Alice 2 - Madnesss Returns Crossfire + PhysX achieved!

Here's how to do it! This will essentially hook your NVidia PhysX capable card up with your CrossFire system. and plugged it in.

Updated: Some new numbers, new info.
Updated: Batman: Arkham Asylum works, though there are no patchable dll's. It just works! GPU-Z confirmed about 22% GPU load in the beginning of the game.

You will need:

Windows 7 (Preferably 64bit)
Alice 2: Madness Returns installed
PhysX capable card, I took an old PNY GeForce 8800GT 512MB. Do not attach any monitor cabble.

PhysX_9.11.0621_SystemSoftware.msi
FluidMark (to confirm your setup)
Old GeForce drivers: 285.79-desktop-win7-winvista-64bit-international-beta.exe

NVIDIA GeForce driver 256 Hybrid PhysX mod [x86/x64] v1.05ff by Liandri / THETA

1. Install GeForce drivers. Do custom installation, and uncheck PhysX. We are using a the latest version that actually work wich is 9.11.0621.
2. Install PhysX 9.11.0621
3. Install FluidMark (I was using 1.4.0)
4. Run Hybrid-PhysX-mod-1.05ff.exe
5. Run nvsvc-set-Manual.cmd (as Administrator)
6. Run PhysX-HwSelection-set-GPU.cmd (as Administrator)
7. Take (now patched) C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\PhysX\Common\PhysXDevice.dll and copy to Fluidmark folder
8. Run FluidMark and observe the checkbox for GPU PhysX has been unlocked. Check it, and run standard 1080 test and snicker. FluidMark will not utilize CrossFire, but Alice 2 will!
9. Copy the same file to replace (remember to backup!) C:\Program Files (x86)\EA Games\Alice Madness Returns\Alice2\Binaries\Win32 . Unfortunately, Alice 2 is not 64bit.
10. Run game! 

And I have two 6770 GDDR5's in CrossFire as well; Also I have unlocked 60 fps rate, and it seems to be stable around 60!

CPU-Z  logs about 53% 96 load on card 1 and 35% 76% load on card two.
I am running Phenom X4 @ 3000 w/default TurboCore 3400, 4GB 1066 RAM

Warning: Something is occasionaly causing this setup to bluescreen the nVidia driver; I don't know if it's the Hybrid patch; the fact that I am using a beta driver or  if it's AMD's fault. When the system goes back online I seem to have lost CrossFire capability and I have to disable the nVidia screen (if any) and unplug it; restart, then reinstall Catalyst. Confirm that the AMD display is #1 and primary display. Re-enable CrossFire, run Hybrid patch and scripts; good to go again. At this stage it is OK to plug in and use the nVidia display. (Nice to put CPU/GPU and other system monitors here and see that everything runs smoothly; this is pulling a good 400 watts on the PSU as well as stressing your entire rig..)

Game played in full HD with everything maxed. Also everything on card half maxed quality-wise. This will add a little more spice to the graphics! Especially fluids, clothing and particles.

 GPU-Z confirms it: (thats a PNY GeForce 8800GT 512MB)

GPU Load [%] Memory Controller Load [%] (Dedicated) [MB] (Dynamic) [MB]
          0                               0                              0                                0  
          0                               0                              0                                0  
          0                               0                              0                                0  
          0                               0                             32                               13  
          0                               0                             32                               13  
          0                               0                             32                               13  
          0                               0                             32                               13  
This goes on for a while, then:
          0                               0                             96                               77  
          0                               0                             96                               77  
          0                               0                             96                               77  
          0                               0                             96                               77  
          4                               0                             96                               77  
          4                               0                             96                               77  
          2                               0                             96                               77  
          6                               0                             96                               77  
          6                               0                             96                               77  
          6                               0                             96                               77  
          6                               0                             96                               77  
          6                               0                             96                               77  
          6                               0                             96                               77  
          6                               0                            108                               77  
         16                               1                            108                               77  
         17                               0                            108                               77  
         14                               0                            108                               77  
         15                               0                            108                               77  
         23                               2                            108                               77  
         24                               2                            108                               77  
         23                               2                            108                               77  
         24                               2                            108                               77  
         22                               2                            108                               77  
         18                               1                            108                               77  
         18                               1                            108                               77  
         19                               1                            108                               77  
         19                               1                            108                               77  


And it goes on like this, up to 63 if I remember correctly, may have been more! I was enthusiastic about running Crysis 1 or 2 with this hack, but Crytek seems to use the PhysX software in CPU mode! I tried, but GPU-Z delivars no numbers.

