AMD V Nvidia by Richard Huddy

[Grooveriding]

Don't expect any acquiescence towards having been completely wrong in this thread.

Just more insistence of knowing absolutes and complete avoidance when being questioned on such.

Let the facts and avoidance thereof speak for themselves.

 

[Scali]

I have not been wrong in any way, nor have I avoided any facts. Which is why you launch this personal attack, without providing any insight in where I would allegedly have been wrong, or why.

 

[Grooveriding]

I have not been wrong in any way, nor have I avoided any facts. Which is why you launch this personal attack, without providing any insight in where I would allegedly have been wrong, or why.

Or wait, let's not...
Even with 2x the tessellation performance, the 5870 (which IS a high-end part), would still not be able to perform on par with the GeForce GTX460 (which is NOT a high-end part) with tessellation.

This 'upgrade' is in the category 'too little, too late'.

Aside from that, if the 6000-series is anything like the 5000-series (which it probably is, as it's just an update of the architecture), then high-end parts will be just as bottlenecked by the tessellator as the midrange parts, so then this tessellation will be 'as good as it gets'.

http://translate.googleusercontent.c...NBlf6RZmR9bCCA

Huddy is a PR guy because as head of developer relations, he's the one always talking about anything devrel-related in the press. About what new games they have been working on, how their latest hardware makes these games even better etc.
Most of his activities are press-related. The rest is directed at game developers, trying to spread the gospel of AMD's Radeons and all that.

Since you know how he spends his time.

What percent over 50%, since you say most of his activities are pres-related, does he spend on press-related pursuits ?

Then, what percent is spent on dev relations ?

Break it down for us, since you are speaking in absolutes and clearly know what you are saying for fact.

You would, if you were to look at a chart that also included nVidia's GPUs.
This chart is not very impressive. At its peak, it's twice as fast as the previous gen, which still isn't very fast... and with higher tessellation factors (where the real point of tessellation is) it seems to drop back down quickly, to pretty much the same poor speeds of its predecessor.

Take a look at this for example: http://www.geeks3d.com/20100826/tess...arative-table/ ... You can figure out for yourself where a 1.5-2x increase would put AMD... Neglect? I think a solid yes.

You're talking about the 6870, a mid-range card and the answer from AMD to the GTX 460. Some early benches show it matching the 460 in tessellation in Heaven. So you also feel the GTX 460 lacks in tessellation performance ?

Do you have early info as to how the 6970 is going to perform in tessellation, is so, please enlighten us as you are again speaking in absolutes about 'neglect in tessellation now, as if you have answers and information the rest of us are not privy to. Also, please advise the percentile breakdown of how Huddy spends his time at work, as you indicated you have that information as well.

I would love some early information on the 6970, as I'm considering replacing my GTX 480s with them. Please, enlighten me, I'd be grateful to hear how they have neglected tessellation in their new single-gpu halo product.



Both questions posed before this release. One not even related to the release. Both avoided. You are speaking in absolutes about things you have no knowledge of.

Please stop fishing for infractions alluding to personal attacks.

It's one thing to work in the 3D graphics industry and do coding and share your insights, that does not grand a crystal ball of divination to allow you to make blanket statements about people's time management skills and unreleased products you know nothing about, and were proved to have no basis on once they were released.

 

[Scali]

http://translate.googleusercontent.c...NBlf6RZmR9bCCA

Did you look at the Anandtech results that Lonbjerg posted?
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3987/...enewing-competition-in-the-midrange-market/17
In Unigine Heaven, the 5870 and 6870 are still below a stock GTX460 with extreme tessellation.
In the DX11 detail tessellation sample (provided by AMD!), the difference is even larger.

Seems like YOU are the one ignoring facts here. Tessellation performance of the 6870 is still nowhere near that of the GeForce 400-series, and in many cases only barely above the 5870, despite the nice slides from AMD of how they improved their tesellation (where, as I accurately pointed out, the 'peak' is not in the 'sweet-spot' for tessellation).

Since you know how he spends his time.

I said activities, not time.

You're talking about the 6870, a mid-range card and the answer from AMD to the GTX 460.

What kind of nonsense is this? The 6870 is a card that is at the same level of performance as the 5870, which is a high-end card, and considerably faster than the GTX460.
It's only when tessellation is engaged that performance on both cards tanks, and they drop down to below the GTX460. That is obviously a weakness in the architecture.

