[Forbes] AMD Is Wrong About 'The Witcher 3' And Nvidia's HairWorks

[monstercameron]

I will say this one more time, pay very close attention:

1. TressFX is a FREE and DOCUMENTED library with SAMPLES.

2. The game studios have people called PROGRAMMERS who know how to WORK with CODE.

3. AMD is a business, if it is NOT MAKING MONEY (DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY) off of TressFX IT DOES NOT NEED TO SPEND RESOURCES ON A THIRD PARTY GAME STUDIO WHO HAVE ALREADY DOCUMENTED CODE FOR A FREE LIBRARY.

4. If CDPR's programmers need assistance implementing documented code then they should be sacked for their incompetence and laziness.

Summary:
You are asking AMD to spoonfeed people who have graduated with degrees who can read and write code. CDPR's programmers have TressFX code since it is FREE and DOCUMENTED. DO YOU UNDERSTAND NOW?

Good points, maybe major game engine profiling and optimizing could use a few ihv engineers but implementing documented libraries is pretty elemental. Proponents of this idea of sending engineers to every game studio is beyond silly, infeasible and probably a little insulting to the projects lead developers -insinuating incompetence.

 

[KingFatty]

You are asking AMD to spoonfeed people who have graduated with degrees who can read and write code. CDPR's programmers have TressFX code since it is FREE and DOCUMENTED.

There is another aspect, and that's dollars spent or resources invested in implementing the code. So, while true nobody should have to be spoon fed, there is the cold hard fact that implementing anything costs money. Why would a game development company not invest money in implementing open source - wouldn't that cause them to lose money?

I wouldn't be surprised if the game company lost no money at all. They will sell the same number of games regardless, and they probably analyzed the situation and came to that conclusion. Why should they care if AMD the company looks bad - they maximized their profit by not investing resources trying to implement open source.

 

[Silverforce11]

Are there two schools of thought here?

I can see some posts sort of thinking that the burden is on the game developer to maximize performance to sell more games.

I can also see the other side where the burden is on GPU companies to work with game developer to maximize performance to sell more video cards.

Yes, there's definitely two opposing views.

One that the onus is on developers to optimize for all hardware, if they need help, seek for it. But the resulting game will run very well on all vendors. Look at neutral titles or recent AMD GE games. Both AMD & NV performance is excellent.

The other view is that IHV push their propriety features by giving studios incentives to go with that, but guess what happens, their competitor suffers horrible performance.

As a neutral gamer who wants value out of hardware, only one route leads to a good outcome. Let's say you're with NV GPUs now, but AMD releases an awesome GPU that may make you switch, you do switch, now you get to suffer in NV sponsored games. Is that fair on you? Why is NV actively punishing your choice in hardware? If its scenario #1, you can use any vendor's hardware and it will perform great, you benefit with freedom of choice.

If all IHV went with #2, you have a situation that games come out running awful unless you're with their hardware. This means PC gaming is fragmented, it will require you to have multiple setups to enjoy all games. It's akin to owning both PS4 and Xbone due to exclusive titles. Here, it may not be exclusive, but if your Titan X performs onpar with a 285 (similar to R290X on gtx660 levels), its not something you want.

 

[Headfoot]

Anyone who quotes when the last WHQL driver was instead of when the last beta/usable driver was is intentionally dissembling and misleading. Can't take this guy seriously. Who actually uses the WHQL drivers if you care about day 1 performance??

 

[monstercameron]

Anyone who quotes when the last WHQL driver was instead of when the last beta/usable driver was is intentionally dissembling and misleading. Can't take this guy seriously. Who actually uses the WHQL drivers if you care about day 1 performance??

Nvidia marketing at its greatest, heard those numbers on both jaystwocents and pcpers podcast.

 

[AnandThenMan]

That author does not have the best record when it comes to writing objective articles, to put it kindly.

 

[Goatsecks]

AMD’s constant pulpit of open source drivers and their desire to prevent a fragmented PC gaming industry is honorable, but is it because they don’t want to do the work?

I think the author, like many on these forums, is trying to hard to construct a conspiracy that does not exist.

AMD have nothing to lose by making their IP open source knowing that the competition, Nvidia, would never use it any way (it would indeed be poor strategy to validate your competitors IP). Instead Nvidia, being the current market leaders with superior resources (i.e. $$$), can develop, market and push their own competing model which they close off.

