AMD to demo GPU physics at GDC next week

[londonbairn]

Like when they were pushing 3dc at the expense of things like SM2? (we could have had games like bioshock upto 2 years earlier).

And the myriad of little things that would be meaningless to people like lacking support for basic texture formats like certain 24+8 formats that were needed for the development of several games (including even more recently ETQW) and instead pushing things like temporal anti-aliasing, resulting in game developers having to cut features that would have enhanced the game considerably.

Or ATI pushing truform at the expense of many other features and then when some developers did adopt truform ATI dropped the support they needed leaving them high and dry.


I'm sure we could pull some bad things nVidia have done too... but they atleast have TWIMTBP program and actively support developers to get features they need into the drivers (look how many times nvidia have a beta driver out a couple of weeks before or at the latest the same day a game goes retail with specific support updates for that game and ATI you have to wait for a hotfix upto 2 weeks after launch).

Do you really think Nvidia have the TWIMTBP program to support developers? They have it to drive demand for their products by consumers, it's a marketing program foremost and a way to get advantage over other GPU manufacturers by obviously sweetening such deals.

In many other industries, it would be construed as anti-competitive practice, if you really think they do it because they actually care about pushing development primarily then you're either brainwashed by the marketing or you're just green tinted.

Nvidia are really pushing all these features that most people do not need at the moment because they're not as price competitive as you think they are. The very fact yous ee people going out to buy a Nvidia GPU just for PhysX is a symbol of the marketing power they have, it's a feature not used by any game worth mentioning.

The main thing ATi really lack is a marketing presence and as a result it's allowed people to create a stereotype of ATi and Nvidia which is quite far from reality, look at all the people who post crap here about ATi having poor driver support and what not, funny how many people don't have any problems.

 

[uv]

but they atleast have TWIMTBP program and actively support developers

so this link means nothing?

http://developer.amd.com/GPU/Pages/default.aspx

ATI provide developers with sample code, gpu tools, libraries, documentation and whitepapers, and even offer support and training:

http://developer.amd.com/support/Pages/default.aspx

The 'developement hinderence' examples you gave are from three and five card generations ago. Comparing drivers, certain linux distributions don't even have 3d hardware acceleration, due to nVidias lack of driver documentation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia#Documentation_and_drivers

_____________________

Now I'm not trying to say ATI are better - indeed, I have both an ATI and an nVidia card in my current machine - but refering back to the actual thread topic, how can hardware acceleration on ATI cards be viewed as anything but good for the end consumer?

 

[Rroff]

so this link means nothing?

http://developer.amd.com/GPU/Pages/default.aspx

ATI provide developers with sample code, gpu tools, libraries, documentation and whitepapers, and even offer support and training:

http://developer.amd.com/support/Pages/default.aspx

Don't take my word for it... ask a few game developers if ATI's support is worth anything?

The 'developement hinderence' examples you gave are from three and five card generations ago.

Sure but thats their track record and its not changed anything much recently, maybe AMD's aquisition will help change this... thats what I've been talking about in this and other threads...

Comparing drivers, certain linux distributions don't even have 3d hardware acceleration, due to nVidias lack of driver documentation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia#Documentation_and_drivers

And since when has linux been a driving force in the consumer end of gaming?

I'm not saying ATI have held back progress overall in graphic card technology and so on, I'm saying very specifically they've done more to retard rather than further the progress of game development specifically in many ways although I'm not denying they had a huge hand in bringing accelerated 3d graphics to the masses.

 

[Rroff]

Do you really think Nvidia have the TWIMTBP program to support developers? They have it to drive demand for their products by consumers, it's a marketing program foremost and a way to get advantage over other GPU manufacturers by obviously sweetening such deals.

In many other industries, it would be construed as anti-competitive practice, if you really think they do it because they actually care about pushing development primarily then you're either brainwashed by the marketing or you're just green tinted.

Nvidia are really pushing all these features that most people do not need at the moment because they're not as price competitive as you think they are. The very fact yous ee people going out to buy a Nvidia GPU just for PhysX is a symbol of the marketing power they have, it's a feature not used by any game worth mentioning.

The main thing ATi really lack is a marketing presence and as a result it's allowed people to create a stereotype of ATi and Nvidia which is quite far from reality, look at all the people who post crap here about ATi having poor driver support and what not, funny how many people don't have any problems.

Sure I'm not totally niave... but they still do a lot more to further game development even with their own agenda...

