Why Is Nvidia So Nasty To ATI?

[Rroff]

ATI developed MSAA support for stalker clearsky's deferred rendering engine under DX 10 and DX10.1, they did not block Nvidia cards from using it and as a consequence Nvidia owners enjoyed AA in stalker thanks to ATI, it worked perfectly fine, so who's the bad guys??

Thats probably why it runs quite slow on nVidia with AA especially when sun rays are enabled.

Only you care about that.
Because this is a classic "either your with me or against me" bully stance in the way this was handled by NV.

Your really not getting the point here, without ATI onboard, scenarios like the nvidia AA implementationstopping working on a future ATI driver update are very real and then who does the fallback come down on.

Your really misguided if you think I'm on nvidia's side here, I want to know if nVidia used their way its meant to be played program to block ATI from supporting the title or if ATI didn't put the effort in and so should anyone else whos interested in it objectively.

 

[Final8y]

Thats probably why it runs quite slow on nVidia with AA especially when sun rays are enabled.



Your really not getting the point here, without ATI onboard, scenarios like the nvidia AA implementationstopping working on a future ATI driver update are very real and then who does the fallback come down on.

Your really misguided if you think I'm on nvidia's side here, I want to know if nVidia used their way its meant to be played program to block ATI from supporting the title or if ATI didn't put the effort in and so should anyone else whos interested in it objectively.

It falls on ATI to fix the drivers for the game.
Most people only care about the end results & not all the back ground self serving politics because talk is cheap.

 

[Rroff]

It falls on ATI to fix the drivers for the game.
Most people only care about the end results & not all the back ground self serving politics because talk is cheap.

As I said before a driver level solution for this is a less than optimal hack at best, the whole reason this is such a big issue is due to the way MS implemented certain things in DX and the way the hardware functions an application work around for each target platform produces the best results.

 

[Final8y]

As I said before a driver level solution for this is a less than optimal hack at best, the whole reason this is such a big issue is due to the way MS implemented certain things in DX and the way the hardware functions an application work around for each target platform produces the best results.

Look its been shown to work including many ATI driver revisions later so arguing over the semantics is of no use.

 

[DeeJayCee]

NV add things that benefit them & not better game experiences for us ALL.
You will not see NV invest time or money in adding the latest DX11 standards in games because even tho it will help the push for people to by new NV DX11 capable cards, it will also help all gfx card makers push DX11 cards as well & NV don't do anything if someone else benefits indirectly.

And when the case that sometime others benefit by buying NV cards to use together with ATI cards, NV will block it.
You must buy 100% NV or else, something that Intel was doing in the past & found guilt for except this time its at the consumer level instead of business level.

I think you misunderstood me mate. I was referring to both NV and ATI helping software devs will help us ALL. obviously neither ATI ar NV will do anything over and above what makes the games run on their cards well.

To my knowledge, NV HAVE invested time in pushing DX11. they have quite clearly stated that the new cards are a complete redesign to cater for DX11 fully, and made very clear that they think DX11 is the "next big thing" in games. So they are clearly stating DX11 as a marketting angle, which will help both NV and ATI. and hopefully sell more games with DX11 capabilities, which will help software devs and also mean sexier looking games for us

I certainly do not necessarily agree with proprietary things as such, but everyone has to have their own unique selling points, otherwise we will all be buying stuff from "Brand Bland", generic parts with nothing to differentiate.

I would put a big bit of money down that a huge percentage of ATI customers, certainly back around xmas, bought the new 5xxx series for DX11 capabilities. Again, Dirt 2 is a great example of this, it caused a huge surge in the gaming undustry "look what DX11 can look like", and this was ATI feeding money into codemasters to achieve this. good on them I say! same as NV did with batman and physx. again, good on them!

The point being, let both ATI and NV do what they do, the more involved with software devs the better (in whatever form!) as it will only ever benefit the consumers. I don't understand why your comments are focussed on bashing NV only. praise both the red and green teams!

 

[Final8y]

I think you misunderstood me mate. I was referring to both NV and ATI helping software devs will help us ALL. obviously neither ATI ar NV will do anything over and above what makes the games run on their cards well.

To my knowledge, NV HAVE invested time in pushing DX11. they have quite clearly stated that the new cards are a complete redesign to cater for DX11 fully, and made very clear that they think DX11 is the "next big thing" in games. So they are clearly stating DX11 as a marketting angle, which will help both NV and ATI. and hopefully sell more games with DX11 capabilities, which will help software devs and also mean sexier looking games for us

I certainly do not necessarily agree with proprietary things as such, but everyone has to have their own unique selling points, otherwise we will all be buying stuff from "Brand Bland", generic parts with nothing to differentiate.

I would put a big bit of money down that a huge percentage of ATI customers, certainly back around xmas, bought the new 5xxx series for DX11 capabilities. Again, Dirt 2 is a great example of this, it caused a huge surge in the gaming undustry "look what DX11 can look like", and this was ATI feeding money into codemasters to achieve this. good on them I say! same as NV did with batman and physx. again, good on them!

