Does GameWorks influences AMD's Cards game performance?

[ShintaiDK]

Amd should just get into the game dev business, at this point posters here want them to go around fixing games than building new gfx cards.

Arh, now you just sound bitter.

You cant just release hardware with minimal support and expect everyone else to pick up the bits. This is the ground floor for the countless failed projects at AMD. The concensus for the company seems to be create it and let someone else carry it. Its a thing that plagued AMD throughout its entire life. And when AMD bougth ATI it went downhill for ATI, since AMDs management saw the spending as a place to save cost.

Do I even have to start showing you how many AMD projects failed flat due to lack of support from AMD themselves?

 

[Hitman928]

http://steamcommunity.com/app/234630/discussions/0/613957600528900678/

AMD was offered to work with the developer of Cars, reached out to AMD and was basically ignored and nVidia and developers get attacked.

Ask AMD to do more, pull up their sleeves and work harder and invest more for their customers, imho.

It doesn't help that view considering the developer desired AMD's participation and did not hear anything from them 'till October of last year. That's the problem, not GameWorks, imho!

The problem is, they later contradicted themselves,

Edit - More info below. Lot's of communications with them around March and more yesterday.

I've now conducted my mini investigation and have seen lots of correspondence between AMD and ourselves as late as March

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1041593386&postcount=59

 

[AtenRa]

And when AMD bougth ATI it went downhill for ATI,

HD4870, first GDDR5 Graphics Card and best performance/price GPU in its segment making NVIDIA to price cut GTX280 within its first week of release by $250.

HD5870, first 40nm High-End GPU and fastest Single Chip GPU for more than 6 months.

HD5970. Fastest Graphics Card for more than 18 months.

HD7970. First 28nm GPU and performance leader for 3 months.

HD7970GE. Faster GPU for more than 6 Months. (until Titan release)

R9 290X same performance at $200 lower than GTX780Ti on release. Even today 18 months after its release it has the best Performance/price in its segment and it is faster in many many games vs the GTX780Ti.

Even in economics, the GPU group always produced profit per year from 2006 onwards.

 

[lilltesaito]

From Hitman928 link,

The game runs PhysX version 3.2.4.1. It is a CPU based PhysX. Some features of it can be offloaded onto Nvidia GPUs. Naturally AMD can't do this.

In Project Cars, PhysX is the main component that the game engine is built around. There is no "On / Off" switch as it is integrated into every calculation that the game engine performs. It does 600 calculations per second to create the best feeling of control in the game. The grip of the tires is determined by the amount of tire patch on the road. So it matters if your car is leaning going into a curve as you will have less tire patch on the ground and subsequently spin out. Most of the other racers on the market have much less robust physics engines.

Nvidia drivers are less CPU reliant. In the new DX12 testing, it was revealed that they also have less lanes to converse with the CPU. Without trying to sound like I'm taking sides in some Nvidia vs AMD war, it seems less advanced. Microsoft had to make 3 levels of DX12 compliance to accommodate Nvidia. Nvidia is DX12 Tier 2 compliant and AMD is DX12 Tier 3. You can make their own assumptions based on this.

To be exact under DX12, Project Cars AMD performance increases by a minimum of 20% and peaks at +50% performance. The game is a true DX11 title. But just running under DX12 with it's less reliance on the CPU allows for massive performance gains. The problem is that Win 10 / DX12 don't launch until July 2015 according to the AMD CEO leak. Consumers need that performance like 3 days ago!

In these videos an alpha tester for Project Cars showcases his Win 10 vs Win 8.1 performance difference on a R9 280X which is a rebadged HD 7970. In short, this is old AMD technology so I suspect that the performance boosts for the R9 290X's boost will probably be greater as it can take advantage of more features in Windows 10. 20% to 50% more in game performance from switching OS is nothing to sneeze at.


AMD drivers on the other hand have a ton of lanes open to the CPU. This is why a R9 290X is still relevant today even though it is a full generation behind Nvidia's current technology. It scales really well because of all the extra bells and whistles in the GCN architecture. In DX12 they have real advantages at least in flexibility in programming them for various tasks because of all the extra lanes that are there to converse with the CPU. AMD GPUs perform best when presented with a multithreaded environment.

Project Cars is multithreaded to hell and back. The SMS team has one of the best multithreaded titles on the market! So what is the issue? CPU based PhysX is hogging the CPU cycles as evident with the i7-5960X test and not leaving enough room for AMD drivers to operate. What's the solution? DX12 or hope that AMD changes the way they make drivers. It will be interesting to see if AMD can make a "lite" driver for this game. The GCN architecture is supposed to be infinitely programmable according to the slide from Microsoft I linked above. So this should be a worthy challenge for them.

Basically we have to hope that AMD can lessen the load that their drivers present to the CPU for this one game. It hasn't happened in the 3 years that I backed, and alpha tested the game. For about a month after I personally requested a driver from AMD, there was new driver and a partial fix to the problem. Then Nvidia requested that a ton of more PhysX effects be added, GameWorks was updated, and that was that... But maybe AMD can pull a rabbit out of the hat on this one too. I certainly hope so.

