View Full Version : NVIDIA-only CUDA effects a scam
Just thought I'd let you people know that the so called NVIDIA-exclusive effects are a scam.
I just bought a dedicated card for PhysX/CUDA and with Bokeh/simulated water enabled, I get 0% load on the secondary card, meaning these effects DO NOT USE CUDA, hence THEY ARE PERFECTLY FEASIBLE ON AN ATI CARD.
These guys probably hardcoded a lockout on those options based on the type of card.
Poor Bison
06-15-2010, 09:24 PM
As this is a dicsussion forum, you'd probably be able to get more of a discussion out of this if you posted it in the PC Forum (http://forums.eidosgames.com/forumdisplay.php?f=277), and asked for others to contribute their thoughts on your discovery.
Not saying this to try and be smart, just giving advice :)
Eeeeeeeewwwwwww a CONSPIRACY!!!
ZombieSkydiver
06-16-2010, 01:58 PM
Not to start an Nvidia/ATI flamewar here, but those options mean nothing, really. What you wanna look at are the cores. Take a look at how many cores an HD5870 has and take a look at how many a GTX480 has. The Nvidia core is far more powerful and well designed than the ATI cores. Not that there's really any noticeable difference in performance between the cards, but it is telling that ATI needs to use nearly 3x more cores than Nvidia for the same resulting performance.
Overall though, the only "new" feature I would use (if my card could handle it lol) would be SSAO. As far as "Bokeh Filter" and "GPU water simulation", I don't really see the point of them either.
German
06-16-2010, 07:50 PM
Just thought I'd let you people know that the so called NVIDIA-exclusive effects are a scam.
I just bought a dedicated card for PhysX/CUDA and with Bokeh/simulated water enabled, I get 0% load on the secondary card, meaning these effects DO NOT USE CUDA, hence THEY ARE PERFECTLY FEASIBLE ON AN ATI CARD.
These guys probably hardcoded a lockout on those options based on the type of card.
Kind of old news now, but hey Welcome to the forums:thumb:
Here's a fantastic graphics card LINK for Just Cause 2 (Graphics Card Face-Off) 7 pages
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/05/04/just_cause_2_gameplay_performance_image_quality/1
The writer sort of shares your sentiments , although he's a bit more discreet about his views.
@ZombieSkydiver:
You're apparently forgetting that for the same performance, NVIDIA has about twice the power consumption.
@German:
You're not getting the point.
It's not a matter of "they could have implemented them on ATI cards".
The existing implementation DOES NOT USE CUDA, thus certainly could run on ATI cards.
The're just deliberately preventing it from doing so.
The HardOCP editor is oblivious to this, as he repeatedly says the game actually uses CUDA.
JustSauce
06-17-2010, 11:49 AM
I just bought a dedicated card for PhysX/CUDA and with Bokeh/simulated water enabled, I get 0% load on the secondary card, meaning these effects DO NOT USE CUDA, hence THEY ARE PERFECTLY FEASIBLE ON AN ATI CARD.
Geez, don't be stupid. It's using the primary card for Cuda! Why do you assume it absolutely would use the secondary card?
The game ships with two Cuda files, cudart.dll and cufft.dll, try renaminging them and see how well those features work.
As for being feasible on ATI card, well, probably. However, then the game would have to use DirectX 11 for compute shader support. Cuda can be used with DirectX10.
Geez, don't be stupid. It's using the primary card for Cuda! Why do you assume it absolutely would use the secondary card?
The game ships with two Cuda files, cudart.dll and cufft.dll, try renaminging them and see how well those features work.
As for being feasible on ATI card, well, probably. However, then the game would have to use DirectX 11 for compute shader support. Cuda can be used with DirectX10.
You resorting to insulting me only goes to show who's the ignorant one.
I have configured the secondary card to be used for CUDA and whenever I run other CUDA-enabled programs, it gets part of the workload assigned as shown by any program to that effect (GPU-Z, MSI Afterburner), but in Just Cause 2 it just stays idle.
Your argument about the game using CUDA being that it includes those DLLs and it doesn't work without them is laughable. If you knew anything about programming, you'd know it suffices with those two DLLs being linked in the executable for it not to work if they're absent.
And I repeat: since the so-called NVIDIA-exclusive effects DO NOT USE CUDA, they would surely work in ATI cards if they hadn't purposely locked them out.
Apache249
06-17-2010, 03:45 PM
To use CUDA, your primary card must be the Nvidia. It's Physx that can be utilized with a second card.
Unless you haven't installed 256-series drivers yet, both CUDA and PhysX can be offloaded onto a dedicated card.
In any case, both my cards are NVIDIA. The primary one is a 470.
Well, it seems like things are not as bad as they looked.
The problem is that for some reason, the NVIDIA-only effects become broken when CUDA is offloaded onto a secondary card.
Here's what I get when I configure a GT 240 to handle CUDA.
http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/7650/jc2l.jpg
Needless to say, the settings are also missing from the options menu.
German
06-17-2010, 09:55 PM
@German:
You're not getting the point.
It's not a matter of "they could have implemented them on ATI cards".
The existing implementation DOES NOT USE CUDA, thus certainly could run on ATI cards.
The're just deliberately preventing it from doing so.
.
Yes AND that's what the LINK provided also says, they even went on to say that the ATI Radeon HD 5870 is the BEST overall card to run JC2.
Did you even READ the entire article? (rhetorical)
Here's a QUOTE from the article
While there is no reason that both of these graphical features could not have been developed with compatibility for AMD GPUs, that is simply not how it happened with this game. This is a "TWIMTBP" title, and the developers chose CUDA rather than OpenCL or DirectCompute, which is of course a shame and a marketing sham that screws the end user.
Like you said AND THE ARTICLE said it's a marketing sham, I suggest you READ the entire article as I said before this is 'old' news.:wave:
I see you're having a REALLY hard time getting it, aren't you?
In your very quote, the author says "and the developers chose CUDA".
What he's saying in all is the effects were implemented with CUDA but they could have been achieved without it.
What I was saying is that THEY IN FACT DID NOT, I repeat, DID N-O-T USE CUDA!!!
After all said, the game does in fact use CUDA.
My previous conclusions were due to several issues on NVIDIA's side and the game itself.
First, I was thrown off by the fact that NVIDIA's control panel displays the CUDA card selection inverted. That is, when I select the 240 it shows it's the 470 being selected.
After I got around that, I found out that the game queries the cards' capabilities in a way that causes it to think the 240 does not support CUDA, thus disabling the NVIDIA effects when the 240 is selected to handle it. The thing about the 240 reporting to not support CUDA also happens in GPU-Z and Folding@Home (other software works just fine).
The only way I could verify that the game does use CUDA was to run the game on the 240, dedicating the 470 to CUDA (of course with craptacular results) which finally got load to be distributed between both cards.
I will be looking into the reason for the mistake in the 240's reported CUDA capability.
Apache249
06-18-2010, 10:26 AM
From now on are you just going to use the 470? It is more than enough to handle it.
Not on 1920x1080 full detail 2XAA with the nVIDIA effects on. :(
Apache249
06-18-2010, 01:14 PM
What CPU?
Don't get me wrong, the PC fares more than well at the game.
It's just that when I can't hit constant 60 in a game, I tend to disable VSync to prevent it from alternating between 60 and 30.
Anyway, the processor is an Athlon II X4 955 (3.2 GHz) on a 790X mobo with 4Gb DDR3 1066 MHz.
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