Some early benches show it matching the 460 in tessellation in Heaven.

But not official benchmarks such as the one from Anandtech itself.

Both questions posed before this release. One not even related to the release. Both avoided.

Perhaps I don't know anything about the 6900-series performance... or I do know, but I'm not at liberty to say...
At any rate, I'm not going to answer those questions.

Please stop fishing for infractions alluding to personal attacks.

If you got infracted, then that is your own doing. You might want to learn to exercise a bit more self-control, perhaps.

It's one thing to work in the 3D graphics industry and do coding and share your insights, that does not grand a crystal ball of divination to allow you to make blanket statements about people's time management skills and unreleased products you know nothing about, and were proved to have no basis on once they were released.

If you work in the industry, perhaps you have dealt with Richard Huddy and AMD/ATi devrel, and also have shared your experiences with other people in the industry, and as such have a pretty good picture of what it is that Richard Huddy does, hmmm?
I think you are the one who can not make blanket statements about what developers in the industry do and do not know about a company's upcoming products or how their devrel department works.

 

[Grooveriding]

Did you look at the Anandtech results that Lonbjerg posted?
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3987/...enewing-competition-in-the-midrange-market/17
In Unigine Heaven, the 5870 and 6870 are still below a stock GTX460 with extreme tessellation.
In the DX11 detail tessellation sample (provided by AMD!), the difference is even larger.

Seems like YOU are the one ignoring facts here. Tessellation performance of the 6870 is still nowhere near that of the GeForce 400-series, and in many cases only barely above the 5870, despite the nice slides from AMD of how they improved their tesellation (where, as I accurately pointed out, the 'peak' is not in the 'sweet-spot' for tessellation).



I said activities, not time.



What kind of nonsense is this? The 6870 is a card that is at the same level of performance as the 5870, which is a high-end card, and considerably faster than the GTX460.
It's only when tessellation is engaged that performance on both cards tanks, and they drop down to below the GTX460. That is obviously a weakness in the architecture.



But not official benchmarks such as the one from Anandtech itself.



Perhaps I don't know anything about the 6900-series performance... or I do know, but I'm not at liberty to say...
At any rate, I'm not going to answer those questions.



If you got infracted, then that is your own doing. You might want to learn to exercise a bit more self-control, perhaps.



If you work in the industry, perhaps you have dealt with Richard Huddy and AMD/ATi devrel, and also have shared your experiences with other people in the industry, and as such have a pretty good picture of what it is that Richard Huddy does, hmmm?
I think you are the one who can not make blanket statements about what developers in the industry do and do not know about a company's upcoming products or how their devrel department works.

Have the last word, it seems there is not a thread where you can go without it. Color me satisfied as this retort is more of the same.


Personal attacks are not acceptable.

Re: "Have the last word, it seems there is not a thread where you can go without it"

Moderator Idontcare

 

[flopper]

Have the last word, it seems there is not a thread where you can go without it. Color me satisfied as this retort is more of the same.

cant deny he is right.
argument isnt won by retoric but by factual supported arguments.
He has those, you dont.

AMD is crippling the game developer by their move of a limited tesselation engine that is the result and consequence of their actions.

 

[Lonbjerg]

Did you look at the Anandtech results that Lonbjerg posted?
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3987/...enewing-competition-in-the-midrange-market/17
In Unigine Heaven, the 5870 and 6870 are still below a stock GTX460 with extreme tessellation.
In the DX11 detail tessellation sample (provided by AMD!), the difference is even larger.

We have indeed come along way since the PR piece from Huddy:
http://blogs.amd.com/play/2009/06/02/why-we-should-get-excited-about-directx-11/

I guess AMD only liked tessellation when it was a AMD only feature...now it's like:

"BWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH....NVIDIA does TOO much tessellation...NOT FAIR!!!"

:hmm:

 

[Scali]

We have indeed come along way since the PR piece from Huddy:
http://blogs.amd.com/play/2009/06/02/why-we-should-get-excited-about-directx-11/

I guess AMD only liked tessellation when it was a AMD only feature...now it's like:

"BWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH....NVIDIA does TOO much tessellation...NOT FAIR!!!"

