[PcGameshardware] The Witcher 3 Benchmark

[SirPauly]

Why would it be a revelation considering how nVidia handles and codes tessellation? nVidia has a hardware advantage there and Richard Huddy sounds surprised. AMD had years to try to get TressFX in there for their customers and try to prove how efficient their method is.

 

[Ranulf]

So yeah... new rumor going around. FPS limits on older nvidia hardware.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/...he-witcher-3-wild-hunt-/post/4534921/#4534921

Direct link: http://cdn.overclock.net/4/43/430ba461_uY1jzMN.png

 

[AtenRa]

Except that Hairworks was announced back in 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SpPqXdzl7g

And Huddy claims they only knew about it in the last couple of months:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonev...ng-about-the-witcher-3-and-nvidias-hairworks/

What Huddy said was that the AMD was working with CD Project Red on Witcher 3 from the start and the game without GameWorks code was working fine for both AMD and NVIDIA hardware.
But 2 months before the official release NVIDIA incorporated the GameWorks code in to the Game Engine with HairWorks and performance for AMD hardware was sub par.

We can see that without GameWorks features like HairWorks, HBAO+ etc the AMD hardware is faster than NVIDIA (7950 faster than 680, 280X faster than or equal 770/780, 290X faster or equal 780Ti/970 etc).

But look what happens when you enable GameWorks features.

Heh, GTX960 faster than GTX680 and equal to R9 290.

R9 290X going from 78fps down to 38fps or ~52% reduction 😵

GTX780Ti at 67fps being slower than 290, with GW it goes down to 49fps or ~26% reduction. Now it is ~29% faster than R9 290X. :whiste:

GTX980 without GW is ~18% faster than R9 290X, with GW it only has a 33% reduction and the lead over R9 290X is increased to ~60%.🙄

 

[3DVagabond]

The posts ManuelG's responded to were about new drivers crippling Kepler though, not specifically the bad performance in The Witcher 3.

I don't think Nvidia is purposely regressing Kepler's driver, at least not now when it's still their former series😛

How much faster would the 980 be over the 780 ti if they didn't cripple the 780 ti? ~5%? Why would anyone have gotten rid of their 780s for Maxwell if that was the case? People complained when 680/7970 was only ~35% increase. They would have lol'd at the 980 with that small of a difference.

 

[Deders]

What Huddy said was that the AMD was working with CD Project Red on Witcher 3 from the start and the game without GameWorks code was working fine for both AMD and NVIDIA hardware.
But 2 months before the official release NVIDIA incorporated the GameWorks code in to the Game Engine with HairWorks and performance for AMD hardware was sub par.

We can see that without GameWorks features like HairWorks, HBAO+ etc the AMD hardware is faster than NVIDIA (7950 faster than 680, 280X faster than or equal 770/780, 290X faster or equal 780Ti/970 etc).

But look what happens when you enable GameWorks features.

Heh, GTX960 faster than GTX680 and equal to R9 290.

R9 290X going from 78fps down to 38fps or ~52% reduction 😵

GTX780Ti at 67fps being slower than 290, with GW it goes down to 49fps or ~26% reduction. Now it is ~29% faster than R9 290X. :whiste:

GTX980 without GW is ~18% faster than R9 290X, with GW it only has a 33% reduction and the lead over R9 290X is increased to ~60%.🙄

These charts were made before the recent patch that has made things much smoother.

 

[3DVagabond]

Not sure why people are expecting hairworks to work fine on AMD cards before AMD releases a witcher 3 driver update dealing with hairworks in witcher 3. My guess is we will see a patch/driver update fixing everything in the next week or two.

We'll see if there is a patch. If there is then it's not AMD's drivers.

 

[3DVagabond]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonev...ng-about-the-witcher-3-and-nvidias-hairworks/

Very good and spot on.

In short he ask a question from AMD that Nvidia has invested millions into Gamework than why in the hell they will give code to AMD to optimize it or help AMD to optimize because it is a business.

