Does GameWorks influences AMD's Cards game performance?

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Gameworks, does it penalizes AMD cards?

  • Yes it defenitly does

  • No it's not a factor

  • AMD's fault due to poor Dev relations

  • Game Evolved does just the same


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cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
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This is true, but it doesn't address the fact that AMD doesn't have access to GW code, therefore they cannot optimize, and it doesn't address the fact that the game issues are end up being fixed by a dev patch.

You can optimize for the rest of the game. Just can't use gameworks locked features.
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
765
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1.Dirt Showdown,TR,DA2 where AMD was leading by a huge margin and NV released drivers later to fix their performance gap.

Looks like you didn't read my comments carefully. It's not unusual for some AMD GE title to run better than NV early on until NV has taken the time to optimize the game code. That's the key here -- all NV needs is time and effort. No matter how much $ AMD spends, it can't optimize code it has no access to. Fundamental difference.

Did AMD pay NV to develop GW? nope and then why should NV allow them to optimize for it? AMD is free to optimize non gw portions anyways.

1. This goes everything against what PC gaming has stood for for decades. GPU hardware makers should never be allowed to alter or modify any game code in a game unless it's open source. AMD and NV are hardware providers, not game developers. As I already said, what if Intel spent billions of dollars and optimized all AAA games for Intel GPUs? Sounds like your definition of fair market competition involves whichever company has the most money winning.

2. PC game development has always revolved around benefiting PC gaming community. That community involves anyone, Matrox, Intel, VIA, AMD, NV, etc. Anyone who makes a GPU should have open source code and no one should be allowed to provide/insert proprietary source code into any game that adversely affects PC gamers that have other hardware. Intel was already fined millions for doing this with compilers that would detect AMD hardware and cripple performance by running worse compilers, and most of the PC community thought this was a horrendous practice that thankfully Intel moved away from. Things like SM3.0, tessellation, HBAO, should all be open source. If NV wants to make proprietary game engines, they should go into software game engine development. Nothing is stopping NV from making the next Unreal Engine 4 if they think their shaders/graphical effects are better than any developer's.

3.In FC4 SLI was broken period.

There were graphical artifacts with SLI but it worked. That's an NV driver issue and there is no Intel or AMD source code in the game that required a patch to get SLI working. :sneaky:

Another example: it took NV a while to get optimized drivers for TressFx in Tomb Raider, I believe. Didn't NV say that they got final game code right before the launch? Pretty sure there was a huge disadvantage (though I think that has since disappeared).

That's not comparable since NV eventually gets all source code. GW means AMD/Intel can never optimize GW-specific shaders/effects. For now since Intel isn't directly competing in the the $100-1000 GPU race, this hasn't' reared its ugly head. However, as Intel GPUs continue to get faster over the next 10 years, Intel users will also be affected. Sooner or later an Intel APU will become fast enough to play games like Project CARS, AC Unity, etc.

Atleast they were given the code to optimize for it. That's the difference. GameWorks is CLOSED.

Exactly. Apparently some gamers don't understand the difference between being granted access at a later date and never being granted access. If only Intel made GPUs on par with the Titan X and was 30-50% crippled in certain titles and had broken "Intel CF/SLI support", this thread wouldn't even need to exist. It would be so obvious...

Jaw...floor.

EDIT: just want to clarify, you said but I think you mean yes?

Ya, I did make a mistake. :D

It's not just GWs though, look at how NV treated the 970 VRAM fiasco - they showed no remorse whatsoever and it was AIBs that started taking cards in. NV didn't offer any discounts, game vouchers and it didn't seem they genuinely even said sorry. They tried everything to do damage control by having PCPer, their mouth piece try to prove how 3.5GB doesn't matter when gamers showed stuttering in 970 SLI at 1440P in various gaming scenarios.