Next project is hacking Batman: Arkhan City!

Super AMD Spider platform achieved!

AMD Spider Components:

• K9A2 Platinum
• Phenom II X4 960T factory core overclocked to of 3.4Ghz and all four cores run at 3 Ghz.
• 2x Sapphire Radeon 6770 in CrossFire
• 4x1 GB Kingston HyperX PC8500 gives me 1066 DRAM speed too!
  
  
• 1x Intel 320 SSD at 80 GB
• 2x Samsung 160GB in SATA/Windows striped RAID 0
• 2x Maxtor 320GB in SATA RAID on independent PCI controller!
• 1x Corsair TX 750 Watt
• 1x Noctua  double fanned coppercoil hybrid cooler fan

Sapphire cards are somewhat unstable at overclocking, even factory overclocked ones.   None of the 10-12 temperature sensors stays between 25 and 50!

I did a FULL overclock of both CPU and GPU (max settings CPU at 3600, GPU at 900 etc but I got artifacts in Crysis! Going to slowly overclock bit by bit until i have a stable rig!

Oh yeah did i mention i paid under $2000 (10000 NOK) for this self build project!

Graveyard

So here's one of those rare band you find once in a while, Graveyard. When I first heard them at a friend's place, it sounded like some forgotten band from the 70's. But this is actually recorded very recently and it seems the feel from Led Zeppelin & Black Sabbath is very present in the both sound and the notes. Great stuff. Wikipedia link here

PS
Just did a quick shot at this on the guitar:
* It's downtuned to D.
* It's mostly the chords C G A.
* Solo stuff goes in A.

Ultimate Boot CD

UBCD is perfect when you just installed the newest Ubuntu with GRUB2, which happily kills all other Linux partition MBR's and installs it self as the sole booting OS. It doesn't even try to detect GRUB partitions! This is absurd. With this console-based CD you can fix most partition woes, but I was not able to restore Linux partitions on logical partitions. I had the following partition setup:

UBCD Homepage: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

sda1 (Primary, bootable) WinXP
sda2 (Extended)
sda5 (Logic) Slackware
sda8 (Logic)Windows 7
sda6 (Logic, bootable (on an extended partition??)Ubuntu 8.04
sda7 (Logic)Linux Swap

After I installed Ubuntu 11.04 it suddenly had shifted some partitions up one step and created a new unused partition, even no resizing or partition changes where made in the installer other than setting sda6 as home partition.

sda1 (Primary, bootable) WinXP
sda2 (Extended)
sda4 (Logic)Unused Partition
sda5 (Logic)Ubuntu 11.04
sda6 (Logic)Windows 7
sda7 (Logic, bootable)Ubuntu 8.04
sda8 (Logic)Linux Swap

Later I tried to install Linux Mint 5 (based on Ubuntu 8.04) over 11.04 to get a new GRUB, but to no avail. (It thinks the partitions are invalid).

Also tried Testdisk to restore MBR from backup sectors, but that made all partition unreadable. So I had to revert.

So I am stuck booting into Windows via UBCD's Super GRUB Disk. If I try to boot into a Linux partition I get 'unbootable partition', I can only boot into Windows 7's bootloader, wich happily let's me boot into XP too.

If anyone has ideas about what is wrong, please comment.

