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

Jesus Christ. How is it a mess because there isn't any Crossfire support? GameWorks effect. Care to explain to me how that is related to GW libraries?

You're making the connection to BF4 just because Nvidia had an SLI profile available? How does that make any sense???

Incredible.

You need to read it to understand.

People look at DX11 or the poor performance of Crossfire in Arkham Origins, and they blame AMD's drivers without realizing that AMD *cannot* optimize the drivers for those functions without access to libraries and support from the developer.

I present two statements I can personally verify and a third I have no reason to distrust:

1). WBM did not return my emails.
2). WBM couldn't optimize the GW libraries, even if it wanted to. (Meaning the greater issue exists and is problematic regardless of developer friendliness to AMD).
3). AMDs ability to improve Crossfire or tessellation without WBM's assistance is limited.

How else can we explain crossfire not working at all, or in some cases not very well in GameWorks titles. Crossfire scaling was always excellent in COD and superior to SLI, until it started using GameWorks.
 
Improve? I'm at work but I think you should probably look at when AMD released a Crossfire profile for Ghosts. As those frames makes it look as though there wasn't a profile at all, leave alone any optimisations. Thanks for linking back to the article though. Even if one of the points is completely inaccurate. Again. But to quote yourself, you'd need to read the NV breakdown to understand.

You're looking at two completely separate issues with two separate games. There is clearly a profile for Crossfire in Batman AO
 
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Improve? I'm at work but I think you should probably look at when AMD released a Crossfire profile for Ghosts. As those frames makes it look as though there wasn't a profile at all, leave alone any optimisations. Thanks for linking back to the article though.

Have you tried playing it on a crossfire setup?

Because when i tried it was horrible. The point is, it was never like this before. Something has changed.
 
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Oh, dang it, I was going to stay out...

AC4 - Gameworks title - quite broken for SLI.

Damn you Nvidia and Gameworks! You broke multicard on my Nvidia setup. If only you'd made your libraries open to Nvidia... oh wait.
 
Have you tried playing it on a crossfire setup?

Because when i tried it was horrible. The point is, it was never like this before. Something has changed.


SLI support was poor before the first patch also.

Also whilst on the subject AC4 has stuttering issues under SLi. Not sure who to complain to about that one though. :rolleyes:

Edit: eyetrip, lol.

God damn it, need someone to point fingers at!
 
http://www.dsogaming.com/pc-performance-analyses/batman-arkham-origins-pc-performance-analysis/


Batman AO SLi performance not up to scratch either. No to imply that makes Crossfire performance acceptable, but it was both vendors with technical difficulties when the game was launched.

AO is just a very poor example, it's buggy. As has been said already multiple times, where exactly is the line drawn.

As we can see below, SLI scaling is currently not as ideal as we’d hoped to. In order to avoid any GPU limitation, we used low details for this scenario. By simply increasing the game’s resolution in that particular scene, we lost 10fps, while our GTX690 was merely used. This clearly shows some SLI issues that have not been addressed as of yet. Hopefully Nvidia will be able to further enhance the game’s SLI performance with some new drivers otherwise those with older SLI systems won’t be able to get the best out of their cards.
 
SLI support was poor before the first patch also.

Also whilst on the subject AC4 has stuttering issues under SLi. Not sure who to complain to about that one though. :rolleyes:

Edit: eyetrip, lol.

God damn it, need someone to point fingers at!

Have you tried playing it since on crossfire? Also SLI support seemed fine according to Guru3d.

Unless im mistaken AC4 was created by Ubisoft, wasn't it? Stuttering is common on their games. See Farcry 3 for reference. Nothing to do with this though.

I've not played this game (AC4) on crossfire so cannot comment, just like you've not played Ghosts on crossfire, or batman or any GameWorks titles for that matter.

Using the same settings that show a 770 to be faster than a 290X with FXAA.

Its perfectly normal. Just like a 660 being faster than a 7950. Nothing to see here. Its perfectly normal for Nvidia to be able to optimize but at the same time block AMD and dev cooperation (if it exists - not in the case of WB) from providing key optimisations for AMD. Perfectly normal. The GameWorks effect.

http://www.dsogaming.com/pc-performance-analyses/batman-arkham-origins-pc-performance-analysis/


Batman AO SLi performance not up to scratch either. No to imply that makes Crossfire performance acceptable, but it was both vendors with technical difficulties when the game was launched.

AO is just a very poor example, it's buggy. As has been said already multiple times, where exactly is the line drawn.

SO Nvidia were able to optimise performance after launch and bring it up to scratch with the developer? Strange that AMD could not do that in full. Mind you, even if the dev was willing nothing could have been done to optimise the parts in question.

AMD is no longer in control of its own performance. While GameWorks doesn’t technically lock vendors into Nvidia solutions, a developer that wanted to support both companies equally would have to work with AMD and Nvidia from the beginning of the development cycle to create a vendor-specific code path. It’s impossible for AMD to provide a quick after-launch fix.

This kind of maneuver ultimately hurts developers in the guise of helping them. Even if the developers at Ubisoft or WB Montreal wanted to help AMD improve its performance, they can’t.
 
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Unless im mistaken AC4 was created by Ubisoft, wasn't it? Stuttering is common on their games. See Farcry 3 for reference. Nothing to do with this though.

What does it matter who the publisher/dev was?

Yes, FC3 was also a mess, but like you say, that has nothing to do with this, so why bring it up?

We are talking about Gamerworks titles (all 2.5 of them), and one is rather broken on the multi-card for the developer of Gameworks - Nvidia.

