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

[ubersonic]

He's saying Mantle does not gimp Nvidia on Direct X, while GameWorks does gimp AMD on Direct X.

Yeah I get it, and I was saying that although the cause is different the effect is the same.

Mantle does not interfere with Nvidia performance in normal none Mantle performance. GameWorks does interfere with AMD outside of that.

Through GameWorks Nvidia control AMD performance, its the same thing as AMD controlling Nvidia performance, that would be great, right?

Like I said, Nvidia has created something that if used gives better performance on their hardware and according to this forum that's terrible and a blow to devs and the consumer. AMD have created something that if used gives better performance on their hardware and according to this forum that's fantastic and great for devs and the consumer, can you not see the hypocrisy here?

Just to clarify I don't like the idea of either manufacturer using dirty tactics to get a leg up, I hate what Nvidia are being accused of with GameWorks, I hate Mantle, and although I love the way it looks I hate PhysX because it means some games look much better on my GTX780 rig than on my CF R290 rig which is plain wrong.

 

[DigiHound]

Really? its more case of Nvidia in this case having run the course before due to investing time and $$ with the organiser from day 1. As you yourself have said They can optimise but in a more inefficient time consuming way.

Even that interpretation is less certain than I'd like. Let me give you an overly simple example: Let's say a library contains a shader program that runs exceptionally efficiently on NV, exceptionally poorly on AMD hardware.

You say "AMD can still optimize." Yes, AMD can maybe still optimize the driver to some limited extent. But it can't rewrite an inefficient program. It can't tell the developer, "Hey, can you show us the shader program that does X? Because we think we can help you clean that up, big time." And bear in mind, AMD's ability to see what the library is actually doing is *still* limited.

To use a really crude analogy: If the shader program says: "Carry water from that well, one teaspoon at a time," and the smallest container AMD can offer to carry the water is a bucket, then AMD's best efforts to accelerate the bucket speed in driver won't change the fact that a teaspoon is a terrible way to carry water. And without source code access, AMD can't help the developer write code that carries a gallon of water at a time using GCN instead of a teaspoon.

 

[humbug]

@ triss, AMD cannot be with every game developer and every game development from day 1, in exactly the same way Nvidia can't and never did.

At the moment it seems just a couple are using Gameworks, and nothing really worth buying, its difficult enough to chose which games to buy for the time that you can spend playing them, for me this just makes that choice more straight forward, its not as if these games are BF4 or anything like that.

What i do hope, is that for developers who are unwilling to work with AMD, as seemingly Warner Brothers are not, i do hope AMD give them the same treatment for any Console support.

 

[humbug]

@ ubersonic, i would hate Mantle if it turns out that AMD would lock Nvidia / Intel out, i don't want to be locked into to one hardware vendor so that vendor can fleece me like i'm an idiot.

They said they are not going to do that, the precedence is that AMD are telling the truth, For all the good things Nvidia HAS done for the Gaming industry, so have AMD, in equal amounts, and yet they have never locked anyone out of any of it, this is not because of some goodie two shoes AMD, its just AMD's strategy, i don't know why but this seems to be the way they operate.

I have been viciously critical of AMD's cheap, nasty, junk Hawaii Ref- cooler, i have been critical of AMD in the past for really bad Driver support.

Criticism is good, this is what some Nvidia, and AMD users fail to understand. and Nvidia Criticism is almost none existent, in journalism or anywhere.
Nvidia can get away with almost anything, and they know it, IMO pepole should be less emotional, and a bit more objective about a brand, its incredible what can be achieved when ANY hardware vendor is hell bent on getting as much money out of you as possible in any way they can, and they get slapped down for it.

 

[triss]

@ triss, AMD cannot be with every game developer and every game development from day 1, in exactly the same way Nvidia can't and never did.

At the moment it seems just a couple are using Gameworks, and nothing really worth buying, its difficult enough to chose which games to buy for the time that you can spend playing them, for me this just makes that choice more straight forward, its not as if these games are BF4 or anything like that.