He also said AMD is now a company who only blames everyone rather make decision and bold risk to counter it.

We've discussed this position to death. I have no idea why you would try to put it forward yet again! 🙄

 

[3DVagabond]

It's not really that. It's because for some strange reason, Nvidia is supposed to code Hairworks (Gameworks) content to work or perform better on AMD hardware. Truth is, Nvidia only has to do that for it's customers. AMD has to do that for theirs.

Not at all accurate. Nobody is asking nVidia to do AMD's optimizing for them. Just to not block AMD from doing it.

 

[5150Joker]

Guess what...


AMD is not even allowed to propose a change in game code to optimize performance...

Because they waited too long, they had 2 years to consult CDPR about TressFX and instead chose to sit on their asses. AMD is a company of inaction and laziness, many developers have echoed AMD's inability to provide proper support. All AMD does these days is just whine because they can't compete.

Not at all accurate. Nobody is asking nVidia to do AMD's optimizing for them. Just to not block AMD from doing it.

NVIDIA hasn't prevented AMD from working with CDPR, the fault lies completely with AMD for being an inept company that wants NVIDIA to do the leg work for them. I can't believe anyone would take AMD's side in this matter considering what a whiny lazy company it has become.

 

[Dribble]

The silly thing is you have 1 thread where everyone is complaining all devs do is produce straight console ports and why don't nvidia and AMD do something about it. Nvidia produce gameworks which give you features the consoles don't get and now you have other threads where everyone refuses to buy games with gameswork effects in because it's so evil. Really!

Gameswork's as I understand it:
1) uses DX11 so it does work on everything, from what I can tell some of the effects are very tesselation heavy so pretty well everything but maxwell (which is very good at it) suffer.
2) there are 2 licenses, the basic one gives the dev the gamesworks libraries, the more expensive one which AAA companies will have gives you the source. Nothing therefore to stop devs re-writing bits of it to take out the if(!maxwell) goslow(); lines if they really existed or to make AMD or whoever else run better if they thought it was worth it.

imo the way it is is fine. You can play the same game you get on the consoles with better textures and higher res on the pc today, and if you have a fast enough pc you can turn on the extras. I'm happy with that as I might buy the game in a year or two and by then even a mid range card (AMD or nvidia) will probably be able to play the game with the gameswork extras.

 

[Erenhardt]

Because they waited too long, they had 2 years to consult CDPR about TressFX and instead chose to sit on their asses. AMD is a company of inaction and laziness, many developers have echoed AMD's inability to provide proper support. All AMD does these days is just whine because they can't compete.

Repeat again please? Maybe this time it will become truth, or once more maybe...?
Do you really thing it was too late to implement TFX? Or was there a same reason as the one that made optimization in game code for amd impossible?

Have you missed mantle and dx12, as well as HBM?

It is nv that needs to play catch up game.

Nvidia support is so bad their are being ditched by apple in favor of amd.

 

[5150Joker]

Repeat again please? Maybe this time it will become truth, or once more maybe...?
Do you really thing it was too late to implement TFX? Or was there a same reason as the one that made optimization in game code for amd impossible?

Have you missed mantle and dx12, as well as HBM?

It is nv that needs to play catch up game.

Nvidia support is so bad their are being ditched by apple in favor of amd.

If you have an issue with what another poster says then discuss the issue in a civil way.
-Moderator Subyman

 

[Leadbox]

Gameworks is cancer.

 

[Erenhardt]

The silly thing is you have 1 thread where everyone is complaining all devs do is produce straight console ports and why don't nvidia and AMD do something about it. Nvidia produce gameworks which give you features the consoles don't get and now you have other threads where everyone refuses to buy games with gameswork effects in because it's so evil. Really!

Gameswork's as I understand it:
1) uses DX11 so it does work on everything, from what I can tell some of the effects are very tesselation heavy so pretty well everything but maxwell (which is very good at it) suffer.

Nope. Tesselation was debunked long ago. Look at 285 vs 280x performance in crippleworks enabled. Without it 285 is faster. With it enabled it is slower despite offering double the tessellation perf.

