Gameworks, Mantle and a pot calling a kettle black

[Gregster]

AMD’s hysteria over Gameworks in Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs is first rank hypocrisy. Both Gameworks and Mantle are bad for consumers because they impede cross-compatibility.

This past week Nvidia and AMD have been at each other’s throats in the posts on Forbes over allegations that Nvidia’s Gameworks library is hindering the performance of Ubisoft’s new game Watch Dogs on AMD hardware.

AMD fired the first salvo on Monday in a piece by Jason Evangelho. Speaking to Evangelho, AMD’s Robert Hallock, one of the company’s technology evangelists for Radeon, called Gameworks a “clear and present threat to gamers” because it “deliberately [cripples] performance on AMD products to widen the margin in favor of Nvidia.”

Hallock further alleged — but did not provide definite proof — that participation in Gameworks bars developers from sharing their code with other hardware makers to optimize their drivers for the game.

“The code obfuscation makes it difficult to perform our own after-the-fact driver optimizations, as the characteristics of the game are hidden behind many layers of circuitous and non-obvious routines,” he said.

Hallock used TressFX as an example of AMD taking the moral high ground with code. The hair optimization library runs equally well on both Nvidia and AMD hardware, which benefits all he said.

Nvidia was quick to fire back and rebut Hallock’s claims.

Cem Cebenoyan, Nvidia’s Director of Engineering in its Developer Technology unit, downplayed some of AMD’s claims and outright denied others.

Cebenoyan said that while Nvidia will assist developers with certain parts of the game, namely optimizing effects and particle simulation, working with Nvidia does not preclude a developer from working with another company. Cebenoyan outright denied Hallock’s claim that developers will legally restricted from giving Nvidia’s GPU rivals access to the source code of Gameworks-optimized titles.

“I’ve heard that before from AMD and it’s a little mysterious to me. We don’t and we never have restricted anyone from getting access as part of our agreements,” he said. “Most developers don’t give you the source code. You don’t need source code of the game itself to do optimization for those games. AMD’s been saying for awhile that without access to the source code it’s impossible to optimize. That’s crazy.”

Direct X and OpenGL exist for a reason

Both AMD and Nvidia are known for their hyperbole and spin, so while Hallock and Cebenoyan both have legitimate points and grievances, the real truth lies somewhere down the middle.

But for every sin AMD accuses Nvidia of, AMD is almost as guilty of themselves to a certain extent. Take, for instance, Mantle. AMD’s proprietary API allows developers low-level access to AMD’s GCN silicon for a “console-like” (this has proven to mean a number of things during Mantle’s life thus far) development experience. Giving developers this intimate access means that developers could write more efficient code reducing the CPU overhead and providing a better gameplay experience for the end user. The few Mantle-optimized titles that have been released to date have shown performance bumps primarily on AMD APUs.

While nobody is accusing AMD of using Nvidia-like tactics and withholding code, effectively with Mantle AMD is taking a different approach to the optimization question. AMD is equally trying to galvanize the gaming industry into different camps, but is playing the offensive and painting this as a David and Goliath narrative with Nvidia.

A fair question to ask, is why exactly are Nvidia and AMD trying to create these vendor-specific silos? As a follow-up, why are developers playing along? After all, as demonstrated at the Game Developer Conference earlier this year, DirectX is set to close the low-level access access gap with Mantle and offer developers the same opportunities. The same can be sade for the new version of OpenGL.

The reason why game developers participate in Nvidia and AMD’s vendor-specific silos is for the monetary incentives. The video game industry lives off monetary incentives and corporate welfare. Declaring an allegiance to either the “Way its meant to be played” or “Gaming Evolved” camp and implementing the respective API unlocks development funds for the developer and commits that specific vendor to bulk buy serial keys for the specific game (e.g AMD’s Never Settle Forever bundles). Money talks, so what’s a dev to do?

