[H] ASUS ROG Poseidon GTX 980 Platinum vs. AMD R9 295X2

[raghu78]

AMD can still optimize its drivers for any game, no one can stop them from doing that. No one can stop them from creating CrossFire profiles, of which it is up to the IHV, NVIDIA and AMD to create said profiles, for any game, the responsibility lies on them.

Firstly AMD clearly said that client side patches are required for CF to work in FC4. They said it in Dec 2014. In Mar 2014 the lazy developer releases a patch which enables FC4 support. So who is to blame here ? Do you have a clue about game engine and 3D graphics architecture and design before blaming AMD. We saw that just as AMD said once the developer patched the game the CF scaling was there.

If you want to hold AMD accountable then without any game patches CF should be able to be enabled. But thats not happening. The game developers are signed up with Nvidia Gameworks and they are just flat out lazy or coerced by Nvidia to not support CF at launch and just drag their feet. You think that nobody sees that Gameworks is a method by which Nvidia harms the competition. I am not talking about the software features like HBAO+ but the business aspect of being signed on with Nvidia. Gameworks licensees cannot work with AMD for optimizing their games as their licensing with Nvidia clearly states they cannot share Gameworks code with AMD. If you contrast that with Tombraider where the developer worked with Nvidia and within 2 weeks from launch Nvidia had performance optimized drivers.

All the Gameworks titles released in the last 6 months have been poorly optimized, buggy and the support for CF has been zero - Farcry 4, AC Unity, Dying Light, Evolve. Heck most of the Gameworks games receive patches for months and after multiple patches still do not support CF. AC Unity patch 1.3 released more than a month after launch improved performance massively on AMD GPUs, but still did not enable CF. Prior to that performance was horrible and the game was buggy.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/12/22/assassins_creed_unity_performance_video_card_review/7

Farcry too had a similar situation with patch 1.5 improving performance but still no CF support.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/01/07/far_cry_4_video_card_performance_review/#.VRZBTfmUfSh

Dying Light patch 1.5 made huge improvements to performance on AMD cards. That patch came 6 weeks after launch. Thats pathetic. If you have the guts write an article which compares performance in single and multi GPU on Gameworks games 2 - 3 months after launch and compare perf and stability on all patch versions. You will see how bad Gameworks titles are. Gameworks has become synonymous with poor optimization, buggy games and literally zero support for CF at launch.

In contrast Gaming Evolved games like Dragon Age Inquisition, Alien Isolation, Civilization Beyond Earth worked very well on launch with both GPU vendors. CF and SLI support was good. So fundamentally there is something right with AMD's Gaming Evolved and something horribly wrong with Nvidia Gameworks. Again I am talking about the process and the business models of these two programs. AMD GE is improving the PC industry and helping drive a good experience for the PC gamer by espousing industry standards and being open with their technology (Tress FX is open source) while Nvidia Gameworks is a black box with an extremely damaging business model for the PC industry and the gamer.

btw your reviews in the past few months are excessively biased. 6 months back you were saying how R9 290X CF or R9 295x2 was able to keep up with GTX 980 SLI. You mentioned XDMA CF was smoother with better scaling and more consistent than SLI.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014...980_sli_overclocked_gpu_review/4#.VRZDNPmUfSg

Now you write an article where you say a single 980 competes with R9 295x2. you are so biased its not even funny. anandtech's latest 2015 GPU bench shows a R9 295x2 hanging with the 980 SLI and much faster than a single 980. Now thats the reality.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1437?vs=1445

I know that Gameworks licensees are going to drag their feet with AMD GPUs but thats basically Nvidia's nasty business practices and not AMD's fault. If you have the guts write an article about how Gameworks is harming the PC industry.

 

[Jaydip]

People here seems to have very selective memory lol.When DA2 came out it ran like crap on NV and NV came out to fix this, I dont remember anyone saying here that BW should have done a better optimization.Same thing with TR,DS which run like crap on NV at first and then they did fix that.So it seems NV actually tries to address issues where AMD just plays the blame game.Did NV get a free pass when these games came out? nope they didnt and neither should AMD.

