AMD warns of tesselation pitfalls

Final8y · 2 Dec 2010 at 17:52

Rroff said:
To be fair the 6xxx GPUs are the first proper effort from AMD rather than ATI and no one can really fault the hardware - tessellation performance aside - and their next gen i looking pretty strong too so if they put the same effort in software side they may turn things around in my estimation.

The facts are that ATi have been doing well since the 4xxxx & its obvious that they been putting the effort in parts that really matter & the market share shows it.

So people can laugh about the things that ATI don't do as well at but the majority don't care for those things as much as those things are not as important at this time.

Phoenixdancer · 2 Dec 2010 at 18:04

Considering amd/ati cards can do much more stuff that nvidia can't i dont care

Turambar · 2 Dec 2010 at 18:31

Developers heeding this advice would benefit Nvidia just as much AMD.

Final8y · 2 Dec 2010 at 18:32

Turambar said:
Developers heeding this advice would benefit Nvidia just as much AMD.

Exactly!.

^Andy^ · 2 Dec 2010 at 18:38

Maybe it's just me but I see nothing wrong with AMD's comments. I read it as AMD asking/warning developers not to alienate mid end card owners.

If you code a game so it runs poorly on mid end cards without the gamer having to reduce the detail levels until it looks like ****e then you 'could' end up in a situation where developers just won't bother using tesellation at all or will simply add it as an after thought.

I would imagine that games developers do actually wan't to sell their games to more than just enthusiasts after all.

If it's a good feature then surely it's worth getting it done right and getting it working on as many cards as possible (both mid and top end - even entry level if possible) because you need consumer buy in - without consumer buy in then it runs the risk of becoming a pointless feature.

Oooh hey look tesselation - luckily the games only running at 2fps now so I get to admire the extra detail for so much longer <g>

Stanners · 2 Dec 2010 at 18:42

Lets all just buy consoles

I want developers to push the boundary, those with mid low end cards have the option of turning things down.

^Andy^ · 2 Dec 2010 at 18:45

Stanners said:
Lets all just buy consoles

Similar problem already exists there and is a good example actually - you often see PS3 owners moaning because the XBox360 is holding them back due to games devs coding for the lowest common denominator and not writing a completely seperate version to utilise any additional features of the PS3.

Stanners · 2 Dec 2010 at 18:46

^Andy^ said:
Similar problem already exists there and is a good example actually - you often see PS3 owners moaning because the XBox360 is holding them back due to games devs coding for the lowest common denominator and not writing a completely seperate version to utilise any additional features of the PS3.

SSsshhhhh, you will bring the console brigade with that kind of talk

Final8y · 2 Dec 2010 at 18:51

Stanners said:
Lets all just buy consoles

I want developers to push the boundary, those with mid low end cards have the option of turning things down.

I'm all for having the option to turn things down but to often its on or off or even the low option is still to much because of bad optimization & in the end means turning it off..

^Andy^ · 2 Dec 2010 at 18:55

Here's a rather crap and poorly thought out line of thought for you...

American cars need a 6 litre engine to produce 400bhp..

Rest of the world can squeeze the same number of horses out of 2 to 3 litre engines

queamin · 2 Dec 2010 at 18:56

Originally Posted by Rroff
To be fair the 6xxx GPUs are the first proper effort from AMD rather than ATI and no one can really fault the hardware - tessellation performance aside - and their next gen i looking pretty strong too so if they put the same effort in software side they may turn things around in my estimation.

Final8y said:
The facts are that ATi have been doing well since the 4xxxx & its obvious that they been putting the effort in parts that really matter & the market share shows it.

So people can laugh about the things that ATI don't do as well at but the majority don't care for those things as much as those things are not as important at this time.

Don't bite, end of the day if they were that bad, Nvidia wouldn't have sent out 460's over clocked to 850 to go up against the review's of stock 6870 and to be honest I don't blame nvidia, I blame the websites for folding under nvidia

^Andy^ · 2 Dec 2010 at 18:57

Stanners said:
SSsshhhhh, you will bring the console brigade with that kind of talk

Oops, My bad!

Rroff · 2 Dec 2010 at 18:58

^Andy^ said:
Here's a rather crap and poorly thought out line of thought for you...

