PhysX & CUDA

Naturally, NVIDIA was pumping PhysX and CUDA for all they were worth. The first chart shows the superiority of PhysX processing in Mirror's Edge. Thanks to PhysX, the GeForce GTX 250 was over twice as fast as the vaunted ATI Radeon HD 4870. However, it's just a matter of time before ATI introduces their own physics processing capability, or it gets standardized through DirectX.

The second chart shows the GeForce GTS 250 trashing the Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 in video effects processing using the TMPGEnc video encoder. Impressive, no doubt. Frankly, no one can deny the superiority of massively parallel processing afforded by all DX10 GPUs. However, TMPGEnc, like most CUDA-based applications, is not free. Generally, you have to pay to benefit from most CUDA applications.

Windows 7 Performance

With Microsoft Windows 7 just several months away from being released, NVIDIA wanted us to know just how far ahead they are with their WDDM 1.1 driver for Windows 7. They tested a slew of games on a beta version of Windows 7 using the latest publicly-available ATI and NVIDIA drivers and found the ATI card couldn't run ET : Quake Wars and Fallout 3 at all.

Obviously, these are beta drivers and ATI still has several months left to get their drivers working, but as far as NVIDIA is concerned, they have better drivers. So, if you are looking to play games on a beta version of Windows 7, an NVIDIA card might be a better solution, but frankly, you should just wait for the final version of Windows 7 and WHQL-certified drivers from ATI or NVIDIA.

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