Battlefield Bad Company 2 + Nvidia Physx

So I'm captivated by this awesome war simulator called Battlefield Bad Company 2 (BFBC2) that I just got from steam since it was only $14.99 and it makes COD MW2 seem like just a video game, particularly when in multiplayer mode.

Anyway, I just got me a Beast of a laptop, the Toshiba X505 Q892 on the blackfriday sales for $900. It's supposedly the low end model of the X505 series, but with it's i5 460m CPU and GTX 460m GPU, it plays every game I have at max graphics settings above 60+ frames per second.

The only game so far that doesn't sustain 60+ fps is BFBC2. Don't get me wrong the game is very playable since it hovers at 30 fps with everything maxed out even AA at native resolution, but this game is just as taxing, if not more than Crysis, since it also has destructible environments to compute.

Now my understanding is that BFBC2 was programmed to take advantage of quad core hyper threading CPU's such as the i7, to do most of the computing for the physics of this virtual environment. I was hoping that I could off load some of the burden from my i5 CPU which is dual core which also has hyper threading, onto the more powerful GTX 460m GPU.

I've tried enabling Physx through my nvidia panel and even though it seems I've gained an extra 5-10 fps ingame, it could all be in my mind, since I don't see any Physx indicator running when I game.

Here's a video I've found while trying to research my question, but I can't seem to understand what the uploader is saying in his description about BFBC2 utilizing Nvidia Physx. Is Physx enabling extra special effects such as fog, explosions etc?

YouTube - BattleField Bad Company 2 Test NVIDIA PHYSX Demonstration

My question is does Battlefield Bad Company 2 utilize Nvidia Physx in anyway?

 

Thankfully BC2 doesn't use Nvidia's terrible PhysX.

It's a modified Havok engine. Thank you Dice for not using PhysX! Whoever made your youtube video is a moron.

 

Bad Company utilizes the Havok Physics software, as do many other quality games.

 

Bad Company uses Havok, not very well implemented either. It's pretty jarring when the wall you just exploded looks like the wall fairy waved her wand and it disappeared, or perhaps they hired Barbara Eden as part of the Frostbite engine? She just crosses her arms and blinks her eyes and the wall disappears. Too bad Dice didn't use PhysX, I really enjoy it on a few games, like Mafia II is the best so far, or even utilize the Havok engine better, like Red Faction: Guerrilla or The Force Unleashed.

 

PhysX is not a feature, it is 100% marketing scam.

 

Why is everyone against Physx? Battlefield Company 2 would have definitely benefited from off setting some of the burden from the CPU. People that have a strong graphics card won't be able to get top performance if they don't have a quad core CPU like the i7. Havok is more taxing on the CPU, but if the developers used Physx they could detour the demanding physics computations to the more powerful GPU thereby freeing up more processing muscles from the CPU.

Infact Bad Company 2's developer and producer of the PC version, Anders Gyllenberg, had this to say about Nvida Physx in one of his interviews about the games development, "We are currently performing all our physics computations on the CPU cores in parallel. CPU/GPU hybrid solutions are an interesting future prospect."

here's the link to the full interview.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 ? New tech info about the DX11 game - Battlefield, Bad Company 2, DirectX 11, Tech Info - PC Games Hardware

Anyway, isn't the guy in the youtube video I posted, implying that there's enhanced special effects with Physx turned on as opposed to not having it enabled at all?

 

Because it's proprietary and AMD has surpassed Nvidia in sales meaning at least 50% of the BC2 players are using AMD.

PhysX has no support for multi-threading on CPU which means not only does PhysX suck on CPU, it also bottlenecks the GPU. It's a horrible physics engine.

And Nvidia's marketing about how taxing physics is on CPU is just that, marketing BS. BC2 doesn't eve use 50% of the i7 720QM. So it's really poor excuse.
- It's no different than Nvidia's video encoding BS. x264 on CPU is faster and also much higher quality.
- And if you really need Physics on GPU, there are open platform alternatives that support both AMD and Nvidia.

 

Not everyone, there are a few ATI fanbois here that like to spout nonsense. See above for examples. As for me, I use whichever is the best at the time I purchase. ATi at the time had DX11 (which I wanted) and Nvidia had PhysX (which I wanted more). I made the right choice for me, well almost, unfortunately I chose Sager, I should have waited for Toshiba which I much prefer. This Sager costs thousands and started to fall apart the first month. Kind of jealous of your Toshiba.

 

PhysX does not multi-thread on CPU and causing GPU bottleneck. This mean you are saying FU to anyone who doesn't use Nvidia.
But that went offtopic. Luckily for the rest of us who aren't eating Nvidia's marketing BS, DICE went with something that works on all systems and all platforms. And luckily Valve and Blizzard and Activision and EA in general all use Havok.