 

[raghu78]

People here seems to have very selective memory lol.When DA2 came out it ran like crap on NV and NV came out to fix this, I dont remember anyone saying here that BW should have done a better optimization.Same thing with TR,DS which run like crap on NV at first and then they did fix that.So it seems NV actually tries to address issues where AMD just plays the blame game.Did NV get a free pass when these games came out? nope they didnt and neither should AMD.

Nvidia had optimized performance drivers for Tombraider two weeks from launch. TR launched on Mar 5, 2013 and Nvidia had optimized drivers on Mar 18, 2013. btw Nvidia mentioned that they worked closely with Crystal Dynamics to get performance up to the mark. Tress FX is completely open. On the contrary Gameworks licensees cannot share the Gameworks code with AMD. Its upto the developer to get the best performance out of AMD GPUs on Gameworks code.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_Raider_(2013_video_game)

http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2013/03/15/lara-croft-joins-geforce-with-45-performance-gain/

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win8-win7-winvista-64bit-314.21-beta-driver.htm

In the Gameworks titles we are talking of months before basic single GPU performance is good and without bugs on AMD GPUs. Further more CF support in FC4 took 4 months. CF in AC Unity is still not working. If you still call these scenarios the same you are basically speaking with a prejudiced point of view.

 

[Silverforce11]

People here seems to have very selective memory lol.When DA2 came out it ran like crap on NV and NV came out to fix this, I dont remember anyone saying here that BW should have done a better optimization.Same thing with TR,DS which run like crap on NV at first and then they did fix that.So it seems NV actually tries to address issues where AMD just plays the blame game.Did NV get a free pass when these games came out? nope they didnt and neither should AMD.

Recall how long it took for Bioware to fix DA2 bugs on NV GPUs with a patch. Now compare that to the situation of GameWork developers.

If the developers are the ones who drop the ball, then blame them instead.

 

[Jaydip]

Nvidia had optimized performance drivers for Tombraider two weeks from launch. TR launched on Mar 5, 2013 and Nvidia had optimized drivers on Mar 18, 2013. btw Nvidia mentioned that they worked closely with Crystal Dynamics to get performance up to the mark. Tress FX is completely open. On the contrary Gameworks licensees cannot share the Gameworks code with AMD. Its upto the developer to get the best performance out of AMD GPUs on Gameworks code.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_Raider_(2013_video_game)

http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2013/03/15/lara-croft-joins-geforce-with-45-performance-gain/

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win8-win7-winvista-64bit-314.21-beta-driver.htm

In the Gameworks titles we are talking of months before basic single GPU performance is good and without bugs on AMD GPUs. Further more CF support in FC4 took 4 months. CF in AC Unity is still not working. If you still call these scenarios the same you are basically speaking with a prejudiced point of view.

IIRC SLI was broken in WD/DL too at launch.You guys are looking at some of the lazy developers in the world, they don't care about PC gaming and definitely not about optimization.Typically games from Blizzard/CDPR are well optimized at launch but sadly not the rest.

 

[Jaydip]

Recall how long it took for Bioware to fix DA2 bugs on NV GPUs with a patch. Now compare that to the situation of GameWork developers.

If the developers are the ones who drop the ball, then blame them instead.

The developers are the main culprit here but the GPU vendors should not get a free pass either.Ubi is lazy and their idea of optimization was poor before GW.

 

[desprado]

People here seems to have very selective memory lol.When DA2 came out it ran like crap on NV and NV came out to fix this, I dont remember anyone saying here that BW should have done a better optimization.Same thing with TR,DS which run like crap on NV at first and then they did fix that.So it seems NV actually tries to address issues where AMD just plays the blame game.Did NV get a free pass when these games came out? nope they didnt and neither should AMD.

