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

[spankingtexan]

Were you able to keep a straight face while you were typing that up.

 

[Gregster]

Greg you would be proud...

Spoiler

Just played a round of BF4 with mates and who should get in my LAV? You guessed it, OcuK forum legend and all round nice guy, AMD Roy!!

LMAO, If I was in the lav and he jumped in, I would have jumped straight out and C4'ed the ******

The biggest problem with this thread and including myself, is we are all dug in so deep, no one is prepared to budge an inch.

Nvidia have GameWorks, AMD have Mantle, Nvidia have Tessellation, AMD have TressFX... This is bad, that is bad and no one is listening to the others argument. Rightly or wrongly, we believe what we know and dismiss things that don't suit. (We are all doing it).

Some very valid points from both parties but I feel we should call it a day and talk about how well Manchester Utd are doing

Ohhh and welcome back Suarez.

 

[Ian Evey]

Lol that would not be fair as a liverpool supporter, Im out.

 

[Silent_Scone]

I hate you. I hate the things you like!!!


Surprised nobody has quoted a few good men yet

 

[Woden]

I hate you. I hate the things you like!!!


Surprised nobody has quoted a few good men yet

Lt. Kendrick: AMD is dead, and that is a tragedy. But he is dead because he had no code. He is dead because he had no profiler, and nVidiawas watching.

 

[LtMatt]

LMAO, If I was in the lav and he jumped in, I would have jumped straight out and C4'ed the ******

The biggest problem with this thread and including myself, is we are all dug in so deep, no one is prepared to budge an inch.

Nvidia have GameWorks, AMD have Mantle, Nvidia have Tessellation, AMD have TressFX... This is bad, that is bad and no one is listening to the others argument. Rightly or wrongly, we believe what we know and dismiss things that don't suit. (We are all doing it).

Some very valid points from both parties but I feel we should call it a day and talk about how well Manchester Utd are doing

Ohhh and welcome back Suarez.

No arguments here.

 

[Uncle Petey]

Is it just me, or do the smilies seem a bit naked without the santa hats now?

 

[LtMatt]

Is it just me, or do the smilies seem a bit naked without the santa hats now?

They do. Too many bald smilies. Give them some hair ffs!

 

[Silent_Scone]

Hair is for wildlife, women and children.

And Alice Cooper.

 

[Klo]

geeeez, why can't we all just get along, Mantle will be awesome for AMD owners, Nvidia owners shouldn't be getting upset just because Mantle will enable AMD cards to perform more closely to their superior cards, Nvidia has already got mantle performance in the way of raw power and don't need a wind up handle mantle.

You forgot the 'lol jk'

 

[eyetrip]

You forgot the 'lol jk'

Was he?

 

[tommybhoy]

Official Nvidia response in regards to TR release performance:

ManuelG said:
We are aware of major performance and stability issues with GeForce GPUs running Tomb Raider with maximum settings. Unfortunately, NVIDIA didn’t receive final code until this past weekend which substantially decreased stability, image quality and performance over a build we were previously provided. We are working closely with Crystal Dynamics to address and resolve all game issues as quickly as possible.
In the meantime, we would like to apologize to GeForce users that are not able to have a great experience playing Tomb Raider, as they have come to expect with all of their favorite PC games.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/...e-a-look-at-tomb-raider/post/3752523/#3752523

I have quad SLI gtx 690 and only 1 GPU seems to be working with the game, the other 3 gpu's are not working at all!

ManuelG said:
Yes, we are aware of this issue as well with Tomb Raider.

[URL="http://www.dsogaming.com/news/tomb-raider-pc-tressfx-will-be-fully-playable-on-gtx680-nixxes-working-on-laras-hair-collisions/]Tomb Raider PC – TressFX Will Be Fully Playable On GTX680, Nixxes Working On Lara’s Hair Collisions[/URL]

Nixxes
Developer Representative
Eidos Official

Default PC Patch Released - 1.0.718.4 - March 9th 2013
We have just made public a new version of the PC version of Tomb Raider, build 1.0.718.4. This patch will be applied by Steam automatically when you next start the game. If your game does not update, please restart the Steam client.

This update addresses a variety of issues that we either found out about shortly before release or immediately after.

Fixes include:

- Addressed some stability and startup issues on machines that have both Intel and NVIDIA graphics hardware.

http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=134690


BAO arrived probably 99.9% in the same fashion to AMD, difference being they can't get any developer support at all and this is OK with some of the posters in here?

In response with the Mantle 'comparison' with GameWorks debate, on Mantle(when it arrives) supported titles, if developers sever all ties on game release with Nvidia-in regards to implementing Nvidia optimisations, this would be ok if AMD simply stayed silent about it?

 

[bru]

As posted by Boomstick in another thread, Nivida are going to talk about Gameworks and other stuff on the 5th.

http://semiaccurate.com/2014/01/02/maxwell-gives-us-glimpse-project-denver-debacle/

 

[K1LaW8tt5]

As posted by Boomstick in another thread, Nivida are going to talk about Gameworks and other stuff on the 5th.

http://semiaccurate.com/2014/01/02/maxwell-gives-us-glimpse-project-denver-debacle/

And im 99% positive they are going to say :

We have improved performance in batman:ao by 30% on all AMD cards. We locked AMD out from optimizations in gameworks, not for greed or for money but because we decided to help our close friends at AMD so that they could better allocate their time concentrating on other more important projects like mantle. Gameworks is the start of a growing friendship between nvidia and AMD. We love you AMD!! Gameworks!!