Havok uses maybe 5% of your CPU... GPU accelerated is not needed unless you are using a Pentium 2...
<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8qRcp2zFdxg?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8qRcp2zFdxg?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width='640' height="385"></embed></object>

 

But if we follow this road we go backwards instead of moving forward. I remember when I started gaming. I was into Atari, then nintendo, sega, and then my friend said hey if you really want awesome graphics then get a PC. This is what I did back in 1989, I got myself a Tandy computer with a 286 processor and I also got me Gunship 2000, a first person helicopter combat simulation. Well guess what the 286 CPU from intel was to weak to handle state of the art software like this simulation, and I was getting not even 1 frame per second, seeing as how when I did a roll maneuver, through my cockpit view I could count to 3 before the next frame was painted giving me such lag, it was unplayable. I returned that Tandy 286 for a 386 CPU and even though it was a little more "smooth" because the CPU could draw more frames it wasn't strong enough, so I returned it for the top of the line 486 CPU, the one before Pentium came out, and this cutting edge CPU still stuttered when running the game. I accepted it and bought other great simulations like Falcon 3.0 and Car & Driver, just to name a few and noticed some games ran smoother than others, because of how much was being computed by the CPU. I thought to myself, "hmm if only there were another CPU to help calculate along side the Main CPU the games would run smoother. Then what do you know a couple years later I read about new technology call GPU cards!

Anyway the point is the GPU is meant to help lighten the burden especially for games, I should know, I was a PC gamer following the PC scene when it was just in it's infancy, but after the Dreamcast and Playstation and Saturn came out I stopped following PC gaming until 2007 came around. So yeah, Nvidia has the right idea with Physx.

 

I would disagree. There is no evidence to say that physics is too taxing on CPU and needs to offloaded on GPU all considering there isn't any game that uses Havok that uses 100% of CPU and in those cases the GPU is the bottleneck still. Also PhysX was not Nvidia's idea. The PhysX SDK was not developed by Nvidia, all Nvidia did was make that proprietary by disabling when it does not recognize Nvidia hardware IDs. Bullet Physics have the right idea, GPU accelerated while being open source, all of AMD's collaboration with Bullet Physics will be added to the SDK, open source. And there are rumors that intel is working on Havok with OpenCL, which is also the right idea, OpenCL keeps Havok open platform. That's what PC should remain, an open platform, not an Nvidia proprietary, exclusive platform.

But IMO this thread should be closed as the answer is, BC2 does not use PhysX, PhysX has no impact on BC2 and whoever made the youtube video is an idiot.

 

Ruckus the Havok video just shows what the software can do, but those special effects are just more workload for the CPU, again if the CPU had a helper to do some of the work, such as graphics computations, hence the acronym GPU, it would free it up more muscle for the CPU to work on other things like AI and such.

 

There is no game that uses Havok that uses all of CPU. There is no evidence that physics needs to be offloaded to GPU. There is no evidence at all that there isn't enough CPU resources for AI when they already exist in games...

Your argument isn't backed up by any evidence by any game that uses Havok.

And most glaring point, for almost every recent game released, the bottleneck is the GPU, not the CPU. It is exact total opposite of what you claim.

 

I don't like PhysX because it sucks for ATI users like myself which isn't very fair. Havok runs equally on all.

And BC2 is not a simulator.

 

jacob808

Have you tryed oc your card?. I did yesterday and in JC2 it was almost 20% improvent. I have the same lapop exept my has I7

 

BC2 is nowhere as demanding as Crysis.

 

@Ruckus The GPU was invented so it would help alleviate the burden from the CPU from doing graphics processing, that was the whole point witnessing this when it was being pioneered back in the early 90s when PC gaming was just in it's infancy. I'm just saying they should utilize the technology and Nvidia is giving them the medium to utilize the GPU with Physx.

@usapatriot, no it's not a full blown simulator, but it's helluva lot closer to simulating a real war battle field than Call of Duty is, and the programming reminds me of all the little details that's taken into account, like gravity and interactive environments that Falcon 3.0, which was based on a real military simulator, also did, which put a heavy computing burden on the CPU.

@Audi4ever, it's kinda brand new and plenty fast, maybe in the future, but I kinda wish I spent the extra for the i7 now. Congrats on your Toshiba. I've had every Toshiba gaming notebook starting with the very first SLI notebook the X205, which I loved so much but got stolen, so being happy with that one I bought the X305 Qosmio, and now the X505. Post your overclocks and I'll use that as reference for later when I'm willing to try. Thanks.

@Bearclaw destructible environments along with the physics simulation that goes with it, also simulating gravity and the xtra bells and whistles like AA and HBAO is heavy duty computations. This is what made Crysis demanding and it's very much the same with BFBC2, I'll bet on it.

 

You are wrong on two points. They should not use PhysX because for half the other BC2 players, PhysX will lock up their CPU with horrendous x87 single threaded. And secondly, the game is already using all of the GPU resources and already a GPU intensive game. There is no need to offload physics to GPU when it's already being used 100%.

You're not making sense. But also thank you for saying FU to me, a BC2 player who uses AMD. Thanks for telling me that my gaming experience should suffer just because you bought Nvidia. And your poor BC2 performance ironically is not because of lack of PhysX, it's because you are using a GTX 460M, which simply isn't powerful enough for 60 FPS at highest levels. Get over it, PhysX would not improve your situation at all, in fact may decrease it.

