AMD & nVidia at it again over Batman

queamin · 5 Nov 2009 at 21:46

what worries me if this becomes the normal all it will do is hurt pc gaming and at moment pc don't need that.

Rroff · 5 Nov 2009 at 21:52

james.miller said:
stop making yourself out to be of superior intellect, its irritating.

what we have here is a lot of assumptions. nothing more than that.

I wish I was... I find it quite strange that I'm in the minority here that can actually see this situation clearly for how it really is.

Gerard · 5 Nov 2009 at 21:53

Rroff said:
I wish I was... I find it quite strange that I'm in the minority here that can actually see this situation clearly for how it really is.

Must have to be an nv fanboy then to see things as "clearly" as you apparently do...

james.miller · 5 Nov 2009 at 21:54

Rroff said:
I wish I was... I find it quite strange that I'm in the minority here that can actually see this situation clearly for how it really is.

quite. us thicko's are really stupid.

Rroff · 5 Nov 2009 at 21:57

mildly amusing...

Someone please explain to me why Eidos aparrently let ATI have access to their development process to implement AA, then laughed in their face and ATI just rolled over and played dog...

queamin · 5 Nov 2009 at 22:05

Rroff said:
I wish I was... I find it quite strange that I'm in the minority here that can actually see this situation clearly for how it really is.

The situation if amd start doing this it will split pc gaming.
e.g. amd got links with bizzard what if they do the same to wow and d3 and sc2? and it snowballs with nvidia doing the same with the next set of games.
Pc gaming don't need this at all.

AMG · 5 Nov 2009 at 22:15

Nvidias practices worry me

Lightnix · 5 Nov 2009 at 22:17

queamin said:
The situation if amd start doing this it will split pc gaming.
e.g. amd got links with bizzard what if they do the same to wow and d3 and sc2? and it snowballs with nvidia doing the same with the next set of games.
Pc gaming don't need this at all.

Quite right, the last thing consumers need is a state of play where manufacturers start competing in ways that are difficult to quantify in a comparative manner.

Rroff · 5 Nov 2009 at 22:17

queamin said:
The situation if amd start doing this it will split pc gaming.
e.g. amd got links with bizzard what if they do the same to wow and d3 and sc2? and it snowballs with nvidia doing the same with the next set of games.
Pc gaming don't need this at all.

Oh I quite agree PC gaming does not need this in whatever form you shape it... regardless of who you attach the blame to.

str · 5 Nov 2009 at 23:57

Lightnix said:
In an ideal world this'd be true. Nvidia, however, just want to get a one-up on the competition (which, as a business, in general is okay). Unfortunately they're not being as competitive as they'd like to be at the moment on the basis of performance per dollar, so it seems as though they're resorting to engineering opinions about their cards by having exclusive features put into some games. It's not how I'd like the two companies to compete, it'll ruin the PC games industry, but otherwise it's perfectly fine for them to do that, even if it's not beneficial to the market.

I wonder if ATI actually care anyway really? :confused:

It's ludicrous for the AA block to continue except for the politics and it would seem that no matter what happens the NVIDIA bods are being made to look like fools once again no doubt much to the delight of the ATI bods lol.

drunkenmaster · 6 Nov 2009 at 00:23

Rroff said:
They can't really lock nVidia out of using standard DX functionality in those games without things majorly kicking off...

Now if they provided extra visual effects which were enabled on ATI cards when one was found to be present that would be an entirely different story - and similiar to the one we have here.

Unfortunatly this finer point seems to be lost on most of the people posting in this thread.

Yes, its far far far more likely that Nvidia came up with AA code from scratch and paid Eidos to use it, then unless it worked perfectly it was ruled out as unsupported on any other hardware. Its far more likely thats what happened, and not a known engine, which has had AA added for a long time, that the makers of the engine that can now add AA support at will do not do so anymore when they licence it out. INfact, most companys never add new things to their engines, that way the price drops and they make less money, thats normally how business works, no really, it is.

Lets be realistic, no AA in the engine is a years old issue, thats gone. IF you think the engine comes without AA support, its laughable, if you think the code is made by Nvidia, then why the most basic and retarded method of making it not work and risking all this hoohaa. Had it been Nvidia owned code, made by them never before run on ATi cards, it would unlikely have worked perfectly on ATi cards, as it did, as its run on other games with the same engine with AA support.

