AMD's Richard Huddy on DirectX 11, Eyefinity, and the competition

[thilanliyan]

http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/interviews/2010/01/06/interview-amd-on-game-development-and-dx11/1

About PhysX:
"despite Nvidia touting it as an "open standard" and how it would be "more than happy to license it to AMD", but [Nvidia] won't. It's just not true! You know the way it is, it's simply something [Nvidia] would not do and they can publically say that as often as it likes and know that it won't, because we've actually had quiet conversations with them and they've made it abundantly clear that we can go whistle."

About Batman AA:
"The part that I totally hold in contempt is the appalling way they added MSAA support that uses standard DirectX calls - absolutely nothing which is proprietary in any useful sense. They just did ordinary stuff, a completely standard recommendation that they make and that we make to developers for how to do MSAA, and they put it in and locked it to their hardware knowing it would run just fine on our hardware. And indeed, if you simply spoof the vendor ID in the driver - which we and other people have documented - it runs absolutely fine on AMD hardware. There's nothing proprietary about it in that sense, nothing new. I think that's exceptionally poor."

About CPU PhysX:
"The other thing is that all these CPU cores we have are underutilised and I'm going to take another pop at Nvidia here. When they bought Ageia, they had a fairly respectable multicore implementation of PhysX. If you look at it now it basically runs predominantly on one, or at most, two cores. That's pretty shabby! I wonder why Nvidia has done that? I wonder why Nvidia has failed to do all their QA on stuff they don't care about - making it run efficiently on CPU cores - because the company doesn't care about the consumer experience it just cares about selling you more graphics cards by coding it so the GPU appears faster than the CPU."

 

[mmnno]

Shots fired.

 

[SunnyD]

Waaaay to much to quote and bring to points. Just read the damn article already!

 

[JSt0rm]

Shots fired.

at a dead cow.

 

[thilanliyan]

nm

 

[ShadowOfMyself]

Great read, that guy is honest unlike some other PR people that keep touting the same crap over and over *cough cough*

 

[faxon]

damn awesome article. read the whole thing it's well worth it

 

[Obsoleet]

His responses seem genuine.

 

[postmortemIA]

AMD is in game to get as much as possible market share, so they are open to everybody as much as they can, including Linux. Nvidia on other hand wants to hold off the market share by limiting options for consumers.

 

[ronnn]

"Well if it's not faster and it's 50 per cent bigger, then they've done something wrong"


That made me laugh.

 

[Wreckage]

I think Huddy is Charlies "source".

AMD needs to stop crying and start doing something.

They still don't have physics, they still have poor developer relations, their OpenCL support sucks, their folding performance is in the garbage, DX11 so far is a disappointment, the 5970 is basically vaporware and pretty soon they will be sitting at the back of the bus again when Fermi launches.

That article read like so much PR spin with no substance. (granted it's clearly preaching to the choir here).

 

[sandorski]

I think Huddy is Charlies "source".

I got nothing, so here's a list of stuff I've previously said that was bunk, but I said it anyway......

Indeed.

 

[akugami]

I think Huddy is Charlies "source".

AMD needs to stop crying and start doing something.

Right. They really need to stop with the massively delayed next gen GPU they are developing, get all the bugs fixed and release it to the public.

They still don't have physics, they still have poor developer relations, their OpenCL support sucks, their folding performance is in the garbage, DX11 so far is a disappointment, the 5970 is basically vaporware and pretty soon they will be sitting at the back of the bus again when Fermi launches.

That article read like so much PR spin with no substance. (granted it's clearly preaching to the choir here).

You like to link to articles with from nVidia with much more spin and less substance and act like it is the truth. Or are we ignoring your belief that nVidia will release Fermi soon because one of their PR guys is seen in a photo with two Fermi engineering samples. Not defending spin but you like to quote nVidia PR reps like they are speaking without spin. It's hypocritical to now call out AMD PR reps and condemn them for spin. It is the job of a PR rep to spin things positively. And this article doesn't have as much spin as you imply.

AMD does indeed need to get their stuff together on physics but they are working with Havok as well as Bullet Physics. There's no question nVidia is ahead in the physics game but the good news for AMD is that physics acceleration is still in its infancy and really not relevant at this point. And as galling as it may sound to nVidia supporters, PhysX may ultimately benefit AMD's physics implementation as much as it does nVidia. The reason is that any planned use of physics features by a developer would carry over if they release a title that utilizes whatever AMD's physics implementation is. I've given my thoughts previously on what I, as a consumer, believe is the right direction with physics and will not go in depth on it here.

As you always like to say when someone else is giving their opinion and knows it is an opinion, it is your opinion that they have poor developer relations and not a fact. Last I heard, they were working with developers on over 20 games and helping them implement DX11. And they also have a regular team that helps developers with problems, even if it is not as well funded as nVidia's own developer programs. It's there if you read the actual article. In fact, some of the stuff Huddy mentions them doing, from a developer relations standpoint, is the same as what goes on from nVidia's TWIMTBP program.

Funny how you say "AMD needs to stop crying and start doing something" and yet nVidia is the one currently with issues releasing a new GPU and rehashing yet another old GPU and releasing it. You call out the 5970 as vaporware but then have the gall to mention Fermi will kick the 5970's ass? Care to provide proof? No one even knows when Fermi will actually be released. And to be fair to AMD, unlike with the X1800, the scarcity/lateness of the 5970's might be more the fault of TSMC than AMD.


