Following Geeks3D report on that recent driver update disables PhysX hardware acceleration not only for Nvidia GPUs, but for Ageia PPUs as well (if non-Nvidia graphics card is present in the system) we’ve desided to perform small investigation.

Test methodology is simple enough: we’ll use certain sample from PhysX SDK 2.8.1 Build 13 to identify if Ageia PPU is working and initializing properly with different PhysX drivers on several systems with Nvidia and ATI GPUs.

Used PhysX System Software – 8.09.04 (last one with direct PPU support) and newest 9.09.0814 installed above 8.09.04 (PPU won’t be recognised on pure 9.09.0814 drivers)

GeForce System #1 – GTX275 + Ageia PPU

PhysX driver 8.09.04                                                         PhysX driver 9.09.0814

GeForce System #2 – GTX295 + Ageia PPU (thanks to JeGX from Geeks3d)

PhysX driver 9.09.0814

As you can see, in both cases Ageia PPU was recognised properly by the system, and hardware acceleration is working too (test applications indicates that both scene and cloth simulations are running in hardware)

What will happen if we’ll try same scenario, but now with ATI GPU installed in the system ?

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