The old NV I respect a lot was not like this. 6800 Non-ultra unlock, voltage overclocking, it was all there. GW isn't just 1 thing that is different about NV today. Voltage locking/crippling on desktop cards, 970 fiasco, locking overclocking on mobile dGPUs until the community went nuts are all signs NV is a completely different company today than it was 10 or even 5 years ago. In modern times NV is becoming more like Apple - not surprising considering JHH's constant admiration of Apple and it's entire business practices. Their record gross margins in the last earnings report are proof they are chasing profits above all.

-------

PC gaming is in already bad position and if neither NV/AMD invested money we would see even more shoddy ports.The thing is as a AAA gaming platform PC is irrelevant except for MOBA/MMOS, optimizing pc games is the last priority of a developer.

Then why not take it a step further. In that case, should NV and AMD just go into the business of making next gen game engines or games? That way they can promote their hardware business by showcasing the latest graphical technology that underlines the next gen BF, AC, Call of Duty title, etc.

Again, if NV or AMD wants to add graphical features to benefit PC gaming, it has to be inclusive of all PC gamers then. If you are going to promote this idea that PC gaming is a red-headed step-child and consoles are gimping AAA PC games, then we should look at it as console vs. PC not AMD vs. NV. In that case, AMD/NV should collaborate together to make games on the PC look that much better than console games to promote the PC gaming platform as a whole. In the past gamers respected both NV and ATI and PC gamers stood together as one community. Today, PC gamers have separated into Intel/NV clan vs. everyone else. It's why in the past it was very rare to see anyone who would actually desire for NV/ATI to release crappy next gen products because the PC gaming community as a whole desired competition, regardless of the vendor.

I don't like either GE or GW but if one has to go then so should the other.

That's what I think. Either make all contributions for the benefit of all PC gamers regardless if they own Intel/NV/AMD hardware, or stay out of it and let the developers make the game.

Even if the closed nature of GW doesn't allow AMD to optimize around the library, then it's AMD's responsibility to provide an alternate code path/library.

So you also advocate that AMD/NV should go into game development? Next thing Intel will provide millions of lines of source code for the next Starcraft 3 or Warcraft 4 franchise and just tell Blizzard to go take a vacation.

There should be a clear separation of duties between software and hardware development. Why? Because the software developer's job is to ensure that the product benefits 100% of consumers and that they have done the best job possible to ensure that this is the case, to ensure they get as many happy customers and as many sales. The hardware developer's job is not the same because in their interest is to promote the sales of new generations of products.

What you suggest actually would allow both AMD and NV to purposely obsolete their older generations because they could optimize the game specifically for latest generations of products and make last gen look bad.

Like this for example:

Project CARS - 1080P, light rain:

1. 680 only 14% faster than 760 but 770 is 10% faster than a 680.
In reality, 680 is 20% faster than 760 and 770 is just 4% faster.
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_Titan_X/29.html

2. 780Ti only 6% faster than 960 OC and 960 OC beating 780.
In reality, 780 is 27% faster than 960 OC, 780Ti is 53% faster than 960 OC.
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Gigabyte/GTX_960_OC/27.html

3. 970 OC 32% faster than 780Ti.

If AMD/NV start providing close-source proprietary alternative code paths in AAA games, and the developer isn't allowed to alter, manage, optimize ANY of that code, AMD/NV will have FULL control of obsoleting older generation of cards at will and we will be at their mercy. Unless you want to upgrade every generation, this sounds like a horrible future, not to mention being forced to own both an NV and an AMD card in the same rig. :cool:
 
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RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
765
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You can optimize for the rest of the game. Just can't use gameworks locked features.

What happens if NV grows 10-100x the size in the next 20-30 years? For next generation of young PC gamers, should they face a situation where NV's SDK is used to create the entire physics model for a AAA game via PhysX, the entire lightning/rain/shadow model via GW SDK, the entire tessellation model for the city? If we go down this path, the bigger and more financially strong the hardware developer grows, the more this firm can alter/shape PC game development, in turn this firm is slowly becoming a software developer. Is that what we want as PC gamers? If so, why not make a Nvidia Game Engine and evolve it like CryEngine version 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.?