As far as the actual article. Less spin than what Wreckage would have you imply. Hell, Huddy even admits that Sabateur was partially their (AMD's) fault and resulted from AMD driver changes as well as some coding changes by the developer that clashed. AMD could have just said that the issues resulted from coding changes by the developer and implied it was all the developers fault. While there is indeed some spin in there, there was also a lot that seemed like genuinely impartial responses.

 

[at80eighty]

it was meant to be tongue-in-cheek Keys - I have no problems with disagreeing - i am just tired of him repeating a schtick nonstop and incidentally never adding value to a thread



delete the post if you feel its over the line

Done - Keysplayr

 

[nemesismk2]

Just looked at the Bit-Tech article, it was an interesting and informative read.

 

[Borealis7]

at a dead cow.

reminds me of the movie "Me, Myself and Irene" with the cow that got shot 10 times in the head and she was still crying in pain...lol...

anywho, in my opinion ATI is enjoying their time in the spotlight with them being the current leaders in terms of technological achievements. i don't think this article would've been published if nVidia had a competitive product out. it's more like a "kick 'em when they're down" statement.

Batman:AA was released quite a while ago, why hasn't he spoken then?
enjoy it while you can, Dick.




(Chillax! his name is Richard!)

 

[PingviN]

Nvidia gets what's coming to them.

Very interesting read, I really enjoy these articles.

 

[lavaheadache]

I think Huddy is Charlies "source".

AMD needs to stop crying and start doing something.

They still don't have physics, they still have poor developer relations, their OpenCL support sucks, their folding performance is in the garbage, DX11 so far is a disappointment, the 5970 is basically vaporware and pretty soon they will be sitting at the back of the bus again when Fermi launches.

That article read like so much PR spin with no substance. (granted it's clearly preaching to the choir here).

nice article, glad to see our resident forum crasher is here just in time


blah, blah, blah, physx, blah, blah, fermi, blah, blah gay dx11, blah, blah, OMG enough already!!!

I thought broken records were a thing of the past. Time to wake up and smell the coffee buddy. Yes, Nvidia makes great products, just not a great as AMD right now. Fact not opinion.

 

[Grooveriding]

I think Huddy is Charlies "source".

AMD needs to stop crying and start doing something.

?? They have. They have put out the best performing cards on the market and have maintained that position for the past four months, and for a good two more months to come.

I'd say their executing a huge win with their GPU strategy and being able to come to market and dominate it, while nvidia is struggling to catch up is certainly 'doing something'

 

[SlowSpyder]

I think Huddy is Charlies "source".

AMD needs to stop crying and start doing something.

They still don't have physics, they still have poor developer relations, their OpenCL support sucks, their folding performance is in the garbage, DX11 so far is a disappointment, the 5970 is basically vaporware and pretty soon they will be sitting at the back of the bus again when Fermi launches.

That article read like so much PR spin with no substance. (granted it's clearly preaching to the choir here).

Yay...! Wreckage is back and adding 'value' to the forums again.

 

[PingviN]

I think Huddy is Charlies "source".

AMD needs to stop crying and start doing something.

You mean like shipping the worlds fastests graphics card which offers tremendous value for money, launching Dx11 mobile GPUs, working with a lot of Dx11-titles and working for the consumers rather than against them.

Ye, AMD should learn not to launch their GPUS on time and block out Nvidia from "AMD-made" functions.

They still don't have physics

And PhysX is supported by how many titles? It's been years since it showed up and support is still crap.

they still have poor developer relations

You didnt bother to read the article?

DX11 so far is a disappointment

Dx11 is advancing much faster than DX8, 9 or 10 ever was, it's turning out to be quite the success to be honest.

the 5970 is basically vaporware and pretty soon they will be sitting at the back of the bus again when Fermi launches.

"soon"? Yes, well, Fermi is still a long way from hitting the shelves, and if TSMC still has problem with the 40nm manufacturing process you can be sure you won't see too many Fermi available.

 

[Zargon]

nice article

seeing a guy at AMD say some 'nice' things about Intel and Nvidias practices is interesting

 

[SunnyD]

I think Huddy is Charlies "source".

AMD needs to stop crying and start doing something.

They still don't have physics, they still have poor developer relations, their OpenCL support sucks, their folding performance is in the garbage, DX11 so far is a disappointment, the 5970 is basically vaporware and pretty soon they will be sitting at the back of the bus again when Fermi launches.

That article read like so much PR spin with no substance. (granted it's clearly preaching to the choir here).

You didn't actually read the article did you?

And to address possibly the only point you bring up with any semblance of validity, a quick look around shows that the 5970 can be purchased without too much trouble (assuming you have the cash to do so).

 

[jiffylube1024]

Good read, and I was skeptical at first because the quotes were all on very contented issues.

I like his take on Larrabee - he's not saying that Intel are idiots or anything of the sort, but they definitely seem to be trying to ram a square peg into a round hole by holding on to CPU achitecture. Intel is going with as much vigour as they started (and ultimately ended) the 'Ghz race' with Netburst.

Honestly, sometimes Intel are their own worst enemies. When they stick to what they know, they make something beautiful (Core 2; Nehalem...).

 

[SniperWulf]

I think Huddy is Charlies "source".

AMD needs to stop crying and start doing something.

They still don't have physics, they still have poor developer relations, their OpenCL support sucks, their folding performance is in the garbage, DX11 so far is a disappointment, the 5970 is basically vaporware and pretty soon they will be sitting at the back of the bus again when Fermi launches.

That article read like so much PR spin with no substance. (granted it's clearly preaching to the choir here).

Err.... I didn't see any crying. The guy gave props as well as criticism when they were due. He even admitted that AMD has done a few things wrong... You really should get that green sack off your chin, its so unbecoming.