I've not played this game (AC4) on crossfire so cannot comment, just like you've not played Ghosts on crossfire, or batman or any GameWorks titles for that matter.

I asked in the gaming thread the other day, and while I didn't get many responses, there is at least one user who is happy as Larry with performance on his 7990 (which he wouldn't be if it was the stuttering mess it is on Nvidia SLI).

I need to go back and check if anyone else responded.

I'll ask the same for Batman, as I'd hate to make assumptions and suck numbers out of my thumb (either in support of, or against my stance on the matter)
 
Have you tried playing it since on crossfire? Also SLI support seemed fine according to Guru3d.

Unless im mistaken AC4 was created by Ubisoft, wasn't it? Stuttering is common on their games. See Farcry 3 for reference. Nothing to do with this though.

I've not played this game (AC4) on crossfire so cannot comment, just like you've not played Ghosts on crossfire, or batman or any GameWorks titles for that matter.


So you've not played any of the effected games yet you feel you're able to comment from a users perspective on AMD hardware? Further more disregarding performance results from 290X users within this thread?

Matt, honestly. You're taking this one man's word as gospel when you've not even played the games yourself. Can you not see the problem with that? When I'm giving you examples of poor scaling with NV hardware, I don't see anywhere else to go from there, GL!
 
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I bet all the 7950 and 7870 users are well miffed at those performance stats, The internet is awash with complaining amd users that want fxaa on batman that are being beaten performance wise by a 660. :)
 
Oh, dang it, I was going to stay out...

AC4 - Gameworks title - quite broken for SLI.

Damn you Nvidia and Gameworks! You broke multicard on my Nvidia setup. If only you'd made your libraries open to Nvidia... oh wait.
Funny. The point is that when the same graphic issue under GameWorks that occur for both sides, Nvidia will be far more likely to be able to and be in a better position to fix it, whereas AMD would struggle far more to do even the simplest tweak/fix.

With enough glitches and poor crossfire scaling which AMD can't fix in games under GameWorks, it will draw the picture of "Nvidia has better support" over time, and it could swap AMD users to jump on the green boats instead for their next next upgrade.

Fortunately for now, there's not many titles under GameWorks.
 
Funny. The point is that when the same graphic issue under GameWorks that occur for both sides, Nvidia will be far more likely to be able to and be in a better position to fix it, whereas AMD would struggle far more to do even the simplest tweak/fix.

With enough glitches and poor crossfire scaling which AMD can't fix in games under GameWorks, it will draw the picture of "Nvidia has better support" over time, and it would no doubt sway AMD users to jump on the green boats instead for their next next upgrade.

Fortunately for now, there's not many titles under GameWorks.

Exactly the same thing can be said about mantle, This game performs said % better on Amd, that wont harm nvidia sales at all will it.
 
What does it matter who the publisher/dev was?

Yes, FC3 was also a mess, but like you say, that has nothing to do with this, so why bring it up?

We are talking about Gamerworks titles (all 2.5 of them), and one is rather broken on the multi-card for the developer of Gameworks - Nvidia.

I asked in the gaming thread the other day, and while I didn't get many responses, there is at least one user who is happy as Larry with performance on his 7990 (which he wouldn't be if it was the stuttering mess it is on Nvidia SLI).

I need to go back and check if anyone else responded.

I'll ask the same for Batman, as I'd hate to make assumptions and suck numbers out of my thumb (either in support of, or against my stance on the matter)

Because Ubisoft made a hash of multi gpu smoothness and they also made farcry 3 and ac4. I brought it up because frosty said AC4 was a mess on SLI.

There are four GW titles so far, that i know of. Maybe 3.5 as Splinter Cell only uses the HBAO/Ambient Occlusion of GameWorks.

I'd be interested to see benchmarks with HBAO on and off and its effect on AMD cards vs Nvidia cards. AMD are locked out from optimisations for HBAO at dev and driver level.

So you've not played any of the effected games yet you feel you're able to comment from a users perspective on AMD hardware? Further more disregarding performance results from 290X users within this thread?

Matt, honestly. You're taking this one man's word as gospel when you've not even played the games yourself. Can you not see the problem with that?

I have played Ghosts so i can report on that accurately. I've played all the COD games, sadly. I've not played Batman, or AC4, but im not specifically referring to the crossfire performance of those titles, as ive not played them.
 
Funny. The point is that when the same graphic issue under GameWorks that occur for both sides, Nvidia will be far more likely to be able to and be in a better position to fix it, whereas AMD would struggle far more to do even the simplest tweak/fix.

With enough glitches and poor crossfire scaling which AMD can't fix in games under GameWorks, it will draw the picture of "Nvidia has better support" over time, and it could swap AMD users to jump on the green boats instead for their next next upgrade.

Fortunately for now, there's not many titles under GameWorks.

But this is all currently just hypothetical nonsense.

Nobody can say for a fact that AMD can't do anything to improve performance in Gameworks games.

We have, what, two current examples? AC4 and Batman AO? (EDIT: 3, forgot Ghosts)

Origins is buggy, and the problem here was clearly Warner, not Gameworks.

AC4? Nvidia SLI users are getting such a cruddy experience that I'd be surprised if AMD crossfire users weren't having a better time of it.
 
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Exactly the same thing can be said about mantle, This game performs said % better on Amd, that wont harm nvidia sales at all will it.

Quoted for truth.

Of course, we will again get told Mantle will be fully open to the world, and that it's really there for everyone's best interest.... not that it was created by one gpu vendor to get the edge over the other gpu vendor..
 
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