AMD Radeon GPUs Can Now Run NVIDIA PhysX Games With 3x Boost Thanks To ZLUDA, Without Requiring A Dedicated PhysX GPU

AMD Radeon GPUs have now gained support for NVIDIA's PhysX with the ZLUDA v6 release, providing a massive boost in PhysX games.

NVIDIA's PhysX Can Now Be Enjoyed on AMD Radeon GPUs At A Playable Frame Rate with ZLUDA

ZLUDA, an open-source library, has been in the headlines for bringing NVIDIA CUDA support to Non-NVIDIA GPUs. The team behind the library has been working hard on adding new features, but at the same time, they have faced crackdowns for not complying with legal terms.

Due to the nature of ZLUDA's work, the team is no longer receiving commercial assistance, but the developer still plans to work on it as a "weekend project" and has focused on bringing better Windows ML, PhysX & Textures support.

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This long-running PR (#651) is not yet comlete, but it adds support for 32-bit PhysX. This means that, in certain older games that relied on PhysX, you will be able to achieve a higher frame rate with an AMD GPU. In some games, AMD GPU owners will also be able to enjoy additional visual effects such as debris and flame for the first time.

ZLUDA Github

The most interesting addition is support for NVIDIA's PhysX (32-bit CUDA) on Non-PhysX GPUs. It is stated that while the long-running PR #651 is yet to be completed, the latest ZLUDA v6 release adds support for 32-bit PhysX on GPUs that don't have built-in PhysX functionality.

PhysX on Non-PhysX GPUs Without Needing A Separate GPU

With the newly added support, AMD Radeon GPUs can achieve a higher frame rate. In Mafia II with ZLUDA PhysX, the game was able to achieve 80.2 FPS versus 26.2 FPS without ZLUDA on the same Radeon platform. That's a 3x boost in performance, and makes older PhysX titles viable to play, not just run, on Non-PhysX GPUs.

Furthermore, PhysX titles added more complex visual effects, such as debris and flames, which are also seen with ZLUDA integration on non-PhysX GPUs.

Mafia II (Before ZLUDA PhysX):

Mafia II (After ZLUDA PhysX):

NVIDIA itself dropped support for 32-bit CUDA on its latest Blackwell GPUs, but later enabled it for select titles. It will be interesting to see if Blackwell GPUs also gain similar performance uplifts when running ZLUDA v6. The previous alternative to running PhysX games smoothly on a non-PhysX graphics card was to use a secondary GPU that had PhysX / 32-bit CUDA support. This has been shown to boost performance in such titles significantly, but since a secondary GPU is needed, it is an expensive approach.

That said, the optimization is currently not as good. It is reported that users can expect fluid simulation glitches, and loading ZLUDA into Steam games is not that good at the moment. But since ZLUDA is open-source, the source code can be edited and tried out in PhysX games by anyone.

Windows ML & Texture Support Added

ZLUDA has primarily been focused on Linux, but the developer now aims to fine-tune Windows support too. The goal now is to make ZLUDA more user-friendly and to tell users what library they are missing when installing ROCm.

There's also better ML support through compiler bugfixes and improvements to performance libraries. Finally, texture support has been added, blending in nicely with the added PhysX and Blender workloads.

Looking ahead, the developer states that the work on ZLUDA will slow down, but will continue to progress at a less steady pace. There will be new versions of the open-source project, but they will be released far less frequently than before. We hope to see improved support in the coming updates.

News Source: Phoronix

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