:hmm:

Yup... that screenshot in there also shows some very heavy tessellation, it seems like they use far smaller triangles than the 16-pixels that AMD now wants (and that was on previous-gen hardware, not the current 6000-series with their super-duper improved tessellator).
Likewise AMD's own DX11 detail tessellation sample is suddenly the 'wrong' way to do tessellation... why? Just because nVidia does it a lot better than they do.

Also proves the point of Huddy being a PR spindoctor. Last year he was saying (and AMD was doing) completely different things regarding tessellation than today. A good source of neutral, technical information? Hardly. He just spins things around to whatever best fits AMD at a given point in time.
If the competitor does not have tesellation, it's a good thing, and developers should push it as much as they can, so that you can see significant IQ improvements over DX10 hardware.
If the competitor has faster tessellation, then tessellation and IQ are a bad thing.

1. A beast called the tessellator has been added which enables games developers to create smoother, less blocky and more organic looking objects in games. This is the change you’ll probably be most aware of. And it’ll show up when you look at the silhouettes of hills and mountains or the profiles of characters in games. Where artists previously had to trade off quality for performance, now artists will have the freedom to create naturalistic scenery. We’ve gotten used to seeing strangely blocky ears and noses on our opponents. But the new generation of games should allow those opponents to scare the heck out of us instead. The tessellator represents a natural next step in gaming hardware (in fact the Xbox 360 graphics chip that AMD designed already has a tessellator, and AMD graphics hardware has featured tessellator technology starting with the ATI RadeonTM HD 2000 series right up to the latest ATI RadeonTM HD 4000 series cards today).

Apparently we're back to trading off quality for performance. Full 180 degree turn in less than 12 months. Nice going, Huddy! I'll just stick with doing what you told me last year.

 

[NIGELG]

http://www.collectpeanuts.com/Collection/Images/Books/Fawcett/ItsRaining.jpg

 

[Creig]

cant deny he is right.
argument isnt won by retoric but by factual supported arguments.
He has those, you dont.

AMD is crippling the game developer by their move of a limited tesselation engine that is the result and consequence of their actions.

Crippling? Simply because AMD cards can't perform the same level of tessellation as Nvidia cards doesn't automatically mean that AMD cards are "crippling" game developers. If both AMD and Nvidia cards can output tessellation at a high enough level to satisfy the needs of the gaming studios, then the extra tessellation capability of the NV cards means nothing. We need more data before we can accurately determine if AMD has enough tessellation power or not.

 

[Scali]

Simply because AMD cards can't perform the same level of tessellation as Nvidia cards doesn't automatically mean that AMD cards are "crippling" game developers.

AMD *is* crippling developers, because they don't want them to include an extra level of tessellation to make use of the extra potential of the nVidia cards.
They're trying to propose 'optimized' tessellation code to developers... and when developers don't accept this, and stick with their original code, AMD starts a PR offensive, trying to paint both the nVidia and the developers as the 'bad guys', just because they want to offer extra detail and image quality to users with the hardware that can handle it (which could also be future hardware from AMD, assuming AMD gets their tessellation up to snuff at some point. After all, it's just standard DX11 code).

 

[badb0y]

The GTX 460 1 GB used in Anandtech review was not stock I beleive it was OCed.

Edit: Nvm I see it but it seems like it handles medium tessellation better than extreme let's not forget these a midrange cards here and I have seen the 6870 winn all if not most of the benchmarks vs stock GTX 460. Also the 6850 performs as well as a GTX 460 1 GB at stock...

 

[Scali]

Edit: Nvm I see it but it seems like it handles medium tessellation better than extreme

Obviously any card will handle any setting better at medium than at extreme.
The thing is the scaling. GeForces have more or less linear dropoff, where Radeons have exponential dropoff.

 

[badb0y]

Obviously any card will handle any setting better at medium than at extreme.
The thing is the scaling. GeForces have more or less linear dropoff, where Radeons have exponential dropoff.

At the end of the day we can argue semantics and synthetic benchmarks all day but the performance in-game is what matters the most and the 68xx seems to do that quite well.

 

[Scali]

At the end of the day we can argue semantics and synthetic benchmarks all day but the performance in-game is what matters the most and the 68xx seems to do that quite well.

I keep hearing that it doesn't do very well in HAWX 2.

 

[Lonbjerg]

At the end of the day we can argue semantics and synthetic benchmarks all day but the performance in-game is what matters the most and the 68xx seems to do that quite well.

