[Nvidia.com] Nvidia GameWorks unleashed at GDC.

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Jodell88

Jodell88

Diamond Member
Jan 29, 2007
8,762
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3DVagabond said:
Does this stuff only run on nVidia GPU's?
Click to expand...
Probably. :(


EDIT:
Image from wccftech
NVIDIA-Star-Citizen-635x357.jpg


How many renderers will Star Citizen have? Unless AMD cards will only use Mantle and Nvidia cards will have all those goodies. What about the AMD 6000 and 5000 series cards?
 
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Gloomy

Gloomy

Golden Member
Oct 12, 2010
1,469
21
81
3DVagabond said:
Does this stuff only run on nVidia GPU's?
Click to expand...

I think only PhysX is NV-only, because it uses CUDA.

I know this thread is going to devolve into poop-flinging, but I want to say that this stuff looks incredible and I am sure it is attractive to smaller developers or just smaller projects due to how much time (money) is saved opposed to developing a similar solution on your own.

However, it just does not feel good in my tummy to have one IHV creating development tools for other IHVs.
 
3

3DVagabond

Lifer
Aug 10, 2009
11,951
204
106
Phynaz said:
Looks that way. Couldn't help but notice Nvidia Hairworks in the link Keys provided. This is going to be funny :D
Click to expand...

Well, I hope not. It would be good to move beyond all that branding and have firms who rely on gaming to make their livings actually contribute instead of constantly trying to take away.
 
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F

f1sherman

Platinum Member
Apr 5, 2011
2,243
1
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Gloomy said:
I think only PhysX is NV-only, because it uses CUDA.

I know this thread is going to devolve into poop-flinging, but I want to say that this stuff looks incredible and I am sure it is attractive to smaller developers or just smaller projects due to how much time (money) is saved opposed to developing a similar solution on your own.

However, it just does not feel good in my tummy to have one IHV creating development tools for other IHVs.
Click to expand...

It does not feel good in my tummy PERIOD.
Now what? Buy one Nvidia and one AMD card is proly the best.
Non CUDA parts will surely work on AMD, but how well? Similarly to Forward+, GI and TressFX on Nvidia would be my guess.
Meaning it will be up to AMD to bring it up in performance, and that's the BEST case scenario.

We are at software war phase now. Who's going to win? Who has more to offer, who's first to start playing dirty?
I dunno, but Nvidia considers itself first and foremost a software company. According to their statements and judging by their employees profile count.

Unbiased and rational people tend to relativize things, but I'll say it upfront.
This is all AMD.
And I'm not saying that to pass guilt, it just is.
You can't say it's AMD, when something apparently good happens (DX12),
and then go searching for some other, more complex causes when something apparently bad happens (Gameworks).

1-2 years ago there was there was truce and status quo sw wise.
There was PhysX and thats it.
AMD sought to resolve status quo; Gaming Evolved, Forward+... culminating in Mantle.
Nvidia is only responding and doing the same thing AMD does, building their own sw stack and differentiating their products.
 
A

ams23

Senior member
Feb 18, 2013
907
0
0
GameWorks tools were already used in popular AAA cross-platform titles such as Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag, Call of Duty Ghosts, and Batman Arkham Origins. The GameWorks tools obviously keep evolving and improving over time, and that is what is reflected here.
 
3

3DVagabond

Lifer
Aug 10, 2009
11,951
204
106
f1sherman said:
It does not feel good in my tummy PERIOD.
Now what? Buy one Nvidia and one AMD card is proly the best.
Non CUDA parts will surely work on AMD, but how well? Similarly to Forward+, GI and TressFX on Nvidia would be my guess.
Meaning it will be up to AMD to bring it up in performance, and that's the BEST case scenario.

We are at software war phase now. Who's going to win? Who has more to offer, who's first to start playing dirty?
I dunno, but Nvidia considers itself first and foremost a software company. According to their statements and judging by their employees profile count.

Unbiased and rational people tend to relativize things, but I'll say it upfront.
This is all AMD.
And I'm not saying that to pass guilt, it just is.
You can't say it's AMD, when something apparently good happens (DX12),
and then go searching for some other, more complex causes when something apparently bad happens (Gameworks).

1-2 years ago there was there was truce and status quo sw wise.
There was PhysX and thats it.
AMD sought to resolve status quo; Gaming Evolved, Forward+... culminating in Mantle.
Nvidia is only responding and doing the same thing AMD does, building their own sw stack and differentiating their products.
Click to expand...

As you say, if it runs on AMD hardware, but just not as well, then it's up to AMD to improve their game. That's assuming it's a fair playing field and it's not artificially limited. It happened with tessellation. AMD had to improve their capability. Same with AMD flexing their Direct Compute and OpenCL prowess, nVidia will need to pick up their performance.

Their problem, as I see it, is they want to maintain the CUDA performance advantage. If they made their GPU's run OpenCL faster than CUDA for example, where would that leave them?

Anyway, I'm curious to see how this plays out. Here's hoping it will be open for everyone to have.
 
