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

[SirPauly]

It's funny because you're repeatedly making a flawed analogy and calling the people patiently explaining it to you dense.

Benefiting ecosystems in which competition exists is better than benefiting ones in which it does not.

It wasn't flawed and a good example of how both companies innovated and did go beyond standards and moved the industry forward.

 

[Goatsecks]

That's ok to dispute anyhow! Its what debate is all about. But here you go:...

Thankyou, I honestly was not disputing, I had not seen this myself.

A common motif of this forum that the sole purpose gameworks is to sabotage AMDs perfomance. I just struggle to see it this way, as does the author. Is this what you think?

 

[crashtech]

The sole purpose of Gameworks is to make Nvidia hardware look good. If this means that AMD hardware has to be deliberately sabotaged to achieve the main goal, then at least we know such a thing is "theoretically possible."

I guess when one person sees a smoking gun, another sees fun target practice.

 

[maddie]

But, you didn't use the entire context and left this out, initially:

This is true, but the question then becomes this one.

Do you believe Nvidia's statements.

In my view, they have lied too many times in the past about too many things. Only when confronted have they recanted and even then, they made many excuses, that are apparently believable to some. Whilst you should not convict anyone on the past, it certainly points to a pattern of behavior.

 

[bowler484]

There has been no AMD GE game that required official patches to massively improve a performance deficit for NV GPUs. Thus, AMD's GE program & devs who sign on to it, are not actively gimping NV hardware during development.

The few examples in which NV ran poorly on release: Dirt 3 (Global Illumination) and Tomb Raider was resolved by NV themselves with an optimized driver which massively boosted performance.

Anyone remember Deus Ex: HR? It was one of the first showcase title for AMD GE, ran excellent on NV hardware on release. That has been the norm, and games that ran poorly were the exception. Every single NV GameWorks title has ran poorly on AMD and indeed, they all have official game patches to improve AMD performance a few months later (months, not days).

Please stop with the false information.

Nvidia users needs both the patch and the driver to make it work right. This information is easily verified online.

On March 10, 2013, a patch was released for the PC version of Tomb Raider. Build 1.0.718.4 [1]

Fixes include:

Addressed some stability and startup issues on machines that have both Intel and NVIDIA graphics hardware.

 

[Goatsecks]

This is true, but the question then becomes this one.

Do you believe Nvidia's statements.

In my view, they have lied too many times in the past about too many things. Only when confronted have they recanted and even then, they made many excuses, that are apparently believable to some. Whilst you should not convict anyone on the past, it certainly points to a pattern of behavior.

Which also begs the question: do we believe AMD's statements?

 

[maddie]

Which also begs the question: do we believe AMD's statements?

This is also true. History is all we have to guide us.

 

[bowler484]

Which also begs the question: do we believe AMD's statements?

Nope. Too many times information has been given by both sides that has turned out to be not true. I would not trust anything said by Roy Taylor or Richard Huddy at any point. In the same vein, I wouldn't trust anything Huang says either.

 

[swilli89]

Thankyou, I honestly was not disputing, I had not seen this myself.

A common motif of this forum that the sole purpose gameworks is to sabotage AMDs perfomance. I just struggle to see it this way, as does the author. Is this what you think?

Like crashtech said above, the sole purpose of gameworks is brand value.

"The way it's mean to be played" was originally just a glorified marketing idea. Now GW is an actual layer of code! This is a huge distinction. How it goes about "improving" the game experience, and any unplanned side benefits (such as hurting a competitor) seem to be up for debate.

 

[Goatsecks]

... How it goes about "improving" the game experience, and any unplanned side benefits (such as hurting a competitor) seem to be up for debate.

+1.

Hairworks, or tressfx, are never going make a poor game great.

Disable it if it is a problem and move on.

I feel the real winners of all this are the witcher devs who have had the community divert attention from the how poor and disappointing witcher 3 is.

This episode has shrouded neither AMD or Nvidia in glory.