This.............Sleeping Dogs on release ran so much crap on Nvidia like 7870 was beating GTX 680 sames go with Hitman and TR and i took 3 to 4 weeks to sort out TR problem while hitman and sleeping dog took a year or so.

 

[digitaldurandal]

The burden still lies on AMD/NVIDIA to work with the developers to get its own hardware like CrossFire or SLI working in a game at launch.

You cannot work with a company that refuses to work with you. I don't see how you could not understand that unless you were biased.

 

[casiofx]

Perhaps you missed a couple of articles

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/12/22/assassins_creed_unity_performance_video_card_review/7

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/11/06/alien_isolation_video_card_performance_review/8

We call it like we see it, on both ends.

I loved to read Hardocp's articles last time.

But seeing how freaking biased you are and the articles now, gonna skip that site, yupp.

 

[AtenRa]

Just keep in mind if a game doesn't have a CrossFire profile you will drop down to the performance of one AMD Radeon R9 290X GPU, which is a lot slower than a GTX 980. AMD has totally dropped the ball recently in terms of Radeon driver and CrossFire profile support and that is inexcusable.

@ BrentJ

The only game of your gaming suite (only 5 games) that doesnt have a CF profile is Dying Light and yet the R9 295 is still faster at 1440 and even faster at 4K than the 980 Poseidon.

How many games have been released since December 2014(Catalyst 14:12) that you are using in your reviews ?? Just a single one, Dying Light. And because of that single game you believe that AMD has totally dropped the ball in terms of driver and CF support ???

I know you had to make the 980 Poseidon look good (any Review site will do the same now days) but you have to be more discrete, it is not the fault of AMD that R9 295 is faster than 980 Poseidon at the same price.
(even without CF profiles)

 

[Silverforce11]

@ BrentJ

The only game of your gaming suite (only 5 games) that doesnt have a CF profile is Dying Light and yet the R9 295 is still faster at 1440 and even faster at 4K than the 980 Poseidon.

How many games have been released since December 2014(Catalyst 14:12) that you are using in your reviews ?? Just a single one, Dying Light. And because of that single game you believe that AMD has totally dropped the ball in terms of driver and CF support ???

I know you had to make the 980 Poseidon look good (any Review site will do the same now days) but you have to be more discrete, it is not the fault of AMD that R9 295 is faster than 980 Poseidon at the same price.
(even without CF profiles)

They have CF for Dying Light, in the most recent patch the developers finally added support for it so AMD's CF can actually work.

This is another example of GameWork devs not working with AMD throughout the development of the game. The question "why not?" is easily explained with statements on the public record from NV, AMD & Developers regarding exclusivity of GameWorks, it locks developers in, restricting them from helping AMD optimize their games.

I don't have a problem with the way NV runs GW, its their money, they can do whats best for them!

But I have a problem with hypocritical review sites that refuse to include Dirt 3 due to AMD's DirectCompute Global Illumination (through DX11, open source, cross-vendor compatible, non-lock out!) running poorly on NV on release, but then turn around and declare GW is fine, it doesn't do anything negative for AMD... well, preventing game devs from sharing optimizations with AMD is pretty damn negative wouldn't you say??

 

[desprado]

They have CF for Dying Light, in the most recent patch the developers finally added support for it so AMD's CF can actually work.

This is another example of GameWork devs not working with AMD throughout the development of the game. The question "why not?" is easily explained with statements on the public record from NV, AMD & Developers regarding exclusivity of GameWorks, it locks developers in, restricting them from helping AMD optimize their games.

I don't have a problem with the way NV runs GW, its their money, they can do whats best for them!

But I have a problem with hypocritical review sites that refuse to include Dirt 3 due to AMD's DirectCompute Global Illumination (through DX11, open source, cross-vendor compatible, non-lock out!) running poorly on NV on release, but then turn around and declare GW is fine, it doesn't do anything negative for AMD... well, preventing game devs from sharing optimizations with AMD is pretty damn negative wouldn't you say??