 

I'm not trying to advocate Nvidia if that's what you think. It's good to have competition. I was hoping that BFBC2 was somehow taking full advantage of an extra processing chip. It seems BFBC2 and the Havok engine was already far along in the development process that there wasn't room to implement the Physx technology. Again coming from the developer's spokesman, that CPU/GPU hybrid was an interesting future prospect, means they could have over looked this programming technique that would have made BFBC2 more effecient even on lower end cards from 2007 that were Physx capable.

 

PhysX is only in games for 1 reason: Nvidia greases the pockets of developers so they can crap on gamers. If that's your definition of competition than so be it.

 

jacob808

815 - Core clock
1630 - Shader clock
1500 - Memory clock

Download MSI afterburner and give it a try

I have also had the Toshiba X200 with sli(8600GT) i belive, and honosly that machine had much better bass than this one if i remember correctly.

My first "PC" was ZX spectrum 48......long long time ago

 

Problem is even if bc2 had implemented physx, gamers like me dont actually pay attention to that crap and are more focused on planting objectives or getting those extra kills. Physx has a different target market and i can tell you that it does not appeal to the majority of pc gamers.

 

@OP - you might want to set your in game settings to All high except shadows low. It doesn't look much different but runs much better. Also modify your config file (not cheating) to set RenderAheadLimit=0. This will give you some decent gains in FPS. I have a notebook with i7-720qm and a 5850 I run at over 5870 clocks. IN game with 1aa and af I get over 100 fps most of the time. I bet you should be close to the same with a 460m. Best Wishes, StevenX

 

Yes! Yes! Again since jumping the PC ship and going aboard the console scene, I haven't had a computer since the SEGA Saturn all the way till Microsoft's original Xbox. So the X205 sli1 was my return to computing and my very first laptop, which amazed me with the solid quality chassis and the sound system was awesome, although I didn't have any experience with other notebooks, so I thought this was common for all laptops, but when I started enthusiastically acquainting myself reading up and following the computer and laptop scene again, I noticed Toshiba was 2nd to none in the audio department for laptops. It's the reason why I decided on getting the Qosmio X305 because of my experience with the majestic audio sound and the X305 did not disappoint, infact I'm typing this on the X305 and listening to music videos on youtube it is remarkably loud, clear and great sounding compared to the X505 which is disappointingly a step down from the previous generation of Toshiba's Flagship gaming notebooks.

Anyway, I'll use those clocks as reference for future use, but may I ask how long have you had the X505 and what particular model of the X505 series? And do you have Battlefield Bad Company 2?

Yeah, thanks steven, I've already tried tweaking it with all the settings, even doing those settings.ini file modifications. I do get very high fps spiking into 150+ with some of the setups I've tried and I find it runs very acceptable and steady framerates, especially forcing it into DX 10 or DX 9 with maxed out settings AA and all, but I'm the kind of guy that gets irritated if I can't get optimum performance of 60+ fps holding steady with the game on maximum settings, the way it was programmed with all it's glory. Right now it runs adequate on my rig hovering between 20-50 fps with max settings, averaging 30. The irritating part is watching the fraps counter drop below 26 fps, but it ain't noticeable as far as choppiness and doesn't break the illusion of being immersed in a virtual environment like on older computer technology, so turning of fraps helps, but just knowing it's not holding a higher count of 60 fps makes me wish I dished out the extra cash for the i7 model. I know this notebook is a beast since all my other games don't make it struggle at all, hopefully developers use the Physx technology to make their programs run more efficiently and make use of the extra horsepower that's at their disposal.

 

jacob808

I have this model

? ADVANCE ? Toshiba Qosmio X500-147 ?

I have BC2 but have not played it yet on the X500. The X500 is only 16 days old. As i already have a desktop Asus GTX480 and a Asus essense sonar sound card(with headphone amp built in) i am not realy sure if i want to keep the X500 or send it back and build a new desktop or keep the X500 and build a desktop later

 

To the die hard Ati/Amd fanatic Ruckus

YouTube - Mafia II Benchmark - PhysX Comparison

nuff said

 

I don't mean to be an here, but you do realize that nVidia made their physics (physx) a proprietary software. What they have shown, using your video as an example, is, DRM.

nvidia, made, like dirt2 and other titles, LOCK-OUT, other features (that could easily be emulated/implemented in software) in games by paying publishes/developers royalties to make such features nVidia PhysX only.

Make no mistake any quadcore/ high-end dual core could emulate, calculate those physics/logistics. nVidia is playing the advocate with Physx, much like Apple's OSX (with their linux based system), that marketing is, if not, more the bread than the butter.

 

that's not really a good analogy, because apple's os x is not a linux based system.

if anything, the derivation is the other way around. linux is based off of unix. unix is the base of apple's system. so...

 

By the way, BC2 is not a war simulator. It is still very arcade-y.

ArmA 2 is a war simulator.