 

[Zstream]

+1.

Hairworks, or tressfx, are never going make a poor game great.

Disable it if it is a problem and move on.

I feel the real winners of all this are the witcher devs who have had the community divert attention from the how poor and disappointing witcher 3 is.

This episode has shrouded neither AMD or Nvidia in glory.

I think the game is terrible lol

 

[Silverforce11]

Please stop with the false information.

Nvidia users needs both the patch and the driver to make it work right. This information is easily verified online.

If you had actually read my post addressing those patches you would have known you're already WRONG before posting that response.

This is my statement:
"There has been no AMD GE game that required official patches to massively improve a performance deficit for NV GPUs."

The first TR patch was to fix stability, aka CRASHES. Not a performance deficit.

The second patch included improved TressFX rendering/quality for all GPUs. Not to fix a performance deficit.

The devs told gamers to get the updated NV drivers, that fixes the performance deficit, which [H] confirmed was a 45-60% performance boost from the DRIVER update.

Get facts straight before you accuse others of being wrong.

 

[Silverforce11]

I feel the real winners of all this are the witcher devs who have had the community divert attention from the how poor and disappointing witcher 3 is.

Have you played it? It's game of the year, easily.

Witcher 3 is also very well optimized for everything except Kepler. :/

 

[bowler484]

If you had actually read my post addressing those patches you would have known you're already WRONG before posting that response.

This is my statement:
"There has been no AMD GE game that required official patches to massively improve a performance deficit for NV GPUs."

The first TR patch was to fix stability, aka CRASHES. Not a performance deficit.

The second patch included improved TressFX rendering/quality for all GPUs. Not to fix a performance deficit.

The devs told gamers to get the updated NV drivers, that fixes the performance deficit, which [H] confirmed was a 45-60% performance boost from the DRIVER update.

Get facts straight before you accuse others of being wrong.

Sorry, still wrong.

The driver improvement would not have been possible without the patch.

In the comments for the beta update post , Nvidia's Andrew Burnes explains the problem and apologises to GeForce owners. "We are aware of performance and stability issues with GeForce GPUs running Tomb Raider with maximum settings," he writes. "Unfortunately, NVIDIA didn't receive final game code until this past weekend which substantially decreased stability, image quality and performance over a build we were previously provided. We are working closely with Crystal Dynamics to address and resolve all game issues as quickly as possible."
Burnes also notes that Nvidia can't magic up a fix without some help from Crystal Dynamics. "The developer will need to make code changes on their end to fix the issues on GeForce GPUs as well. As a result, we recommend you do not test Tomb Raider until all of the above issues have been resolved."

 

[Silverforce11]

Which issues, stability or performance?

Patch notes from the devs clearly say STABILITY. They clearly tell gamers to get the latest drivers for performance fixes. Reviewers confirm the driver bring massive performance fixes.

 

[x3sphere]

I feel the real winners of all this are the witcher devs who have had the community divert attention from the how poor and disappointing witcher 3 is.

Must not be your type of game then, I think it's stellar. Probably the best open-world RPG yet, and definitely the best in the series. Already sunk around 70 hours in it 🙂

 

[tg2708]

Must not be your type of game then, I think it's stellar. Probably the best open-world RPG yet, and definitely the best in the series. Already sunk around 70 hours in it 🙂

Yea it's a very nice game, graphics is not everything but I can see why people are upset about what was promised then what was delivered though. For me gameplay is way above graphic quality expecially if the game still looks good even when downgraded.
Their are loads to do in the game too.

 

[boozzer]

Yea it's a very nice game, graphics is not everything but I can see why people are upset about what was promised then what was delivered though. For me gameplay is way above graphic quality expecially if the game still looks good even when downgraded.
Their are loads to do in the game too.

you can hate on the bait and switch graphics, while at the same time enjoy the phenomenal gameplay.

I have a legit hate, 60 fov. for this reason alone I will give every future cdpr game a pass. I get massive headaches playing anything less than 80 fov.