Further, I would be extremely surprised if they were stupid enough to bribe game devs. Instead, they can wield their resource pool like a weapon providing the devs with more support to ensure it is their IP that is implemented.


If the roles were reversed it would make sense for AMD to do the same thing.



Can't say I like it the end result more than any one else. But if it offends you that much vote with your wallet.


Besides the witcher is bollocks any way, no matter which hardware you play it on.

 

[monstercameron]

That author does not have the best record when it comes to writing objective articles, to put it kindly.

I don't thinks that's quite fair, he was one of the big opponents and spoke out about game works.

 

[Goatsecks]

That author does not have the best record when it comes to writing objective articles, to put it kindly.

He should rock over to these forums then, he would fit right in! :whiste:

 

[Headfoot]

I thought people were exaggerating about the nVidia slant on those sites so I went and took a look for myself and it's really gotten worse lately. Even 2-3 years ago they weren't so aggressively biased. It's pretty pathetic.

Anandtech is slowing down on video card reviews too. It basically leaves techspot, a couple of the european reviewers (which I dont like to view since I don't speak the language and google translate isn't fantastic) and 1 of the reviewers at HardOCP for unbiased reviews.

 

[Headfoot]

Plus nobody unbiased is regularly doing FCAT or other frametime analysis anymore now which is ridiculous. They all talked about how revolutionary it was then stopped doing it...

 

[stahlhart]

Everyone get their tempers under control, NOW.
-- stahlhart

 

[crisium]

It's almost as bad as the HardOCP reviewer who posted nonsense here like "just do it AMD no excuse" with complete disregard to the realities of Nvidias anti consumer GW program. So naturally the conclusion is to buy more Nvidia to raise prices higher and encourage this type of behavior. Great idea...

 

[Enigmoid]

I will say this one more time, pay very close attention:

1. TressFX is a FREE and DOCUMENTED library with SAMPLES.

While nice this ultimately means little. Is it easy to use? Is it good? Is it worth your while to implement. Lots of things are free...and people stick with propriety alternatives because they often have better support and are less bother.

2. The game studios have people called PROGRAMMERS who know how to WORK with CODE.

Yep...but that doesn't mean it worth their time to implement. Witcher 3 was already delayed several times.

3. AMD is a business, if it is NOT MAKING MONEY (DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY) off of TressFX IT DOES NOT NEED TO SPEND RESOURCES ON A THIRD PARTY GAME STUDIO WHO HAVE ALREADY DOCUMENTED CODE FOR A FREE LIBRARY.

Its advertising and brand value. If it wasn't making anything why spend the time and resources developing. Thats not good business practice.

Anyone who quotes when the last WHQL driver was instead of when the last beta/usable driver was is intentionally dissembling and misleading. Can't take this guy seriously. Who actually uses the WHQL drivers if you care about day 1 performance??

OEMs like to ship with WHQL drivers. Not having any recent drivers impacts the consumer, especially since OEMs like to lock down drivers and block upgrades (on some notebooks).

 

[Silverforce11]

OEMs like to ship with WHQL drivers. Not having any recent drivers impacts the consumer, especially since OEMs like to lock down drivers and block upgrades (on some notebooks).

This is very true, notebooks are very annoying when it comes to driver updates, particular some brands..

But in this instance, its not the cause of poor performance of Hairworks (which the Forbes author was on about), its due to 64x tessellation and 8x MSAA applied on top of that. As users have shown, putting it to 16x doesn't negatively impact the IQ. You can have hairworks with great performance on AMD by doing these tweaks.

But if you own Kepler, you can't. NV's control panel should have a Tessellation factor override imo, it'll help Kepler owners a lot.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

It's almost as bad as the HardOCP reviewer who posted nonsense here like "just do it AMD no excuse" with complete disregard to the realities of Nvidias anti consumer GW program. So naturally the conclusion is to buy more Nvidia to raise prices higher and encourage this type of behavior. Great idea...

The gameworks code can be turned off.

There is no "excuse" for the mediocre performance without it. Just like there is no excuse for the awful performance of nvidia kepler cards.