The point being, let both ATI and NV do what they do, the more involved with software devs the better (in whatever form!) as it will only ever benefit the consumers. I don't understand why your comments are focussed on bashing NV only. praise both the red and green teams!

NV are pushing DX11 hardware yes but they are not pushing DX11 in games that would not of otherwise had DX11 if it was not for there involvement.

My comments are in line with the topic of the thread.

What ATI did works on both, what NV did only works on NV, i will give credit when credit is due.

If ATI constantly do things that are bash worthy then they will be bashed.
If you swap the names of the 2 companies around then it would be ATI that i have been bashing because a name is irrelevant to me & only what they offer & do matters & there names has nothing to do with there actions.

NV working with developers to optimise the code to run better than it would have on NV cards i have no issues with as that does not mean that it will work worse on ATi cards than it would have done which i can give credit to NV (except for the patching out of dx10.1 from assassins creed)

What's best for PC gaming is what works on all compliant hardware.

"Brand Bland", generic parts with nothing to differentiate.

Ultimately its price & performance.
But that's why things like NV3d & Eyefinity are great as they are not detrimental as they don't alter the game mechanics that would be missing on other hardware.

 

[Final8y]

In response to Marine-RX179.....

The evidence comes from the users with first hand experience of the matters.
The blocking of NV PhysX cards when not used with an NV card & unlocking of PhysX, AA, SLI on hardware where NV said were not compatible.

The new anti-mavity & slowdown time bomb in hardware PhysX when used in conjuction with ATI cards but a new patch by the hackers has fixed it.
http://www.geeks3d.com/20100422/hybrid-physx-patch-1-03-with-reverse-mavity-timebomb-fix/

Making games better for all .
Edited: by me in light of the cleaning.

 

[Fire Wizard]

In response to the few people who are complaining about this thread being a rant festival and should be locked, please in future use the Report Post button. Someone part of the moderating team will then deal with the thread in the appropriate way.

In regards to what should be done to this thread at the moment though, there's not really much that needs to be done. The discussion has, for the most part, been fairly constructive and people are simply sharing their viewpoints with each other. If you don't like the discussion or you are bored with it, please do not post in the thread.

May I also direct everyone to the following thread - *** Attention Graphics Card Forum *** - Read it and read it well please. Thank you.

Thread cleaned.

 

[Marine-RX179]

In response to Marine-RX179.....

The evidence comes from the users with first hand experience of the matters.
The blocking of NV PhysX cards when not used with an NV card & unlocking of PhysX, AA, SLI on hardware where NV said were not compatible.

The new time bomb in PhysX when used with ATI cards does not exist either, but a new patch by the hackers has fixed it.
http://www.geeks3d.com/20100422/hybrid-physx-patch-1-03-with-reverse-mavity-timebomb-fix/

Edited: by me in light of the cleaning.

And in response to you, I'm was not referring to nvidia blocking PhysX from working with ATI card. I was refering to your argument of repeating nothing but...
"But nvidia block ATI's AA in Batman..."
"But nvidia block ATI's AA in Batman..."
"But nvidia block ATI's AA in Batman..."

(with just assumption and no evidence to back that up)
to try counter almost every single contructive comment/arguement Rroff put forward (valid or not), that is pretty pointless. If you are just gonna ignore every points that Rroff's making and just carry on with saying whatever you want not actually 'replying' to his comments, why bother posting at all? One way posting is no discussion at all (spam more like it)!

While I cannot verify if the points that Rroff made were true, but if ATI really didn't provide their own code to the game developer and just told them to use Nvidia's code as he said, Nvidia has every right (I think) to block ATI hardware from using their code. I mean if I spent hours/days to work on a piece of coursework, and someone who couldn't be bothered to do their own work comes along and want to copy my work, does that make me nasty for saying 'no' or 'back-off'? The crack/hack that allow ATI cards to use AA could be just something for bypassing Nvidia's block on ATI cards for using their code. This is however just assumption, and is no more factual than people's claim of Nvidia blocking ATI's AA in Batman.

However, I do have to agree with Rroff at least on the point that Nvidia/Batman's developer would be insane to directly sabotage ATI so openly, as there would definitely be evidence existing and can be found and used against them. If Nvidia really did disable ATI's AA (as in AA that is based on their own code), pretty sure ATI would had taking them to court over it.

P.S. I'm no fan of Nvidia disabling PhysX to work with ATI cards (as my next graphic card upgrade may be an ATI, and my 9800GTX+ would be sitting around collecting dust and cannot be use for PhysX), but I think it is within their legal right to do so (if I'm not mistaken).

