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

[Tohtori]

So Nvidia developing features for its customers that are paid for by its customers is cheating?

Nvidia developing features for EVERYONE while hurting competition most is cheating, especially if those features cannot be turned off. Ask Intel how well anticompetitive features fare in court.

 

[96Firebird]

Honestly, if reviewers standardized on turning off GW features in benchmarks, it'd go a long way. The other half is if it were designed as a value add for PC gaming rather than NV gaming. Otherwise it's distorting the market and serving as another mechanism to destroy the barely stable equilibrium that's maintaining some competition.

Why?

Game reviews are used to show how well cards play a game. Crying because it shows a card in a bad light is just that, crying.

Unless you mean card reviews?

 

[SirPauly]

I would have thought that people voicing their displeasure when it comes to GW tossing a wrench into older Nvidia GPUs would be one of them. But clearly you don't think that is the case so can you provide one or maybe a few examples?

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The HairWorks percentage hit was similar on Kepler and Maxwell.

 

[xthetenth]

Why?

Game reviews are used to show how well cards play a game. Crying because it shows a card in a bad light is just that, crying.

Unless you mean card reviews?

Card reviews, yes. It stops being an apples to apples comparison of cards if only one brand's playing on their home turf. Game reviews should show both on and off.

 

[exar333]

Nvidia developing features for EVERYONE while hurting competition most is cheating, especially if those features cannot be turned off. Ask Intel how well anticompetitive features fare in court.

Exactly where are the cases where GW cannot be turned-off?

 

[Gikaseixas]

The HairWorks percentage hit was similar on Kepler and Maxwell

Since Kepler had lower performance than Maxwell to start with, HW just made high end Kepler irrevelant by not being able to push playable frame rates

 

[Gikaseixas]

Game reviews are used to show how well cards play a game. Crying because it shows a card in a bad light is just that, crying

Kepler owners do not agree with you. Just ask around
And the issue is not showing a card in a bad light, who cares?? The problem is turning capable hardware into low end stuff

 

[Gikaseixas]

See i applaud Nvidia's initiative to implement exclusive features, things that will add value to the product. What is not acceptable is their disregard for previous arch's (Kepler) and other schemes that it's not worth mentioning. My laptop cannot run Project Cars properly and i paid top dollar for it because it had an amazing GPU.

 

[ocre]

There's nothing wrong with gamesworks - it's optional extra's that nvidia spent the time and money to get added to a game. In every case you can turn them off, and if nvidia hadn't got involved the game with them off is all you would have got. If you hate it so much then just turn it off and you can live in a world where for you gamesworks don't exist.

The rest of us appreciate when someone is attempting to make the pc version more then a straight console port, to give us extras. Yes nvidia is a business and they spent that money to get a return on investment by selling more gpu's but you can hardly blame them for that - that's how business works, how companies make money.

Really the only reason to hate gamesworks is if you want AMD to do better then they are because AMD's inability to compete effectively in this area is costing them sales. However truth is outside of these forums no one gives a ... about AMD or nvidia, they just want to play the games. The only way AMD will do better is by competing better, not by a few forumites trying to convince the rest of us to accept straight console ports just so AMD doesn't look bad.

you know the irony...............
I have yet to see a game default with gameworks on. In every game I own, you have to turn on HBAO+, TXAA, etc. Its not something you turn off, it is something you turn on

 

[Goatsecks]

Nvidia developing features for EVERYONE while hurting competition most is cheating, especially if those features cannot be turned off. Ask Intel how well anticompetitive features fare in court.

But hairworks can be turned off and this has always been the case. So please, tell me how this is cheating?

 

[Goatsecks]

...Reddit user “FriedBongWater” only needed 48 hours after the game’s release to publish a workaround enabling better performance of HairWorks on AMD hardware...

So how does a reddit user figure this out 2 days after release and AMD's devs did not? Is this also Nvidia's fault?

 

[Tohtori]

So how does a reddit user figure this out 2 days after release and AMD's devs did not? Is this also Nvidia's fault?

AMD devs put that option in drivers at the first place, do not try that.

 

[Goatsecks]

AMD devs put that option in drivers at the first place, do not try that.

Great! What is the problem then? Looks like AMD could have nipped this in the bud before release?

 

[smithkt]

Great! What is the problem then? Looks like AMD could have nipped this in the bud before release?

Turning down the tessellation level globally in the game is a work around. This is not the same as being able to optimize for specific features.

 

[Goatsecks]

Turning down the tessellation level globally in the game is a work around. This is not the same as being able to optimize for specific features.

So AMD can turn this feature off and, additionally, there is a work around. So what is the problem?

 

[smithkt]

So AMD can turn this feature off and, additionally, there is a work around. So what is the problem?

The original argument is that since source code for Gameworks libraries, such as Hairworks, are not available to AMD, they can not optimize specifically for them giving Nvidia an advantage when these libraries are used.

This is contrasted against AMD's TressFX which is open and can and has been optimized by Nvidia for use with their hardware.

I'll let you guys continue to argue the merits of this approach.

 

[96Firebird]

Kepler owners do not agree with you. Just ask around
And the issue is not showing a card in a bad light, who cares?? The problem is turning capable hardware into low end stuff

I'm not sure if you meant to quote me? Your response had nothing to do with what I said...

 

[Goatsecks]

The original argument is that since source code for Gameworks libraries, such as Hairworks, are not available to AMD, they can not optimize specifically for them giving Nvidia an advantage when these libraries are used.

This is contrasted against AMD's TressFX which is open and can and has been optimized by Nvidia for use with their hardware.

I'll let you guys continue to argue the merits of this approach.

