[maximumPC] Nvidia Tom and Rev interview on Contracts, Gsync + more

[Attic]

Pretty simple folks.

Gameworks is bad for gamers. Locking AMD out from optimizing gameworks code when their cards are forced to run gameworks is one thing, given than nVidia has control of that gamework code is an entirely different thing. Their isn't exactly a neutral force developing and implementing gameworks code in games that AMD will then be forced to run.

The glaring performance discrepancies for cards, particularly in Batman Orgins is proof enough for me that funny business, as expected, takes place in gameworks code.

Gamers shouldn't be supporting crap like gameworks if we want better games and better running games going forward.

 

[Mand]

Pretty simple folks.

Gameworks is bad for gamers.

The developers who have chosen to use it knowing that it's a proprietary middleware would seem to disagree.

Nvidia can't force Gameworks on the market. If Gameworks truly were this evil conspiracy to screw AMD over until they go out of business, the devs wouldn't use it. Because doing so would mean that people with AMD cards wouldn't buy their game, which they don't want.

 

[Stuka87]

Too bad?

Gameworks is Nvidia IP. No, their competitors don't get access to it. If they want to have comparable performance, then they need to either generate their own IP or learn how to optimize what they have access to. Nvidia is under no obligation whatsoever to give away their IP to their competitors, and it is wrong for you to ask them to.

Not all devs themselves even choose to get access to Gameworks source code. How in the hell do they do optimizations for anything at that point? The same way they always do, in the same ways that all games do. AMD can optimize for games that use Gameworks, as evidenced by the recent AMD driver update for Watch Dogs that dramatically improved performance. If optimization is so impossible, how did they do it?

*pounds head on desk*

Do you always contradict yourself like this? First you say I am lying by saying AMD cannot optimize that code, and then you turn around and say they cant as well!

And its obvious you have zero experience with software development. Game developers can optimize their games because its their game, they have all the code. In the case of gameworks, nVidia is putting the code in, so they are optimizing it for their cards at that time. The developer cannot do anything. No clue what you mean by "the way they always do", because the way they always do is to look at their own code in conjunction with source from nVidia/AMD/Intel.

In the case of Watch Dogs, AMD did not have early access to the game. So it was expected that any patch to improve things would come later. But thats not to say that the game could not be optimized further.

I still cannot fathom why you think having closed source libraries from each GPU maker is a good thing for gamers. I assume that you do play games, so you should care about this just as much as the rest of us. Only you have yet to show it.

 

[Mand]

I'm saying that if AMD can't optimize without Gameworks code, then that's their problem, but that I'm also not convinced it's actually true.

And I never said you were lying. I said you were repeating AMD's claims that have been proven false.

 

[Techhog]

Too bad?

Gameworks is Nvidia IP. No, their competitors don't get access to it. If they want to have comparable performance, then they need to either generate their own IP or learn how to optimize what they have access to. Nvidia is under no obligation whatsoever to give away their IP to their competitors, and it is wrong for you to ask them to.

Not all devs themselves even choose to get access to Gameworks source code. How in the hell do they do optimizations for anything at that point? The same way they always do, in the same ways that all games do. AMD can optimize for games that use Gameworks, as evidenced by the recent AMD driver update for Watch Dogs that dramatically improved performance. If optimization is so impossible, how did they do it?

So, you think it's perfectly fair if Intel and AMD have to deal with bad performance at the launch of these games, which is when they're reviewed? Most sites won't go back and correct reviews due to new drivers, and even if they do it doesn't mean that people who read them the first time will read the correction. It's unavoidable bad press. Nvidia adding their own stuff is fine, so long as AMD and Intel aren't locked out early on. People love to complain that Mantle Beta is not open, but how is this thinly-veiled PR sabotage not just as bad, if not worse?

 

[Rezist]

Realistically gameswork would not even be an issue if it could be disabled for benchmarking purposes. I don't expect anyone to bench a mantle AMD vs dx nVidia game because it really tells us absolutely nothing about the game.

In alot of ways it's far worse then mantle since atleast in DX the games are being treated the same, and usually mantle will come later.

 

[Mand]

So, you think it's perfectly fair if Intel and AMD have to deal with bad performance at the launch of these games, which is when they're reviewed?

AMD didn't think so with TressFX and Tomb Raider.

 

[Grooveriding]

I don't think it's worth worrying over gameworks. It's obviously a gambit to rig the benchmark game in favour of nvidia cards in games that use it, but, it is just another gpu physx situation where hardly any games will use it. The ones that do will be doing it because nvidia pays them off with sending them free labour in the form of one of their software people and most likely some cash payouts as well.