What would be the point of a PC game developer if they would just take modular building blocks of source code and put them together like a lego in a game? Essentially the entire game engine underlying the AAA game would become the property of NV other than the story line, voice acting, music and the art assets.....

I think a lot of NV GPU owners today wouldn't be siding with GWs if AMD was a company 10X bigger than NV and it was AMD that used AMD GE to this extent. Obviously the consequences of GWs do not matter to an NV user who sold Kepler and got Maxwell and will dump Maxwell and get Pascal. Who cares if those older gen NV cards rot in performance hell; who cares about all Intel and AMD gamers too - it's obviously their fault for not buying the latest NV gen!

What some gamers aren't seeing/acknowledging is that NV can optimize the latest versions of GW SDK to specifically run better on its latest and greatest architectures, in turn forcing planned obsolescence. How can a $180 960 OC end up only 6-14% behind what was just 1.5 years ago a $700 780Ti?!

http://www.computerbase.de/2015-05/...diagramm-grafikkarten-benchmarks-in-1920-1080

GW isn't just an AMD/Intel problem but it's clearly affecting NV users with older generation of cards. We started to see Kepler's performance really take a dive especially after GWs games started coming out.
 
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Techhog

Platinum Member
Sep 11, 2013
2,834
2
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1.Dirt Showdown,TR,DA2 where AMD was leading by a huge margin and NV released drivers later to fix their performance gap.

2.Did AMD pay NV to develop GW? nope and then why should NV allow them to optimize for it? AMD is free to optimize non gw portions anyways.

3.In FC4 SLI was broken period.

There are aspects of GW which cannot be disabled, meaning there are things which AMD can never optimize. All GW features are ridiculously hardware intensive for no reason other than to force people to use Nvidia hardware, and it hurts Nvidia users too! I was dissatisfied with my performance in GTA5, and you know how i fixed it? Not using Nvidia PCSS. And I'm using a 970. GameWorks is bad for everyone except developers too lazy to put work into PC games. This is a fact.
 

nvgpu

Senior member
Sep 12, 2014
629
202
81
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015...thanks-to-strong-ps4-and-camera-sensor-sales/

For the 2014 fiscal year, Sony reported it had shipped 14.8 million PS4s. Combined with the 7.5 million shipped in the company's 2013 fiscal year (when the console was launched towards the tail end of it) total PS4s shipped are now 22.3 million.
22.3 million GCN GPUs

Maxwell, 1-2 million GPUs sold to consumers so far.

Anyone that says GameWorks harms AMD is full of it. Developers code for the largest market which is the console market. The odds are stacked against Nvidia. AMD's Sabotage Evolve program clearly hurts GeForce users as been shown many many times.
 

Techhog

Platinum Member
Sep 11, 2013
2,834
2
26
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015...thanks-to-strong-ps4-and-camera-sensor-sales/

22.3 million GCN GPUs

Maxwell, 1-2 million GPUs sold to consumers so far.

Anyone that says GameWorks harms AMD is full of it. Developers code for the largest market which is the console market. The odds are stacked against Nvidia. AMD's Sabotage Evolve program clearly hurts GeForce users as been shown many many times.

I don't even know why you bother posting your opinion when you openly admit to being a fanboy. :rolleyes: Either way, GameWorks isn't used on consoles, and consoles don't use the same drivers as PCs. This is an irrelevant post. The fact that you're trying to make Nvidia into a victim against all evidence is kinda sad.
 
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cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
What happens if NV grows 10-100x the size in the next 20-30 years? For next generation of young PC gamers, should they face a situation where NV's SDK is used to create the entire physics model for a AAA game via PhysX, the entire lightning/rain/shadow model via GW SDK, the entire tessellation model for the city? If we go down this path, the bigger and more financially strong the hardware developer grows, the more this firm can alter/shape PC game development, in turn this firm is slowly becoming a software developer. Is that what we want as PC gamers? If so, why not make a Nvidia Game Engine and evolve it like CryEngine version 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.?

