So I enabled PhysX in Borderlands 2 on my AMD card....

[TechFan@ic]

I just went into the settings, everything was already set to high , PhysX was set to low by default, I set it to high and restarted the game.

The difference was absolutely massive, I could see new elemental weapon effects like slag waves, new electrical & fire shaders and general effects like sparks, dirt particles, water droplets...etc.

So first off why the hell are normal shaders categorized under PhysX ?, secondly isn't PhysX supposed to be an nVidia exclusive feature, am I getting a cut down version of PhysX ? or is it because my graphics card is so old, they didn't bother to lock off this setting for me ?

Are other AMD users able to manipulate the PhysX settings ? or is it locked for them ?

I'm running an HD 4870 , all settings high including physX @ 1920x1080, the FPS went noticeably down with physx set to high , but it was so fast to begin with on low PhysX it's still running very well.

[191x7]

The CPU can do the work for PhysX but it's a lot slower than the nVidia GPU. AMD GPUs can't run PhysX. They could if they had the license from nVidia, but nVidia won't license it's competitors.

[Zachriel]

PhysX is a classical example of creating a problem that only you can or are allowed to solve... There is no hardware restrictions on Amd cards that so that they cant run PhysX, it might be that Nvidia have made some hardware optimizations on their cards so that they run it better. However bout Intel and Amd have bout said the cpu is a lot better at doing physics calculations than Gpus.

So from a game developers point of view it would be better for them to either completely disregard Physx or let the cpu run physics calculations, if it we're not for the fact than Nvidia pays them to write the game with inferior code (PhysX) and let the gpu run physX instead of letting games or third part developers start developing optimized technology to take advantage of multi-core cpus physics calculating powers.

But back to your original question in older games you could enable PhysX while using Amd cards. But Nvidia has made it harder now, however it should be possible to mod the game in order to unlock PhysX.

[EChondo]

The CPU can do the work for PhysX but it's a lot slower than the nVidia GPU. AMD GPUs can't run PhysX. They could if they had the license from nVidia' date=' but nVidia won't license it's competitors.[/quote']

Correct, the CPU can enable and take care of PhysX, but it's going to bring performance down massively.

[NIEZRECKAGE]

i was doing the same thing with my 7950 running the PhysX but then i went to this one area to do a mission and there was so much PhysX my 2500k could not handle it. My Fps tanked to like 20 or so.