2) there are 2 licenses, the basic one gives the dev the gamesworks libraries, the more expensive one which AAA companies will have gives you the source. Nothing therefore to stop devs re-writing bits of it to take out the if(!maxwell) goslow(); lines if they really existed or to make AMD or whoever else run better if they thought it was worth it.
[/QUOTE]

They have a source code, but they can in no way alter it. That is why cdpr said they can't optimize amd perf.

 

[Erenhardt]

snip

yea... Their support is laughs-worthy. They abandoned most of their userbase (Kepler performance).

 

[LTC8K6]

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=399245

AMD Catalyst 15.5 BETA (14.502.1014.1001 May 14) - 05-19-2015

 

[Dribble]

They have a source code, but they can in no way alter it. That is why cdpr said they can't optimize amd perf.

If they have the source of course they can alter it, they might choose not to because in fact looking at it they see there's nothing wrong with the code nvidia wrote (or not enough wrong to be worth tweaking it themselves), but they can certainly change it if they wanted.

 

[caswow]

If they have the source of course they can alter it, they might choose not to because in fact looking at it they see there's nothing wrong with the code nvidia wrote (or not enough wrong to be worth tweaking it themselves), but they can certainly change it if they wanted.

i can prove that they cant optimize for amd can you prove me otherwise? because you only guess things without proving anything.

 

[frozentundra123456]

What Huddy said was that the AMD was working with CD Project Red on Witcher 3 from the start and the game without GameWorks code was working fine for both AMD and NVIDIA hardware.
But 2 months before the official release NVIDIA incorporated the GameWorks code in to the Game Engine with HairWorks and performance for AMD hardware was sub par.

We can see that without GameWorks features like HairWorks, HBAO+ etc the AMD hardware is faster than NVIDIA (7950 faster than 680, 280X faster than or equal 770/780, 290X faster or equal 780Ti/970 etc).

But look what happens when you enable GameWorks features.

Heh, GTX960 faster than GTX680 and equal to R9 290.

R9 290X going from 78fps down to 38fps or ~52% reduction 😵

GTX780Ti at 67fps being slower than 290, with GW it goes down to 49fps or ~26% reduction. Now it is ~29% faster than R9 290X. :whiste:

GTX980 without GW is ~18% faster than R9 290X, with GW it only has a 33% reduction and the lead over R9 290X is increased to ~60%.🙄

I can see the criticism of gameworks in a game like AC Unity which pretty much runs like crap no matter what.

But I am sorry, I just dont see the problem here. You have an AMD card, just turn off Gameworks features. Simple. nVidia designed gameworks features as a value add for their cards. Making it run equally well on AMD cards would defeat the purpose. That is business, even though some apparently think it is unfair. Now if AMD wants to make their special features open source, they are certainly free to do so (if a bit naive IMO), but nVidia certainly is under no obligation to do so.

 

[AtenRa]

I can see the criticism of gameworks in a game like AC Unity which pretty much runs like crap no matter what.

But I am sorry, I just dont see the problem here. You have an AMD card, just turn off Gameworks features. Simple. nVidia designed gameworks features as a value add for their cards. Making it run equally well on AMD cards would defeat the purpose. That is business, even though some apparently think it is unfair. Now if AMD wants to make their special features open source, they are certainly free to do so (if a bit naive IMO), but nVidia certainly is under no obligation to do so.

Are you representing a certain company's interests here or are you a consumer like the rest of us ???

Because consumers want all features to be open sourced for everyone, consumers want to play games with all features enabled with every hardware in the market. Only corporates believe in proprietary code/features etc.

Do you want to play all games with all features with all the hardware available ?? or do you want PC gaming to become the same as consoles ???

I want the first one, I want my $300 Graphics Card to perform like a $300 GPU in every game. I dont want to have two cards like people doing with consoles.
what say you ???