American cars need a 6 litre engine to produce 400bhp..

Rest of the world can squeeze the same number of horses out of 2 to 3 litre engines

Unfortunatly its not that simple.

The problem is tessellation can be used in a lot of different ways too. i.e. you might use a very small number of very high resolution instances to simulate water for instance while not using it scene wide - which could potentially cause issues with the way AMD is advocating.

At the end of the day it is almost purely a political move by AMD... tho its not without some technical merit but in reality they are more interested in deflecting attention from their deficiencies.

^Andy^ · 2 Dec 2010 at 19:08

Rroff said:
Unfortunatly its not that simple.

The problem is tessellation can be used in a lot of different ways too. i.e. you might use a very small number of very high resolution instances to simulate water for instance while not using it scene wide - which could potentially cause issues with the way AMD is advocating.

At the end of the day it is almost purely a political move by AMD... tho its not without some technical merit but in reality they are more interested in deflecting attention from their deficiencies.

I guess I should say right now that I don't really understand what tessellation is. I've seen some demo's but to be totally honest with you I can't see what the heck they are trying to show me that I havn't seen done before. Ok water may look nice, but it looks just as nice in dx10 (to me at least) and without a massive performance hit :mad:

MoodyB · 2 Dec 2010 at 20:40

^Andy^ said:
I guess I should say right now that I don't really understand what tessellation is

http://www.nvidia.com/object/tessellation.html

Rroff · 2 Dec 2010 at 20:50

I'm not a great fan of tessellation myself - moderns PCs aren't challenged on storeage space, system bus speed, GPU memory and tris throughput to such a degree that it prohibits using original high quality well designed assets producing superior and more pleasing results than tessellation which tends to look a bit "upscaled". Theres a place for tessellation tho i.e. it can be used quite effectively on terrain.

Alpherah · 3 Dec 2010 at 09:39

Final8y said:
Seems you don't understand what AMD is talking about at all as you don't need any other competing product at all for the comments that AMD have made to be still totally valid.

Efficient use of is a valid goal & the reason why AMD's market share has gained because AMD has applied Efficient use of to as many things as its capable of.

If AMD GPU was the same size & cost to make as the NV GPU & performed less then yeah kudos to NV for being better.

I think you miss-understood what i was saying

I realise what AMD are saying will be valid even without competing products.
All im saying is, this forum slates AMD and praises Nvidia and their TWIMTBP line, because they speak to Developers to make sure it runs as well as it should.
But when AMD do the same, even if its for the good of both card owners, its all because AMD are fail etc etc.

Double standards.

Stanners · 3 Dec 2010 at 10:17

Alpherah said:
I think you miss-understood what i was saying
I realise what AMD are saying will be valid even without competing products.
All im saying is, this forum slates AMD and praises Nvidia and their TWIMTBP line, because they speak to Developers to make sure it runs as well as it should.
But when AMD do the same, even if its for the good of both card owners, its all because AMD are fail etc etc.

Double standards.

Nvidia do a bit more than just speak to developers(All for there own gains of course)

MooMoo444 · 3 Dec 2010 at 10:20

If there is no visible benefit to super-extreme-awesomo tesselation, then AMD have a point. Just because nvidia cards seem stronger at it, doesn't really need all the 480 and 580 owners coming forward and lol'ing at AMD.

:rolleyes:

AWPC · 3 Dec 2010 at 10:29

Alpherah said:
I think you miss-understood what i was saying
I realise what AMD are saying will be valid even without competing products.
All im saying is, this forum slates AMD and praises Nvidia and their TWIMTBP line, because they speak to Developers to make sure it runs as well as it should.
But when AMD do the same, even if its for the good of both card owners, its all because AMD are fail etc etc.

Double standards.

Nvidia do a lot more than speak to developers they assist in the actual game development & have 250 software engineers who optimise the game to run well on Nvidia hardware. According to Nvidia this costs them over $10M per year so its their contribution to PC Gaming.
Thats why typically Nvidia cards have less problems than ATI with PC games & graphics drivers as Nvidia for many years have put a lot of time/money/effort into this as they understand their cards are not much use without decent PC games to play on them

ATI make great hardware but their drivers have always been an issue as they simply do not put the resource into PC gaming like Nvidia do :rolleyes: