Ian McNaughton goes out against The Way it's Meant to be Played

[D13]

Regarding need for speed and resident evil 5, it really doesnt mention how nvidia is involved.

Need for Speed: Shift
In another TWIMTBP title, we submitted a list of issues that we discovered during the games’ development. These issues include inefficiencies in how the game engine worked with our hardware in addition to real bugs, etc.. We have sent this list to the developer for review. .

Unfortunately you will be unable to get a fair playing experience with our hardware until the developer releases a patch to address and fix our reported issues.

Resident Evil 5
AMD was unable to receive builds of this game early enough to get a chance to test and address any open issues.

What does this have to do with nvidia?
If anything it just highlights ati seemingly poor relationshipd with developers

 

[Rroff]

Regarding need for speed and resident evil 5, it really doesnt mention how nvidia is involved.

Need for Speed: Shift
In another TWIMTBP title, we submitted a list of issues that we discovered during the games’ development. These issues include inefficiencies in how the game engine worked with our hardware in addition to real bugs, etc.. We have sent this list to the developer for review. .

Unfortunately you will be unable to get a fair playing experience with our hardware until the developer releases a patch to address and fix our reported issues.

Resident Evil 5
AMD was unable to receive builds of this game early enough to get a chance to test and address any open issues.

What does this have to do with nvidia?
If anything it just highlights ati seemingly poor relationshipd with developers

I can't confirm it as truth but from what I've heard, and I do have some good contacts in the game development world, the deal with Shift is as much six to one as half a dozen to the other... ATI ignored requests for fixing some standard functionality needed with shift while demanding certain changes were made to the engine.

RE5 they've just thrown in as extra ammo on the fire... as it doesn't really have any relevance unless they find a problem... which kinda discredits what they say before as its obviously not an objective report.

 

[D13]

I can't confirm it as truth but from what I've heard, and I do have some good contacts in the game development world, the deal with Shift is as much six to one as half a dozen to the other... ATI ignored requests for fixing some standard functionality needed with shift while demanding certain changes were made to the engine.

RE5 they've just thrown in as extra ammo on the fire... as it doesn't really have any relevance unless they find a problem... which kinda discredits what they say before as its obviously not an objective report.

There is an un-usually strong level of criticism for nvidia supposed business practices, I would be very curious to know if these critics are amd or intel users....

 

[Ritsugamesh]

When I built my first pc not that long ago I was almost completely ignorant to the differences between the two companies gpu's and opted for a 4890 out of value and nothing else.

With the events that appear to be occurring I can safely say I stepped into the ATi camp for my graphics card and will continue to do so with future purchases.

In response to ATi's driver support: I would argue that their driver support is top notch, receiving new drivers every month with fixes, improvements and new features is pretty awesome.

 

[Rroff]

When I built my first pc not that long ago I was almost completely ignorant to the differences between the two companies gpu's and opted for a 4890 out of value and nothing else.

With the events that appear to be occurring I can safely say I stepped into the ATi camp for my graphics card and will continue to do so with future purchases.

In response to ATi's driver support: I would argue that their driver support is top notch, receiving new drivers every month with fixes, improvements and new features is pretty awesome.

Its been quite a role reversal lately

nVidias 185.xx and 190.xx drivers have been appalling, and as much as I hate to say it most of the 9.xx ATI drivers have been relatively superb.

I just hope 191.xx WHQL are a return to form... coz dodgy drivers will uh drive me away faster than anything else.

 

[Clairvoyant]

Nvidia has done the same thing with PhysX in Windows 7. If you have an ATI card you can not use an nvidia card for PhysX.

No wonder nvidia cards are so expensive, bunging millions to developers.

And if ATI did the same and invested in the game developers, their cards would go up in rice I bet.

Nvidias tactics stink.

 

[D13]

Nvidia has done the same thing with PhysX in Windows 7. If you have an ATI card you can not use an nvidia card for PhysX.

No wonder nvidia cards are so expensive, bunging millions to developers.

And if ATI did the same and invested in the game developers, their cards would go up in rice I bet.

Nvidias tactics stink.

yet you are sitting there with a q9550? You attack nvidia but you are ok with intel ?

 

[D D Danneh]

yet you are sitting there with a q9550? You attack nvidia but you are ok with intel ?

I don't agree with Intel's tactics, but I still bought an i7. Their underhandedness did nothing to affect me anyway, it only shafted the people who buy pre-built PC's from the large vendors. In fact, it may have helped me. By restricting the market to intel's CPU's only, AMD would be forced to lower prices to compete, and Intel would retaliate, meaning it could be BETTER for us who build.

I also don't agree with nvidia's strategy, but I still bought an nvidia card. Although to be honest, if BFG did ATI cards, I'd have bought a 4870.

 

[Final8y]

The only people who really lose out by all this are the consumers.