 

[xthetenth]

The PR line of Gameworks is that it's there to encourage ecosystem health by making it much easier to get high quality effects in games. If that weren't a blatant bold-faced lie even by its supporters' standards, that'd be awesome. Instead we get games with bits lopped out to make room for it that you can only have work well if you have the latest nv card.

It's PC gaming, not NV gaming.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Are you representing a certain company's interests here or are you a consumer like the rest of us ???

Because consumers want all features to be open sourced for everyone, consumers want to play games with all features enabled with every hardware in the market. Only corporates believe in proprietary code/features etc.

Do you want to play all games with all features with all the hardware available ?? or do you want PC gaming to become the same as consoles ???

I want the first one, I want my $300 Graphics Card to perform like a $300 GPU in every game. I dont want to have two cards like people doing with consoles.
what say you ???

I own no stocks and have no financial interest in AMD, intel, or nVidia, and resent the repeated insinuations in these threads that those who dont drink the AMD cool aid have some vested financial interest in intel or nVidia. I am also sick and tired of the continual whining about gameworks, if you want the blunt truth. What kind of dream world do you live in? Of course consumers want every feature to be available on products from every vendor. While we are in fantasy land, lets make everything free as well. I bet the consuer would like that too.

I would love it for every automaker to share all their technology with the others to build the best car possible. Does that happen? Of course not. Companies spend huge sums of money to develop technologies that give people a reason to purchase their products in preference to a competitor's. That is the way business works. People *want* a lot of things, but that does not make it the way the world operates.

 

[Enigmoid]

I own no stocks and have no financial interest in AMD, intel, or nVidia, and resent the repeated insinuations in these threads that those who dont drink the AMD cool aid have some vested financial interest in intel or nVidia. I am also sick and tired of the continual whining about gameworks, if you want the blunt truth. What kind of dream world do you live in? Of course consumers want every feature to be available on products from every vendor. While we are in fantasy land, lets make everything free as well. I bet the consuer would like that too.

I would love it for every automaker to share all their technology with the others to build the best car possible. Does that happen? Of course not. Companies spend huge sums of money to develop technologies that give people a reason to purchase their products in preference to a competitor's. That is the way business works. People *want* a lot of things, but that does not make it the way the world operates.

Wow...someone actually gets how businesses work.

What we want and how the world works are two different things.

 

[monstercameron]

I own no stocks and have no financial interest in AMD, intel, or nVidia, and resent the repeated insinuations in these threads that those who dont drink the AMD cool aid have some vested financial interest in intel or nVidia. I am also sick and tired of the continual whining about gameworks, if you want the blunt truth. What kind of dream world do you live in? Of course consumers want every feature to be available on products from every vendor. While we are in fantasy land, lets make everything free as well. I bet the consuer would like that too.



I would love it for every automaker to share all their technology with the others to build the best car possible. Does that happen? Of course not. Companies spend huge sums of money to develop technologies that give people a reason to purchase their products in preference to a competitor's. That is the way business works. People *want* a lot of things, but that does not make it the way the world operates.

You makes some good point but using automakers as an example was a bad one, tesla is doing just that to grow the ev market. Sometimes it's better to work together.

 

[Headfoot]

The silly thing is you have 1 thread where everyone is complaining all devs do is produce straight console ports and why don't nvidia and AMD do something about it. Nvidia produce gameworks which give you features the consoles don't get and now you have other threads where everyone refuses to buy games with gameswork effects in because it's so evil. Really!

You don't get it.

GameWorks and GE are NOT the only way to add PC effects, not even close. Look at the GTA V PC port. The graphical effects they added are fantastic -- the PC only shadowing algorithm is easily one of the best shadow algorithms I've ever seen. Better than both vendor's options... there's an image floating around comparing them and the Rockstar coded one is miles ahead of the other.

All the other devs can just look at Rockstar's GTA V port and shoot for that. That's how its done. Except maybe do the control scheme port a little better -- other than that.

edit: found it. Rockstars shadow method looks better and runs better, according to the HardOCP article on the matter.