NVIDIA & AGEIA Technologies

Its probably a Win7 issue, I would download the absolute latest nVidia drivers, apply them, and then wipe the PC entirely clean of every old driver for the videocard.

Also, you have 2 cards in your comp? One for video and one entirely devoted to PhysX?

TBH I am new to the computer world (specs wise), I only just built my first build a week and a half ago. I decided that the pre-built garbage in stores was crap being sold at a higher price than a true machine that could be built yourself at a lower price.

As such, I have absolutely no experience with multiple GPUs (only have one 216 GTX260 in my rig), let alone one card devoted to video and the other to PhysX. Just to warn you, lol, the driver suggestion might not fix the problem, and the two cards might need entirely different sets of drivers, so be sure you wont be killing your PC if you decide to clear drivers.

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?s=6b72b5848df4f5b890c90fc32555b1c2&showtopic=91172&st=20

Found that thread that might help you.  Doesn't look like good news however.  As near as I can tell, support has pretty much died for the physical PhysX cards in favor of continued development for the Nvidia CUDA-based graphics cards.

Just wanted to note as well that if you're going to remove all drivers, you should do that first and then install the newest one.  Installing a video driver first and then trying to clean older drivers off your system might work, but it's not recommended.

Oh ok.

In February 2008, Nvidia bought Ageia and the PhysX engine and has begun integrating it into its CUDA framework, effectively rendering the PhysX add-in card redundant.

Your AGEIA physX card is a obsolete PhysX PPU add-in card...

the AGEIA PhysX Card does not have any driver supporting it.

Go to http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx_9.09.1112.html ...

Runtime upgrade ONLY for AGEIA PhysX processors users. (New AGEIA PhysX processors installations should install an older PhysX system software such as version 8.09.04 – prior to installing this update). Note – AGEIA PPU acceleration support for 2.8.1 SDK or earlier, and Windows Vista and Windows XP only.

Seem that your old AGEIA PhysX will not have a update for Win7... not really needed since CUDA ( who include PhysX ) work with any card from the serie 8 to the recent one one...

For the end, a last info :

Versions 186 and newer of the ForceWare drivers disable PhysX hardware acceleration when a GPU from a different manufacturer, such as AMD, is present in the system. Representatives at Nvidia stated to customers that the decision was made due to development expenses, and for quality assurance and business reasons. This decision has caused a backlash from the community that led to the creation of a community patch for Windows 7, circumventing the GPU check in Nvidia's updated drivers. Currently this patch only works on GPUs and not PPUs.

Thank you all guys!

"Also, you have 2 cards in your comp? One for video and one entirely devoted to PhysX?"

Yes

The performance is still amazing. I use it in my theatre room; movies, music and games are still fantastic. Sad that the extra money spent is not being taking advantage of. I was planning to buy Alienware Area-51 ALX Desktop.

But as Lord-Vale3 said, best to build your own if you know how. It save you more money.

Thanks again guys

More importantly, you get to select the components you want, rather than a get what you're given with proprietary brands.   By choosing the parts wisely, you can avoid the common proprierary brand situation of having OK RAM specs but an underpowered CPU and/or grossly inadequate onboard graphics.

Also important is that you can get an OEM version of Win 7 and avoid all those trial proggies and all the crapware/bloatware that usually comes with pre-builds.

When you're ready to build and have an idea of what you want (power and spec-wise), it wouldn't be a bad idea to post here and seek advice/opinions of others.  There are quite a few tech-savvy people here who would be able to help select the right parts and advise on building, etc.

Was this recently, or from over a year ago?  Because indeed the PhyX card is totally obsolete now, and Dell are complete dicks if they included this by default on a modern system.

IMO, Dell are complete dicks anyhow... for crapifying all their PC's/laptops with junk and bloatware that just pisses most users off. But of course, Dell makes money off including other companies junk, so they'll keep on doing it and bugger the customer.