Richard Huddy of AMD says DX API & Consoles holding back PC gaming visuals.

[Grooveriding]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2011/03/16/farewell-to-directx/1

'It's funny,' says AMD's worldwide developer relations manager of its GPU division, Richard Huddy. 'We often have at least ten times as much horsepower as an Xbox 360 or a PS3 in a high-end graphics card, yet it's very clear that the games don't look ten times as good. To a significant extent, that's because, one way or another, for good reasons and bad - mostly good, DirectX is getting in the way.' Huddy says that one of the most common requests he gets from game developers is: 'Make the API go away.'

 

[busydude]

There are 2 ways to look at this:

1) It is silly to think MS is developing DX standards for us PC Gamers.. PC's have always been a testing platform for DX API's to be used later into their consoles. Also, MS has pretty much given up on PC gaming after it entered console markets.

2) API's have always been a limiting factor.. if you consider that games should be supported for wide range of hardware. There should be atleast a standard platform for games to be developed.

I would like to see an alternate API(aside from OpenGL, which is almost non existent these days), but that seems extremely far fetched.

 

[Dkcode]

I think the fact publishers and developers alike are wanting the money from console gamers because its easier to market and develop for.

Taste for the money haven't they?

 

[Grooveriding]

I also find it ironic considering AMD designed the graphics chips in the two most purchased consoles. Of course why would they not want to have done that, but it's still ironic reading this now.

 

[Lonyo]

And apparently D3D is better than OGL for graphics.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/..._Believes_Direct3D_Is_Better_than_OpenGL.html

Also, I'd rather wait for developers to be able to develop for hardware which adheres to an API before having them try and develop for various different architectures by accessing the hardware at a low level.
Not to mention that when there are extra things available, developers don't use them anyway.

 

[brandonb]

How is DX getting in the way? Most developers embrace a standards for pretty much anything... Be it DX, OpenGL, HTML5, whatever.

Sounds like the guy is a moron.

The reason why we aren't 10 times further is because developers are not going to limit their marketshare by developing something for the high end, instead work with the lowest common denominator. If AMD really wants to fix this issue, start selling high end cards for cheaper to make it easier to upgrade, instead of attacking the API.

 

[n0x1ous]

Groove I think it might be good to rename thread title to "Huddy" says instead of AMD. No use in dragging down AMD's good name by attaching them to this statement.

The guy does more harm than good for them. Why is the dev relations/ marketing guy always talking about technical stuff?

Old Fuddy is always good for a laugh.

Yeah devs really want to spend a bunch more time programming low-level with no standards because they are all dying to program high end PC games because thats where all the money is.....not to mention that the graphics architectures differences would probably mean that everyone needs both an AMD and NV card to play all games.

Maybe in a perfect world not driven by money, but this is never going to happen. Without D3D/OGL all PC development (of games we care about anyway) would cease and it would be a console fest forever....

Just think. Then there would only be new console GPUs to talk about every 5-7 years.....that would put a dent in our sub-forum pretty quickly...Not a pretty thought.

 

[exar333]

How is DX getting in the way? Most developers embrace a standards for pretty much anything... Be it DX, OpenGL, HTML5, whatever.

Sounds like the guy is a moron.

The reason why we aren't 10 times further is because developers are not going to limit their marketshare by developing something for the high end, instead work with the lowest common denominator. If AMD really wants to fix this issue, start selling high end cards for cheaper to make it easier to upgrade, instead of attacking the API.

This.

LCD development. Why build an application that only runs on 10% of the market? Sure we could have some awesome games that were designed to run only on high-end GPUs, but the market would not support such a cost to develop the game.

 

[SirPauly]

The marketing is starting for the APU.

 

[Anarchist420]

DX hurts nvidia far more than hurts AMD. If vendors completely made their own standards, then ATi wouldn't still be around. I know it was faster, but the 9700 Pro's feature set sucked compared to the Geforce FX's feature set.

