhancing the overall score to P4262. A comparable system without PhysX-support will cross the finish line at about P3800.

We are told that there is currently no relationship between NGOHQ.com and AMD’s PR team, which means that Eran does not have access to Radeon 4850 or 4870 cards. Check the www.ngohq.com website for the software to become available this weekend.

Source: TG Daily - Nvidia PhysX runs on AMD Radeon 3870, scores 22,000 CPU marks in Vantage

[Richard_Rahl]

Certainly ATI cards can do the job (with the right software), it's a matter of "politics" since Ageia is on Nvidia's side (i.e. I read somewhere that Ageia is owned by Nv. these days). AMD supports an equivalent of PhysX, of which I have forgotten the name.
So it isn't really a matter of capabillity afaik.

Edit: the name of that technology appears to be Havok

[Magus]

But havok isn't hardware accelerated, it's software for as far as I know!

[Slaymate]

I'm still waiting on an ATI system that beats me with a comparible system. On average I see alot of low Nvidia numbers reported in every review. And my system is far from being the fastest on the Planet.

[KamisoriX]

Who cares. AMD sux

[mikami]

I care. I hope this is real I might get a 4870 and wouldn't mind folding@home with the gpu client