 

[AnandThenMan]

It's almost as bad as the HardOCP reviewer who posted nonsense here like "just do it AMD no excuse" with complete disregard to the realities of Nvidias anti consumer GW program. So naturally the conclusion is to buy more Nvidia to raise prices higher and encourage this type of behavior. Great idea...

How have we come to the point where some think it is perfectly fine and business as usual for Nvidia to get involved with game devs with the explicit intent of harming performance on competitors hardware? This is absolutely ridiculous and goes against everything that has made PC gaming successful. And I absolutely hate the argument that it is all good because Nvidia is "investing" their time and money into said games so no harm no foul. BS, I don't care about the justifications intentionally crippling your competitor through software is a low down dirty tactic that no one should be supporting.

The icing on the cake is Nvidia is sabotaging their own hardware!

 

[MTDEW]

IMO if anything AMD missed a golden opportunity to prove TressFx could have better optimized performance vs Hairworks.
This would have went a long way toward AMDs stance that TressFx being open source is a better solution for ALL PC Gaming as a whole.

If you're AMD Just learn from the missed opportunity, recommend AMD users disable Nvidia Hairworks and move on.
Pointing fingers at Nvidia for being there and ensuring Hairworks is available for its customers isn't accomplishing anything for AMD or its customers.
All it does is lead to articles like this.

 

[crisium]

The gameworks code can be turned off.

There is no "excuse" for the mediocre performance without it. Just like there is no excuse for the awful performance of nvidia kepler cards.

Mediocre? Looks like 290X bites at the heals of the 970 in this game. The 290X is about the same price or slightly cheaper. How mediocre indeed. Pretty good for no driver. 290X is barely underperforming.

 

[xthetenth]

Are there two schools of thought here?

I can see some posts sort of thinking that the burden is on the game developer to maximize performance to sell more games.

I can also see the other side where the burden is on GPU companies to work with game developer to maximize performance to sell more video cards.

The burden is on the customer to incentivize behavior that benefits them. Companies can do what they want, but customers shouldn't just give them an arbitrary pass on it. At the end of the day that's what matters, not whether a company doing something is legal.

 

[Goatsecks]

How have we come to the point where some think it is perfectly fine and business as usual for Nvidia to get involved with game devs with the explicit intent of harming performance on competitors hardware? This is absolutely ridiculous and goes against everything that has made PC gaming successful. And I absolutely hate the argument that it is all good because Nvidia is "investing" their time and money into said games so no harm no foul. BS, I don't care about the justifications intentionally crippling your competitor through software is a low down dirty tactic that no one should be supporting.

The icing on the cake is Nvidia is sabotaging their own hardware!

Why would they do that?

 

[amenx]

IMO if anything AMD missed a golden opportunity to prove TressFx could have better optimized performance vs Hairworks.
This would have went a long way toward AMDs stance that TressFx being open source is better solution for ALL PC Gaming as a whole.

If you're AMD Just learn from the missed opportunity, recommend AMD users disable Nvidia Hairworks and move on.

Absolutely. What a loss for AMD to have left things to the whim of devs and the uncertainty of using or not using their code, whether open source or not. Its a big gaming title! They should have been banging on CDPRs doors to make this happen. But no, the code/libraries are out there... to be used.. or not. Jeezus, AMD shareholders should be screaming for blood at this moment.

 

[MTDEW]

Absolutely. What a loss for AMD to have left things to the whim of devs and the uncertainty of using or not using their code, whether open source or not. Its a big gaming title! They should have been banging on CDPRs doors to make this happen. But no, the code/libraries are out there... to be used.. or not. Jeezus, AMD shareholders should be screaming for blood at this moment.

Yeah, they could have knocked this on outta the park!
And it would have been a big win for AMD and for ALL of us PC Gamers.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Mediocre? Looks like 290X bites at the heals of the 970 in this game. The 290X is about the same price or slightly cheaper. How mediocre indeed. Pretty good for no driver. 290X is barely underperforming.

But isn't a 290x usually faster than a 970?

Maybe it's resolution dependant.

 

[Noctifer616]

Its a big gaming title!

On consoles or PC? GTA 5 was big, but Witcher? The game kinda seams meh to me. The new Deusx Ex on the other hand, now that's an important PC title that is going to have both Tress FX and DirectX 12 support.