Vid: An underrated group: UFO

Some time ago I came across the group UFO after reading about the influences of my favorite band, Metallica. So I loaded up my torrent client and headed for one of my favorite bootleg sites, TTD. By chance, I somehow downloaded what was probably their best live performance, in London in 1974. Fast-forwarding trough the (seemingly uninteresting at first) DVD, I got sucked into a song called "This Kids", with this awesome guitar solo and really catchy riffs. I knew I had stumbled across a real talent. That was the door-opener I needed, and I started to listen more carefully to more of their records. That performance is with Michael Schenker on lead guitar, wich I found out was one of the founders of Scorpions. He also played in other bands, and was a bit on and off with UFO. He is said to be the guitarist that brought fast metal-style solos to the rock scene, and he also got famous for his sound. John Marshall was one of the people who tried to duplicate it. Kirk Hammett of Metallica usually mentions UFO when talking about past influences. I am almost finished with tabbing the whole song, let me know if you want it posted!

Recent Linux kernels doesn't like SB600 the chipset?

It seems kernels that came after or shortly after 2.6.24-29 does not support ATI's SB600 south bridge chipset that powers AMD's FX790 platform.

I've tried all recent Ubuntu variants as well as the newest OpenSUSE, FreeBSD and others. All of them fail to detect my SATA disks (because it doesn't detect the SCSI/SATA interface) and it's getting annoying now.
I can always install a module for a sound or network card. It would be different if it wasn't the hard disks.

I even tried several 'alternate ISO installs' and those found my disk during install and all went well, but it seems it couldn't just use that same driver again when the OS was supposed to boot. That would be too clever.

It appears that Ubuntu Hardy and it's forks are the last ones to operate my computer. Slackware 13.37 actually found my disks, but did not find my network interface.Sadly, I don't know much about Slackware and so I could not be bothered to figure out how to locate and install a proper driver. I've been dealing mostly with Ubuntu and it's Debian-based layout and tools.A commodity Realtek chipset from 4 years back MUST be supported in every distro. So must the SB600 chipset too!

I have installed an 8.04 based Mint version but it seems I somehow I managed to nuke all the Linux MBR's. (I am looking at you, various bootloaders that doesn't operate on the principle of least surprise).

Instead of shoveling out distros with less and less hardware support, why don't they cut down on other bloat instead? I am really excited about Puppy Linux and it's future, because it seems like this is the approach they take on it.

And so I can only boot into Windows at the moment. Oh the irony!

Coding: Pixel ripple effect

Obfuscated C code! This is the inner core loop of a water rippling effect, though I spent some time rearranging the code, because it looked cool for some reason. Do you get what is going on here ? :p

