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

[Gregster]

Not much more I can add. You choose to believe a blogger over an Nvidia statement. I am not out to convince you or anyone and people can see for themselves if they look through the thread at all the evidence provided.

Maybe Tommy could run it at the same settings as Joel did? I don't have a 770 to test sadly, as that was the only card he had.

 

[andybird123]

Three different articles written by three different journalists now all saying the same thing. As for being proven wrong just because you or others say its wrong does not make it the case. Joel Hruska who wrote one of the articles for Extreme Tech is very respected and i certainly take his non biased, well researched opinion over yours. You're welcome to try and bring other issues with other gpu vendors into this if you want it to help support your claim, but it has no relevance to this.

yes, because journalists never read each others work and plagiarise it for the purpose of a sensationalist headline

his benchmarks aren't backed up by other sources, so either he used a very specific set of settings purely in the interests of getting the result he wanted, or they are just wrong, which throws the "unbiased" claim out of the window for this particular article

even using a single game to make crass generalisations about an entire tools set is pretty sloppy work

the only thing his article proves is that WB don't want to talk to bloggers directly and that AO on certain settings combinations runs marginally worse on one set of hardware than another

 

[tommybhoy]

Come on guys, maybe take on board what is being presented as fact-AMD's performance improvement came via MSAA improvements.

GW library has a zero negative/positive impact on AMD finding MSAA improvements.

Also can't get my head around the subject of Game Works NOT falling under 'proprietary tech', can someone please explain how I enable TXAA or gpu PhysX on my 290?

Maybe Tommy could run it at the same settings as Joel did? I don't have a 770 to test sadly, as that was the only card he had.

What's the settings for the BM, icba looking.

 

[andybird123]

if GameWorks features don't run on AMD hardware then how can they affect AMD performance, surely they would just be disabled, lowering IQ but increasing frame rates?

GameWorks isn't just TXAA and PhysX, PhysX Flex for example will (does?) include direct compute support, NVidia actually seem to be making moves to make their features work with other hardware, direct compute is being added with PhysX SDK 3.4 but not having access to their developer downloads I'm not sure when this is due for release or if it has already

looking at Black Flag benches, 290X uber mode and 780ti (bearing in mind NVidia have had early access to the game and released 2 sets of drivers for it which AMD have yet to do any optimisation at all for iirc), the 780ti is single digit FPS ahead at 1080p and 1600p on same settings and same AA, which doesn't seem out of kilter with other non-GameWorks games performance between the 2

 

[LtMatt]

if GameWorks features don't run on AMD hardware then how can they affect AMD performance, surely they would just be disabled, lowing IQ but increasing frame rates?

Tessellation, HBAO, multi gpu scaling and performance. All things that come under GameWorks and features that are available for AMD. There may be more, but these are the things i know of. Things that AMD are unable to optimize for at driver level because of the closed libraries of GameWorks.

Explains why crossfire never worked in one of the Assassins games and why crossfire never worked for Ghosts on launch. Crossfire has always worked flawlessly with COD until it became a GameWorks title.

 

[tommybhoy]

GameWorks isn't just TXAA and PhysX

I know, the question was very specific, which still leaves GW's proprietary tech all the same.

 

[andybird123]

Tessellation, HBAO, multi gpu scaling and performance. All things that come under GameWorks and features that are available for AMD. There may be more, but these are the things i know of. Things that AMD are unable to optimize for at driver level because of the closed libraries of GameWorks.

Explains why crossfire never worked in one of the Assassins games and why crossfire never worked for Ghosts on launch. Crossfire has always worked flawlessly with COD until it became a GameWorks title.

I was replying specifically to tommy's statement about GameWorks or parts thereof being proprietary or not

Ghosts didn't work for me in SLI either for the entire time it took for me to complete the SP campaign, same with BF4, I'm going to lay the blame on dodgy developers rather than Machiavellian hardware vendor plots

 

[Rroff]

Three different articles written by three different journalists now all saying the same thing. As for being proven wrong just because you or others say its wrong does not make it the case. Joel Hruska who wrote one of the articles for Extreme Tech is very respected and i certainly take his non biased, well researched opinion over yours. You're welcome to try and bring other issues with other gpu vendors into this if you want it to help support your claim, but it has no relevance to this.