M

monstercameron

Diamond Member
Feb 12, 2013
3,818
1
0
what is the advantage of cuda vs opencl?
if no real advantage exists, why not implement physx in opencl?
if a real advantage exists, why not get khronos to implement it in opencl?

this is all assuming there are no serious hardware complications...
 
3

3DVagabond

Lifer
Aug 10, 2009
11,951
204
106
CUDA is nVidia's ace in the hole for GPGPU compute. It's what separates their Tesla cards from the competition. They've built an entire economic system around it. They've invested a lot in it and aren't going to port it to an open platform. It would be like Microsoft porting DX to Linux.
 
A

ams23

Senior member
Feb 18, 2013
907
0
0
Gloomy said:
I think only PhysX is NV-only, because it uses CUDA.
Click to expand...

GPU-accelerated PhysX is for NVIDIA GPU's (and presumably for those who license NVIDIA's GPU technology in the future). This is NVIDIA's intellectual property of course. CPU-accelerated PhysX is obviously an option too (albeit with unknown perf. impact).

Here is more info on PhysX and GameWorks: https://developer.nvidia.com//gameworks-physx-overview
 
S

Silverforce11

Lifer
Feb 19, 2009
10,457
10
76
It's good to see some vicious competition in the GPU space, so much innovation from both sides.

We should celebrate these efforts to bring us better visuals. Without competition, it would stagnate horribly like on desktop CPUs.
 
Keysplayr

Keysplayr

Elite Member
Jan 16, 2003
21,211
50
91
3DVagabond said:
Well, I hope not. It would be good to move beyond all that branding and have firms who rely on gaming to make their livings actually contribute instead of constantly trying to take away.
Click to expand...

Example of this practice? Or what you perceive it to be?
 
T

thilanliyan

Lifer
Jun 21, 2005
12,037
2,249
126
f1sherman said:
1-2 years ago there was there was truce and status quo sw wise.
There was PhysX and thats it.
AMD sought to resolve status quo; Gaming Evolved, Forward+... culminating in Mantle.
Nvidia is only responding and doing the same thing AMD does, building their own sw stack and differentiating their products.
Click to expand...

Umm...there was never a truce between AMD and Nvidia. How do you equate PhysX as the status quo? Nvidia made PhysX to sell more cards. AMD now does the same sort of thing and now everything is AMD's fault?? o_O

If there is eventual fragmentation, it is the fault of BOTH companies, not just one. However, they are just trying to sell cards and seeing as how performance and IQ are so close these days, this kind of thing is how they differentiate.
 
Stuka87

Stuka87

Diamond Member
Dec 10, 2010
6,240
2,559
136
monstercameron said:
what is the advantage of cuda vs opencl?
if no real advantage exists, why not implement physx in opencl?
if a real advantage exists, why not get khronos to implement it in opencl?

this is all assuming there are no serious hardware complications...
Click to expand...

nVidia has locked a lot of HPC customers into CUDA, they will not give it up easily. There is no real technical advantage of CUDA over OpenCL. Each has small advantages and disadvantages when compared to the other.

nVidia does not want their OpenCL performance to be any better because then more software companies may move to it, which would lessen their strangle hold on the HPC market with CUDA. And since AMD OpenCL performance is significantly better, customers may move to them and away from nVidia.

As for PhysX, it is completely artificially limited to CUDA, and there is zero technical reason it could not be changed to run with OpenCL or on a CPU. Some API calls may have to change, but CUDA does not do anything special that the others do not do.
 
Keysplayr

Keysplayr

Elite Member
Jan 16, 2003
21,211
50
91
Why isn't it understood that these companies do these things to stand out over their competitors. To offer something the other doesn't have, or offer something better? To bring greater value to their products and those that hold their products?
 
O

ocre

Golden Member
Dec 26, 2008
1,594
7
81
As far as i know, gameworks works on all hardware.

But as we know, the libraries are all Nvidia's creation. Its free for developers to use and could save the a lot of time and money. Since its designed by nvidia it will most likely run great on their HW from the start. I would imagine anyway.

AMD may have to spend some time optimizing performance on their cards with their drivers. But the beautiful part is that once AMD optimizes for gameworks in one game, the work is done if it is used in another. And if you dont already know, this software is already in some big titles out today. Ghost, AC IV, and Origins use some of parts of gameworks. AMD has already been working with games that use gameworks. So i think that its not something that will totally blind side them. And as they optimize on the driver side for one game, they have a lot of the work done for any other game that may use the code.

This is actually not a bad thing, not at all.
 
Phynaz

Phynaz

Lifer
Mar 13, 2006
10,140
819
126
Keysplayr said:
Why isn't it understood that these companies do these things to stand out over their competitors. To offer something the other doesn't have, or offer something better? To bring greater value to their products and those that hold their products?
Click to expand...

Agreed. Standardized features = commodity = low $. Differentiation and specialization is what very company wants in order to increase income.
 
M

magomago

Lifer
Sep 28, 2002
10,973
14
76
How much industry wide traction will it have moving forward as the consoles pick up steam? Why should a developer, who have developed a console game, take the time to implement these nvidia specific features unless money was thrown at them, or unless those nvidia specific features drastically improved the port process?
 
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