DX11 is in no way brand biased.

How a game runs on different branded hardware has to do with drivers, architecture, and targeted game features (such as PhysX, however any brand can run PhysX, the ONLY reason AMD/ATI can't is because Nvidia will not allow it. It has nothing to do with hardware). The only other time would be if the game was coded to purposely favor one or the other. Not something you are going to see very often since that would alienate a good half of their customer base.

Never said DirectX 11 is brand biased in any way.

CryTEK optimized their game to run well in DX11 on nV hardware and didn't optimize it(yet) to run as well on ATI/AMD hardware. How is this inconceivable to you?

I didn't say nV payed CryTEK to make Crysis 2 run worse on AMD/ATI hardware. I said that CryTEK took money from nV to implement DirectX 11 in Crysis 2 and have it optimized well for nV hardware(My explanation why DX11 performs better on nV hardware than AMD/ATI hardware atm).

Anyway.

My single 6970 is performing just as good as it's Nvidia counterpart,...

In DX11? I'd really like to see proof of that.

can you crossfire a 6870 with a 6900 series?or does it need to be the same card

no. only 68xx with 68xx. Also your 850w will be more thatn enough to xfire 2 6870s

Developers use different code paths according to what GPU features they want to support and optimise for. DirectX is not GPU biased.

They all cross license with one and other in different aspects.

There is no tech that AMD would need to license from Nvidia that's relevant to gaming. They can do it all themselves. That's what's stopping them. heh

Bit of a contradiction don't you think? AMD would benefit from licensing PhysX and CUDA.

CUDA and PhysX are not a technology. They are brands given to Nvidia's version of a technology.

CUDA has no effect on gaming. CUDA cores and Stream Processors do the same job, just in different ways. The main focus of CUDA is running non-gaming applications on the GPU to take advantage of the architectural and operational advantages a GPU has over a CPU in some processing tasks. Such as video transcoding, large scale number crunching and simulation (Folding, brute force cracking, BitCoin, ect.), and other such apps that can be offloaded to a GPU. An AMD GPU can do all of these tasks as well. Nvidia has simply placed more focus and effort on it than AMD has. However recently AMD has added support to do transcoding on the GPU, has always been a Folding @ Home partner, and have added the ability to offload flash to the GPU.

If your going to get into hardcoe cracking and simulation though, Nvidia is the better choice, since they have been focused on these tasks far longer than AMD has. Their cards will perform much better at these tasks. However I am a gamer, I don't fold, and I don't do any number crunching, I play video games. So this is why I choose AMD over Nvidia. I spend less money and get performance that's on par, and sometimes better, with the green side of the road.

PhysX is a proprietary physics engine. One that is not used on many mainstream games anymore. Game developers are not willing to alienate what amounts to over half of their customer base by using hardware brand specific engines. No matter who owns it. Most games that use PhysX these days, are paid to do so by Nvidia. The simple fact is that PhysX is not the only option out there, but it is the only hardware brand specific proprietary one out there. It's also falling out of favor with many developers, out of all the games coming out this year, how many use PhysX? A few if your lucky.

So yeah, I don't see any contradictions here. What I see are two things that are not necessary for gaming. After all, that is what I buy a video card for. heh

i run it all on ultra with high res @ 1080p, and i can definitely can notice the drop of fps and smoothness of the game.. its actually annoying but its playable... i was hoping for better performance out of my system. =[
i run..
phenom amd970 @ 3.5ghz stock.
EVGA GTX570HDSC 1.280gigs of vram
4gigs of ram do i need more for this game????

Actually CUDA does. Just Cause 2 uses CUDA water, which has just about the best looking water out there.

Game developers use PhysX to enhance their game and it's good marking for NVIDIA and the game to sell more and sell more NVIDIA GPUs. there are quiet a few games that support PhysX, one recent one being Alice Madness Returns. PhysX is a tool, it's up to developers to weight the costs and of it for their game.