What i do hope, is that for developers who are unwilling to work with AMD, as seemingly Warner Brothers are not, i do hope AMD give them the same treatment for any Console support.

This is why some games are better on one vendor or another
has been like that for a long time
Do i wish all games were eg AA/tessellation heavy etc to favour one vendor over another? No.
I'd like a level playing field but since both vendors have different hardware and different ways of doing stuff we have to live with that.
cons some like me have 2 rigs which is horribly cost ineffective

Pro Vendors sometimes cam up with a innovative way of getting around the issue and make something amazing
If everyone was on the samewave length the world would miss out on a lot of stuff

Personaly i dont want any game devs to refuse to work with either vendor and atm we have no idea why in this case they did. It might well of been the code supplied was garbage hard to say without WB steping up

 

[humbug]

This is why some games are better on one vendor or another
has been like that for a long time
Do i wish all games were eg AA/tessellation heavy etc to favour one vendor over another? No.
I'd like a level playing field but since both vendors have different hardware and different ways of doing stuff we have to live with that.
cons some like me have 2 rigs which is horribly cost ineffective

Pro Vendors sometimes cam up with a innovative way of getting around the issue and make something amazing
If everyone was on the samewave length the world would miss out on a lot of stuff

Personaly i dont want any game devs to refuse to work with either vendor and atm we have no idea why in this case they did. It might well of been the code supplied was garbage hard to say without WB steping up

In terms of performance IT IS a level playing field, GameWorks may change that if its taken up widely, Mantle may also change that, the difference is, or seems to be AMD gain an advantage by improving performance on AMD GPU's, great for AMD owners, Nvidia gain an advantage not so much by improving performance, more by controlling and then gimping performance for AMD, a total let down for Nvidia owners.

If i was an Nvidia loyalist, i would be saying "fight it by giving me what they are getting, Nvidia, don't go the cheap gutter rout by trying to bring AMD's performance down wherever you can, that just stinks"

Or better yet, if AMD do offer to support Mantle for Nvidia, i would say swallow your idiotic pride and take them up on it, its better for me and everyone.

 

[eddyr]

Yeah I get it, and I was saying that although the cause is different the effect is the same.

Like I said, Nvidia has created something that if used gives better performance on their hardware and according to this forum that's terrible and a blow to devs and the consumer. AMD have created something that if used gives better performance on their hardware and according to this forum that's fantastic and great for devs and the consumer, can you not see the hypocrisy here?

Just to clarify I don't like the idea of either manufacturer using dirty tactics to get a leg up, I hate what Nvidia are being accused of with GameWorks, I hate Mantle, and although I love the way it looks I hate PhysX because it means some games look much better on my GTX780 rig than on my CF R290 rig which is plain wrong.

The mistake is that mantle goes beyond just AMD specific performance boost. It improves what game devs can achieve by removing overhead and giving them control. That's before the consideration of intended offering of it as an industry standard, which is hypothetical at the moment so carries less weight in debate.
That's why it's great for the devs and consumer, it pushes boundaries. In the context of performance, additional perfomance/game enhancement gets realised, compared to status quo limits to performace/features being coincidentally enforced.

There is no hypocrisy in denying that the 2 are equal and equatable. It's also why comparisons shouldn't be made and don't belong in the discussion, at least in the manner it has been generally done so far, thoughtless 1 liner retorts/strawmen.

 

[eyetrip]

The mistake is that mantle goes beyond just AMD specific performance boost. It improves what game devs can achieve by removing overhead and giving them control. That's before the consideration of intended offering of it as an industry standard, which is hypothetical at the moment so carries less weight in debate.
That's why it's great for the devs and consumer, it pushes boundaries. In the context of performance, additional perfomance/game enhancement gets realised, compared to status quo limits to performace/features being coincidentally enforced.

There is no hypocrisy in denying that the 2 are equal and equatable. It's also why comparisons shouldn't be made and don't belong in the discussion, at least in the manner it has been generally done so far, thoughtless 1 liner retorts/strawmen.

We don't yet know that mantle is going to be the second coming. Or how it may benefit other vendors, so let's not jump to conclusions.