Gameworks and Mantle are both understandable attempts for Nvidia and AMD to boost their respective market share by claiming that the top titles of the year will run the best on their hardware. But in the end this is a throwback to the dark, pre-API days. Direct X and OpenGL were created to ensure that programmers didn’t have the herculean task of programming their game to work on each specific piece of hardware (but back then the video card market was more crowded). A performance overhead hit would certainly occur, but this was a fair tradeoff for widespread compatibility. Nvidia and AMD are trying to undo this with their respective silos.

Nvidia and Ubisoft both ignored requests for comment on this story.

http://vr-zone.com/articles/gameworks-mantle-bad-gaming-industry/78152.html

 

[ICDP]

The yin of LTs yang

 

[Rusty0611]

The yin of LTs yang

Good article Greg thanks for sharing. It's good to read the other side of the debate which doesn't get posted much as a thread.

 

[LtMatt]

The yin of LTs yang

Indeed.

He's comparing them (Mantle+GameWorks) but then admitting that actually they have one massive difference.

While nobody is accusing AMD of using Nvidia-like tactics and withholding code

And therein lies the problem. Mantle has no negative effect on Nvidia performance, but GameWorks does has a negative effect (by the way of lower fps) on AMD performance.

 

[Rusty0611]

That's tangential to the point he's making in his article though.

But as an aside, in Watch Dogs GameWorks doesn't do anything to AMDs performance.

 

[LtMatt]

That's tangential to the point he's making in his article though.

But as an aside, in Watch Dogs GameWorks doesn't do anything to AMDs performance.

In my opinion at least his point (which is a fair one) loses a lot of it's backbone when you have to admit that actually theres a pretty big difference in the end outcome.

 

[Gregster]

Indeed.

He's comparing them (Mantle+GameWorks) but then admitting that actually they have one massive difference.

And therein lies the problem. Mantle has no negative effect on Nvidia performance, but GameWorks does has a negative effect (by the way of lower fps) on AMD performance.

I thought this was a good article showing how they are both as bad as each other but even I managed to miss that bit (or it didn't sink in) and fair play to you Matt, you managed to miss the whole point of the article and drag AMD to new and God like heights

 

[Rusty0611]

In my opinion at least his point (which is a fair one) loses a lot of it's backbone when you have to admit that actually theres a pretty big difference in the end outcome.

its* backbone

You're getting bogged down in the low level detail. Process it as a whole - this angle it isn't about that side of things.

I don't agree with certain points of what he says either but as a whole it comes down to securing an advantage and attempting to split the market in ones favour. AMD aren't being altruistic in their pursuit and development of Mantle and nor should they be.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

its* backbone

You're getting bogged down in the semantics of the low level detail. Process his views as a whole - it isn't about that.

The problem is Mantle is more a tool for AMD to make its CPUs look more competitive in games,then anything else. Hence all the 2GHZ FX8350 and Core i7 4770 bumpf they were talking about last year.

Nvidia themselves already started threading their DX11 drivers better,meaning they actually tend to performance relatively better on AMD CPUs than AMD's own cards!

Which is kind of ironic.

 

[Gregster]

it's* backbone

You're getting bogged down in the semantics of the low level detail. Process his views as a whole - it isn't about that.

 

[Rusty0611]

No it's definitely its . Matt loves it when I get him on his grammar.

 

[Boomstick777]

Eeeew more fud to stir up the fanboys. These articles suuuuck.

Both are as bad as each other. Nvidia literally pay people to make games run better on their hardware with proprietary features for Nvidia hardware, while gimping performance on AMD hardware. We all know they do this. They act like, no moi? We are saints, and we love PC gaming.. Hmm..

AMD are no better, they win the console contracts and use this as a way of saying all games will run better on their hardware, as they are optimized towards console AMD hardware. Along with Mantle which is blatantly proprietary in the sense it will only work on GCN hardware which yep you guessed it is AMD based. Somehow they claim Mantle is 'open' for all, but it only runs on GCN..


Hmm enough of this gash

I wish Intel could bring out something decent I would jump to that to escape all the fanboy lameness..

