How to use PhysX with ATI graphics

[Timotheus 416]

Information

 

The first thing you need to know, or may have found out by now, is that ATI does not support the PhysX driver. There has been a project which got the PhysX working on ATI graphics cards, but this project has been canceled for legal reasons.

PhysX has been developed by a company named Ageia. When this company developed the PhysX software, they made special dedicated PhysX cards to run this software on. And that is the trick we will be using! AGEIA PhysX cards will allow you to enable PhysX with an ATI graphics card without that major performance hit due to CPU usage for PhysX. There are effects on performance though, see the notes for more details.

 

You need:

1. an ATi card in your system
   
2. an Ageia PhysX processor card
   
3. the 8.09.04 PhysX driver which you can get by clicking here
   

HOW TO:

• Install Sacred 2: Fallen Angel.
  
• Patch your game to 2.40.
  
• Restart.
  

• Go to the Add/Remove Software menu (START>CONTROL PANEL>SOFTWARE>ADD/REMOVE SOFTWARE).
  
• Remove the Nvidia PhysX driver.
  
• Turn off the pc.
  

• Install the PhysX card in your system. Don't forget to plug in the power cable.
  
• Turn on your system, and cancel the installation screen that will be automatically started by Windows.
  
• Install the 8.09.04 PhysX driver which you downloaded.
  
• After completing the installation of the driver, go to the Nvidia PhysX control panel (START>NVIDIA CORPORATION>NVIDIA PHYSX PROPERTIES) and enable the AGEIA PhysX PPU.
  
• (You may want to try the diagnostics test to test it for functioning.)
  

You're almost done:

start Sacred 2, and in the graphics options slect PhysX.

 

That's it folks.

 

Notes:

• You may have to turn graphic options down. I used to have 60+ FPS with everything on highest and 2xAA, but I'm now at everything on high, grass off and no AA with ~30 FPS.
  
• As some of the regular visitors may have noticed, I posted this earlier and something got screwed up. It lead to me deleting my posts and commenting the PhysX did not work. However, I stuck with it and tried again and again. And this time, it did lead to success. For now, stick to the 8.09.04 driver, since that is the only one I have now verified.
  
• Sorry for the fuss and hopes I got up with my first posting of this how-to, and the crushing of dreams after things went iffy and I felt obliged to get the thread removed ASAP. But I felt I had to post this little success that followed after some perseverance.
  

[Timotheus 416]

Back to the drawing board. I did a full system restart to verify that the PhysX effects were working properly. They were. (Stubbie can vouch for that!)

However, after restarting again just now, the effects are on CPU again? What's up with this?

I even tried updating the driver: still nothing? Went back to the older driver: PhysX on the Ageia card. Logged out of the game. Logged back in: PhysX on CPU.

I'm really confused.

Edited April 5, 2009 by Timotheus