Nvidia Is Working On A Downloadable PhysX Patch For GeForce 8 Cards

We knew that Nvidia had some big plans when they announced the acquisitions of PhysX creator Ageia. I honestly thought that this would be one of those things that moved slowly, with no real news for several months at the earliest. However, Nvidia has hit the ground running with this and is already working on making the technology compatible with current GeForce 8-series cards.

Essentially what Nvidia is working on now is the ability to port the PhysX engine to their CUDA or Compute unified Device Architecture. This is the programming interface that lets them write applications for their GPUs. Once they have completed this, they will be able to roll out the PhysX update to all GeForce 8 cards.

Nvidia is confident that this integration will boost sales of their popular graphics cards, as it will give consumers a better reason to buy more powerful cards, as well as use multiple-card configurations.

"Our expectation is that this is gonna encourage people to buy even better GPUs. It might—and probably will—encourage people to buy a second GPU for their SLI slot. And for the highest-end gamer, it will encourage them to buy three GPUs. Potentially two for graphics and one for physics, or one for graphics and two for physics."

[via TechReport]