There are very elegant methods you could use to code the AA so it didn't work on ATi hardware, why use the crudest possible way, and why did it work perfectly weeks before release in the demo?

Its clear to anyone with half a brain that Nvidia simply, as part of the agreement to provide extra funding for the game, would simply "buy" part of Eidos's code added a few lines blocking out ATi and under agreement Eidos couldn't add ATi support in.

The "proof" Rroff has provided, as everyone else has said, is nothing but conjecture and opinion, claiming anything he's posted as fact, proof or evidence, is as laughable as most of the other idea's coming out.

I also wish we stopped having the argument that , if there was really anything wrong why don't AMD just take them to court(though to be fair not sure its popped up in this thread, but it has in the umpteen others). Its pretty simple, bigger fish to fry, and only so many lawyers you can employ. They've got hundreds of lawyers going after Intel for doing worse things than Nvidia, considering the way Nvidia's heading its also very possibly cheaper to wait them out at this stage.

Frankly theres two lots of people at fault, Nvidia for thinking this is ok, the bigwigs at Eidos for deciding to accept Nvidia's offer and the lower down people at Eidos who actually work on the game seem to be at the mercy of their bosses and legal departments, those guys have no blame. If your boss tells you, do this or don't at all do that, you have no choices.

queamin · 6 Nov 2009 at 00:49

drunkenmaster said:
Yes, its far far far more likely that Nvidia came up with AA code from scratch and paid Eidos to use it, then unless it worked perfectly it was ruled out as unsupported on any other hardware. Its far more likely thats what happened, and not a known engine, which has had AA added for a long time, that the makers of the engine that can now add AA support at will do not do so anymore when they licence it out. INfact, most companys never add new things to their engines, that way the price drops and they make less money, thats normally how business works, no really, it is.

Lets be realistic, no AA in the engine is a years old issue, thats gone. IF you think the engine comes without AA support, its laughable, if you think the code is made by Nvidia, then why the most basic and retarded method of making it not work and risking all this hoohaa. Had it been Nvidia owned code, made by them never before run on ATi cards, it would unlikely have worked perfectly on ATi cards, as it did, as its run on other games with the same engine with AA support.

There are very elegant methods you could use to code the AA so it didn't work on ATi hardware, why use the crudest possible way, and why did it work perfectly weeks before release in the demo?

Its clear to anyone with half a brain that Nvidia simply, as part of the agreement to provide extra funding for the game, would simply "buy" part of Eidos's code added a few lines blocking out ATi and under agreement Eidos couldn't add ATi support in.

The "proof" Rroff has provided, as everyone else has said, is nothing but conjecture and opinion, claiming anything he's posted as fact, proof or evidence, is as laughable as most of the other idea's coming out.

I also wish we stopped having the argument that , if there was really anything wrong why don't AMD just take them to court(though to be fair not sure its popped up in this thread, but it has in the umpteen others). Its pretty simple, bigger fish to fry, and only so many lawyers you can employ. They've got hundreds of lawyers going after Intel for doing worse things than Nvidia, considering the way Nvidia's heading its also very possibly cheaper to wait them out at this stage.

Frankly theres two lots of people at fault, Nvidia for thinking this is ok, the bigwigs at Eidos for deciding to accept Nvidia's offer and the lower down people at Eidos who actually work on the game seem to be at the mercy of their bosses and legal departments, those guys have no blame. If your boss tells you, do this or don't at all do that, you have no choices.

I agree but i blame the bigwigs at Eidos for deciding to accept Nvidia's offer more than nvidia at the end of the day it was them being greedy and i do hope it hurt them where it hurt most in sales as we don't want to go down this route for every game as it would be a mess.

Flongoid · 6 Nov 2009 at 00:53

AMG said:
Nvidias practices worry me

Agreed. I think it shows something when you focus on undermining your competitors product instead of improving yours.

Rroff · 6 Nov 2009 at 01:05

I see more conjecture in your own post than in every single post I've made in this thread put together... infact for my own part there is very little conjecture in anything I've posted... neither is much of it subject to opinion.

Please feel free to correct anything you feel is laughable:

FACT: For ATI to effectively provide Eidos with a custom multisampling "solution" they would need access to the development platform.

FACT: Game studios aren't going to just let anyone have access to their development platform and liaising with a 3rd party to provide a feature like this would take considerable time and effort.

FACT: Your not likely to interact with a 3rd party at this level if your just going to turn around and laugh in their face when the work is done.