 

[Erenhardt]

LMAO, so they hogg(er)ed the CPU down with additional physx effects that are otherwise done on nv gpu, and call for a liter driver from amd because there is not much cpu left?

This:

For about a month after I personally requested a driver from AMD, there was new driver and a partial fix to the problem. Then Nvidia requested that a ton of more PhysX effects be added, GameWorks was updated, and that was that... But maybe AMD can pull a rabbit out of the hat on this one too. I certainly hope so.

sums this thread nicely.

 

[railven]

From Hitman928 link,

So basically straight from the horses mouth this is a PhysX integration into GW issue?

Haha, man this game/subject has really been interesting. I show no fault to the devs, they are clearly being as transparent as possible. I guess we just have to wait for AMD to optimize for PhysX over head.

 

[SirPauly]

The problem is, they later contradicted themselves,



http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1041593386&postcount=59

I don't know who this cageymaru is and the poster is offering that nVidia is using GPU PhysX.

 

[railven]

I don't know who this cageymaru is and the poster is offering that nVidia is using GPU PhysX.

Don't matter who the poster is, what matter is:

Let me quote Ian Bell directly from the private SMS forums since he gave us permission to do so.

Ian Bell's post verbatim. 5/7/2015

And this is getting reported around other forums. Beside a WMD forum screen shot, take it as you want.

 

[Hitman928]

I don't know who this cageymaru is and the poster is offering that nVidia is using GPU PhysX.

I don't know who he is either, as I said, other than he appears to be an early backer of the game. His posts about the AMD communication are quotes from one of the head guys at SMS (you have to pay/be a backer to get into the forum where they're posted).

The physx stuff is probably a combination of him seeing the developments happening through the builds and the communication from nvidia and the developer in the forum. Don't know how much of that stuff is true, which is why I just posted the quotes from the SMS developer and his personal driver experience.

 

[AtenRa]

LMAO, so they hogg(er)ed the CPU down with additional physx effects that are otherwise done on nv gpu, and call for a liter driver from amd because there is not much cpu left?

This:

sums this thread nicely.

Pay attention to this one,

Then Nvidia requested that a ton of more PhysX effects be added, GameWorks was updated, and that was that.

So the developer of the game had no saying in to the matter.

And that is the evidence some people were asking for.

 

[SirPauly]

Don't matter who the poster is, what matter is:


And this is getting reported around other forums. Beside a WMD forum screen shot, take it as you want.

Do you have a link for the screenshot?! These are bold accusations from this poster!

 

[tg2708]

Physx ran through the gpu of Nvidia cards while if Physx was enabled on an amd card it ran through the cpu. Take for instance borderlands Physx it had a huge performance hit on high with some Nvidia gpu so you can imagine how poorly it performed through the cpu.

 

[railven]

Do you have a link for the screenshot?! These are bold accusations from this poster!

Sorry, I'm not a backer so I can't snag you any screen shots. Feel free to ask the Hardforum poster for more evidence, though.

 

[jpiniero]

I have to wonder why they aren't just using the IGP for PhysX.

 

[ThatBuzzkiller]

Intel killed GPU Accelerated Havok as soon as they bought it. Once Intel bought Havok AMD started touting Bullet Physics which is used by pretty much just GTA 4 & 5 & the DiRT series, hardly a roaring success.

As far as middleware goes Gameworks is quite successful in part because the IHV that makes it fully supports it, AMD relies on third parties who don't have the funding or support to really compete. The fact that developers are making their own just shows that nobody has made a big success of the market but hopefully the competition should spur developments.

No, they picked it up again and had just recently shown a demo ...

At one time they probably did sideline GPU accelerated Havoks in favour of getting Havoks to run on the Larrabee but seeing as how that project didn't successfully pan out what had happened is that Intel went back to add GPU acceleration support for Havoks while requests from devs had kept piling up for that feature ...

Then came the next gen consoles with their anemic CPUs so at that point Intel was pretty much dead set on making Havoks GPU accelerated since tons have devs have opted out to Intel that CPU physics wasn't viable anymore for the next generation ...

 

[Zanovar]

its infuriating.and the arseholes defending this*or pretending to be shame on you.

 

[geoxile]

Havok "Next gen" launched 2 years ago. They've hardly been slacking

 

[3DVagabond]

http://steamcommunity.com/app/234630/discussions/0/613957600528900678/

AMD was offered to work with the developer of Cars, reached out to AMD and was basically ignored and nVidia and developers get attacked.

Ask AMD to do more, pull up their sleeves and work harder and invest more for their customers, imho.

There are too many holes in this statement to really know the whole story.

"I asked the big boss Ian Bell the permission to post what he said about AMD's putting the blame on SMS for the perf's problem"
Do we have AMD's statement where they blamed SMS? It would help if we knew what they said.

"We've provided AMD with 20 keys for game testing as they work on the driver side."
I don't see this as working with AMD. AMD can get their own copies of the game.

"But you only have to look at the lesser hardware in the consoles to see how optimised we are on AMD based chips."
Considering the consoles use different API's and different code, I don't see the correlation. This actually sounds like a cop out more than anything else.