 

[londonbairn]

Sure I'm not totally niave... but they still do a lot more to further game development even with their own agenda...

But not all of these "backed" games are amazing experiences, I mean Mirror's Edge a PhysX "big title" is hardly a great game, and Crysotasis is an average shooter at best (my opinion). Any other of these Nvidia backed games run fine on my PC, looks as good or in most cases better than when I had a 8800GTS.

The only games which really have had an impact in physics is Crysis & Half Life 2 let's face it, and PhysX really needs a title like that to push it, otherwise all it is, is unneeded effects at the moment.

All this is going to breed is opinion that ATi should be avoided if you want optimum gaming experience, which is not representative of reality. You mentioned earlier that it results in ATi needing to produce hotfixes, the only time I have ever had problems was with 4850CF, and in fact I spent ages blaming ATi where the problem was my overclock settings were not as stable as I thought they were.

What is your agenda? I am guessing you are a developer and I'm also guessing that you develop for a company which has some of Nvidia's money involved. I understand there are many things "in theory" that can be implemented, but I am afraid I feel your theories would mean a single GPU vendor in the industry.

 

[mmj_uk]

So is ATI Havoc support a long term solution or are AMD just using their acquisition of ATI to try and kill off Physx to bring about a CPU based solution?

Lets face it there was no way Havoc running on a current day CPU could compete with Physx running on an NVidia GPU, my guess is that this is just a temporary solution until CPU's are able to perform physics better at which time they'll possibly make Havoc exclusively CPU based?

This is basically the CPU manufacturers versus NVidia, I just hope the best solution wins based on its merits as a physics technology rather than backroom tactics and alliances.

 

[Lightnix]

Well surely if it gets to the point wherein CPUs can handle physics as well as a GPU (which may become a reality in 5-7 years, with Intel going to beef up the SIMD processing capabilities of its CPUs with AVX extensions, and just increasing the amount of cores per die) it doesn't really matter much anyway because everyone has a CPU anyway? At least it doesn't really affect the end consumer, at any rate.

This is in contrast to the whole PhysX thing, where only owners of Nvidia GPUs can run their heavier applications.

 

[londonbairn]

So is ATI Havoc support a long term solution or are AMD just using their acquisition of ATI to try and kill off Physx to bring about a CPU based solution?

Lets face it there was no way Havoc running on a current day CPU could compete with Physx running on an NVidia GPU, my guess is that this is just a temporary solution until CPU's are able to perform physics better at which time they'll possibly make Havoc exclusively CPU based?

This is basically the CPU manufacturers versus NVidia, I just hope the best solution wins based on its merits as a physics technology rather than backroom tactics and alliances.

PhysX needs to show it frankly if PhysX spits out some brilliant looking games and most importantly play great, then I'll agree.

There have been many things which are great in theory but never properly took off, PhysX has had a while now and has not quite shown much that makes it a must have let's be honest....

Let's be straight also - if PhysX was killer, then I would absolutely not hesitate to quicken my move to X58 and try SLi with PhysX.

 

[layte]

So is ATI Havoc support a long term solution or are AMD just using their acquisition of ATI to try and kill off Physx to bring about a CPU based solution?

Lets face it there was no way Havoc running on a current day CPU could compete with Physx running on an NVidia GPU, my guess is that this is just a temporary solution until CPU's are able to perform physics better at which time they'll possibly make Havoc exclusively CPU based?

This is basically the CPU manufacturers versus NVidia, I just hope the best solution wins based on its merits as a physics technology rather than backroom tactics and alliances.

Havok is an Intel technology which is seemingly being ported to the industry adopted OpenCL standard which means that a multitude of devices will be able to offer hardware acceleration, including those from both ATI and Nvidia.
http://www.khronos.org/opencl/

 

[Rroff]

PhysX has had a while now and has not quite shown much that makes it a must have let's be honest....

Only because no ones going to put time and effort developing for something thats only supported by a moderate slice of the market... which is where my entire arguement about ATI holding back progress stems from.

2 Years down the line or so we'll start to see games coming out where people will sit up and notice the physics... we'll see people acting as if its a massive revolution... this could be happening now.

 

[drunkenmaster]

If we can keep ATI out of the loop and have havok running on openCL then I'd be a little happier, they have a bad tendancy to push stuff thats all style over substance at the expense of what really needed for game development and then not even support that feature down the line anyhow...