Unlike most of the other articles on the subject - which show a marked ignorance of what actually happens in game development and an almost daily mail level of reporting on the subject complete with definite bias - Joel Hruska's article is indeed very well written with a lot of insight however I don't think it supports your views as you appear to think it does - some of his comments could be taken in a narrow context to suit one or other agenda or opinion but most of them are meant from the perspective and insight of a wider view of game development as a whole.

He demonstrates very well that the problem with Batman:AO isn't with GameWorks itself and that the closed nature of the libraries is not in itself anything unusual* - and shifts the blame performance wise to tessellation and ultimately points the finger at WB rather than nVidia.


*Though hes not a fan of that aspect in a wider scope of game development regardless of who is behind the libraries.

 

[LtMatt]

Unlike most of the other articles on the subject - which show a marked ignorance of what actually happens in game development and an almost daily mail level of reporting on the subject complete with definite bias - Joel Hruska's article is indeed very well written with a lot of insight however I don't think it supports your views as you appear to think it does - some of his comments could be taken in a narrow context to suit one or other agenda or opinion but most of them are meant from the perspective and insight of a wider view of game development as a whole.

He demonstrates very well that the problem with Batman:AO isn't with GameWorks itself and that the closed nature of the libraries is not in itself anything unusual* - and shifts the blame performance wise to tessellation and ultimately points the finger at WB rather than nVidia.

*Though hes not a fan of that aspect in a wider scope of game development regardless of who is behind the libraries.

Agreed. I have it on good authority that GameWorks is closed though and neither the dev nor amd are able to optimize for the things ive mentioned which is the problem i have with it.

 

[Rroff]

Thats the thing - gameworks being closed isn't any different to other similiar libraries like enlighten, speed tree and so on but people are carrying on like its different, probably due to being an easy thing to latch onto to bash nvidia, and in doing so taking focus away from the real issues here - to your credit you are the only person I've seen here who has gone away and asked AMD/WB "hey what actually happened with AMD's attempt to optimise for this game?"

 

[LtMatt]

Thats the thing - gameworks being closed isn't any different to other similiar libraries like enlighten, speed tree and so on but people are carrying on like its different, probably due to being an easy thing to latch onto to bash nvidia, and in doing so taking focus away from the real issues here - to your credit you are the only person I've seen here who has gone away and asked AMD/WB "hey what actually happened with AMD's attempt to optimise for this game?"

I think we can all agree theres a problem when AMD are unable to optimise their own drivers when a game uses GameWorks. This is not something they'd say, or journalists would report on, without good reason. In my opinion this is Nvidia's proprietary version of Mantle and will ensure they can outperform any AMD card, if they so desire. If im wrong on this, then ill happily apologise down the line. I don't think that will be the case though. I can only hope Nvidia optimize GameWorks to allow AMD some wiggle room. After all it will still favour their cards, but no need to put up impossible boundaries for AMD either.

 

[andybird123]

so pages of benchmarks showing comparable results on comparable AMD/Nvidia hardware in a variety of gameworks titles not enough evidence for you then matt?

gaming evolved titles showing a similar bias towards AMD hardware also totally not an issue for "gamers" in general?

 

[Rroff]

I think we can all agree theres a problem when AMD are unable to optimise their own drivers when a game uses GameWorks. This is not something they'd say, or journalists would report on, without good reason. In my opinion this is Nvidia's proprietary version of Mantle and will ensure they can outperform any AMD card, if they so desire. If im wrong on this, then ill happily apologise down the line. I don't think that will be the case though. I can only hope Nvidia optimize GameWorks to allow AMD some wiggle room. After all it will still favour their cards, but no need to put up impossible boundaries for AMD either.

Oh I agree its not a good thing at all, I just find it a bit tedious and red herring when people focus on "nVidia has 'locked' the gameworks libraries to keep AMD out" as though its something specifically intentional and unique to gameworks when all binary libraries work in the same way in that regard.

Neither am I saying nVidia won't try to use this as a way to marginalise AMD or that pressure shouldn't be put on developers and/or nVidia to prevent them using the natural functionality here to hide intentional degredation of performance on other platforms.

so pages of benchmarks showing comparable results on comparable AMD/Nvidia hardware in a variety of gameworks titles not enough evidence for you then matt?

gaming evolved titles showing a similar bias towards AMD hardware also totally not an issue for "gamers" in general?

When you get past the hysteria - the real issue here isn't the performance as is but whether AMD are being shut out from being able to optimise to show their true performance - it could be that as things are the 290/X and 780/tis show comparable performance but with optimisations the AMD cards could run even faster in the game(s). But as it is people are getting too hung up on "locked" libraries and nVidia "sabotaging" AMD performance and missing whats actually important.

