ATI card running with Nvidia card for PhysX

Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
edited January 2010 in Hardware
Before I truly jump into making this work I wanted to see if anyone has had success doing this. I know Lordbean has gotten it to work? but I haven't found any good articles that show you a good order to make it all jive. In that I am making this thread to get help for myself & hopefully for others also trying this out.

Comments

  • lordbeanlordbean Ontario, Canada
    edited December 2009
    I have indeed gotten it to work... I've been fooling around with Arkham Asylum running HD5850+GTX285 or 9600GT.

    I've got an article about it coming eventually, but first I want to play through the game again running with PhysX off in order to compare the gameplay.

    Long story short on the installation:

    Download this patch
    Install Forceware 195.62, reboot into safe mode
    Run patch
    Reboot into normal mode, connect and activate a secondary monitor on the Geforce adapter (yes, the second monitor is required - the NVIDIA software still goes inactive if the geforce is not driving a monitor)

    After following those steps the NVIDIA control panel should let you turn on hardware PhysX even when an ATI adapter has the primary monitor.
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited December 2009
    I think I got it before reading your post. Lets see what happens.
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited December 2009
    So it runs the CPU benchmark perfectly fine. Scored a nice 57637 for my CPU in Vantage but when running the graphics aspect the content goes all haywire :(
  • lordbeanlordbean Ontario, Canada
    edited December 2009
    What operating system are you running?
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited December 2009
    Win 7 Ultimate 64bit
  • lordbeanlordbean Ontario, Canada
    edited December 2009
    Theoretically, it should work then - that's the same OS as I have.

    It's possible the drivers just aren't meshing correctly with your cards. Whereas my setup involves only a single GPU from either manufacturer, yours has hardware CrossfireX and SLI, and the problem could be originating from one or both. No way to tell, unless you have a single-GPU Geforce lying around you could test. That would tell you whether it's a problem with the 295 or not.
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited December 2009
    I am using a GTX 260 & the ATI 5970
  • lordbeanlordbean Ontario, Canada
    edited December 2009
    Ok, try this then... set Catalyst AI to Off in your 3D settings. That's the only way to disable hardware crossfire on a dual-GPU Radeon. If it works, Crossfire and dedicated PhysX aren't compatible... if it doesn't, I have no idea what's going on with your setup.
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited December 2009
    Its funny how many issues the Catalyst AI causes...
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited December 2009
    I could be wrong, but I doubt the Catalyst AI is for people like you Sledge. It's more for people who are running a single card and don't want to tweak their settings on their own.
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited December 2009
    The big problem i am having now is that the ATI drivers will just flat out stop working... Win 7 will recover and things will go to normal to only have the ATI drivers crash once again.

    I did a safe mode graphic driver clean out and installed the new 9.12 drivers again and the issue still occurs. I than reverted back to the beta drivers (doing a deep driver clean before hand) and the issue is happening again. Makes me wonder if it is the card or the drivers or the OS?
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited December 2009
    I dunno, but I've had that problem with my GF8600GTS from time to time as well. I'll get the stupid "crash notification" for the drivers but it will recover and go on working.
  • lordbeanlordbean Ontario, Canada
    edited December 2009
    Graphics driver recoveries can often be a sign that the card is overheating. Are you getting them while playing games, or at the desktop?
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited December 2009
    lolFolding. My card is definitely dying though. In fact, it's getting baked tonight. MUAHAHAHAHAHA (now I just need to find the pink wig)
  • lordbeanlordbean Ontario, Canada
    edited December 2009
    Heh... it's amazing, since Bobby's article, quite a lot of graphics cards have been revived in the oven. It's like the fountain of youth for 3D graphics.
  • SnarkasmSnarkasm Madison, WI Icrontian
    edited December 2009
    (Quite a lot of them got revived before Bobby's article using the same method, too. It's not particularly new.)
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited December 2009
    The card is running at 51C far from overheating.

    It only happens when I am just sitting on my desktop doing basic stuff.. (internet browsing, listening to music in itunes etc..) When I game all seems fine.
  • lordbeanlordbean Ontario, Canada
    edited December 2009
    ardichoke wrote:
    I could be wrong, but I doubt the Catalyst AI is for people like you Sledge. It's more for people who are running a single card and don't want to tweak their settings on their own.

    Just noticed this post, figured I'd drop some information to help alleviate any confusion here...

    Catalyst AI MUST be turned on when more than one ATI GPU are present in order for Crossfire to do anything. If you disable the Catalyst AI, the PC will only use a single GPU to do rendering, even when Crossfire is enabled (and even when you have a card with two physical GPUs on the PCB). In fact, setting the Catalyst AI to advanced mode enables a sort of tag-team system where, as I understand it, each graphics card takes turns rendering a frame, which increases performance significantly over having AI on standard.

    So, yes, Catalyst AI is for hardcore systems, too.
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited December 2009
    So i did massive amounts of drive cleaning did a fresh install & the fact remains the ATI drivers for the 5970 are just broken. been talking with others with the card on Win 7 64bit & they have the same issues.

    For now I dropped back to my GTX 295 and it runs without any issues. I shall wait for ATI to address some of the issues.
  • lordbeanlordbean Ontario, Canada
    edited December 2009
    That sounds about right, for a new ATI product... it usually takes them a couple of driver revisions before the hardware actually works properly. My HD5850s are only just starting to resemble fully stable as of Catalyst 9.12.
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    that is one thing I have never had an issue with when it came to Nvidia... Not to say it hasn't been an issue for certain cards. but I have been lucky I guess.
  • lordbeanlordbean Ontario, Canada
    edited January 2010
    To be fair to ATI, the HD5000 series is a major redesign over the HD4000. They added a ton of new features to the HD5000 card that aren't supported natively on the 4000 series - I'm sure that makes for some added difficulty in writing the drivers.

    In my mind, the NVIDIA chips probably haven't significantly changed much (apart from die shrinks, minor features, etc) since the introduction of the Geforce 8000 series. Every NVIDIA GPU in the 8000, 9000, and GT200 line supports the same core set of features - DirectX 10.0 and CUDA. The Fermi Geforce series is going to be NVIDIA's first major chip revamp in a long time.
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