Nvidia Forceware 177.83 & Power Pack

[polonyc2]

Nvidia has released the Official Forceware 177.83 drivers for Windows XP 32-bit/64-bit and Windows Vista 32-bit/64-bit. These drivers are only for GeForce 8, 9 and 200 series graphics cards, and aside from several fixes, they include full support for GPU-based PhysX on the above graphics cards, courtesy of the included 8.08.01 PhysX drivers which are part of this Forceware package.

To allow you to experiment with the new GPU-accelerated PhysX capabilities, Nvidia has also released the GeForce Power Pack, a set of games and tech demos which support PhysX and highlight its benefits. The pack also contains the full Unreal Tournament 3 PhysX Mod Pack, since UT3 supports additional PhysX-based levels which GeForce 8, 9 and 200 series owners can now access

Force Within: Download

[polonyc2]

details on what's included in the free GeForce Power Pack PhysX package:

-Warmonger, a full free game. Destroy walls, floors, and whole buildings to open up new paths or close existing ones. Destructive power is more than eye candy here—it's a tactical weapon in this ground-breaking action game.

-Unreal Tournament 3 PhysX Mod Pack—includes three maps with amazing effects that fundamentally change the gameplay (requires full version of Unreal Tournament 3)

-A sneak peek at the upcoming Nurien social networking service, based on the Unreal Engine 3 (with built-in benchmark)

-A sneak peek at the upcoming game Metal Knight Zero -(with built-in benchmark)

-All new Nvidia 'The Great Kulu' tech demo that showcases the use of PhysX soft bodies in a real game play environment

-All new Nvidia 'Fluid' tech demo—a simulation of realistic fluid effects with a variety of liquids."

-In addition, the download includes Stanford University's Folding@home distributed-computing, protein-folding client and rhe trial version of Elemental Technologies' Badaboom video transcoder.

[polonyc2]

NVIDIA's GeForce PhysX implementation

NVIDIA has created three sets of circumstances on how you can choose to use your PhysX setup from within the PhysX driver:

Standard- one GPU renders both Graphics + PhysX (not ideal as you'll need a lot of GPU horsepower)

SLI mode- have two GPUs render both Graphics + PhysX

Multi-GPU mode- GPU1 renders Graphics and GPU2 renders PhysX

the last option is by far ideal as this is a situation where with any mainboard with two x8 or x16 PCIe slots you can use your old adapter as PhysX unit.

also you do not need a power-house of a graphics card to deal with the PhysX calculations. Say you have an older GeForce 9600 GT or 8600 GT lying around and you upgraded towards a GeForce GTX 260 (or whatever). Then can you use your 9600 GT (or even 8600 GT) as a Physx unit and the GTX 260 for graphics.

this way you can do something new with an old outdated graphics card and...and you are not bound to an nForce platform since you are not running SLI mode

[yamawho]

This is over a 2GB download ... is it worth it ?

I noticed that you can't dl only the video driver ...

The evga site still has 177.79 beta

[CK8-04]

Uncheck all the boxes on the right except the video driver to download only the driver.

[polonyc2]

also at the bottom of the download page there is an option that says--"click here to individually download your Power Pack files"

you can then download each program separately

Originally Posted by yamawho

This is over a 2GB download ... is it worth it ?

I noticed that you can't dl only the video driver ...

The evga site still has 177.79 beta

it's worth it if you're interested in trying out some PhysX demos...I downloaded everything except the Unreal Tournament 3 mod because I don't have the full version of that game

you should also always use the Nvidia site to get the latest video card drivers and not the EVGA site...I don't think EVGA customizes their drivers which would make them any different then the official Nvidia ones

[yamawho]

Originally Posted by CK8-04

Uncheck all the boxes on the right except the video driver to download only the driver.

That's the reason I posted ...

After unchecking them all except for the video driver, it totaled 0 MG download.

The WHQL version is still at 175.19 according to the nvidia site.

I think I'll go to bed, I'm getting a headache

[polonyc2]

played around with the PhysX demos...most of them are nothing really jawdropping or spectacular...nice demos though...there are 2 benchmark utilities (Nurien and MKZ) which were interesting...my 8800GT gets a 43 FPS average in Nurien and 56 FPS average in MKZ, which is pretty good considering it is not the latest high end card out

the Warmonger demo/game does the best job of showing of PhysX capabilities in real world gameplay form...pretty nice stuff...the possibilities of using PhsyX in games has great potential...nice job by Nvidia backporting it into older 8000+ series cards

[polonyc2]

.....

[Pentium4]

Thanks for posting the great pics polonyc2 wondered what those demos looked like as have not had a chance to try them out on my new uber beast of a video card I just installed, hopefully tomorrow will give them a try

[polonyc2]

Originally Posted by Pentium4

Thanks for posting the great pics polonyc2 wondered what those demos looked like as have not had a chance to try them out on my new uber beast of a video card I just installed, hopefully tomorrow will give them a try

very nice new rig you got there!!

I hear Nvidia will be releasing more free 'Power Pack' demos over the next few months...apparently Power Pack 2 is almost ready to be released

[Sandog]

Yeah, nice rig Pentium4 and good pics polonyc2. I wish I had the new GTX260 @55nm coming but my ATI 4850 is doing great so I will keep it.
I sure would like to see UT3 + Physix on the 260 though.

[WhiteEclipse]

Originally Posted by polonyc2

very nice new rig you got there!!

I hear Nvidia will be releasing more free 'Power Pack' demos over the next few months...apparently Power Pack 2 is almost ready to be released

Supposedly it will be in September already and will include the new 18x.xx drivers.

[polonyc2]

my 3DMark Vantage score went up over 2000 points after installing the new Nvidia PhysX driver...3DMark Vantage has a PhysX benchmark test in its package and that's why overall scores show significant increase after using the new driver...in fact the only place where you'll see a real advantage at the moment (outside the very limited PC stable of games) is in 3DMark Vantage and the specific PhysX benchmark

interesting that my scores went down a bit in all the other 3DMark tests---3DMark03, 05, 06

Originally Posted by WhiteEclipse

Supposedly it will be in September already and will include the new 18x.xx drivers.

makes sense...releasing a new 'Power Pack' with each new driver release...or maybe releasing a new Power Pack whenever ATI/AMD launches a new card

[Pentium4]

Originally Posted by polonyc2

very nice new rig you got there!!

Thanks polonyc2 and Sandog Am really enjoying it at the moment, it's so stable, cool, fast, and very quiet after having spent several hundred dollars (plus trial & error hours) on different fans over the year to get the results that I have finally been able to achieve. I no longer need Q-Fan as have the perfect combination of rpm/airflow my system needs to keep not only cool, but quiet as well It's a pity I didn't have a crystal ball, as all it needed were the three Coolermaster case fans I already had, plus the Noctua speed reducing adapters, and a no-name generic on the cpu to achieve bliss

Am running the system all at 'Auto' including the ram, which have never been able to do before on previous boards, as always needed to tweak something or other in the bios to get the hardware to do what it supposed to do The only thing have touched is the multiplier, which I bumped up a whole one notch to 10 (3.33MHz) and my system seems to love it My (very first) new 19" widescreen also turned up today, but after using it for a while, I now realise I should have got either a 22" or 24", oh well, live and learn.

Thanks for the tip on the new PowerPack, and PowerPack 2 demos. Did not know nVidia had planned to add anything else so soon