Will it affect performance for AMD users ? Sure, but it will be the same situation we see now with 5 or 6 games making use of it every year. Game developers have overwhelmingly rejected nvidia's attempts to get their proprietary software in games. Before it was gpu physx and now it will be gameworks. You'll see it in a few Ubisoft games and whatever the latest Batman title is and that will be about it.

 

[Techhog]

AMD didn't think so with TressFX and Tomb Raider.

Did Tomb Raider run badly on Nvidia cards even when TressFX was off? If not, this point is irrelevant.

EDIT: Okay, actually you're totally right. Either way, that doesn't suddenly make both of them right for doing it. I also don't know of any shady contract with TressFX, but you're free to prove me wrong.

 

[Mand]

that doesn't suddenly make both of them right for doing it.

Absolutely. But it does make AMD more wrong for complaining about it when they do it themselves.

 

[Techhog]

Absolutely. But it does make AMD more wrong for complaining about it when they do it themselves.

If that's the way you see it, fine. I can't really argue that.

 

[Stuka87]

Absolutely. But it does make AMD more wrong for complaining about it when they do it themselves.

The difference is nVidia has access to the TressFX source. AMD should have released it earlier for that one game. But nVidia has that source now, so it is no longer an issue. This is not the case with Gameworks.

 

[Techhog]

The difference is nVidia has access to the TressFX source. AMD should have released it earlier for that one game. But nVidia has that source now, so it is no longer an issue. This is not the case with Gameworks.

Some people feel that you can never get past anything that you've ever done. That said, Tomb Raider isn't all that old of a game.

 

[Mand]

Some people feel that you can never get past anything that you've ever done. That said, Tomb Raider isn't all that old of a game.

Possibly, but I'm not one of those people. That said, running the exact operation you're complaining about a competitor allegedly doing (they don't actually have proof that Gameworks degrades performance on their hardware) a mere year prior doesn't sit well with me.

Hypocrisy is bad. Maybe you can claim that AMD learned from Tomb Raider and is embracing a new philosophy of awesome, but their statements and tactics in the last seven or eight months haven't exactly borne that out. From Mantle to Freesync to Gameworks, they've been all about undercutting Nvidia's image rather than competing with Nvidia's products.

This is not the same company that I bought my most recent card from. They've changed, for the worse.

 

[Erenhardt]

I'm saying that if AMD can't optimize without Gameworks code, then that's their problem, .

Oh may. It is so wrong... Spoken like a true PR guy.
This wouldn't go through a gamer's mouth! It is not AMDs problem, not NVs problem, not microsofts - IT IS GAMER'S PROBLEM. In the end those anti-competitive practices hurt us(!?) - gamers!

 

[Techhog]

Possibly, but I'm not one of those people. That said, running the exact operation you're complaining about a competitor allegedly doing (they don't actually have proof that Gameworks degrades performance on their hardware) a mere year prior doesn't sit well with me.

Hypocrisy is bad. Maybe you can claim that AMD learned from Tomb Raider and is embracing a new philosophy of awesome, but their statements and tactics in the last seven or eight months haven't exactly borne that out. From Mantle to Freesync to Gameworks, they've been all about undercutting Nvidia's image rather than competing with Nvidia's products.

This is not the same company that I bought my most recent card from. They've changed, for the worse.

They don't have the money to develop parts which beat Nvidia on the top-end, so they try to compete on price and innovative features instead. I don't see the issue. Also, the fact that all Mantle games run exactly as they should on Nvidia cards right from the day of release is pretty strong proof that AMD is out of the crippling game.

 

[Mand]

Oh may. It is so wrong... Spoken like a true PR guy.
This wouldn't go through a gamer's mouth! It is not AMDs problem, not NVs problem, not microsofts - IT IS GAMER'S PROBLEM. In the end those anti-competitive practices hurt us(!?) - gamers!

Unless you flip that around, and call "unoptimized crap" the baseline, and then Nvidia comes along and gives us something that's better, which is good for gamers.

Is it really better to not have something at all than to have something one company does a better job of optimizing? If Nvidia had never come up with Gameworks, would we as gamers be better off? No.

 

[rgallant]

Pretty simple folks.

Gameworks is bad for gamers. Locking AMD out from optimizing gameworks code when their cards are forced to run gameworks is one thing, given than nVidia has control of that gamework code is an entirely different thing. Their isn't exactly a neutral force developing and implementing gameworks code in games that AMD will then be forced to run.

The glaring performance discrepancies for cards, particularly in Batman Orgins is proof enough for me that funny business, as expected, takes place in gameworks code.

Gamers shouldn't be supporting crap like gameworks if we want better games and better running games going forward.

they are not supporting gameworks , only stating that nv can't do anything bad imo

 

[Saylick]

Is it just me, or could you literally swap nVidia with AMD and swap Gameworks with Mantle and you'd have just as valid of an argument...