 

[oRdchaos]

Back in the day developers were complaining about the PS2 not having a solid API, making it much more difficult to program for.

But, toward the end of the PS2's life, developers were able to find various tricks and techniques that wouldn't have been available through a high level API to get the graphics to a significantly better level than you would have expected given the hardware.

Many of those techniques don't translate well from one graphics card to the next from the same manufacturer, much less multiple manufacturers, so it's difficult for PC developers to pull off the same tricks.

 

[BD231]

I also find it ironic considering AMD designed the graphics chips in the two most purchased consoles. Of course why would they not want to have done that, but it's still ironic reading this now.

We have no idea how many years AMD was planning on sitting on the same tech, though, and it's pretty evident they have absolutely zero say in the matter.

Personally I'm glad I don't need a console to play all my fave games. But to say that graphics cards have ten times the graphics power is a bit silly IMO. Once you factor in the higher resolutions that 10x gap becomes a pretty exaggerative figure.

 

[SirPauly]

I think it is-is to start spreading information about what they can do with the APU -- and because of this --- technology leadership.

I do agree with some of it, where GPU compute comes into play.

 

[aka1nas]

The only developers that I can see complaining about having an API "in the way" are the engine developers such as Sweeney and Carmack, who have been vocal in that area. Of course, they do have a slight conflict of interest in suggesting things that make it harder for other game developers to product 3d engines....

Honestly, game developers already find enough ways to write buggy, crashy code. I don't want them working any closer to hardware than they are now if we can help it.

 

[Fox5]

Which api are they talking about? I can see DX9 (which I think is what the xbox 360's dev kit roughly targets when porting to PC) limiting it, but DX10 and DX11 seem to have removed most practical limitations, unless you wanna go completely off the wall with how you're doing your rendering. And in that case, OpenCL and Directcompute exist.

 

[Blitzvogel]

APIs are advantageous for the developers, duh. They are a problem as far as pushing a system to it's max due to the software overhead. I would like to know as well which API (DX9, 10, or 11) they are complaining about too. I don't think small developers especially want to have to create their own rendering schemes that would end up only being compatible with a specific series/line of graphics processors. PCs are not consoles of course. I can understand the API complaints, but it's an inherit part of developing games to work on a multitude of system configurations like PCs and phones.

 

[RussianSensation]

But to say that graphics cards have ten times the graphics power is a bit silly IMO. Once you factor in the higher resolutions that 10x gap becomes a pretty exaggerative figure.

The 10x performance difference is actually a reasonable claim.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/18682/6

The GPU in PS3 is not faster than a 7950GT which is slower than a 7900GTX. I believe it even has half the memory bandwidth of a desktop 7950GT, making it even slower.

GTX480 vs. 7900GTX
Dirt 2 - 5.5x faster
Borderlands - 12x faster
Left 4 Dead 2 - 13.5x faster

 

[Blitzvogel]

The 10x performance difference is actually a reasonable claim.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/18682/6

The GPU in PS3 is not faster than a 7950GT which is slower than a 7900GTX. I believe it even has half the memory bandwidth of a desktop 7950GT, making it even slower.

GTX480 vs. 7900GTX
Dirt 2 - 5.5x faster
Borderlands - 12x faster
Left 4 Dead 2 - 13.5x faster

RSX is a 7800 (G71) with it's testicles cut off (8 ROPS instead of 16) and of course 128 bit memory interface. Code to metal and Cell BE graphics assistance is what keeps the PS3 somewhat graphically competitive with the 360 and mainstream PC graphics like Nvidia GT 430s and Radeon 5570s at 720p (they are in turn limited by their bandwidth not their GPUs mostly). Yeah it's a shame most PC games do not look much better than their console counterparts, but of course much of that extra capability we suck up with higher resolutions like 1080p while running 4x MSAA and still getting 60 FPS standard

 

[BD231]