It all comes to who has more money, majority and shares.I told u before it is all business and business runs by money not begging.

 

[raghu78]

They have CF for Dying Light, in the most recent patch the developers finally added support for it so AMD's CF can actually work.

This is another example of GameWork devs not working with AMD throughout the development of the game. The question "why not?" is easily explained with statements on the public record from NV, AMD & Developers regarding exclusivity of GameWorks, it locks developers in, restricting them from helping AMD optimize their games.

I don't have a problem with the way NV runs GW, its their money, they can do whats best for them!

But I have a problem with hypocritical review sites that refuse to include Dirt 3 due to AMD's DirectCompute Global Illumination (through DX11, open source, cross-vendor compatible, non-lock out!) running poorly on NV on release, but then turn around and declare GW is fine, it doesn't do anything negative for AMD... well, preventing game devs from sharing optimizations with AMD is pretty damn negative wouldn't you say??

Its very clear that the majority of sites are more critical of AMD and less so of Nvidia. Nvidia's mistakes like the GTX 970 spec miscommunication (well who believes that trash) are glossed over and some tech sites even defend Nvidia's actions to an extent saying the performance is still the same. Thats a flat out lie and some of these sites should be ashamed of themselves. The GTX 970 is showing its limitations in the recent games like Evolve, Dying Light at 1440p / 4k and Rome Total War Atilla at 1080p even in single GPU. in muti GPU the problem is even worse with other titles like Middle Earth and COD AW showing more frametime variations than GTX 980 SLI.. Thats why I think the majority of the press is just paid Nvidia PR and marketing.

Many of the sites which were critical of games like Dirt Showdown, Hitman Absolution saying it hurt Nvidia GPUs are now just choosing to ignore the shady practices of Nvidia TWIMTBP/Gameworks. This is a marketing-cum development program which is meant to harm AMD. No doubt about it. Gameworks titles run like crap on AMD GPUs and take months to fix. They do not support CF at all at launch. FC4 and Dying Light required game patches to enable CF support. AC unity still does not work in CF.

 

[Silverforce11]

It all comes to who has more money, majority and shares.I told u before it is all business and business runs by money not begging.

Also @raghu78

As said, I have zero issues with NV's vision and control with GW. They are entitled to make their products look better than their competitors. They aren't in the business of enabling competition and they shouldn't be!

AMD has no understanding of this marketing battle. Its a sin that they release their technology source code for GE games. Spend all that R&D and give it to NV for free? Help devs make games and allow them to share optimizations with NV? Result: A week or two after a GE game runs poorly on NV on release, NV is able to release a driver to fix it. AMD gains nothing for that $ expenditure on their GE program.

It also does not help them that there's so many NV biased review sites and now more hypocritical reviewers freely dissing AMD for their failure to perform in GW titles along with getting blamed for lazy developers.

ps. For the claim that Hitman ran poorly on NV, here's the early post release review from [H] itself.
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/12/20/hitman_absolution_performance_iq_review/4#.VRai4fmUefU

Note the same thing in every other GE title, they run just fine on NV hardware even on release or very soon after release.

 

[raghu78]

Also @raghu78
As said, I have zero issues with NV's vision and control with GW. They are entitled to make their products look better than their competitors. They aren't in the business of enabling competition and they shouldn't be!

AMD has no understanding of this marketing battle. Its a sin that they release their technology source code for GE games. Spend all that R&D and give it to NV for free? Help devs make games and allow them to share optimizations with NV? Result: A week or two after a GE game runs poorly on NV on release, NV is able to release a driver to fix it. AMD gains nothing for that $ expenditure on their GE program.

It also does not help them that there's so many NV biased review sites and now more hypocritical reviewers freely dissing AMD for their failure to perform in GW titles along with getting blamed for lazy developers.

ps. For the claim that Hitman ran poorly on NV, here's the early post release review from [H] itself.
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/12/20/hitman_absolution_performance_iq_review/4#.VRai4fmUefU

Note the same thing in every other GE title, they run just fine on NV hardware even on release or very soon after release.