What would be the point of a PC game developer if they would just take modular building blocks of source code and put them together like a lego in a game? Essentially the entire game engine underlying the AAA game would become the property of NV other than the story line, voice acting, music and the art assets.....

I think a lot of NV GPU owners today wouldn't be siding with GWs if AMD was a company 10X bigger than NV and it was AMD that used AMD GE to this extent. Obviously the consequences of GWs do not matter to an NV user who sold Kepler and got Maxwell and will dump Maxwell and get Pascal. Who cares if those older gen NV cards rot in performance hell; who cares about all Intel and AMD gamers too - it's obviously their fault for not buying the latest NV gen!

What some gamers aren't seeing/acknowledging is that NV can optimize the latest versions of GW SDK to specifically run better on its latest and greatest architectures, in turn forcing planned obsolescence. How can a $180 960 OC end up only 6-14% behind what was just 1.5 years ago a $700 780Ti?!

http://www.computerbase.de/2015-05/...diagramm-grafikkarten-benchmarks-in-1920-1080

GW isn't just an AMD/Intel problem but it's clearly affecting NV users with older generation of cards. We started to see Kepler's performance really take a dive especially after GWs games started coming out.


What happens when we can't do anything about it? A successful business is going to grow and do things to continue that growth? Saw it ain't so.

I personally don't fear monger about it and I play the games.
 
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3DVagabond

Lifer
Aug 10, 2009
11,951
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Another example: it took NV a while to get optimized drivers for TressFx in Tomb Raider, I believe. Didn't NV say that they got final game code right before the launch? Pretty sure there was a huge disadvantage (though I think that has since disappeared).

TE in Tomb Raider was before AMD went open source with their effects libraries. The source was released about a month after the game IIRC. Since then though, all of their libraries are free without license.
 

3DVagabond

Lifer
Aug 10, 2009
11,951
204
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PC gaming is in already bad position and if neither NV/AMD invested money we would see even more shoddy ports.The thing is as a AAA gaming platform PC is irrelevant except for MOBA/MMOS, optimizing pc games is the last priority of a developer.

So unless they are allowed to hinder their competitor's performance you wouldn't expect them to do anything? Doesn't make sense. Also, Devs make plenty of money on PC gaming to care. It's not lack of optimizing this is about. It's about not allowing optimizing for your competitor.
 

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
765
126
What happens when we can't do anything about it? A successful business is going to grow and do things to continue that growth? Saw it ain't so. I personally don't fear monger about it and I play the games.

A successful business doesn't need to engage in anti-competitive practices to grow.

Who is fear mongering? We are discussing the reality of PC game development today. You are sitting there on 970 SLI and the poor performance of 780Ti or 680 SLI doesn't matter to you. That's great but what about existing owners of Kepler cards, what about existing owners of AMD/Intel products? I guess they should all upgrade every generation like you just because that's what you do? Once next gen games roll out with future GW SDKs and 970 SLI bombs like Kepler does today, you'll just get new Pascal cards, so who cares right...planned obsolescence FTW -- I mean you did say a successful business needs to grow. There should be no reason at all that a card like 780Ti is barely faster than a 960 for a game made primarily for XB1/PS4 generation. How can the game run at 40-60 fps on 768 shader XB1 GPU but it struggles on a 2816 shader 290X? You don't see anything wrong about this?

Why can't we do anything about it? You know how many people closed their eyes when NV locked mobile dGPU overclocking and said "oh well, who cares?" Do you honestly believe that the consumer's voice is meaningless in 2015? Gamers' feedback does matter believe it or not. Also, we can directly influence game development not only by expressing our opinions but voting with our wallets. A lot of PC gamers refuse to buy GW titles until they hit bargain bin prices. This might not matter to you at all, but to think we have no choice in the matter and should just accept it is now how I was raised.
 