I believe the original argument of this thread, or atleast the implication, is that Nvidia's hairworks is deliberatly sabotaging AMD's performance despite it being possible to run hairworks on AMD's hardware and the game still being playable. AMD clearly had the resources to heavily mitigate the performance impact of hairworks on their hardware at release but did not do so.

Secondly, just becuase a library is open source does not mean it is free/easy to implement. The inevitable complexity of tressfx or hairworks will require a lot of man-hours to correctly implement. Which begs the question: why was hairworks selected over tressfx when tressfx is open? Were brown evelopes exchanged or was support more forthcomming from one of the camps? This answer to this is only going to be speculation but the most simple answer will be the more likely.

 

[exar333]

I believe the original argument of this thread, or atleast the implication, is that Nvidia's hairworks is deliberatly sabotaging AMD's performance despite it being possible to run hairworks on AMD's hardware and the game still being playable. AMD clearly had the resources to heavily mitigate the performance impact of hairworks on their hardware at release but did not do so.

Secondly, just becuase a library is open source does not mean it is free/easy to implement. The inevitable complexity of tressfx or hairworks will require a lot of man-hours to correctly implement. Which begs the question: why was hairworks selected over tressfx when tressfx is open? Were brown evelopes exchanged or was support more forthcomming from one of the camps? This answer to this is only going to be speculation but the most simple answer will be the more likely.

This just doesn't make sense to me. Hairworks is pretty silly and was implemented in a very heavy-handed way by NV (read: not well done). AMD's workaround with the slider is a GREAT solution and is something that NV should have included as well a long time ago.

NV's approach here hurt their own products and AMD because of it's clumsy setup forcing a specific tesselation factor of 64. The slider mitigates this greatly and is actually a 'workaround' that works better than the real product.

Go figure. 🙂

 

[Goatsecks]

This just doesn't make sense to me. Hairworks is pretty silly and was implemented in a very heavy-handed way by NV (read: not well done). AMD's workaround with the slider is a GREAT solution and is something that NV should have included as well a long time ago.

NV's approach here hurt their own products and AMD because of it's clumsy setup forcing a specific tesselation factor of 64. The slider mitigates this greatly and is actually a 'workaround' that works better than the real product.

Go figure. 🙂

I could not agree more, but lets not mix up maliciousness with sloppy implementation! 🙂

 

[smithkt]

I believe the original argument of this thread, or atleast the implication, is that Nvidia's hairworks is deliberatly sabotaging AMD's performance despite it being possible to run hairworks on AMD's hardware and the game still being playable. AMD clearly had the resources to heavily mitigate the performance impact of hairworks on their hardware at release but did not do so.

Secondly, just becuase a library is open source does not mean it is free/easy to implement. The inevitable complexity of tressfx or hairworks will require a lot of man-hours to correctly implement. Which begs the question: why was hairworks selected over tressfx when tressfx is open? Were brown evelopes exchanged or was support more forthcomming from one of the camps? This answer to this is only going to be speculation but the most simple answer will be the more likely.

I had a slightly different take away from the argument. It's not so much that Hairworks has some secret sauce to deliberately reduce performance on AMD cards, it's that the closed nature of it makes it impossible for AMD to directly optimize for it in their drivers meaning AMD will always be behind in performance for a given image quality setting (tessellation factor).

I never suggested that open=easy. Why Hairworks over TressFX? Only CDPR can answer that.

I don't have a clue if any other parts of the game require or use a tessellation factor of 64. If not, then the slider in the AMD panel is a perfectly suitable work around. It's still not the best solution.

The slider should be in the game itself, but I don't know if that is allowed by Nvidia.

 

[Goatsecks]

I had a slightly different take away from the argument. It's not so much that Hairworks has some secret sauce to deliberately reduce performance on AMD cards, it's that the closed nature of it makes it impossible for AMD to directly optimize for it in their drivers meaning AMD will always be behind in performance for a given image quality setting (tessellation factor).

I never suggested that open=easy. Why Hairworks over TressFX? Only CDPR can answer that.

I don't have a clue if any other parts of the game require or use a tessellation factor of 64. If not, then the slider in the AMD panel is a perfectly suitable work around. It's still not the best solution.

The slider should be in the game itself, but I don't know if that is allowed by Nvidia.

I hope that one day everything is a lot more open and community centric. But at this time it is unfair to chastise Nvidia for developing features for their customers. Especially when these features do run on the competions hardware and/or can be disabled entirely.

The slider is a great idea. I can't see how Nvidia could have a say over a general graphical setting, after all, tessalation is not a unique to hairworks but a general modelling paradigm.

I just get frustraited at how desperately people are trying to blame Nvidia for an episode where neither AMD or Nvidia have shrouded themselves in glory. Mistakes have been made of both sides and it would be nice to see the forum accept this.

 

[smithkt]

I hope that one day everything is a lot more open and community centric. But at this time it is unfair to chastise Nvidia for developing features for their customers. Especially when these features do run on the competions hardware and/or can be disabled entirely.

The slider is a great idea. I can't see how Nvidia could have a say over a general graphical setting, after all, tessalation is not a unique to hairworks but a general modelling paradigm.

I just get frustraited at how desperately people are trying to blame Nvidia for an episode where neither AMD or Nvidia have shrouded themselves in glory. Mistakes have been made of both sides and it would be nice to see the forum accept this.

I know you are speaking about the forum in general, but I'd like to point out that I myself am not chastising Nvidia. They are free to do as they please. The market will accept it or not.

 

[SirPauly]

They are free to do as they please. The market will accept it or not.

That's the key, there are differing views, sometimes very spirited and vocal, which at times become circular and why I have the signature, Ultimately the market decides.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Why should what the general public decides to consume en mass be equated with being automatically a positive outcome and a reflection of the best products succeeding. This may very well be the highest form of a strawman a person could think of.