Being serious id like to hear more about the new gpu tech etc and more on what is actually happening with gameworks.

 

[LtMatt]

Thanks for taking the time to sign up Joel.

For everyone else i decided to contact Joel via email and direct him to the thread. His post got missed as it was awaiting moderator approval on page21.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/member.php?u=156899

Disclosure: I'm the author of the story being discussed here. I'm jumping in to clarify the question of whether AMD "handed" me this story.

When I attended APU13, AMD told me there were discrepancies in Arkham Origins related to GameWorks, yes. I checked game reviews and noted that the published results for AO were extremely odd.

Once I returned home, I set up test beds using AMD and Nvidia hardware that was previously provided for standard reviews. I tested a Sandy Bridge-E and a Haswell box, and later built a Windows 8.1 system on an Ivy Bridge-E to confirm that I wasn't seeing issues that were tied to Windows 7.

After AMD told me about the problem, I reached out to Nvidia with some questions on GameWorks and attempted to contact WBM. I also tested GW performance in multiple additional titles. AMD did provide some assistance in setting up and using their own GPUPerfStudio monitoring program on Radeon cards, but did *not* provide the results I published. I gathered the raw data myself, on systems I built and configured myself. The content and focus of the article were chosen by myself. It was my idea to test AO directly against AC and I decided to look for problems in ACIV and Splinter Cell.

One question that's been hotly debated here is the impact of FXAA. It should be noted that with FXAA off (no AA whatsoever), the R9 290X runs at 152 FPS vs. 149 FPS for the GTX 770. In other words, it's not that FXAA is running slowly on AMD cards, but that AMD cards run slowly, period. The only way to change this is to turn on MSAA, which hammers the card hard enough for the R9 290X to brute force its way past the GTX 770.

I received absolutely no compensation or consideration of any kind, implied or overt, from AMD. I was paid a standard fee by ExtremeTech for my work. The hardware I used for this comparison was hardware I already had on hand. It is not my property, but the property of my employer.

 

[Suarez7]

The lengths you'll go to at times Matt to try and gain a "win" is slightly worrying.

 

[eyetrip]

Thanks for quoting that Matt.

But it doesn't move us any further forward.

Maybe Amd cards should be running better, but that's probably down to Warner throwing Amd 's submission back in their face.

Still don't see where we can point fingers at nvidia and gamworks.

And we have to bear in mind that some titles ALWAYS run better on one vendor over the other.

Amd has its titles where it's favoured too.

Still strikes me as nothing more than witch hunt.

Sorry. I'll have to keep holding out for real evidence.

 

[andybird123]

Disclosure: I'm the author of the story being discussed here. I'm jumping in to clarify the question of whether AMD "handed" me this story.

When I attended APU13, AMD told me there were discrepancies in Arkham Origins related to GameWorks, yes. I checked game reviews and noted that the published results for AO were extremely odd.

Once I returned home, I set up test beds using AMD and Nvidia hardware that was previously provided for standard reviews. I tested a Sandy Bridge-E and a Haswell box, and later built a Windows 8.1 system on an Ivy Bridge-E to confirm that I wasn't seeing issues that were tied to Windows 7.

After AMD told me about the problem, I reached out to Nvidia with some questions on GameWorks and attempted to contact WBM. I also tested GW performance in multiple additional titles. AMD did provide some assistance in setting up and using their own GPUPerfStudio monitoring program on Radeon cards, but did *not* provide the results I published. I gathered the raw data myself, on systems I built and configured myself. The content and focus of the article were chosen by myself. It was my idea to test AO directly against AC and I decided to look for problems in ACIV and Splinter Cell.

One question that's been hotly debated here is the impact of FXAA. It should be noted that with FXAA off (no AA whatsoever), the R9 290X runs at 152 FPS vs. 149 FPS for the GTX 770. In other words, it's not that FXAA is running slowly on AMD cards, but that AMD cards run slowly, period. The only way to change this is to turn on MSAA, which hammers the card hard enough for the R9 290X to brute force its way past the GTX 770.

I received absolutely no compensation or consideration of any kind, implied or overt, from AMD. I was paid a standard fee by ExtremeTech for my work. The hardware I used for this comparison was hardware I already had on hand. It is not my property, but the property of my employer.

I'm interested to know how you came to the conclusion that gameworks usurps power from gamers and AMD?

You mention in the article that turning off each of the game works features resulted in the same improvment to fps, so surely it isnt the gameworks libraries that are directly responsible for the performance issues?

Also, lots of games use external libraries from lots of sources, why is it that you say thst AMD are unable to do ANY optimisation on the nvidia ones, yet they seem able to optimise for other 3rd party libraries?

With any library, each vendor can see what commands are being sent from DirectX to the drivers and then rewrite the drivers to reinterpret what happens on the GPU, this happens all the time with 3rd party libraries, my understanding is that tressfx is a library for example, so why is it that AMD cannot do any optimisation at all on the gameworks fucntions that work on AMD cards? Do you actualy have any direct experience of coding or are you relying on what AMD have told you on this?

 

[tommybhoy]

@Joel,

Welcome to oCuk forums.

290X stock clocks [email protected]

My 290X data has been talked about in various places now, can't anyone provide some current Nvidia data on FXAA for comparison?

 

[pgi947]

I'm on it tommy. Be up shortly!

Edit:

FXAA HIGH:

Spoiler

FXAA LOW:

Spoiler

Next to no difference between the two tbh.

Both ran on a single GTX780 at 1000/6000, latest beta drivers, 4770K @ 4.6ghz