 

[LtMatt]

I thought this was a good article showing how they are both as bad as each other but even I managed to miss that bit (or it didn't sink in) and fair play to you Matt, you managed to miss the whole point of the article and drag AMD to new and God like heights

Whilst there may be similarities in what they set out to do, the end result is markedly different that actually its quite hard to compare them when you look at the bigger picture. It stood out to me because you have Nvidia's partner Epic (Unreal Engine 4) giving an interview to Joel on the record saying that access to source code (which Nvidia hide) is often vital and mandatory.

Do developers need access to middleware (GameWorks) source code?

AMD: GameWorks greatly restricts developer access to source code (or did). This is an enormous problem.

Nvidia: Developers can now license the right to see source code on GameWorks libraries in a standardized fashion (before March this was apparently handled on a case-by-case basis).

Developers say: Source code access is often vital.

The various developers we interviewed indicated that source code access for middleware was extremely important if not mandatory. Middleware, it turns out, is often buggy or requires significant additional changes to perform as desired. Without access to the underlying code, developers are stuck either trying to convince the middleware owner to fix it or hacking out workarounds in their own implementation.

Remember what AMD had to say on the matter? How everyone thought it was rubbish. Well Epic just confirmed that as true. The same Epic that have GameWorks Physx integrated into Unreal Engine 4.

“The code obfuscation makes it difficult to perform our own after-the-fact driver optimizations, as the characteristics of the game are hidden behind many layers of circuitous and non-obvious routines,”

Anyway its a nice article and i enjoyed reading it. That's just my take on things looking at the bigger picture. One harms rival performance, the other does not. Do they both set out to improve the gaming experience for their own side? Yes.

 

[Gregster]

No it's definitely its . Matt loves it when I get him on his grammar.

Ahhh ok, I learn something new everyday

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I wish Intel could bring out something decent I would jump to that to escape all the fanboy lameness..

Don't worry Intel has started sponsoring games like GRID2 and Rome2.

Sadly,they might not be much better.

We have a pre-release version of GRID 2 to test, and it's because Intel has been working closely with Codemasters to optimize this game for Iris Pro graphics. GRID 2 comes out of the box with some distinctive visual effects, such as order-independent transparency, made possible via special hooks in the Intel IGP hardware. We didn't test performance with those effects enabled, since they wouldn't work on other brands of GPUs, but it's a sign of change when Intel is putting in this sort of work with game developers. We did enable the "CMAA" antialiasing mode, which looks to be a post-process antialiasing method a la MLAA or FXAA. Intel tells us it co-developed CMAA with Codemasters, and this feature works on Radeons as well as on Iris.

 

[~Mike~]

 

[Boomstick777]

Don't worry Intel has started sponsoring games like GRID2 and Rome2.

Sadly,they might not be much better.

Haha, yeah you're probably right.. The fanboy stuff is what ruins PC gaming imho. It's just so laaame. Who cares what brand it is. I like the hardware from both camps, happily use all of it. All this fanboy cringe stuff makes me ashamed to be into PC stuff

I now will abandon thread lol. Cool gif btw.

 

[LtMatt]

That's my gif!

 

[Gregster]

Whilst there may be similarities in what they set out to do, the end result is markedly different that actually its quite hard to compare them when you look at the bigger picture. It stood out to me because you have Nvidia's partner Epic (Unreal Engine 4) giving an interview to Joel on the record saying that access to source code (which Nvidia hide) is often vital and mandatory.

Remember what AMD had to say on the matter? How everyone thought it was rubbish. Well Epic just confirmed that as true. The same Epic that have GameWorks Physx integrated into Unreal Engine 4.

I think you have posted in the wrong thread and should have posted that in the GameWorks (any of them) threads. This is about how both AMD and nVidia are out to get an advantage and both swinging handbags at dawn whilst neither is a saint.

I agree with the guy and reiterates things I have said in the many GameWorks threads.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

Anyway its a nice article and i enjoyed reading it. That's just my take on things looking at the bigger picture. One harms rival performance, the other does not. Do they both set out to improve the gaming experience for their own side? Yes.

Oh, has this been proved now?