AMD ramps up its Gaming Evolved program

[Final8y]

Last weekend, we traveled to AMD's offices in Markham, Ontario and spoke to Gaming Evolved marketing chief Peter Ross, who gave us some idea of what's been going on behind the scenes.

The program's growing profile is evidently no accident. According to Ross, AMD has increased the size of its developer relations team, on both the marketing and the engineering sides. Part of the recent push has involved giving the developer relations program a name and marketing it explicitly, just has Nvidia has been doing. That effort began a couple of years ago with the introduction of the Gaming Evolved label. AMD has endeavored to work more closely with both developers and publishers, as well.

Interestingly, Ross told us AMD's recent executive changes have been beneficial to the program. He said the new executive team better appreciates the importance of gaming. Ross also pointed out with some exultation that Rory Read, AMD's new CEO, has made public statements about the company's commitment to gaming. Given AMD's precarious financial situation as of late, it's telling that the company has seen fit to increase funding for the Gaming Evolved program.

The future looks bright, too. The aforementioned changes all took place more than a year ago. Ross said we're only just now seeing them produce results, and those changes represent a continued commitment on AMD's part. This is "not something that just flamed up and will go away," Ross stressed. Things "will only get better from here."

What do game developers think about all this? Jorjen Katsman was also there in Markham, and he spoke to us about his company's collaboration with AMD. Katsman is President of Nixxes, a Dutch firm that's developed the PC versions of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days, and several Tomb Raider games. The firm is currently working on the PC versions of Hitman: Absolution and the upcoming Tomb Raider reboot—both Gaming Evolved titles, just as Human Revolution was.

Top: Hitman: Absolution. Bottom: the new Tomb Raider. Sources: Steam, Square Enix.

Katsman made it clear that his company has ongoing relationships with both AMD and Nvidia. The folks at Nixxes "always have a good time" working with both firms, he said, and with Human Revolution, Nixxes was "just as much in touch" with Nvidia as with AMD. Katsman pointed out that engaging both companies is necessary to ensure players get the best experience. Nobody wants their message boards flooded with bug reports and complaints, after all.

Nevertheless, Nixxes seems to favor Gaming Evolved over Nvidia's developer program. According to Katsman, what AMD brings to the table is simply more compelling, and he views the AMD team as more dedicated. While he didn't delve too deeply into specifics, he mentioned that AMD engineers helped Nixxes implement not just Radeon-specific functionality in their games, but also MSAA antialiasing support and general DirectX 11 features. The two companies collaborate sometimes over Skype and sometimes in person, when AMD engineers visit the Nixxes offices in Utrecht, Holland.

Read More Here.
http://techreport.com/review/23779/amd-ramps-up-its-gaming-evolved-program

 

[Final8y]

Don't be silly Spoffle. There's a reason nearly all new gaming evolved titles have unnecessary GPU compute based features. Its so nvidias performance is gimped. Both companies do it.

While that is true to a degree at least NV can put the Compute performance back into there next cards where AMD cards do not run PhysX at all, compute is not exclusive to a brand.

 

[Final8y]

Give it time for the auto switching comparisons to load.
http://blogs.amd.com/play/2012/07/03/dirt-showdown-amd-benchmark-guide/

And mid way down the Advantages.
http://blogs.amd.com/play/2012/06/20/dirt-showdown-on-gcn/

 

[Final8y]

im not sure where in all that it says that doing it traditionally is not possible. the only game ive played with compute functions limiting nv hardware so far is sleeping dogs. and i cant tell the difference between the Ati mode (ultra) and nv (v high)

Because its not about if its not possible the traditional way, its about which is the most efficient way.

 

[Final8y]

but its only the most efficient way for half of the market. similar to physx on amd cards. it can be done with the cpu, but gimps performance.

i dont agree with using compute because it gimps performance on nv hardware. and to balance, i dont agree with physx on ati because its gimped there too. on consideration

It gimps performance on NV at the moment because NV decided to gimp it this round.
And no its not the same as physx as for it to be the same Compute would have to be exclusive to AMD and the Compute functions would have to run on the CPU just like physx and then the gimp would be massive.

Also in regards to physx, NV will always have the advantage in those titles no matter what generation of AMD card.

 

[Final8y]

i bet if nv cards were good at compute this gen then amd wouldnt be pushing this area nearly as hard...

Showdown was started before this gens cards where even out and the rumoured NV card was meant to be a compute beast.

Dave Baumann AMD Rep

The direction of Showdown started long before anyone anyone knew Keplar would be relatively weak on the Compute side of things. There is nothing that was "designed" to hobble Keplar with Showdown, at least not from our part, not least because we simply didn't know what Keplar was or where it would be weak when Showdown work was being done.

