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

[SirPauly]

Brand perception is a *very* hard thing to change.

imho,

The only way is to out work, out execute and out innovate, especially hard considering their major focus and resources are about GPU's.

I think the share differential is from the investments in R&D and resources spent for software and hardware for the GPU, where AMD is spread thin.

 

[AnandThenMan]

You don't have to out innovate to become a dominant player, in fact Nvidia follows much more than they lead. Where they lead is business acumen, Microsoft is another great example of this.

 

[MattL]

imho,

The only way is to out work, out execute and out innovate, especially hard considering their major focus and resources are about GPU's.

I think the share differential is from the investments in R&D and resources spent for software and hardware for the GPU, where AMD is spread thin.

I'd agree that's one of the only ways you can try to change the perception, though even then the people who innovate and out-excecute other brands don't always cause a shift in perception. Though again I'd agree that's one of the few sane ways to approach a perception issue. I don't think anyone genuinely knows how to consistently do it though, much like success is both hard work and luck.

 

[Keysplayr]

You don't have to out innovate to become a dominant player, in fact Nvidia follows much more than they lead. Where they lead is business acumen, Microsoft is another great example of this.

I see. The only advantage Nvidia has is their business acumen. Nothing to do with their products. Nothing to do with their technology or dev relations. Any success Nvidia has had is due to marketing and business savvy ways.
People buy Nvidia because they don't know any better. 77% of them. That's a lot of people who do not know any better. That 23% though. Now they are in the know. /sarcasm

Yes, you have to out innovate your competitor. You also have to out market, out plan, out maneuver, out smart, out everything if you want to be on top and that is in any business.
Folks still using AMD have nothing to worry about when it comes to Hairworks or Gameworks features if all they have to do is shut it off. That's all. Let Nvidia users judge whether or not the performance hit is justified or not. If it's not for them, they can shut it off too. It's not that complicated, but all Gameworks titles should absolutely have the means to disable partial and all of the features. And that is the only thing, I feel, needs to be done.

I think quite a few people have said this very thing in this thread. After the first person said it, this thread should have ended. IMHO.

 

[tential]

I see. The only advantage Nvidia has is their business acumen. Nothing to do with their products. Nothing to do with their technology or dev relations. Any success Nvidia has had is due to marketing and business savvy ways.
People buy Nvidia because they don't know any better. 77% of them. That's a lot of people who do not know any better. That 23% though. Now they are in the know. /sarcasm

Yes, you have to out innovate your competitor. You also have to out market, out plan, out maneuver, out smart, out everything if you want to be on top and that is in any business.
Folks still using AMD have nothing to worry about when it comes to Hairworks or Gameworks features if all they have to do is shut it off. That's all. Let Nvidia users judge whether or not the performance hit is justified or not. If it's not for them, they can shut it off too. It's not that complicated, but all Gameworks titles should absolutely have the means to disable partial and all of the features. And that is the only thing, I feel, needs to be done.

I think quite a few people have said this very thing in this thread. After the first person said it, this thread should have ended. IMHO.

Honestly, I'd say Nvidia's business acumen may even be better than Apple's. If you can't see it, well, I'm not surprised but it's my love of business and Nvidia is a company I just can't stop watching. They play things so well. Since even before bumpgate I've thought this company just can't lose. No matter what they do, they make a positive out of it, downplay it, brush it off, etc. They always come out ahead.

But hey, if you think Nvidia doesn't have that great of a business acumen, and that it's their product that sells then that's great. I'd just think you'd have a little more respect for how Nvidia does business since they clearly respect your feedback/opinion.

 

[AnandThenMan]

I see. The only advantage Nvidia has is their business acumen.

No one has said this.

 

[SirPauly]

Tom Petersen touched on Witcher 3's tessellation; tessellation is an incredibly complicated science, not just the scale factor, right, tessellation factor is used for how many hairs per inch , right, and how many curves per hair, is the water different from the hair on the animal, what about tessellated shapes in the distance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fi1QHhdqV4

Not much but some response --- Good question though

 

[Cookie Monster]

When Nvidia has inferior products both in price and performance they still sell in large numbers when AMD is in the same situation their numbers tank. This is the answer that you don't want to hear. And don't even go into marketshare numbers when is the last time Nvidia had under 20%? There have been times NV deserved to be at 20% but it never happened because of "brand" which is much more powerful than the actual merits of the product.

This is like business 101 the 2nd day of class.

Im not so sure about that. Remember this chart? http://cdn3.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Nvidia-AMD.png

When AMD or ATi brings out a better product both in performance and price, naturally the market share flips or atleast become close. Same applies to nVIDIA. We can see this happen when nVIDIA flopped with the NV3x based products while ATi was on a roll with R300/R420 etc vice versa e.g. G80/R600.

There are other factors in play of course but interestingly enough.. nVIDIA hasn't flopped or released a poor product in a very long time (initial Fermi based products is the only one that comes to mind in the last couple of years). This also helps you maintain or strengthen your image because a solid product is realeased one after another. Back in the days, the two companies always had a good answer which would result in the marketshare swinging back and forth. But in the past 2~3 years, that hasn't been the case and thats why we see AMD being in unfamiliar territory. They've somewhat lost the past 2~3 generations. Just imagine nVIDIA going through a "Fermi/GTX480" generation for 2~3 consecutive generations. They'd be doing badly regardless of image or execution as long AMD can place themselves with more products akin to the HD5870/50.