 

[no_1_dave]

1) Some games are optimised TWIMTBP but others are optimised for ATI (remember valve games etc, HL2 was free with all ATI cards, everyone knew it would be better on ATI even before release).
This argument has happened many times aimed at both companies, over many years.

2) Its not like Intel & AMD with what they did. Intel threatened to not allow large PC retailers to sell Intel CPUs if they stocked or used AMD CPU's. Big difference.
Nvidia have not called manufacture's and threatened that they can not sell Nvidia chipsets etc if they also stock AMD graphic cards have they?

The bottom line is, both companies have done it to each other, its nothing new & no one cares!

 

[D D Danneh]

1) Some games are optimised TWIMTBP but others are optimised for ATI (remember valve games etc, HL2 was free with all ATI cards, everyone knew it would be better on ATI even before release).
This argument has happened many times aimed at both companies, over many years.

True, true, some games are optimized for ATI cards, but I haven't seen anything where ATI have paid developers to drop PhysX support, or to disable in-game AA for nvidia cards. There's a difference between including features to boost the performance of your own product, and removing your competition's features to reduce their performance. It's counter productive and serves only to line their own pockets. Fair enough, they're a business, the whole point is to make money, but I do wish they could do it a less underhanded way.

 

[mmj_uk]

The real problem here lies in the fact that AMD aren't working with games developers during the development phase, but rather waiting for games to be released and then crying when things are broken and new drivers/game patches are required.

If Nvidia's TWIMTBP programme is actively stopping developers from liasing with AMD and/or gimping ATI cards on purpose then they need a good slapping, but I can't see games developers purposely wanting their game to run badly on a particular brand of card.

 

[Rroff]

It doesn't really make sense from a game developers POV to lock out a good proportion of your market... and I really can't see nVidia paying them enough to make it worthwhile... they'd be channeling every penny of profit off their cards straight back to the studios.

 

[hyperst]

It doesn't really make sense from a game developers POV to lock out a good proportion of your market... and I really can't see nVidia paying them enough to make it worthwhile... they'd be channeling every penny of profit off their cards straight back to the studios.

i dont know about every penny, come on how much do the Graphics cards really cost them to make , no moving parts exept a fan, the rest,,, well aload of capacitors and stuff, im guessing £40 tops

 

[mmj_uk]

Well it could just be that these developers feel the NVidia seal of approval is good enough for release and they don't want the added hassle/delay of working with ATI (AMD) to iron out their bugs too.

NVidia certainly aren't going to go out of their way to test the games on ATI hardware/drivers.

 

[hyperst]

i suppose its a bit like everything else in the end, tape to cd, vhs to dvd, hd to blueray, theres eventually a winner, it just seems ati to nvidia seems to be taking an age

 

[Rroff]

i dont know about every penny, come on how much do the Graphics cards really cost them to make , no moving parts exept a fan, the rest,,, well aload of capacitors and stuff, im guessing £40 tops

Maybe exagerating slightly - but it would significantly cut into nVidia's profits... which they can ill afford atm... a good tripple A title can cash in $100 million easy - nvidia couldn't compensate many studios at even a reasonable percentage of that without hurting a lot.

 

[Pendu]

Would just like to get in my 2 pence,

What is the point in having directx if the developers are having to "validate" their games with certain hardware.

The validation has already taken place when Ati built their GPU to the directx specifications.

I can understand that the developer might have wanted to customise it abit, but then why not leave the directx path to work with the ATi gpu and have the customised path work with the Nvidia gpu. Why did you lock out application controlled AA completely with Ati.

 

[Lightnix]

i dont know about every penny, come on how much do the Graphics cards really cost them to make , no moving parts exept a fan, the rest,,, well aload of capacitors and stuff, im guessing £40 tops

I think in terms of the basic component costs for a high end card you might be right, but the actual cost of the card will be higher than that because a lot is outsourced to third party companies like TSMC, hynix, samsung, etc., who are also looking to make a profit.

 

[Rroff]

Would just like to get in my 2 pence,

What is the point in having directx if the developers are having to "validate" their games with certain hardware.

The validation has already taken place when Ati built their GPU to the directx specifications.

I can understand that the developer might have wanted to customise it abit, but then why not leave the directx path to work with the ATi gpu and have the customised path work with the Nvidia gpu. Why did you lock out application controlled AA completely with Ati.

As far as physx goes, thats a step before the rendering stage and nothing directly related to DX...

As for the ingame AA - if its a custom form of multisampling then while it will use standard DX features as the building blocks the actual implementation will be down to how the developer decided it was to be for optimal performance with the game features...

I suspect that the developer in collaboration with the nvidia way its meant to be played program created a multisampling path that was tested against nvidia hardware and then either didn't bother to test or create a version for ATI hardware or ATI weren't interested in getting involved to support it, so the feature is enabled when nVidia hardware is present and disabled on other vendors due to being "untested"...

So the fact that ATI is locked out may be intentional or due to not being tested or a mix of both...