We don't yet know that gameworks is going to end up penalising other vendors, and equate to the rising of the dark prince.

That's the issue I have here. I'm not saying one will be good and one will be bad. Handled well, both could be fantastic for developer and gamer.

The original article to me feels sensationalist at best, and those who want any excuse to hate nvidia more are simply jumping on it. It's based on assumptions and guesses.

I have been quite clear that I know nvidia can underhanded things, and even stated I don't particularly like them as a company. But I don't believe we really have any proof of anything untoward, and I'd rather people would avoid pointing fingers until such time as we know for fact.

Just as I wish people would stop spouting that mantle will be good for all vendors. We don't know this. I'm hoping mantle is great, despite owning nvidia. I also hope it will prove to be worthwhile for all vendors. But I'm not bitter that when it's added to games that I won be seeing the benefits.

 

[eyetrip]

Even that interpretation is less certain than I'd like. Let me give you an overly simple example: Let's say a library contains a shader program that runs exceptionally efficiently on NV, exceptionally poorly on AMD hardware.

You say "AMD can still optimize." Yes, AMD can maybe still optimize the driver to some limited extent. But it can't rewrite an inefficient program. It can't tell the developer, "Hey, can you show us the shader program that does X? Because we think we can help you clean that up, big time." And bear in mind, AMD's ability to see what the library is actually doing is *still* limited.

To use a really crude analogy: If the shader program says: "Carry water from that well, one teaspoon at a time," and the smallest container AMD can offer to carry the water is a bucket, then AMD's best efforts to accelerate the bucket speed in driver won't change the fact that a teaspoon is a terrible way to carry water. And without source code access, AMD can't help the developer write code that carries a gallon of water at a time using GCN instead of a teaspoon.

Could you please direct me to somewhere that shows game developers or amd/nvidia have access to the directx source code? The actual source code, and not just the api.

 

[Silent_Scone]

He'll be hard pressed to find one eye trip as DX isn't open source.
I think after a catch up its safe to say that without more info on GW everyone is going around in one huge circle.

 

[andybird123]

Even that interpretation is less certain than I'd like. Let me give you an overly simple example: Let's say a library contains a shader program that runs exceptionally efficiently on NV, exceptionally poorly on AMD hardware.

You say "AMD can still optimize." Yes, AMD can maybe still optimize the driver to some limited extent. But it can't rewrite an inefficient program. It can't tell the developer, "Hey, can you show us the shader program that does X? Because we think we can help you clean that up, big time." And bear in mind, AMD's ability to see what the library is actually doing is *still* limited.

To use a really crude analogy: If the shader program says: "Carry water from that well, one teaspoon at a time," and the smallest container AMD can offer to carry the water is a bucket, then AMD's best efforts to accelerate the bucket speed in driver won't change the fact that a teaspoon is a terrible way to carry water. And without source code access, AMD can't help the developer write code that carries a gallon of water at a time using GCN instead of a teaspoon.

That is the whole point of drivers, if you know that program X is going to ask you to use a spoon and you don't have one, you can intercept that command and tell it to use the bucket
It isnt quite as quick as being told in advance about the spoon and getting the developer to use the bucket, but the end result in performance terms would be the same. The driver can queue up the spoon commands until there's enough for the driver to use a bucket.
Unless GCN just isnt very efficient and carrying water at all (tesselation) and the command is that we need lots of it, though in that situation it would be best if the developer offers a lower tessealation option (as they do in AO no?)

 

[andybird123]

Criticism is good, this is what some Nvidia, and AMD users fail to understand. and Nvidia Criticism is almost none existent, in journalism or anywhere.
Nvidia can get away with almost anything, and they know it, IMO pepole should be less emotional, and a bit more objective about a brand, its incredible what can be achieved when ANY hardware vendor is hell bent on getting as much money out of you as possible in any way they can, and they get slapped down for it.