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3DVagabond

Lifer
Aug 10, 2009
11,951
204
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Speaking of pCARS, after the previous thread was locked I did some testing on my secondary card.

2a55fe87_7950test4_annotated.PNG


http://www.overclock.net/t/1554407/various-project-cars-pc-benchmarks/90#post_23886414

AMD perf jumps crazy amounts after you raise power limits from stock. With stock power limits in pCARS the cards hit the limit and downclock like crazy all the way down to 500mhz. (at least my 7950 did)

So for some reason pCARS is pulling lots of power on AMD cards and causing throttling which honestly doesn't sound like a gameworks issue at all.

That's very interesting. I'd really like to see what it is that causes that.

Does anyone not push the power control slider all the way to the right anyway?
 

Eymar

Golden Member
Aug 30, 2001
1,646
14
91
So you also advocate that AMD/NV should go into game development? Next thing Intel will provide millions of lines of source code for the next Starcraft 3 or Warcraft 4 franchise and just tell Blizzard to go take a vacation.

Nope, but a company has to keep up with the competition fair or not. That being said, as a developer I wouldn't use GW knowing that AMD users would be impacted negatively as that would affect the bottom line.
 
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3DVagabond

Lifer
Aug 10, 2009
11,951
204
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Hell yes it hurts AMD's performance at release of GW games....Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out.

Casual gamer here with a 970. Never buy a game at launch or for full pop. Guess it's why I don't condone or deny GW's anterior motive.

If more people started doing this we'd see a huge change in how things are done. Even at AMD's current 25% MS (which is historically low) companies would react if those people didn't buy the game until it was optimized for their cards.
 

3DVagabond

Lifer
Aug 10, 2009
11,951
204
106
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015...thanks-to-strong-ps4-and-camera-sensor-sales/

22.3 million GCN GPUs

Maxwell, 1-2 million GPUs sold to consumers so far.

Anyone that says GameWorks harms AMD is full of it. Developers code for the largest market which is the console market. The odds are stacked against Nvidia. AMD's Sabotage Evolve program clearly hurts GeForce users as been shown many many times.

So says you. Show me one GE title that nVidia doesn't have access to the entire code base for every aspect of the game. You say "many many". One shouldn't be too hard to find for you then.
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
27,052
357
126
A successful business doesn't need to engage in anti-competitive practices to grow.

Who is fear mongering? We are discussing the reality of PC game development today. You are sitting there on 970 SLI and the poor performance of 780Ti or 680 SLI doesn't matter to you. That's great but what about existing owners of Kepler cards, what about existing owners of AMD/Intel products? I guess they should all upgrade every generation like you just because that's what you do? Once next gen games roll out with future GW SDKs and 970 SLI bombs like Kepler does today, you'll just get new Pascal cards, so who cares right...planned obsolescence FTW -- I mean you did say a successful business needs to grow. There should be no reason at all that a card like 780Ti is barely faster than a 960 for a game made primarily for XB1/PS4 generation. How can the game run at 40-60 fps on 768 shader XB1 GPU but it struggles on a 2816 shader 290X? You don't see anything wrong about this?

Why can't we do anything about it? You know how many people closed their eyes when NV locked mobile dGPU overclocking and said "oh well, who cares?" Do you honestly believe that the consumer's voice is meaningless in 2015? Gamers' feedback does matter believe it or not. Also, we can directly influence game development not only by expressing our opinions but voting with our wallets. A lot of PC gamers refuse to buy GW titles until they hit bargain bin prices. This might not matter to you at all, but to think we have no choice in the matter and should just accept it is now how I was raised.


All I see is negativity. PC gaming is pretty strong, due in part to nvidia but according to many here they are only evil and can't do anything good.
 