"What can I say but he should take better stock of what's happening in his company. We're reaching out to AMD with all of our efforts. We've provided them 20 keys as I say. They were invited to work with us for years."
Who is he, in this statement? Again, the 20 game keys like that's all they should need. By the time you get game keys the damage is already done. This reminds me of nVidia's statement on DX12 where they "had a conversation with msft years ago" and that constitutes them working with msft for years on DX12.

"Looking through company mails the last I can see they (AMD) talked to us was October of last year."
Gives us no idea what was said, how it went, why there hasn't been any other communication?

"Categorically, Nvidia have not paid us a penny. They have though been very forthcoming with support and co-marketing work at their instigation."
Support and co-marketing is as much of a form of payment as money is. While this and of itself isn't a bad thing, it only confirms that nVidia is involved.

"We've had emails back and forth with them yesterday also. I reiterate that this is mainly a driver issue but we'll obviously do anything we can from our side."
Too bad we don't know what was said. Taking this statement with the "Looking through company mails the last I can see they (AMD) talked to us was October of last year." prior statement they are actually contradictory without more to go on.

I'm not saying they are lying or misleading us. We just don't know. I just question the vagueness of this statement though. It doesn't really give us much except they are denying any fault of their own and nVidia that their game runs poorly on AMD hardware. It could be true. Maybe AMD didn't see any reason to put any effort into this game, for whatever reason. Or it could be pure damage control.

 

[3DVagabond]

The problem is, they later contradicted themselves,
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1041593386&postcount=59
[/I]

They said this also

The software render person says that AMD drivers create too much of a load on the CPU. The PhysX runs on the CPU in this game for AMD users. The PhysX makes 600 calculations per second on the CPU. Basically the AMD drivers + PhysX running at 600 calculations per second is killing performance in the game. The person responsible for it is freaking awesome. So I'm not angry. But this is the current workaround without all the sensationalism.

So it's the drivers fault PhysX is taking up so much CPU? OK.

 

[SirPauly]

I'm confused!

Are they implying that nVidia is using GPU physX and AMD is forced to use CPU Physx?

 

[3DVagabond]

They aren't implying it, they are saying it in black and white.

 

[Hitman928]

They aren't implying it, they are saying it in black and white.

I don't know for sure, but I don't think that any of the physx code gets off loaded to the gpu for nvidia. I think it's just a misquote or they weren't very clear about it. It should be easy to test for though to confirm.

 

[Silverforce11]

Apparently the devs are now aware, on later versions of CPU PhysX (not Apex GPU effects), some features of it can be GPU accelerated if you got a CUDA compatible GPU, aka NV GPU. It is indeed offloading their PhysX calculations, that is the only explaination for such hammering of the CPU on AMD and not on NV. This "draw call" overhead is not related because the game isn't that intensive to start with, we're talking 1M draw calls per second to really flood AMD and make it a CPU bottleneck. Does a game where a gtx660 get great FPS suggest its doing 1M draw calls? No. It's just doing a ton of PhysX calculations on the CPU (something the devs have now admitted to).

See, the devs wanted to build a realistic racing game so they built everything around PhysX, they cannot unbuild that. It's too late. They knew years ago it perform bad on AMD, you can check the forum post for the dates, as well as bug reports from backer testers. They did not enter into this blind. By going that heavy with PhysX they KNEW it would adversely affect AMD. On the console, the PhysX is toned down, players complain the game is arcade like and broken. What do they do? They ban players who give negative reviews on forums.

Not only that, according to alpha backers, the early builds ran better on AMD, so NV requested more GameWork features to be added and boom. Game over for AMD.

This has to be one of the worse examples of GameWorks + crap developer combo so far.

 

[Zanovar]

Apparently the devs are now aware, on later versions of CPU PhysX (not Apex GPU effects), some features of it can be GPU accelerated if you got a CUDA compatible GPU, aka NV GPU. It is indeed offloading their PhysX calculations, that is the only explaination for such hammering of the CPU on AMD and not on NV. This "draw call" overhead is not related because the game isn't that intensive to start with, we're talking 1M draw calls per second to really flood AMD and make it a CPU bottleneck. Does a game where a gtx660 get great FPS suggest its doing 1M draw calls? No. It's just doing a ton of PhysX calculations on the CPU (something the devs have now admitted to).

See, the devs wanted to build a realistic racing game so they built everything around PhysX, they cannot unbuild that. It's too late. They knew years ago it perform bad on AMD, you can check the forum post for the dates, as well as bug reports from backer testers. They did not enter into this blind. By going that heavy with PhysX they KNEW it would adversely affect AMD. Not only that, on the console, the physics is toned down, players complain the game is arcade like and broken. What do they do? They ban players who give negative reviews on forums.

Not only that, according to alpha backers, the early builds ran better on AMD, so NV requested more GameWork features to be added and boom. Game over for AMD.

This has to be one of the worse examples of GameWorks + crap developer combo so far.

Amd has to cone out with sometihng special

 

[Zanovar]

Imo