NV's GW is basically a nefarious business practice. Nvidia might not be in the business of enabling the competition but they sure as hell have no right to be in the business of crippling or disabling their competition through black box Gameworks code licensed to game developers with strict licensing agreement not to share it with AMD, which prohibits a Gameworks licensee from working with AMD. On the contrary AMD does not prevent Nvidia from working with AMD GE developers. Thats how Nvidia can fix performance in a game like Tombraider two weeks from launch. btw even that was an exception. In recent times every GE game (DAI, Alien Isolation, Civ BE) has launched with excellent performance on NV GPUs including SLI.

Thats why if a gamer or consumer has a brain of his own and values business ethics he or she needs to vote with his wallet. Do not buy a Gameworks game at full price on launch. In most cases the game itself would be available for a bargain price of USD 5 - 10 within 3 months. These games are buggy, unoptimized and an unenjoyable experience on AMD GPUs at launch. So by the time its a good experience these games just end up at bargain sale prices. As for Nvidia they won't get a dime from me because I absolutely detest companies like them who intentionally harm the competition through unethical methods.

 

[AtenRa]

They have CF for Dying Light, in the most recent patch the developers finally added support for it so AMD's CF can actually work.

This is another example of GameWork devs not working with AMD throughout the development of the game. The question "why not?" is easily explained with statements on the public record from NV, AMD & Developers regarding exclusivity of GameWorks, it locks developers in, restricting them from helping AMD optimize their games.

I don't have a problem with the way NV runs GW, its their money, they can do whats best for them!

But I have a problem with hypocritical review sites that refuse to include Dirt 3 due to AMD's DirectCompute Global Illumination (through DX11, open source, cross-vendor compatible, non-lock out!) running poorly on NV on release, but then turn around and declare GW is fine, it doesn't do anything negative for AMD... well, preventing game devs from sharing optimizations with AMD is pretty damn negative wouldn't you say??

If BrentJ wants what is best for all GAMERS (amd and nv) then it should put more pressure to NVIDIA (GameWorks) to let AMD be able to optimize the f...cking game.
Instead, he is putting the blame on AMD for being late with CF support.
Im sure if AMD had access to the Game, it would had all the CF support within a few weeks. Much like NVIDIA does with GE titles.

 

[Jaydip]

If BrentJ wants what is best for all GAMERS (amd and nv) then it should put more pressure to NVIDIA (GameWorks) to let AMD be able to optimize the f...cking game.
Instead, he is putting the blame on AMD for being late with CF support.
Im sure if AMD had access to the Game, it would had all the CF support within a few weeks. Much like NVIDIA does with GE titles.

Nope the pressure should be on AMD's shoulders alone, why would NV let you optimize a game for AMD when they paid the developers to get the early access? weird thinking really.AMD created mantle to so that games run faster on their cpu/gpus, it was a black box to NV too so they needed something to fight mantle and GW is the answer.Instead of blaming NV ask AMD to release more mantle enabled games period.

 

[caswow]

Nope the pressure should be on AMD's shoulders alone, why would NV let you optimize a game for AMD when they paid the developers to get the early access? weird thinking really.AMD created mantle to so that games run faster on their cpu/gpus, it was a black box to NV too so they needed something to fight mantle and GW is the answer.Instead of blaming NV ask AMD to release more mantle enabled games period.

thats the best that could happen to the pc community. bribing devs to cripple the competition. nice thats what the industry should be about. crippling itself

 

[Jaydip]

thats the best that could happen to the pc community. bribing devs to cripple the competition. nice thats what the industry should be about. crippling itself

Lol PC community, so how long did it take GTA 5 to arrive on PC? you know the answer.PC gaming is all about MMOs/MOBA/Indies now, I think going forward AAA franchise on PC gonna be irrelevant.

 

[Headfoot]

it doesn't really seem like the points being argued are in any way mutually exclusive.