How will it fare when games comes out that make more/better use of tessellation than the first DX11 games?

 

[badb0y]

I keep hearing that it doesn't do very well in HAWX 2.

We can't base our entire opinion on HAWX 2 can we? Also we have to wait for the 'magical' AMD drivers that will "fix" it.

 

[Scali]

We can't base our entire opinion on HAWX 2 can we?

Come on, work with me. Obviously I mean that future games will make more and better use of tessellation. It's not like HAWX 2 is going to be the only game ever to use more tessellation than the games so far (which have been mostly DX9-class console games with tessellation bolted-on as an afterthought, often under guidance of AMD devrel).
Games so far have only scratched the surface of what tessellation can do.

I will repeat it again, this time in bold, so someone may actually notice. Haven't you ever seen a Pixar movie? That's all polygons, all tessellated. Done so well that you can never spot a single polygon anywhere.

 

[badb0y]

Come on, work with me. Obviously I mean that future games will make more and better use of tessellation. It's not like HAWX 2 is going to be the only game ever to use more tessellation than the games so far (which have been mostly DX9-class console games with tessellation bolted-on as an afterthought, often under guidance of AMD devrel).
Games so far have only scratched the surface of what tessellation can do.

I will repeat it again, this time in bold, so someone may actually notice. Haven't you ever seen a Pixar movie? That's all polygons, all tessellated. Done so well that you can never spot a single polygon anywhere.

Yea but you keep referring to the future. In said future we will have better cards no? Also a year from now if there are DX 11 tessellation intensive games enough to bring these cards down so you think it will matter if GTX 460 get 18 fps while the Radeon get 13? They would both be unplayable anyways right? I guess as someone who upgrades every few months I am kind of biased in my assessment but that's how I see it.

 

[Scali]

In said future we will have better cards no?

We already have cards with pretty decent tessellation today. Why shouldn't we use them to their full potential?

 

[badb0y]

We already have cards with pretty decent tessellation today. Why shouldn't we use them to their full potential?

I think we are, Metro smacks around even a GTX 480.

 

[Scali]

I think we are, Metro smacks around even a GTX 480.

I disagree. Metro seems to be one of those DX9 games with tessellation bolted on. It only results in weird rendering errors (strangely blown up weapons and such, reminiscent of early TruForm failures). It neither improves performance nor image quality.
Exactly the WRONG type of tessellation.

 

[badb0y]

I disagree. Metro seems to be one of those DX9 games with tessellation bolted on. It only results in weird rendering errors (strangely blown up weapons and such, reminiscent of early TruForm failures). It neither improves performance nor image quality.
Exactly the WRONG type of tessellation.

Well then it's upto developers when they want to adopt into the new DX 11 100% correct way, I beleive a lot of develops want to keep the games open to all players so they are going to make these games somewhat crippled hence my reasoning that by the time tessellation is implemented the way you are saying it should be I think we will be far beyond the HD 6000 and Gtx 400 series. I'll check back later I am heading into class for now.

 

[Scali]

I beleive a lot of develops want to keep the games open to all players so they are going to make these games somewhat crippled

Ever heard of scalable quality?
Pretty much all games have had this for ages.
That's what any sensible developer should do: allow the user to select a few levels of tessellation.
AMD users won't be able to use the highest setting... no reason to leave it out of the game and cripple it for nVidia users who can.

Still open to all players.
Anyone who thinks AMD's idea of lowering IQ is better for everyone, is just falling into the PR trap.
It's trivial to adjust tessellation levels, so there is no reason not to include higher levels which may not be entirely AMD-friendly. Developers should not let nVidia customers be the victim of AMD's poor hardware design.

 

[Creig]

AMD *is* crippling developers, because they don't want them to include an extra level of tessellation to make use of the extra potential of the nVidia cards.

Oh really? So you know exactly how much tessellation power every game developer out there needs for every game in production that will use tessellation?

Let me try to put this in simpler terms. On a scale of 1 - 10, if AMD cards put out level 6 tessellation and Nvidia cards put out level 8, then what is so "crippling" if game developers don't ever need anything over level 5?

Just because Nvidia cards have extra tessellation capacity, it does not automatically follow that the extra capacity is required. Yes, in "extreme" benchmarks Nvidia will win. But will the developers need "extreme" levels in their games? We don't know yet.