Case in point:

And it's not Nvidia's fault that AMD is dropping the ball. The proper response to Gameworks is to come up with something as good or better, not whine and moan when your competitor doesn't let you piggyback on their products.

And it's not AMD's fault that nVidia is dropping the ball. The proper response to Mantle is to come up with something as good or better, not whine and moan when your competitor doesn't let you piggyback on their products.

And how good will it be for gamers when the companies don't make improvements because there is no financial incentive for them to spend millions of dollars and years of engineering time in order to develop new features and capabilities?

Again, the claim that titles that use Gameworks can't be optimized for AMD is false. Stop repeating it.

And how good will it be for gamers when the companies don't make improvements because there is no financial incentive for them to spend millions of dollars and years of engineering time in order to develop new features and capabilities?

Again, the claim that titles that use Mantle can't be optimized for nVidia is false. Stop repeating it.

Too bad?

Gameworks is Nvidia IP. No, their competitors don't get access to it. If they want to have comparable performance, then they need to either generate their own IP or learn how to optimize what they have access to. Nvidia is under no obligation whatsoever to give away their IP to their competitors, and it is wrong for you to ask them to.

Not all devs themselves even choose to get access to Gameworks source code. How in the hell do they do optimizations for anything at that point? The same way they always do, in the same ways that all games do. /snip

Too bad?

Mantle is AMD IP. No, their competitors don't get access to it. If they want to have comparable performance, then they need to either generate their own IP or learn how to optimize what they have access to. AMD is under no obligation whatsoever to give away their IP to their competitors, and it is wrong for you to ask them to.

Not all devs themselves even choose to get access to Mantle source code. How in the hell do they do optimizations for anything at that point? The same way they always do, in the same ways that all games do.

The developers who have chosen to use it knowing that it's a proprietary middleware would seem to disagree.

Nvidia can't force Gameworks on the market. If Gameworks truly were this evil conspiracy to screw AMD over until they go out of business, the devs wouldn't use it. Because doing so would mean that people with AMD cards wouldn't buy their game, which they don't want.

The developers who have chosen to use it knowing that it's a proprietary middleware would seem to disagree.

AMD can't force Mantle on the market. If Mantle truly were this evil conspiracy to screw nVidia over until they go out of business, the devs wouldn't use it. Because doing so would mean that people with nVidia cards wouldn't buy their game, which they don't want.

Unless you flip that around, and call "unoptimized crap" the baseline, and then Nvidia comes along and gives us something that's better, which is good for gamers.

Is it really better to not have something at all than to have something one company does a better job of optimizing? If Nvidia had never come up with Gameworks, would we as gamers be better off? No.

Unless you flip that around, and call "unoptimized crap" the baseline, and then AMD comes along and gives us something that's better, which is good for gamers.

Is it really better to not have something at all than to have something one company does a better job of optimizing? If AMD had never come up with Mantle, would we as gamers be better off? No.

 

[Irenicus]

The whole section about Mantle is pure brilliance.

Then again, in a PR war, no one pulls any punches, no matter how ridiculous one might sound.

Rev was pretty dismissive of the entire point of mantle now that dx12 was in the pipeline, downplaying its likely role in moving the ball forward on the microsoft side.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aG2kIUerD4c#t=21m26s



But then later, while talking about the point of having direct control over their proprietary cuda he makes the exact kind of argument AMD might make for why they want to keep developing and supporting mantle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aG2kIUerD4c#t=41m

"Us owning Cuda, lets us innovate in ways that we couldn't otherwise if we had to wait for a standards body"

Ding ding ding, and that is why amd should continue to develop mantle. If EA is going to continue to support it because of Johan and others backing, it could always be a testing ground for more advanced rendering/computational techniques that microsoft is slower at patching into future dx iterations.

 

[Techhog]

And how good will it be for gamers when the companies don't make improvements because there is no financial incentive for them to spend millions of dollars and years of engineering time in order to develop new features and capabilities?

Again, the claim that titles that use Mantle can't be optimized for nVidia is false. Stop repeating it.

This one doesn't really work, since every single game which supports Mantle is optimized for Nvidia just fine at release in DX. Mantle just provides extra performance on top of it. Nobody has ever claimed otherwise.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Rev was pretty dismissive of the entire point of mantle now that dx12 was in the pipeline, downplaying its likely role in moving the ball forward on the microsoft side.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aG2kIUerD4c#t=21m26s



But then later, while talking about the point of having direct control over their proprietary cuda he makes the exact kind of argument AMD might make for why they want to keep developing and supporting mantle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aG2kIUerD4c#t=41m

"Us owning Cuda, lets us innovate in ways that we couldn't otherwise if we had to wait for a standards body"

Ding ding ding, and that is why amd should continue to develop mantle. If EA is going to continue to support it because of Johan and others backing, it could always be a testing ground for more advanced rendering/computational techniques that microsoft is slower at patching into future dx iterations.