DirectCompute is already being used by lots of titles and devs will adopt it more and more as new algorithms are developed using it. Likewise, when we initially demo'ed forward plus with Leo it garnered a lot of developer interested and experimentation because it is a rendering technique that has the efficiencies of Defferred Shading without some of the limitations.

If there is anything proprietary then it is proprietary to Codemasters, not to AMD. The Forward+ rendering mechanism is based on industry standard API code and any DX11 complaint GPU can operate it, and the source code of the Leo demo featuring it is available to anyone; as per the previous comment numberous devs have been playing around with it and variations thereof.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...0-ti-review-comment-thread-15.html#post655743

 

[Final8y]

AMD have only been putting direct compute heavily into their titles since they have seen performance is poor on nvidia 6XX. Its pretty obvious why. Let's not pretend there is any other reason.

I'm no nvidia fan and I think they have questionable morals/direction at the moment, but let's not pretend AMD are saints when it comes to levering an advantage.

AMD - Gimping Evolved
Nvidia - The Way Its Meant to be Gimped

But its one where NV can claw back unlike Physx.
There is not a single AMD Evolved title that NV could not claw back and there is nothing in AMD Evolved that is over the top like mega tessellated flat surfaces.
AMD has been weaker at tessellation for some time before the 7xxx and they still put it in there Evolved titles.

 

[Final8y]

The thing is nvidia went the direction they did for a reason. If the 6xx series had good compute performance, they would have run much hotter and probably wouldn't have hit 1100-1200mhz at stock, so gaming performance would have been poor.

When nvidia had the compute advantage, they were pimping compute. Now AMD have the compute advantage, they are pimping compute.

No one can tell me that compute based AA in sleeping dogs is worth the 10 degrees temperature increase. Its just been put on there so that any reviewer who benches sleeping dogs on Max settings shows a clear performance advantage for AMD. I don't blame them, you have to fight fire with fire.

I care more about the performance than the heat increase, i never turn settings down because of heat.

And if you look at my edited post things have been in motion for quite sometime.

Dave Baumann AMD Rep

The direction of Showdown started long before anyone anyone knew Keplar would be relatively weak on the Compute side of things. There is nothing that was "designed" to hobble Keplar with Showdown, at least not from our part, not least because we simply didn't know what Keplar was or where it would be weak when Showdown work was being done.

DirectCompute is already being used by lots of titles and devs will adopt it more and more as new algorithms are developed using it. Likewise, when we initially demo'ed forward plus with Leo it garnered a lot of developer interested and experimentation because it is a rendering technique that has the efficiencies of Defferred Shading without some of the limitations.

If there is anything proprietary then it is proprietary to Codemasters, not to AMD. The Forward+ rendering mechanism is based on industry standard API code and any DX11 complaint GPU can operate it, and the source code of the Leo demo featuring it is available to anyone; as per the previous comment numberous devs have been playing around with it and variations thereof.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...0-ti-review-comment-thread-15.html#post655743

 

[Final8y]

Certainly not, I'd much sooner use something like FXAA anyways.

I have started to play BF3 again and before i used to have 4xMSAA + Post AA on low, now i just have 4xMSAA as the blur got on my nerves and as we all know the AA in BF3 misses a lot of stuff but i would rather that than the blur.

 

[Final8y]

Medal of Honor Warfighter™

Tile-based Deferred Shading

Medal of Honor Warfighter™ uses the Frostbite 2 Tile-based Deferred Shading. This technique breaks up the screen into tiles and uses a DX11 compute shader to determine what lights are used in each of the tiles. By using a compute shader to cull the lights that are not used in a tile, lighting calculations can be done much faster, and more lights can be used overall in the scene.

Depth Bounds Test Extension

The depth bounds extension is used in Medal of Honor Warfighter™ when rendering the deferred lighting. It uses the depth bounds test which is part of the GCN architecture. This allows the game to specify a range of acceptable depth values, and anything outside this range is instantly rejected, saving the cost of a full depth compare.

http://blogs.amd.com/play/2012/10/24/moh-warfighter-amd-guide/2/

 

[Final8y]

Real men disable blurfest fxaa and use amd's morphological AA, not only is there almost no performance hit, it looks better.

I tried it and don't like that either.

 

[Final8y]

LOL

 

[Final8y]

I cried myself to sleep when AMD removed Wide Tent AA. Loved that in some games.

Left 4 Dead 2 being one of them.

Hated those AA modes.

 

[Final8y]

Now that the denial didn't happen lets get back to where we were as i have read plenty of threads about AMDs money/stock issues already.

 

[Final8y]

really? from what i see its slower than the 690. other than the usual amd games

also man its ugly!

Link.
http://translate.google.com/transla...astest-VGA-Card-2012,testberichte-241127.html

And thread.
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18454141