RSX is a 7800 (G71) with it's testicles cut off (8 ROPS instead of 16) and of course 128 bit memory interface. Code to metal and Cell BE graphics assistance is what keeps the PS3 somewhat graphically competitive with the 360 and mainstream PC graphics like Nvidia GT 430s and Radeon 5570s at 720p (they are in turn limited by their bandwidth not their GPUs mostly). Yeah it's a shame most PC games do not look much better than their console counterparts, but of course much of that extra capability we suck up with higher resolutions like 1080p while running 4x MSAA and still getting 60 FPS standard

Thank you, that's why the claim to me is bogus. Every bit of that power available can be put to use but Huddy claims it's sitting there doing nothing. Huddy said it himself of the DX API that when it comes to a performance impact on the pc " it can vary from almost nothing at all to a huge overhead ".

Then his genius self goes on to say " On consoles, you can draw maybe 10,000 or 20,000 chunks of geometry in a frame, and you can do that at 30-60fps. On a PC, you can't typically draw more than 2-3,000 without getting into trouble with performance".

???? I'll take my backwards compatibility, Huddy. If you want hardware specific programing pay people off like nVidia.

 

[Ancalagon44]

Make the API go away?

Yes, I would rather write my own hardware graphics interfacing library from scratch every time I develop a new game, and hope to hell that the graphics cards support the stuff I want to use. Cos, you know, that gives me close to the metal access which I love as a prima donna developer.

If developers actually say that, I hope they get cursed with having to write a replacement for DX from scratch. I really dont think it would be any fun or that the results would be even remotely worth it.

 

[Morg.]

I believe we're sort of losing the point here.

Think of the API as an interface, which by it's position in the architecture should be a bit like C : very fast, very thin, common translator for CPU-dependent ASM implementations - that has to be compiled for said CPU in order to run (fast).

And directX is not that, it's heavy and slow.

"Make the API go away" is just a bad wording for "Make this shitty API go away" or "Make this DirectX failPI go away"

API = good
old OpenGL before it died = decent
directX today = bad

 

[Ancalagon44]

I believe we're sort of losing the point here.

Think of the API as an interface, which by it's position in the architecture should be a bit like C : very fast, very thin, common translator for CPU-dependent ASM implementations - that has to be compiled for said CPU in order to run (fast).

And directX is not that, it's heavy and slow.

"Make the API go away" is just a bad wording for "Make this shitty API go away" or "Make this DirectX failPI go away"

API = good
old OpenGL before it died = decent
directX today = bad

John Carmack says DX is actually pretty decent now. Even better than OpenGL. I trust the word of John Carmack more than an anonymous game developer.

 

[Morg.]

Even better than OpenGL, which has become complete utter trash because nobody used it in a decade, yes.
John Carmack is thus correct.
When I talk about old OpenGL before it died, I am referring to Quake3Arena, which is about the last real game to make it to OpenGL when it was a competing standard.
Mostly everything after Quake3 stopped having good OpenGL support if at all.

 

[bryanW1995]

DX hurts nvidia far more than hurts AMD. If vendors completely made their own standards, then ATi wouldn't still be around. I know it was faster, but the 9700 Pro's feature set sucked compared to the Geforce FX's feature set.

there have been lots of times when nvidia cards were clearly superior to amd, why go after one that absolutely dominated for amd? you could make the argument that nvidia still has a better feature set nowadays because they have physics, d3d, and cuda, while amd only has eyefinity (and just released a limited form of 3d)? also, by your stance 2900xt was a lot better than 8800 ultra b/c the amd card was dx10.1 compliant, so that argument goes both ways.

 

[Dasda]

there have been lots of times when nvidia cards were clearly superior to amd, why go after one that absolutely dominated for amd? you could make the argument that nvidia still has a better feature set nowadays because they have physics, d3d, and cuda, while amd only has eyefinity (and just released a limited form of 3d)? also, by your stance 2900xt was a lot better than 8800 ultra b/c the amd card was dx10.1 compliant, so that argument goes both ways.

GEESH, off-topic, but how many rigs do you need?