 

[3DVagabond]

and ironically, Radeon owners can probably enjoy more performance with HairWorks than most GeForce sku's.

Nothing ironic about it. AMD offers the ability for their customers to optimize Tessellation. Unfortunately that doesn't help in competitive benchmarks, which is all nVidia really cares about.

 

[3DVagabond]

I also have no issues with Mantle however I will say yes, this one is iffy. I think it should have been an open standard to address the need for low level API. Fortunately, it looks like that standard is included in DX12 so this is now a non issue. It's also a bit disingenuous to compare a low level API that is an essential part of your drivers to the code implemented game side.

Interesting how you would feel like Mantle should be an open standard but are fine with DX12 using it. DX is not an open standard at all which is what made Mantle necessary to begin with. OpenGL IS an open standard and thankfully, just as you suggested, Mantle is incorporated for the next iteration of OpenGL making it an open standard as well.

These people who are tryingto use Mantle to justify what nVidia does are being extremely disingenuous. Mantle was closed while AMD developed it. Just like TressFX. Once done, they simply release it with the only stipulation that you can't adapt it to disadvantage AMD hardware. Now THAT seems fair. That's like telling your neighbor it's OK to park in your driveway just leave room for your car too.

 

[amenx]

The sole purpose of Gameworks is to make Nvidia hardware look good. If this means that AMD hardware has to be deliberately sabotaged to achieve the main goal, then at least we know such a thing is "theoretically possible."

Agree. Pretty sure if AMD did not exist, GW would be a very different beast. But also have a feeling it would still be tough on performance, just so people would see a need to upgrade.

 

[MisterLilBig]

1.Lol what lie? that mantle never ever ran on NV ? no it is correct it didn't.
2.Lol wot?

Jeez, it goes right thru you.
1. You said Mantle was not intended to be cross platform. That was a lie.
2. Images of Hairworks at x16 and at x64(the default) are hard to tell apart. You can tell apart that detail(or lack of) from 30+ images a second with a moving camera? Good for you!

(I wont be repeating myself anymore unless you actually have some proof, the cycle has to end now. Or maybe your english is not good?)

1) CUDA is extensivley used in scientific computation.

2) CUDA should be open source?

1) True. Ignoring that NV has had horrible support for OpenCL since the very beginning.
2) No need. We have OpenCL.


Infraction issued for personal attack

-Rvenger

 

[Flapdrol1337]

You said Mantle was not intended to be cross platform. That was a lie.

Cross platform, as in xbox and pc 🙂

When mantle was announced there was no indicaton of it ever wanting to be cross vendor. When they realised it didn't go well with their good vs evil marketing they said they'd open it up "when it's done", whenever that may be.

Or am I being too cynical?

I really hate the cheesy good vs evil amd marketing, they're companies, not people. Nvidia did a good job building hype with the 970 and 980, sold a lot. But now they're neglecting kepler I think amd has a real opportunity.

With dx12 nvidia's cpu overhead advantage will disappear, downsampling was an nvidia advantage for years but now amd also does it. I think they're pretty much approaching feature parity.

 

[MisterLilBig]

When mantle was announced there was no indicaton of it ever wanting to be cross vendor. When they realised it didn't go well with their good vs evil marketing they said they'd open it up "when it's done", whenever that may be.

You are wrong. That's why I said that I wouldn't reply anymore about the topic. No one can actually find any info to support this.

As you said, they would open it up "when it's done". Meaning, the intention was always there.

Mantle was "released" to version 1.0 right when it was given to Khronos to build Vulkan.
People are using the Alpha and Beta stages of Mantle to "say something" about AMD.

The facts are there, the videos of the conferences are even in Youtube.

Mantle shouldn't even be mentioned, that project is now Vulkan and led by Khronos.

 

[SirPauly]

C'mon now, AMD basically offered, there would be no DirectX 12 -- I Still can't believe that was actually offered.