FACT: The ATI developer relations guy and one of their higher level marketing guys are NOT on the same page.

FACT: The ATI developer relations person provides a denial of any provided solution - instead ATI are happy if the nVidia code is run on their GPUs.

We can draw a pretty good conclusion from the above that ATI did infact NOT present Eidos with a solution - the logic is sound.

MOST LIKELY TO BE A FACT: The license agreement for the multisampling code that nVidia have developed for Eidos does not prevent anti-aliasing being implemented on other cards via a different implementation.

FACT: The nvidia multisampling implementation does not disable anti-aliasing on other cards - if you can't understand the distinction and implications here please don't attack me for your own lack of comprehension - I've tried to explain it as simply as possible.

FACT: ATI is quite happy for untested, unsupported code to be run on their GPUs

Lightnix · 6 Nov 2009 at 01:19

Righto, okay, based on what you have said, we've established that ATi cannot have implemented AA code because they would not have had the chance to. Curse those evil dastards.

TAC4U · 6 Nov 2009 at 03:41

Guys, I think it's time to give this up. It's turned from a rational discussion into the world against Rroff. The fact that he's stated that a developer shouldn't have to spend time coding anti-aliasing support should have been enough to cut this dead but we're still here two pages later. This is simply a case of nVidia trying to pay off developers - whether through money, coding or advertising - at the expense of the game. ATi shouldn't be forced into a position where they have to pull the same dirty tricks to remain competitive.

Rroff said:
Anti-aliasing isn't really something a video game developer should have to spend their time on... ideally they could just enable it with one command and away they go... unfortunatly with current setups especially when you throw a deferred shader pipeline into the mix things can get a little complicated.

What? Is that a joke? That's EXACTLY what developers should be doing. That used to be exactly what developers did until the trend of licensing engines; even then developers still build upon what they get. Engine design has always been important, even when licensing engines. Look at Mirror's Edge or Bioshock - both took the engine and built upon it to create the desired effect.

Rroff said:
The method from nVidia does not lock out ATI from doing AA in itself - it only enables that specific routine when approved hardware is found...

Euphemism.

NickK · 6 Nov 2009 at 08:38

Rroff said:
We can draw a pretty good conclusion from the above that ATI did infact NOT present Eidos with a solution - the logic is sound.

MOST LIKELY TO BE A FACT: The license agreement for the multisampling code that nVidia have developed for Eidos does not prevent anti-aliasing being implemented on other cards via a different implementation.

FACT: The nvidia multisampling implementation does not disable anti-aliasing on other cards - if you can't understand the distinction and implications here please don't attack me for your own lack of comprehension - I've tried to explain it as simply as possible.

You do seem to be missing the possibility that AMD discussed this informally but Edios refused on contractual grounds. Thus no offer would be made..

Rroff said:
FACT: ATI is quite happy for untested, unsupported code to be run on their GPUs

The fact here is that AMD GPUs will run the code with a hack. A hack that neither AMD nor Edios has not been involved with. Thus are Edios happy too?

D.P. · 6 Nov 2009 at 09:04

To summarise 6 pages of ATI propaganda, from the little known information we have we cannot know for sure who is to blame.

What we also know for sure is that if Nvidia did something illegal then there will be a lawsuit and we will find out that Nvidia played a dirty trick. Nvidia will get punished for this. If no such law suit arises then it is clear that Nvidia were not responsible for illegally preventing ATI cards running with AA. Possiblly their was a legal licensing issue at awork, but this cannot be deemed anti-competitive or Nvidia will get sued.

The Fact is, ATI are very verbal about blaming Nvidia. If ATI actually thought they had a legal case then they would be told to be silent by their lawyers and this argument would be going on in silence.

Calabi · 6 Nov 2009 at 13:01

The only one to blame for this is Eidos for idiocy and ineptitude in alienating whatever percentage of the population it is that own ATI cards.

Freddie1980 · 6 Nov 2009 at 13:08

AMG said:
Nvidias practices worry me

What worries me more is that both AMD and Nvidia are apart of the PC Gaming Alliance. It amazes me how Nvidia claims to be helping and promoting PC gaming yet secretly makes sure some games have limited functionality on it's competitors hardware.

Edit:
I've just noticed Epic games (a few games that use the UT3 engine developed by Epic Games has AA locked out on AMD video cards at game level) are in there as well, if the PC Gaming Alliance is to have any sort of credibility it needs to get it's house in order.