 

[eyetrip]

Oh, this still going then....

 

[LtMatt]

Oh I agree its not a good thing at all, I just find it a bit tedious and red herring when people focus on "nVidia has 'locked' the gameworks libraries to keep AMD out" as though its something specifically intentional and unique to gameworks when all binary libraries work in the same way in that regard.

Neither am I saying nVidia won't try to use this as a way to marginalise AMD or that pressure shouldn't be put on developers and/or nVidia to prevent them using the natural functionality here to hide intentional degredation of performance on other platforms.



When you get past the hysteria - the real issue here isn't the performance as is but whether AMD are being shut out from being able to optimise to show their true performance - it could be that as things are the 290/X and 780/tis show comparable performance but with optimisations the AMD cards could run even faster in the game(s).

Agreed. I have no problems with what you're saying and agree with most, if not all of it.. Most don't see it your way though and ignore what has been said and just look at the fps figures. Anyway i think there is more to come from this story.

so pages of benchmarks showing comparable results on comparable AMD/Nvidia hardware in a variety of gameworks titles not enough evidence for you then matt?

gaming evolved titles showing a similar bias towards AMD hardware also totally not an issue for "gamers" in general?

When having GE ever blocked Nvidia at driver level from providing optimizations for Tessellation/HBAO/HDAO/TressFX/Multi Gpu Scaling?

 

[MrMarvelous]

I wish both game developers and companies to away with this sort of ********. The only ones inconvenienced/hurt buy this are the consumers.

 

[LtMatt]

I wish both game developers and companies to away with this sort of ********. The only ones inconvenienced/hurt buy this are the consumers.

Yep ill drink to that mate.

No problem with TWIMTBP. Nvidia get earlier optimizations, thats fine. GE works the same way with AMD. Its fair as once the game launches both sides can fine tune optimizations. But GameWorks changes that playing field. No longer will AMD be able to optimize like before, aside from improving AA performance. This is a worry and its not healthy. Hopefully things change regarding what can be done with it.

 

[Rusty0611]

Come on guys, maybe take on board what is being presented as fact-AMD's performance improvement came via MSAA improvements.

GW library has a zero negative/positive impact on AMD finding MSAA improvements.

I think the point being made was more:

Does it really matter how it is optimised when the 290X is outperforming a Titan? It doesn't look like there's any dodgy dealings going on at least presently. Surely what matters is how the game actually runs in reality.

I get the point of the alleged morals of it so you don't need to point that out again, but people should vote with their wallets if they don't agree with it.

To me, as long as the game runs well (and it must be running well if a 290X is outperforming a Titan) then that's the main thing. I think some people in general are just looking for an excuse to get the pitch forks out as I don't believe that the ethics of it are really as bothering to people as is being made out. But if they are then fair enough .

 

[eyetrip]

Does it really matter how it is optimised when the 290X is outperforming a Titan?

But, but, but... if AMD could edit and make changes to Nvidias intellectual property, they could get a gajillion more % from it, by working their magicz! Innit!

 

[Silent_Scone]

Yep ill drink to that mate.

No problem with TWIMTBP. Nvidia get earlier optimizations, thats fine. GE works the same way with AMD. Its fair as once the game launches both sides can fine tune optimizations. But GameWorks changes that playing field. No longer will AMD be able to optimize like before, aside from improving AA performance. This is a worry and its not healthy. Hopefully things change regarding what can be done with it.

What are you even talking about? It's an open library to developers, the only thing you're basing this on is one studio refusing an update for which we don't even know what the contents are, to WB Studios. AMD will be able to work with developers just as directly. You have no idea what the reasoning behind WB refusal is, and nor has it happened anywhere else yet.

You're just posting blanket statements based on one crummy article.
There is no facts that state that AMD optimisations will be directly effected. Stop going round in circles it's really quite boring. Tessellation performance on AMD is ropey as ****. Do you not see how funny it is for someone to actually moan about poor optimisation for one technology, when it runs marginally better on alternative hardware. It's easy to point fingers but when it comes down to it, the site has no proof and has even clarified that in a recent edit.

I could start up a thread about how Mantle could directly affected developers affordable time on Direct X optimisations, but I won't. Because I don't have a website low on hits that needs some attention. I also like how you've singled out AC4 as performance is absolutely spot on for the game for AMD users.

What is your argument.