SirPauly

Diamond Member
Apr 28, 2009
5,187
1
0
I have no problem with IHV's desiring to offer gaming experience value for their customer base and most of the graphical effects are fidelity settings that may go beyond what the developer intended. I have no problem if a company desires to risk and invest.
 

chimaxi83

Diamond Member
May 18, 2003
5,457
63
101
I have no problem with IHV's desiring to offer gaming experience value for their customer base and most of the graphical effects are fidelity settings that may go beyond what the developer intended. I have no problem if a company desires to risk and invest.

You'd have no problem with AMD closed source code obviously gimping performance for Nvidia hardware? Let the market decide, right?
 

twjr

Senior member
Jul 5, 2006
627
207
116
What happens when we can't do anything about it?

How quickly was the paid mods fiasco on Skyrim taken back? I think you are giving the businesses more power than they actually have. Consumers can make change when they are organised. Its just relatively infrequent that they do organise into a coherent group
 

EvilNodZ

Member
Mar 24, 2014
53
0
0
All gamers should be standing together and condmening this sort of practice.

Just think about if this happens. Lets say next year the top 5 AAA games are all Intel sponsored and run like crap on AMD & Nvidia GPU's and they cant be optomised for, Ill bet there would be a massive uproar against intel. Tough luck that GPU you spent £500 on last year now performs similar to a £100 GPU and there is nothing you can do about it.

This is what it feels like at the moment for AMD users. At no fault of the gamers they are being penalized by Nvidia. I know Nvidia fans wont care, until it is done to them, this is what it will come down to.

We are all gamers here and should never support this kind of behaviour from any company.
 

kawi6rr

Senior member
Oct 17, 2013
567
156
116

RussianSensation

Elite Member
Sep 5, 2003
19,458
765
126
So says you. Show me one GE title that nVidia doesn't have access to the entire code base for every aspect of the game. You say "many many". One shouldn't be too hard to find for you then.

His post is full of fallacies.

1. He compares console sales to PC sales of Maxwell cards but GW is a PC-centric program. That means separate teams optimize console version of games vs. PC games. It's been publicly acknowledged many times that separate teams work on PC version - TW3 or DAI is a perfect example of this. There have also been cases where the PC version is outsourced to another studio which means GW has no chance of impacting the console version development to start with. That means his assertion that "NV's odds are stacked against them" don't even apply to console game develoment.

2. He states that only 1-2 million Maxwell GPUs have been sold to date but NV sold 1 million GM204 alone in just 2.5 months from their launch per TPU. It's shocking he would make such an uninformed statement considering the entire GPU market sell-through rate is 10-12 million per quarter, of which NV has 76% market share.

3. He states that there are many examples where AMD's GE purposely sabotages NV cards but there is no such game ever released. Once NV has access to the game's code, it just takes a bit of time to optimize the drivers. In fact, he can't even provide a single example of any AMD GE title that runs poorly on NV hardware today - because no such game/example exists. After NV has given access to all of the source code, its cards run well.

Are you f-ing serious!

According to him 95% of NV's entire line-up today are Fermi and Kepler cards if he thinks only 1-2 million Maxwell cards were sold since GTX750/750Ti launched.
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...b7Y.jpg&hash=a65c5dc8a5a8a88545e623d9e081d455

I know Nvidia fans wont care, until it is done to them, this is what it will come down to.

We are all gamers here and should never support this kind of behaviour from any company.

Applause.
 
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SirPauly

Diamond Member
Apr 28, 2009
5,187
1
0
they showed no remorse whatsoever

I was very vocal about the wrong spec disappointment at Rage and desired to hear this will not happen again. If ya can't trust at face value specs of one's sku's, one may lose precious credibility. Jen-hsun Huang offered he understood why some were disappointed and voiced, it will not happen again. It's what I desired to hear from the leader of nVidia.

Again, if NV or AMD wants to add graphical features to benefit PC gaming, it has to be inclusive of all PC gamers then.

Why? Why should a company that desires to offer more have to wait for others? Support and Q/A their hardware?
 
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