Nvidia Shenanigans again?

[An Exception]

What I find in this whole episode very concerning is that Nvidia is going out and telling sites what tests to run.

What's more concerning is most of those sites do as they are told.

 

[Skyrocket]

Well said kywel.

Once u pass a certain lvl of Tesselation you will not see any difference.
Ati hardware mode can only do so much. 16. Where it peaks.
Nvidia on the other hand with cuda is much better as it software based and deploys as many cores as it needs.

With the "right" help software companys can be easily persuaded to cross this sweet spot....

 

[Skyrocket]

What's more concerning is most of those sites do as they are told.

"Money" and "you will never get another graphics card to review" is a powerful tool.

 

[Rezident]

Ubisoft are a massive company and IMO not so stupid to implement dodgy code so the game runs like crap on AMD cards, it's not in their interest considering AMD have the majority of the DX11 market currently. I think it's down to AMD to sort their drivers out.

Why not? Ubisoft were stupid enough to ensure Assassin's Creed 2 didn't work properly for their paying customers, in the name of anti-piracy. I still don't trust them after that. In fact, the more I think about it, Ubisoft sounds like exactly the sort of company that would deliberately do something like this. I'm sure they got their blood money for it.

 

[kylew]

What's more concerning is most of those sites do as they are told.

Often it's under conditions of "do as we say or we'll exclude you from press conferences, reviews and anything else". Basically they blacklist sites that don't do what they want.

 

[Rroff]

Well said kywel.

Once u pass a certain lvl of Tesselation you will not see any difference.
Ati hardware mode can only do so much. 16. Where it peaks.
Nvidia on the other hand with cuda is much better as it software based and deploys as many cores as it needs.

With the "right" help software companys can be easily persuaded to cross this sweet spot....

nVidia doesn't do tessellation on the CUDA cores neither is it done in software, infact you can't do tessellation in software without excluding one of the main benefits to doing it on a GPU as you'd have to run extra transformation on 100s of tris.

 

[Skyrocket]

Ubisoft are a massive company and IMO not so stupid to implement dodgy code so the game runs like crap on AMD cards,

History has told us otherwise.
Remember assassin creed and 10.1 directx...
When it enabled big gains over Nvidia and then boom next patch it dissapeared...

Software companys do what they are told. Most of their profits come from consoles anyway..

 

[An Exception]

Often it's under conditions of "do as we say or we'll exclude you from press conferences, reviews and anything else". Basically they blacklist sites that don't do what they want.

It's basically blackmail.
I guess Kyle @ HardOCP doesn't plan on taking this crap laying down.
It's nice to see someone with a set of balls now and again...

 

[kylew]

It's basically blackmail.
I guess Kyle @ HardOCP doesn't plan on taking this crap laying down.
It's nice to see someone with a set of balls now and again...

Of course, it's good that HardOCP don't just accept it and give in though.

 

[Broken Hope]

The issue here is HAWX 2 is using a very high level of tessellation, creating very small poly's - 6 pixels, in fact (per NV email). This is below the optimal efficiency threshold for GPU's that process four quads of pixel groupings - i.e. NVIDIA and AMD current designs. You know quad quads better as 16px/clock, in specifications.

So when you tessellate down below 16 pixels, you create a scenario where the resterizer ('pixel processor') has to reprocess pixels because it's got a new poly in it, despite the fact it's already been processed. This stalls the rasterizer pipeline and causes problems.

This would be fine and down to 'architecture implementation of specification' if it werent for the fact that you can't actually tell the difference as tessellation factors go up, especially if you have a HD display. Ultimately it is a product differentiator between AMD and NV high end, just as forced TSAA was. Does it make a difference to consumers? That's a personal decision.

I got both emails from NV and AMD, and decided it was a stunt to cause controversy in the week of next generation launch.

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showpost.php?p=1336398700&postcount=1375

 

[AMG]

Not every game is going to use tess like some others and this is coming from someone with a nvidia card. Why don't ya wait till the cards come out along with the benci before speculating or guess and from a neutral place.

 

[ghutchison14078]

CUDA...WOULDA....SHOULDA

 

[opethdisciple]

Iv just come accross these whist browsing on the web then it clicked that 'ahh so thats what you guys where going on about'!

Now my thoughts.

A. There is a history of Nvidia doing things with benchamrks or locking ATI out which ATI do not. (Physx for instance, has been proved that it could run just fine on cpu's but Nvidia use some program techniques to make it run like crap) (Another example is the AA Batman fiasco)

B. ATI are far more open and support far more of the open standards and standards in general, which means even in this instance, even IF Hawx 2 is not being purposly negativley affected by Nvidia, if the developers where implementing the tesselation as the DX11 specification says, then it would run just fine on ATI hardware. Which is what ATI are saying is wrong with Hawx2, ie its not doing tesselation according to the specification.... (which may or may not have an Nvidia infuence)

Lets not forget, that GPU is one area that ATI are absolutly fearless at the moment. They have probably sold four times as many gpus as Nvidia have since the the first dx11 card was released, so I would guess that this indeed smells of Nividia, just trying to take the shine of the impending release of the 6000 series.

Bring on the day Nvidia open physx and cuda to all gpu Vendors, then we truely will see some exciting gpu wars.

 

[Metroid]

Nothing new, both AMD and Nvidia have been doing this for years.

 

[An Exception]

^^^
Link?

 

[Porcelina]

Ubisoft are a massive company and IMO not so stupid to implement dodgy code so the game runs like crap on AMD cards, it's not in their interest considering AMD have the majority of the DX11 market currently. I think it's down to AMD to sort their drivers out.

Ubisoft? The company that implemented the most draconian DRM seen on their single player games? And sold it as a feature? And finally admitted in the end that it might not be good to lose game progress because their own servers could not guarantee stability?

Yeah, that Ubisoft, they sure are infallible.

 

[Zarf]

Ubisoft? The company that implemented the most draconian DRM seen on their single player games? And sold it as a feature? And finally admitted in the end that it might not be good to lose game progress because their own servers could not guarantee stability?

Yeah, that Ubisoft, they sure are infallible.

Not to mention the whole Assassins Creed DX 10.1 debacle. Ubi are so deep in Nvidia's pocket that they're smelling Jen-Hsun's socks.

 

[cainer]

Not to mention the whole Assassins Creed DX 10.1 debacle.

your a bit late, its already been mentioned in this thread here...

DX10.1 ? Or do you forget that.

here...

This is starting to remind me of the dx10.1 patch that improved performance on ati cards in assassins creed. Did ubi ever offer a reason why it was withdrawn that didn't stink of BS?

also here...

You mean like how Ubisoft removed DX 10.1 support from Assassins Creed that had performance improvements on ATI cards, but Nvidia didn't support DX 10.1 at the time?

oh then theres this one...

This is the same company that removed 10.1 support from assassins creed remember so therefor totally in the Nvidia camp.

another little mention here...

Remember assassin creed and 10.1 directx...
When it enabled big gains over Nvidia and then boom next patch it dissapeared...

 

[kylew]

your a bit late, its already been mentioned in this thread here...



here...



also here...



oh then theres this one...



another little mention here...

No matter how many times it's mentioned, some people will still act like it never happened.

 

[Broken Hope]

Nothing new, both AMD and Nvidia have been doing this for years.

Please show us a link to a case where AMD worked with a game dev to increase performance on their hardware whilst at the same time showing bad performance on Nvidia hardware, I don't think you'll find one.