Could AMD do more for CF profiles and optimization at day 1? Yes, certainly.
Is nVidia gameworks license language and code strategy likely slowing down AMD's efforts? Yes, certainly.

Its pretty selective hearing to specifically ignore any relevant factor, regardless of which side you fall on. The world is a complicated place, and it becomes more complicated when you talk about billion dollar businesses fighting for a market. Oversimplification serves no one

 

[Jaydip]

it doesn't really seem like the points being argued are in any way mutually exclusive.

Could AMD do more for CF profiles and optimization at day 1? Yes, certainly.
Is nVidia gameworks license language and code strategy likely slowing down AMD's efforts? Yes, certainly.

Its pretty selective hearing to specifically ignore any relevant factor, regardless of which side you fall on. The world is a complicated place, and it becomes more complicated when you talk about billion dollar businesses fighting for a market. Oversimplification serves no one

You are spot on

 

[AnandThenMan]

NV's GW is basically a nefarious business practice. Nvidia might not be in the business of enabling the competition but they sure as hell have no right to be in the business of crippling or disabling their competition through black box Gameworks code licensed to game developers with strict licensing agreement not to share it with AMD, which prohibits a Gameworks licensee from working with AMD.

This practice should be illegal (maybe it is I am not a legal expert). But either way [H] should be calling out Nvidia for pulling this crap, that's what a site does when the interest of the reader is put first. But sadly the interests of Nvidia are being put first. I find it ridiculous that Brent posts two links trying to say look we are equal in our criticism. Did he even read his own links? I don't see Nvidia being bashed and blamed over and over for missing features and buggy code.

The short version is Brent blamed AMD for something they had absolutely no control over. :thumbsdown:

 

[raghu78]

This practice should be illegal (maybe it is I am not a legal expert). But either way [H] should be calling out Nvidia for pulling this crap, that's what a site does when the interest of the reader is put first. But sadly the interests of Nvidia are being put first. I find it ridiculous that Brent posts two links trying to say look we are equal in our criticism. Did he even read his own links? I don't see Nvidia being bashed and blamed over and over for missing features and buggy code.

The short version is Brent blamed AMD for something they had absolutely no control over. :thumbsdown:

Its clear that he is not thinking objectively and fairly. If he were he would be putting the interests of the PC gaming community first rather than Nvidia.

 

[AtenRa]

Nope the pressure should be on AMD's shoulders alone, why would NV let you optimize a game for AMD when they paid the developers to get the early access? weird thinking really.AMD created mantle to so that games run faster on their cpu/gpus, it was a black box to NV too so they needed something to fight mantle and GW is the answer.Instead of blaming NV ask AMD to release more mantle enabled games period.

Get your facts straight,

1: AMD Mantle doesnt prohibit NVIDIA from optimizing the game in DX-11 mode.

2: NVIDIA GameWorks prohibits AMD from Optimizing the game in DX-11 mode.

3: The problem for all gamers is NVIDIA and the GameWorks. If BrentJ and anyone else in the review industry cares about all the gamers it is NVIDIA that he should put more pressure for its low tactics, not AMD for crating a new API that doesnt prohibits anyone from optimizing the games in DX mode.

 

[AtenRa]

it doesn't really seem like the points being argued are in any way mutually exclusive.

Could AMD do more for CF profiles and optimization at day 1? Yes, certainly.
Is nVidia gameworks license language and code strategy likely slowing down AMD's efforts? Yes, certainly.

Its pretty selective hearing to specifically ignore any relevant factor, regardless of which side you fall on. The world is a complicated place, and it becomes more complicated when you talk about billion dollar businesses fighting for a market. Oversimplification serves no one

Have you seen AMD Gaming Evolve Games locking out NVIDIA from Optimizing the game ?? Even in games that support Mantle, NVIDIA is able to optimize the game for DX-11 mode.

It seems people here doesnt know what NVIDIA is doing with GameWorks.