Sorry, what now?
Every other week there is an unsubstatiated hatchet piece on Nvidia releasing drivers that kill cards, or pay off pc makers to drop AMD hardware, or do something to hurt AMD performance

It is unsubstantiated, when you disable gameworks you get the same improvement on both vendors, any problem with AO cannot be directly attributed to the gameworks libs, so what remains is a potential that they could (that would be really obvious if they did), and that it appears that one dev has decided to not use AMDs code

 

[andybird123]

Nvidia has said that developers can see source. That does not mean all developers do see source. The distinction is meaningful and significant in this context. And no, I can't cite you a source on it.

A dev or AMD can still profile the library without source code, or rather they can profile the game and still get reports on how long the library takes to do whatever it does, if it runs obviously worse on AMD than on Nvidia it would be blatantly obvious, and AMD can profile their own drivers to see if DX is making innefficient calls to its hardware (and intercept them and change them). Either way a developer or AMD would be able to give you evidence of the smoking gun needed to legitimise these concerns.

 

[eddyr]

We don't yet know that mantle is going to be the second coming. Or how it may benefit other vendors, so let's not jump to conclusions.

We don't yet know that gameworks is going to end up penalising other vendors, and equate to the rising of the dark prince.

That's the issue I have here. I'm not saying one will be good and one will be bad. Handled well, both could be fantastic for developer and gamer.

The original article to me feels sensationalist at best, and those who want any excuse to hate nvidia more are simply jumping on it. It's based on assumptions and guesses.

I have been quite clear that I know nvidia can underhanded things, and even stated I don't particularly like them as a company. But I don't believe we really have any proof of anything untoward, and I'd rather people would avoid pointing fingers until such time as we know for fact.

Just as I wish people would stop spouting that mantle will be good for all vendors. We don't know this. I'm hoping mantle is great, despite owning nvidia. I also hope it will prove to be worthwhile for all vendors. But I'm not bitter that when it's added to games that I won be seeing the benefits.

Indeed there are a lot of mantle/GW unknowns (actual dev/competitor limitations/implications) and the use of blanket comparisons when there are clear differences in scope just muddies the discussion.
The creation of GameWorks is not in itself malicious. It appears an incremental evolution of their TWIMTBP program, whether it ends up for better or worse (which is all speculative atm).
Edit: a streamlining of the work they would have been doing anyway by going a step further and creating their GW libraries.

 

[Orangey]

He'll be hard pressed to find one eye trip as DX isn't open source.
I think after a catch up its safe to say that without more info on GW everyone is going around in one huge circle.

Source viewing is done for Windows in controlled settings, so probably DX too.

+ part of being an incumbent monopoly means your code is periodically up for review by governments who rely on it, I bet NV & AMD headhunt for engineers who have worked on such an audit.

 

[K1LaW8tt5]

That is the whole point of drivers, if you know that program X is going to ask you to use a spoon and you don't have one, you can intercept that command and tell it to use the bucket
It isnt quite as quick as being told in advance about the spoon and getting the developer to use the bucket, but the end result in performance terms would be the same. The driver can queue up the spoon commands until there's enough for the driver to use a bucket.
Unless GCN just isnt very efficient and carrying water at all (tesselation) and the command is that we need lots of it, though in that situation it would be best if the developer offers a lower tessealation option (as they do in AO no?)

But you would be still waiting for the bucket to be filled by the spoon......

 

[andybird123]

But you would be still waiting for the bucket to be filled by the spoon......

No, youve missed the point, the spoon would never be used, as part of the driver optimisation you would have a good idea of how much water was going to be needed and you would go ahead and use the bucket without ever going near a spoon

 

[K1LaW8tt5]

No, youve missed the point, the spoon would never be used, as part of the driver optimisation you would have a good idea of how much water was going to be needed and you would go ahead and use the bucket without ever going near a spoon

No im fairly confident that you have missed the point...

 

[Final8y]

No im fairly confident that you have missed the point...

Indeed.

 

[Stanners]

No, youve missed the point, the spoon would never be used, as part of the driver optimisation you would have a good idea of how much water was going to be needed and you would go ahead and use the bucket without ever going near a spoon

He has lost me.