Personally tho I find physx better for gaming purposes it feel more fluid than havok, specially in multiplayer where objects tend to bounce off you more without impeding your progress whereas with havok you tend to stick on them i.e. the barrels in CSS.

so you're having a go at ATI for some unknown reason, and having a go at Havok because CSS is a REALLY old game now and has worse physics than newer games, but you've completely unsurprisingly decided to make it about havok's incapabilities vs Physx, rather than mention that CSS is ridiculously old and every game in the past year or two is FAR ahead of CSS still using Havok, simply because they are newer games.

If you want to honestly know, this is why people don't take you or the other physx fanboy seriously. CSS has less good physics because its an old, simple, not huge, pretty basic game and thats all there is to it, trying to insinuate ANY other conclusion based on how much better physx is, is just in all honesty, pathetic.

The more and more the rumour mill gets going, the more sense a lot of it makes and the worse it looks for physx(when it already looked close to death) and even pretty bad for Nvidia.

As in rumours of Intel barging in on the PS4 with larabee, havok hardware/software support on all next gen consoles and no sign of physx in any cross platform games. Nvidia's possible exit from consoles or the possibility in my eyes that there seemingly desparate attempt to maek a x86 based cpu after spending the past 2 years saying CPU's are crap, its all about gpu's, could be an attempt for them to push out a consoles of their own.

 

[layte]

2 Years down the line or so we'll start to see games coming out where people will sit up and notice the physics... we'll see people acting as if its a massive revolution... this could be happening now.

I am sure once an open standard is with us we will indeed see a jump in the use of physics in gaming. Personally I would rather wait for such a thing to take root than jump into bed with the first proprietary standard that happens along.

You tirelessly beat the drum about ATI holding things back, yet if they listend to short sighted arguments like yours the industry would be under the control of a single company pushing their closed technologies onto us all at a price that suits them. The blame could be equally placed at the doorstep of NV. They are attempting to push a closed API which they control and only runs on their hardware as some kind of standard, and short sighted individuals such as yourself lap it up. It looks like Intel and AMD are about to blow that strategy out of the water, what is their not to cheer? Jumping on the first thing that happens along is not always for the best. Do you honestly feel that NV having a strangle hold on the industry with PhysX would be better than Havok working on any OpenCL supported hardware? I mean really, honestly feel that?

This is similar to the early days of accelerated 3D on the PC. We had trailblazers like 3dFX and PowerVR, unfortunately they each had their own closed API's, look what happened when Microsoft came along with DirectX which offered an open standard for hardware and software vendors... We are all the better for it.

As for physics and the PS3, go take a look at Motorstorm2. Amazing physics effects and no sticky barrels in sight.

 

[londonbairn]

I was going to say that Havok's been around for a bit and doing pretty well, but the above 2 posts put it better than I was going to.

 

[Lightnix]

Drunkenmaster and Layte, very good posts.

Rroff, if you would, imagine with me:

The GTX280 and GTX260 are launched, £400 and £320 respectively. The next fortnight, RV770 comes along, only in this reality, the 4870 is a competitor to the 8800 GT, and the 4850 is barely any faster than the 8800 GS. Nvidia keeps its prices where they are, and never introduces the GTX260-216, the consumer is left in the dark, but Nvidia fans are happy because their company is doing so well - they don't care, because they don't know any better - i.e. what really happened.

Now, let's change that up a little, GPU assisted PhysX (wherein it's used enough to make CPUs crawl) gains wide adoption, this GPU independent accelerated Havok thing falls through the floor. ATi cards are near useless at using these physics effects, so their marketshare plummets (boy, you do like reading that, huh?) GT300 comes out, and is a bit faster than GT200, costs £300 for the high end model. Not too bad. Next generation, GT400, it's not even much faster than GT300, but apparently has some new feature that all new PhysX games will need, costs £450 on launch, prices stay where they are until GT500.

This is why we need a cross-vendor solution. I DO NOT want to be forced into buying low end cards for silly money just because everyone dived on the guy who 'did it first', hardware accelerated physics wise. It is not good for the market, it is not good for technology. The market would stagnate, and PC gaming would go nowhere, very fast.

 

[Rroff]

The CSS thing was just an EXAMPLE something people around here seem to have no concept of...

I would NOT like to see ATI out the game that would be extremely silly...

Again many times I've expounded the virtues of having an open hardware accelerated physics system...

This got very boring when people started putting words in my mouth and imagining I'd stated something to fit their own agenda against me...