switch    (renderflag)          {
case      0                  :  {
for(int i=1; i < resy-1 ; i  ++ )  {
for(int j=1; j < resx-1 ; j  ++ )  {
    buf1   [ j ]     [ i     ]  =
    ((                          (
    buf2   [ j + 1 ] [ i     ]  +
    buf2   [ j - 1 ] [ i     ]  +
    buf2   [ j ]     [ i - 1 ]  +
    buf2   [ j ]     [ i + 1 ]  )
    >>                     1 )  -
    buf1   [ j ]     [ i     ] );
    buf1   [ j ]     [ i     ] -=
    buf1   [ j ]     [ i     ] >>
    7                           ;
    offsetx                     =
    buf1   [ j ]     [ i     ]  -
    buf1   [ j + 1 ] [ i     ]  ;
    offsety                     =
    buf1   [ j ]     [ i     ]  -
    buf1   [ j ]     [ i + 1 ]  ;
    _putpixel(  water, j , i   ,(
    128      -  offsetx        )&
    255                        );
    offsetx                   >>=
    8        ;  offsety       >>=
    8                           ;
    indexu   =  offsetx  + j    ;
    indexv   =  offsety  + i    ;
    if       (  indexu         >=
    resx     )  indexu         -=
    resx                        ;
    else if  (  indexu   < 0    )
    indexu                     +=
    resx                        ;
    if       (  indexv         >=
    resy     )  indexv         -=
    resy                        ;
    else if  (  indexv   < 0    )
    indexv                     +=
    resy                        ;
    _putpixel(  vscreen  , j    ,
    i                         ,((
    _getpixel(  backdrop        ,
    indexu                      ,
    indexv   )                 <<
    8                          )+
    _getpixel(  water, j , i   ))
    >>                     8   );
    }}}         break           ;
case 1                         :{
for(int i=1; i < resy-1 ; i  ++ )  {
for(int j=1; j < resx-1 ; j  ++ )  {
    buf2   [ j ]     [ i     ]  =
    ((                          (
    buf1   [ j + 1 ] [ i     ]  +
    buf1   [ j - 1 ] [ i     ]  +
    buf1   [ j ]     [ i - 1 ]  +
    buf1   [ j ]     [ i + 1 ]  )
    >>                     1 )  -
    buf2   [ j ]     [ i     ] );
    buf2   [ j ]     [ i     ] -=
    buf2   [ j ]     [ i     ] >>
    7                           ;
    offsetx                     =
    buf2   [ j ]     [ i     ]  -
    buf2   [ j + 1 ] [ i     ]  ;
    offsety                     =
    buf2   [ j ]     [ i     ]  -
    buf2   [ j ]     [ i + 1 ]  ;
    _putpixel(  water, j , i   ,(
    128      -  offsetx        )&
    255                        );
    offsetx                   >>=
    8        ;  offsety       >>=
    8                           ;
    indexu   =  offsetx  + j    ;
    indexv   =  offsety  + i    ;
    if       (  indexu         >=
    resx     )  indexu         -=
    resx                        ;
    else if  (  indexu   < 0    )
    indexu                     +=
    resx                        ;
    if       (  indexv         >=
    resy     )  indexv         -=
    resy                        ;
    else if  (  indexv   < 0    )
    indexv                     +=
    resy                        ;
    _putpixel(  vscreen  , j    ,
    i                         ,((
    _getpixel(  backdrop        ,
    indexu                      ,
    indexv   )                 <<
    8                          )+
    _getpixel(  water, j , i   ))
    >>                     8   );
    }}}         break           ;
    default:    break;          }

Tab: Soulshimmer

"Soulshimmer" - Written by me ca. anno. 2006


EM

------0---0-----------0---------------
------0---0-----------0---------------
---0----0---0-------0------0----------
------------------2-------------------
-------------------------2------------
-0------------------------------------

C

------0---0-------
------1---1-------
---0----0---0-----
------------------
--3---------------
------------------


C
------0---0-------
------1---1-------
---0----0---------
------------------
--2----------0----
---------------3--




G
------3---3~~-----
------0---0h1-----
---0----0---------
------------------
------------------
--3---------------

------3---3~~-----
------0---1p0-----
---0----0---------
------------------
------------------
--3---------------

------3---3~~-----
------3---3-------
---0----0----0----
------------------
------------------
--3---------------

------3---3~~-----
------3---3p0-----
---0----0----0----
------------------
------------------
--3---------------



------------------
------------------
------------------
------------------
------------------
---2b3b2----------




---------0-----0---h----
---------12----12--10---
------12----12-12--11---
------------------------
------------------------
--0---------------------


---------0-----0--------
---------10----10-s-8---
------11----11-11-s-9---
------------------------
------------------------
--0---------------------


---------0----0---------
---------8----8-s-7-----
------9----9--9---8-----
------------------------
------------------------
--0---------------------


---------0-----0--------
---------8-----0--------
------9----9------------
------------------------
------------------------
--0---------------------

Games: PS2 games

Here's our stack of PS2 games.

Unfortunately, we have one of the last PS2 Slimline's to ever be produced, and it does not allow for any chipping or anything. If you have a recent PS2 SL, check your model number before you attempt to get it chipped!

Some good PS2 games: Spiderman 2, Matrix Path of Neo, GTA: Vice City. Psyvariar, Mobile Light Force, and the SEGA MegaDrive Collection wich has 20-25 retro games!

New Metallica bootlegs

Recently aquired:

Double DVD transfers of Quebec'86 and Toronto'86. Awesome quality now!