Nvidia’s GameWorks program usurps power from developers, end-users, and AMD

Tonester0011 · 28 Dec 2013 at 17:28

humbug said:
Have you noticed how the Titan price has not budged an inch?

Its as if Nvidia just flat-out refuse to make any gesture that even remotely suggest it was never worth anywhere near £800+
This despite a faster card now in their own range being £150+ less, which was forced by the 290X existence.

This is probably why...

YOUR BASKET
1 x PNY Nvidia Tesla K20 Workstation Solution Graphics Card - 5GB - GDDR5 SDRAM £2999.99
1 x Asus GeForce GTX Titan 6144MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £799.99
Total : £3,811.38 (includes shipping : £9.50).

The Titan card is not only good for gaming.

Ian Evey · 28 Dec 2013 at 17:28

Moot thread . Nothing new here

pgi947 · 28 Dec 2013 at 17:29

humbug said:
I think thats Bantman Arkham city.

All of those games are pre Nov 2013, unless Batman AO is there.
Gameworks was introduced in November this year. Batman AO is the first game to use the Gameworks libraries, and the performance on AMD GPU's is below par, by a good chunk.

I can assure you its Arkham Origins, Assasins Creed IV: BF, COD: Ghosts , Splinter Cell: BL, The Witcher 3 And Sleeping Dogs are also up there.

Its also (as mentioned above) not a single library, more a collection of them along with various tools.

Orangey · 28 Dec 2013 at 17:30

Tonester0011 said:
This is probably why...

YOUR BASKET
1 x PNY Nvidia Tesla K20 Workstation Solution Graphics Card - 5GB - GDDR5 SDRAM £2999.99
1 x Asus GeForce GTX Titan 6144MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £799.99
Total : £3,811.38 (includes shipping : £9.50).

The Titan card is not only good for gaming.

+1, seen a lot of people with Titans in workstation rigs for CUDA performance etc.

Rroff · 28 Dec 2013 at 17:31

humbug said:
Have you noticed how the Titan price has not budged an inch?

Its as if Nvidia just flat-out refuse to make any gesture that even remotely suggest it was never worth anywhere near £800+
This despite a faster card now in their own range being £150+ less, which was forced by the 290X existence.

The Titan was effectively hung out to dry gaming wise once stuff like the 780 and 290 came along - so that and because some will buy it as an alternative to dropping a considerable larger amount on quadro cards is why theres no real price movement on it.

The 780 price was adjusted reactively and while the price is at time a bit high having bought a 780 GHZ for under £400 I'm pretty happy with it.

EDIT: Beaten lol.

humbug · 28 Dec 2013 at 17:34

How does the Titan compare to the Tesler K20 and 780TI in GPGPU?

Boomstick777 · 28 Dec 2013 at 17:39

Final8y said:
Is not about exclusive features and its clear you have not read and neither understand.

When a game uses Mantel it does not prevent the option of the standard DX11 path being optimized by NV while in this case Nvidia’s GameWorks stops the standard DX11 path being optimized by AMD.

This maybe a one off situation, we shall see.

Captain obvious for the first part of your post :rolleyes:

, hence why I wrote someone needs to explain to me how this is any different

. Also you haven't really explained anything?

Currently Mantle locks Nvidia out at a hardware level (Requiring GCN) for any functionality..

Twimtbp titles lock AMD out at a software level for the Nvidia optimized code.

Someone explain why Nvidia is the bad guy? Nvidia is bad for Physx and Twimtbp but AMD is a savior for Mantle... When coming from a neutral view point, it just looks like two company's trying to screw each other other with proprietary features that require proprietary hardware / software to function.. Both as bad as each other..

Boomstick777 · 28 Dec 2013 at 17:40

Boomstick777 said:
Captain obvious for the first part of your post , hence why I wrote someone needs to explain to me how this is any different . Also you haven't really explained anything?

Currently Mantle locks Nvidia out at a hardware level (Requiring GCN)

Twimtbp titles lock AMD out at a software level.

Someone explain why Nvidia is the bad guy?

Boomstick777 · 28 Dec 2013 at 17:41

Boomstick777 said:
Captain obvious for the first part of your post , hence why I wrote someone needs to explain to me how this is any different . Also you haven't really explained anything?

Currently Mantle locks Nvidia out at a hardware level (Requiring GCN)

Twimtbp titles lock AMD out at a software level.

Someone explain why Nvidia is the bad guy?

Rroff · 28 Dec 2013 at 17:44

humbug said:
How does the Titan compare to the Tesler K20 and 780TI in GPGPU?

Depends on the task, in anything double precision heavy the Titan and Teslas are fairly similiar but the Titan lacks some of the more advanced features that are specific to some tasks i.e. the need for ECC. The 780 and 780ti are slower but highly variable how much - can be anything from 3x slower, 40% slower or about the same depending on the nature of the GPGPU task.

LtMatt · 28 Dec 2013 at 17:44

Boomstick777 said:
Captain obvious for the first part of your post , hence why I wrote someone needs to explain to me how this is any different . Also you haven't actually explained anything?

Currently Mantle locks Nvidia out at a hardware level (Requiring GCN)

Twimtbp titles lock AMD out at a software level.

Someone explain why Nvidia is the bad guy?

