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Why 'Watch Dogs' Is Bad News For AMD Users -- And Potentially The Entire PC Gaming Ecosystem

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Regarding UE4 engine - while nVidia APIs are often the default render/compute path for a lot of features i.e. physx is one of the options for physics and CUDA is the default for backend lighting compute, etc. they aren't the only path, most features are also fully implemented to use directcompute, etc. if nVidia hardware isn't present and usually Epic embrace all sorts of tech so expect to see other vendor paths become available for features i.e. like they had support for the MeTaL API in UT99.
 
A very very interesting read and clears up so much BS.

In my opinion, after talking with a bunch of different people on the matter, I think there was probably some merit to AMD’s claims of a “lock out” with NVIDIA’s GameWorks toolset at the outset of the program. Gamers using AMD hardware might eventually be at a direct disadvantage when a game developer uses it but in reality it is the developer’s decision to integrate and correct any issues. NVIDIA is in no way required to make sure that AMD gets equal optimization with GameWorks. AMD was not required to build Mantle in a way to help out NVIDIA gamers. And NVIDIA never needed to apologize for developing CUDA.
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http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Editor...t-over-NVIDIA-GameWorks-Program-Devil-Details

Read the whole thing to get a complete understanding of what is what.
 
Gregster said:
A very very interesting read and clears up so much BS.



http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Editor...t-over-NVIDIA-GameWorks-Program-Devil-Details

Read the whole thing to get a complete understanding of what is what.
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LtMatt posted the video of them discussing it on page 17!! :p

The problem,is Greg it all started this with the last Batman game with AMD complaining about last year:

http://i.imgur.com/GcXVeHF.jpg

The thing is if AMD had not kicked up a fuss about it,things will not have changed at all.

From the PCPER article and it has been posted before:

mYGuwxZ.png


That are two devs from DICE and Ubisoft just in early April,so AMD did have some merit in complaining since last year and it seems to have worked upto some degree,in Nvidia opening up the code eventually,which was not the case last year for example.

However,as the PCPER article says:

Only NVIDIA-only features like PhysX and TXAA remained in the "black box" form.
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So,what if other features start to get integrated into the "black box" section of the Gameworks libraries?? What if Faceworks and Flameworks end up the same??

I just fear this will end up with more and more proprietary features and artificial lockouts for AMD and Nvidia only. This time AMD has the consoles too,which will not help longterm. ATM, the XBox360 and PS3 are the main base consoles and one has a Nvidia GPU. Wait another year or two and more and more games will be targeted towards the new ones with their AMD hardware.

I really rather not want to have two gaming rigs powered by AMD and Nvidia cards!!
 
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There's no doubt about it, AMD had a valid point. Backed up publically by developers was just the icing on the cake and that is probably the reason Nvidia had no choice but to alter the way GameWorks worked. It just doesn't look good and this has created a lot of negative press (deservedly so) towards GameWorks. It was also a bit of a shock to see Epic strongly denying that GameWorks is fully integrated into Unreal Engine. Collateral damage from Epic? Maybe.
 
Well,Intel has started doing its own "game partnerships" too,and I believe it means in certain games,their IGPs perform much better than they should,due to support of certain Intel specific features.

Rome 2 and GRID2 are the first of these.

AMD and Nvidia need to worry more about Intel joining the fray than all this silly in-fighting!!
 
Watchdogs has been gimped vram wise so high end cards even struggle, More so nvidia at higher settings.

Amd in the same game with gameworks say it hampers performance on their cards.

Nvidia users experience similar issues on the same game using gameworks.

The Game is not well coded and uses 3gb vram, it's not worth buying to some people in its current state, So avoid it.

Do you think when there is 40 mantle endorsed games out that nvidia users will buy those games if nvidia has poor performance on dx11 / dx 12 compared to amd?

Swings and roundabouts.
 
LtMatt said:
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You forget about Iris Pro! It might be a very large part,but if Intel refines the tech for lower end parts,things could get interesting. But games like GRID2 and Rome 2 do much better than they should on Intel IGPs. Intel has no problems about spending billions of dollars to gain an advantage.

Remember the P4 era?? Or even now with their massive contra-revenue with Atom,or even their failure with Itanium.

They even displaced AMD and Nvidia from a reasonable of MacBook and iMac wins with Apple for example.
 
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Ian Evey said:
Do you think when there is 40 mantle endorsed games out that nvidia users will buy those games if nvidia has poor performance on dx11 / dx 12 compared to amd?
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Mantle is more about improving AMD GPU performance on slower CPUs and more CPU limited games,especially since AMD drivers do not thread as well as Nvidia ones, as they are more dependent on single core performance(ironic isn't it??). Nvidia cards in many cases do better on AMD CPUs than AMD ones for example.

I can see Mantle giving AMD an advantage now in systems with slower CPUs,which was not the case in the last year at least.
 
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CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Mantle is more about improving AMD GPU performance on slower CPUs and more CPU limited games,especially since AMD drivers do not thread as well as Nvidia ones, as they are more dependent on single core performance(ironic isn't it??). Nvidia cards in many cases do better on AMD CPUs than AMD ones for example.

I can see Mantle giving AMD an advantage now in systems with slower CPUs,which was not the case in the last year at least.
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+1

Ian, Mantle will never hinder Nvidia DirectX performance so no need to worry.
 
triss said:
You mean like it was proven gameworks in watchdogs didnt hurt amd :)
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Not enough evidence to confirm nor deny 100%. All we do know is AMD cards underperform massively in every single GameWorks title so far so clearly it has something to do with it. Pcper and Techreport even state this when they said AMD have a case. Watchdogs? Well this appears to be a case of a terribly optimized game, regardless of any potential GameWorks impact.
 
LtMatt said:
Not enough evidence to confirm nor deny 100%. All we do know is AMD cards underperform massively in every single GameWorks title so far so clearly it has something to do with it. Pcper and Techreport even state this when they said AMD have a case. Watchdogs? Well this appears to be a case of a terribly optimized game, regardless of any potential GameWorks impact.
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One option thats able to be turned off and both venders cards preform that function within spitting distance anyway ,
Or did you not bother to read the article or watch the video you linked?

The video even clear states they have no idea why AMD said this over watchdogs.
 
triss said:
One option thats able to be turned off and both venders cards preform that function within spitting distance anyway ,
Or did you not bother to read the article or watch the video you linked?

The video even clear states they have no idea why AMD said this over watchdogs.
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I was referring to other titles, sorry thought i made that clear. Titles that have been out before mid April, prior to the change that occurred with GameWorks. I'm not sure there is any GameWorks reason why it (watchdogs) runs so much worse on AMD cards, (assuming you don't exceed the vram limit) but none of us know for sure. It's just after previous titles, it's hard not be skeptical. At the end of the day we have to take the video as gospel? Of course not. What we need is for Ubisoft, the developer to come out and make a statement. Something they have refused to do. That sets the alarm bells ringing for sure though.
 
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We dont have to take the video/articles as gospel no but we cant also cherry pick the bits we want and use them while dismissing other bits.
Is official now Ubisoft wont reply?
Shame if it is would be nice to clear the air on this so to speak.
 
triss said:
We dont have to take the video/articles as gospel no but we cant also cherry pick the bits we want and use them while dismissing other bits.
Is official now Ubisoft wont reply?
Shame if it is would be nice to clear the air on this so to speak.
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They refused. Probably not a good thing to admit to i suspect. If there was no truth to it, they'd just deny it you'd think.
 
Not to stoke the fire... but it was claimed that Sleeping Dogs was a title where AMD denied access to NV. So it works both ways

Now get back to playing the game :)
 
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