The two may look similiar but are quite different if you think about the context. Video cards for one are primarily 3D accelerators. Roughly five~six years ago, different IHVs especially nVIDIA decided that for them to survive for the next 10 years or so the GPU must do things outside its "3D" stuff i.e. general purpose/compute/video etc.

This is pretty much the origins of CUDA. Instead of waiting for an industrial body to first form then create a standard in a non-existent market with virtually nothing invested to it.. the path they took with CUDA although proprietary made sense especially in a world where copying a copied idea is the norm. Even with OpenCL around, the CUDA ecosystem is much valuable especially as the market itself is customer specific and catered toward industrial workloads.

With Mantle.. its abit different. The primary goal of the API's existence is to increase performance by reducing the overhead present in microsoft's DX API by getting direct access to the metal. It isn't about doing something new visually within the 3D realm but to increase performance especially when they are not in a financial state to keep hitting the performance targets with new architectures.

They could probably milk the GCN architecture for a very long time without having to make a complete architectural overhauls (doing simply updates like GCN 1.0 -> 1.1 to 1.2 and so forth) which will be very very expensive + lots of risk. This is just my theory in why they are so committed into their own proprietaryopen API. It all comes down to the financial figures and how the resources is going to be better spent.

Note: I don't remember any material where it claimed that it would improve visuals and make the GPUs do things that it couldn't due to the API bottleneck. Feel free to correct me.

And just like most things, DX12 was probably in the works for a good few years..

 

[dacostafilipe]

Note: I don't remember any material where it claimed that it would improve visuals and make the GPUs do things that it couldn't due to the API bottleneck. Feel free to correct me.

You can make tiled ressources on Win7, that alone helps a lot for visuals (in LoD for example).

 

[SirPauly]

This would be the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen for gamers. And the fact that you suggest this makes me wonder if you actually grasp what would happen to the market.

If every company had their own proprietary code paths we would end up with games that run terribly for everybody. Because nVidia cards would run poorly on AMD code paths, and AMD cards would run poorly on nVidia code paths. Or we would end up with games that only work on one make of card.

There is NOTHING good about gameworks from a gamers perspective. It does not make games run better nVidia (they run worse), and it hurts the other half of the market with AMD and Intel GPU's as they have no way to optimize their drivers for those code paths.

imho,

That's just fear mongering --- developers desire to sell their games and if there is code that is purposely harmful to their customers is like cutting their own throats!

Forums are filled with fear mongering, conjecture and wild conspiracies.

GameWorks -- nothing good? How about the quality of HBAO+ and how it improves the visual experience for AMD and nVidia gamers?

 

[Mand]

Is it just me, or could you literally swap nVidia with AMD and swap Gameworks with Mantle and you'd have just as valid of an argument...

Case in point:



And it's not AMD's fault that nVidia is dropping the ball. The proper response to Mantle is to come up with something as good or better, not whine and moan when your competitor doesn't let you piggyback on their products.



And how good will it be for gamers when the companies don't make improvements because there is no financial incentive for them to spend millions of dollars and years of engineering time in order to develop new features and capabilities?

Again, the claim that titles that use Mantle can't be optimized for nVidia is false. Stop repeating it.



Too bad?

Mantle is AMD IP. No, their competitors don't get access to it. If they want to have comparable performance, then they need to either generate their own IP or learn how to optimize what they have access to. AMD is under no obligation whatsoever to give away their IP to their competitors, and it is wrong for you to ask them to.

Not all devs themselves even choose to get access to Mantle source code. How in the hell do they do optimizations for anything at that point? The same way they always do, in the same ways that all games do.



The developers who have chosen to use it knowing that it's a proprietary middleware would seem to disagree.

AMD can't force Mantle on the market. If Mantle truly were this evil conspiracy to screw nVidia over until they go out of business, the devs wouldn't use it. Because doing so would mean that people with nVidia cards wouldn't buy their game, which they don't want.



Unless you flip that around, and call "unoptimized crap" the baseline, and then AMD comes along and gives us something that's better, which is good for gamers.

Is it really better to not have something at all than to have something one company does a better job of optimizing? If AMD had never come up with Mantle, would we as gamers be better off? No.

I see what you did there, but the situations are not symmetric. You can't just flip the names and have the same story. Note that I'm not objecting to Mantle being proprietary, just explaining to people that it *is* proprietary.

You clearly seem to think that I have this awful evil bad bias against AMD and in favor of Nvidia, but that's just not the case. I am not pretending Nvidia is a saint. What I am saying is that AMD has moved from trying to beat their competition to trying to smear their competition by lying.