For me, time and time again products that are strong in all the areas e.g. HD5870, 8800GTX etc (representing its family) i.e. performance/power(heat and noise)/price really dictates the outcome of the overall market share. 5 series from AMD had a good lineup especially with the performance/value focused HD5850. The 8 series had its own in the form of 8800GT. If AMD can do this, it will create momentum to swing the advantage in their favor but nVIDIA has been so solid in the past couple of years.. its going to be VERY tough.

They need to win it out for 2 generations minimum to see a shift upwards but with the look of things, I don't know if that will ever happen. Fiji blasting the doors off the GM200 or atleast being more efficient at the same performance would be a great start.

Sorry for derailing the OT!

 

[ocre]

Great post cookie monster

 

[showb1z]

I don't understand. If you insist that Gameworks isn't a value add, then why tout that it can be tweaked to run better on anything, let alone AMD hardware? Should this matter? Because your implying that it matters and for something to matter, it would probably have to be a value add.

Also I don't understand this statement: "How about they start by properly optimizing their features so they don't destroy 30% of our performance for no IQ gain."
If there is no IQ gain, why complain there is a 30% performance loss. Turn it off. Because the alternative is no loss of performance just so you can have a no IQ difference Gameworks enabled in a given game.

Also: "it's just a way to make their competitor and their older cards look worse"
What is a way to make their competitor and their older cards look worse?
If there isn't any IQ difference, then there isn't any reason to have it enabled. Hence your argument has defeated itself? I think?

Nvidia is going to continue to offer differentiating features. Pretty much end of story, so you may as well get used to it. The market is speaking and always has been speaking. Customers want more. Nvidia intends to give it.

Since we've been going over the same thing for 40 pages I didn't think it necessary to post yet another wall of text. This has probably been posted a hundred times in this thread, by me and others. But I'll make it 101 for you. Here goes, from the top:

Gameworks is utter crap. Not just because it's proprietary and AMD has a hard time optimizing for it. But because it's completely unoptimized for Nvidia's own customers as well.
It's been shown that Hairworks at 64x tesselation offers no IQ gain over 16x, while destroying performance on Maxwell/Kepler/GCN.

Hairworks made anything but Nvidia's latest generation unplayable. How is that added value for someone who bought a $650 780 or a $1k Titan?
And why should someone with a 980 be overjoyed that Nvidia's shiny new feature cut their minimum fps in half? If Nvidia was actually worried about "giving more" to their customers they would tweak their effects for optimal IQ/performance ratio, but they don't cause they only care about pushing their new cards.
Nvidia shouldn't be in charge of how well games run on any given hardware, yet Gamework pretty much gives them a slider where they can obsolete cards at will.
Gameworks isn't just bad for AMD customers, it's bad for everyone.

 

[SirPauly]

One can tweak the tessellation MSAA,2,4,8 or disable the tessellation MSAA --- you have the ability to turn off HairWorks, enable Geralt or All.

 

[Dribble]

Nvidia shouldn't be in charge of how well games run on any given hardware, yet Gamework pretty much gives them a slider where they can obsolete cards at will.
Gameworks isn't just bad for AMD customers, it's bad for everyone.

When crysis came out I had to turn the settings right down to play, took several years before I had a card that could max it and I could admire the game in all it's glory. Did that make me upset there were ultra settings - should crytek have just released the game with medium settings being the highest you could go? Of course not, I love those ultra settings when I got a card that could use them. Just because a game has some optional setting that are demanding for the current range of cards doesn't mean they are bad.

 

[Keysplayr]

Since we've been going over the same thing for 40 pages I didn't think it necessary to post yet another wall of text. This has probably been posted a hundred times in this thread, by me and others. But I'll make it 101 for you. Here goes, from the top:

Gameworks is utter crap. Not just because it's proprietary and AMD has a hard time optimizing for it. But because it's completely unoptimized for Nvidia's own customers as well.
It's been shown that Hairworks at 64x tesselation offers no IQ gain over 16x, while destroying performance on Maxwell/Kepler/GCN.

Hairworks made anything but Nvidia's latest generation unplayable. How is that added value for someone who bought a $650 780 or a $1k Titan?
And why should someone with a 980 be overjoyed that Nvidia's shiny new feature cut their minimum fps in half? If Nvidia was actually worried about "giving more" to their customers they would tweak their effects for optimal IQ/performance ratio, but they don't cause they only care about pushing their new cards.
Nvidia shouldn't be in charge of how well games run on any given hardware, yet Gamework pretty much gives them a slider where they can obsolete cards at will.
Gameworks isn't just bad for AMD customers, it's bad for everyone.

Then turn it off. "Problem" solved. Thanks for attending problem solving 101. And youre right, there was no need for 40 pages of circular tugging to arrive at this epiphany.
Stop complaining. Turn it off. Makes no sense to use something that aggravates you. Makes sense to turn it off.

 

[stahlhart]

This has gone on long enough. Thread closed.
-- stahlhart