 

[Final8y]

And in response to you, I'm was not referring to nvidia blocking PhysX from working with ATI card. I was refering to your argument of repeating nothing but...
"But nvidia block ATI's AA in Batman..."
"But nvidia block ATI's AA in Batman..."
"But nvidia block ATI's AA in Batman..."

(with just assumption and no evidence to back that up)
to try counter almost every single contructive comment/arguement Rroff put forward (valid or not). That is pretty pointless.

While I cannot verify if the points that Rroff made were true, but if ATI really didn't provide their own code to the game developer and just told them to use Nvidia's code as he said, Nvidia has every right (I think) to block ATI hardware from using their code. I mean if I spent hours/days to work on a piece of coursework, and someone who couldn't be bothered to do their own work comes along and want to copy my work, does that make me nasty for saying 'no' or 'back-off'? The crack/hack that allow ATI cards to use AA could be just something for bypassing Nvidia's block on ATI cards for using their code.

I have to agree with Rroff at least on the point that Nvidia/Batman's developer would be insane to directly sabotage ATI so openly, as there would definitely be evidence existing and can be found and used against them. If Nvidia really disable ATI's AA (as in AA that is based on their own code), pretty sure ATI would had taking them to court over it.

P.S. I'm no fan of Nvidia disabling PhysX to work with ATI cards, but I think it is within their legal right to do so (if I'm not mistaken).

I have said a hell of allot more than just "But nvidia block ATI's AA in Batman..."


The reason why im not providing links to the matters because its been done to death many times already & the evidence was there for all to see at the time whether they accepted the evidence or not.

The mount of effort to mentally recall all the links to these events with the proof all over again is not worth the effort because many of them are here on this form if you look deep into the archives.
What happens in a few months time when someone else who was not in the know at the time & asks me again.

It should be obvious for the amount of effort that i have put in this thread that im acting on more than just hearsay & there are very few here who are agreeing with Roff because they too have seen the evidence.

And no im not surprised that ATi have not taken NV to court over the matter by its self because its small fry on its own.

NV being in its legal right has yet to be seen & is not the focus of the discussion because we dont know for sure but what we do know for sure is that no one who has bought NV GPUs & also use ATI GPU are going to be happy or ok with that NV is preventing them from using what they have paid for because that feature is on the box & that box does not state that the feature is not compatible when in use with any other GPU.

If that was on the box then its purely down to the legal matter & not for anyone to get upset about until then as it was clear what was what at purchase.

 

[Rroff]

While I cannot verify if the points that Rroff made were true, but if ATI really didn't provide their own code to the game developer and just told them to use Nvidia's code as he said, Nvidia has every right (I think) to block ATI hardware from using their code. I mean if I spent hours/days to work on a piece of coursework, and someone who couldn't be bothered to do their own work comes along and want to copy my work, does that make me nasty for saying 'no' or 'back-off'? The crack/hack that allow ATI cards to use AA could be just something for bypassing Nvidia's block on ATI cards for using their code. This is however just assumption, and is no more factual than people's claim of Nvidia blocking ATI's AA in Batman.

Most of the publicly available info can be found here:

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/11/4/batmangate-amd-vs-nvidia-vs-eidos-fight-analyzed.aspx

Tho despite the "analyzed" headline they don't do much in the way of analysis and just make some general comments based on face value interpretation of the information.

The issues with the hardware related to MSAA and multiple render targets, how things have been implemented in directx, etc. is well documented and a very real and complex problem as a little googling will show.

 

[Final8y]

Most of the publicly available info can be found here:

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/11/4/batmangate-amd-vs-nvidia-vs-eidos-fight-analyzed.aspx

Tho despite the "analyzed" headline they don't do much in the way of analysis and just make some general comments based on face value interpretation of the information.

The issues with the hardware related to MSAA and multiple render targets, how things have been implemented in directx, etc. is well documented and a very real and complex problem as a little googling will show.

There is no dispute about complexity all that matters is that it works or not & all the evidence shows that it works.
http://www.ngohq.com/graphic-cards/17716-batman-arkham-asylum-msaa-fix.html
http://forums.eidosgames.com/showpost.php?p=1208912&postcount=2

 

[Rroff]

yes no issues have been seen so far, after months of incidental post release testing, thats not something any self respecting developer would want to gamble their reputation on at release time and no ones knows if a future ATI driver update, game patch, etc. would accidentally break compatibility.

 

[Final8y]

yes no issues have been seen so far, after months of incidental post release testing, thats not something any self respecting developer would want to gamble their reputation on at release time and no ones knows if a future ATI driver update, game patch, etc. would accidentally break compatibility.

This issue has already done enough damage to eidos with NV & eidos blaming each other with eidos wanting to remove the block but NV claimed rights over the AA code & said no.

AND there is no such thing as the perfect software that will never have no issue on any combination of hardware & software unless your claiming that was there goal on something as non critical as a game with a short lifespan.

Much more serious in your face issues exist in high profile games today.