Also, wether or not ATI would do the same thing if they were in that position is irrelevant. Sure, lots of corporations do wrong when given the opportunity, but that doesn't mean we should ignore (or worse, excuse) it.

As much as I agree with your moral stance Petros I have to just say that I think that it's terribly naive to think -any- corporate entity would do differently. (I'm not calling you naive btw) Nvidia just happens to be a position to do this, and get away with it. You know damn well AMD would do the same thing to make more money. It's just the nature of big business to try and make money.

The only saving grace I can think of is that if a company makes more money then they have more to spend on engineering and making the next product better or invest into other cool technology. Public companies rarely ever just sit on piles of cash if they have places to spend it.

Also, PhysX and Havok might be irrelevant anyways with DX11. The DX11 spec includes standards for GPU accelerated physics.

Feature - DirectX 11: A look at what's coming | bit-tech.net

I would have to disagree.

If you look at the way AMD has typically functioned, it has been a lot more open and worked towards open-standards. Nvidia has typically worked towards closed standards.

Keep in mind that people who purchased cards for Physx usage, per the original company information as well as what Nvidia said back in the day, have now been locked out due to Nvidia specifically targetting functionality to work ONLY when the GPU detected is an Nvidia card.

That is absolutely bogus because it has been proven that the little hack that allows a Physx card/gpu to be used with an AMD card is something that definitely works. There is no reason for Nvidia to lock out this functionality.

Also, note that the vast majority of top tier games are still deing developed and released using Havok, an open-standard.

If the secondary card operates and pushes the Phsyx portion of the game, what does it matter what the GPU is? Tweak it further for your own card if you must, but there is absolutely no reason whatsoever that the GPU detect would disable the Nvidia product that is working as the physics accelerator.

If I, as a consumer, purchase an Nvidia card or a Physx card for that functionality, I should be free to use it how I see fit. Nvidia has already received my money. They should not be able to force the consumer to only purchase Nvidia gpu's for graphics purposes in order to benefit from any Physx functionality.

After they initially purchased Ageia and obtained the rights to PhysX, they ran the idea past ATI of them also using PhysX, and ATI said no.

Admittedly I was unaware that PhysX card owners have been screwed over since Nvidia aquired PhysX. And I agree with you that there is no excuse for that.

That aside for the moment the reason it matters what GPU is doing the PhysX calculation is because if they artificially limit it to Nvidia cards then they are more likely to make money on people purchasing their cards for that purpose. That much is pretty obvious. While I'm not endorsing the behavior I simply understand why they are doing it. Perhaps I'm not as upset about it as some because I run Nvidia myself. If I was an ATi user and wanted to see the GPU enhanced physics then yeah I could see being a bit more upset about it.

As to your last comment, why not? PhysX is their product. They own it, maintain it and continue develop it further using their money. I honestly don't see why you expect them to open the pandora's box of support for other manufacturers products. In doing so they would not be able to ensure that PhysX would be properly presented to the end user on anything but their own hardware. It's a similar approach that Apple uses with their products and software. I completely understand the frustration, but I think it's silly to cry about it. You don't buy a high end Lamborghini then complain when you can't use a high end part designed for a equally high performing Ferrari. If you wanted that, you should have bought a Ferrari.

I feel my analogy still stands, as you are just nitpicking at it. There are many aftermarket parts you can buy for a car, bike, skateboard, etc that might only work with a specific company's product. Yet you can tweak it, break it, modify it to make it work with something else sure, That's not really the point of the example. I'm simply saying that you if are interested in a specific feature that a company A offers, it's foolish imho to then buy company B's product and then expect the company A to put out the effort to allow it work with the company B's product's too. Also, see below.

Perhaps everyone is taking it a tad too personal? Perhaps Nvidia isn't actively trying to screw ATI users in hopes they buy Nvidia. Perhaps they are just protecting the appearance of their product (In this case PhysX) by limiting it to hardware platforms they can guarantee it will work properly with. I find that a bit more believable than the idea that Nvidia is ran by a bunch of evil people who want to proactively shun ATi users for simply being ATi users.

So what's the problem then? Sounds like anyone ambitious enough will figure out a way to get what they want. I see no harm in Nvidia's QA stance in regards to limiting what hardware can run GPU accelerated physics out the box. It's both a protection of their IP and a way to safegard the marketability of PhysX to developers.

Hybrid PhysX Mod Package Contained Trojan

It has come to our attention that the Hybrid PhysX Mod from NGOHQ.com posted earlier this month contained the Infostealer.Gampass trojan. According to Symantec, Infostealer.Gampass specifically targets video game credentials, log-ins and passwords. I would recommend uninstalling this and doing a full scan on your computer. I would also recommend that you avoid downloading anything from sites that do not scan files before offering them to the general public. We apologize to anyone that may have downloaded the Hybrid PhysX Mod after we posted that link. Thanks to Theron E. for the heads up.

Petros: and that doesn't comply to your pointed out information how? NVidia offered PhysX to ATI.... ATI said no.....
[...]

Unified GPU-based physics....... Well, what exactly do you think it would have been if ATI weren't a bunch of stubborn idiots in the first place?

I've been asked by a few sources to delay Update #2 for several days.