It might be tempting to link them, but this isn't about Mantle vs. Gameworks. A game that supports Mantle does not penalize DX11 on any other solution. Nvidia retains full control over their own DX11 performance and can optimize the title in all the usual ways.

Here's what you're missing: If you write a game 'the normal way", partnering with AMD or NV means that one company has better, more optimized drivers ready for launch. Nothing prevents the other company from optimizing drivers post launch. So in the long run, games get optimized on both platforms.

Optimized through GameWorks, games are never optimized for AMD at all. That's a fundamental change from how we used to do things. Instead of working with a developer to add support for specific NV functions, Gameworks actively works against the implementation of any AMD-specific functions.

Nvidia can optimize their drivers. AMD can't. That's not an "Nvidia advantage" like PhysX, or TXAA, or G-Sync.

humbug · 28 Dec 2013 at 17:46

Rroff said:
Depends on the task, in anything double precision heavy the Titan and Teslas are fairly similiar but the Titan lacks some of the more advanced features that are specific to some tasks i.e. the need for ECC. The 780 and 780ti are slower but highly variable how much - can be anything from 3x slower, 40% slower or about the same depending on the nature of the GPGPU task.

OK, thanks.

PhysicsMan94 · 28 Dec 2013 at 18:05

humbug said:
Have you noticed how the Titan price has not budged an inch?

Its as if Nvidia just flat-out refuse to make any gesture that even remotely suggest it was never worth anywhere near £800+
This despite a faster card now in their own range being £150+ less, which was forced by the 290X existence.

It's because, as others have stated, the Titan is essentially a slightly modified compute card. Nvidia cannot decrease the price of the Titan without undermining their own workstation series of Tesla cards. For customers who need an efficient double floating point precision calculation card, but whom also do some gaming or cannot afford the much more expensive workstation series GPUs, the Titan is perfect.

By decreasing the price of the Titan, Nvidia would lose out on their Tesla series as customers who normally buy those would just buy several Titans at a cheaper price point.

In my honest opinion, Nvidia's GPUs are actually quite reasonably priced and they don't need to rely on bundling loads of games with their cards in order to sell them. The high end Nvidia graphics cards are beasts and the prices we pay for them are fair for what we get, in my opinion.

Kaapstad · 28 Dec 2013 at 18:13

PhysicsMan94 said:
It's because, as others have stated, the Titan is essentially a slightly modified compute card. Nvidia cannot decrease the price of the Titan without undermining their own workstation series of Tesla cards. For customers who need an efficient double floating point precision calculation card, but whom also do some gaming or cannot afford the much more expensive workstation series GPUs, the Titan is perfect.

By decreasing the price of the Titan, Nvidia would lose out on their Tesla series as customers who normally buy those would just buy several Titans at a cheaper price point.

In my honest opinion, Nvidia's GPUs are actually quite reasonably priced and they don't need to rely on bundling loads of games with their cards in order to sell them. The high end Nvidia graphics cards are beasts and the prices we pay for them are fair for what we get, in my opinion.

Not to mention that the Titan is the only genuine 4K capable card (even if you need several of them), 4gb cards need not apply regardless of whatever AMD would tell us.

humbug · 28 Dec 2013 at 18:27

Kaapstad said:
Not to mention that the Titan is the only genuine 4K capable card (even if you need several of them), 4gb cards need not apply regardless of whatever AMD would tell us.

lol, 4K reviews have the 290X just as fast if not faster than the GTX Titan.

I get the GPGPU performance, though one does wonder why Nvidia strip so much compute power out of their gaming cards to start with, now, Retail GK104 Kepler are weaker than Retail Fermi cards.

I know you like to return the favour to those who said 2GB is not enough on the GTX 680, its still not enough now that they have re-badged that GPU as the GTX 770, but i have yet to see where 4GB is not enough, and its more than 3GB

LtMatt · 28 Dec 2013 at 18:42

Come on guys, give it a rest. Lets keep to the topic at hand rather than personal squabbles over what card you own or how much you paid for it.

shankly1985 · 28 Dec 2013 at 19:04

Wasn't Mantle already stated multi vendor compatible?

Edit
Yeah they did see here
http://www.dsogaming.com/news/amds-mantle-does-not-require-gpus-with-gcn-architecture/

Rroff · 28 Dec 2013 at 19:05

humbug said:
lol, right

oh. i also have shares in Nvidia and Intel, but i have not made this much money, in this short space of time, as i have mining and trading Crypto currency, not in a long time

Your doing it wrong then

AMD was pretty good to make some quick cash off recently if you were so inclined - that said it wouldn't really have been to the benefit of the company and not a way of trading I approve of.

humbug · 28 Dec 2013 at 19:09

Rroff said:
Your doing it wrong then AMD was pretty good to make some quick cash off recently if you were so inclined - that said it wouldn't really have been to the benefit of the company and not a way of trading I approve of.

No dividend, But AMD are up and down like a rubber ball, its incredible for short if you can predict the timing right, which isn't that difficult.

Rroff · 28 Dec 2013 at 19:45

humbug said:
No dividend, But AMD are up and down like a rubber ball, its incredible for short if you can predict the timing right, which isn't that difficult.

I find certain aspects/practises of shorting stock a bit tasteless from a moral perspective heh (otherwise I could have made a ton of money by now :|).