Which approach to graphics features is better for gamers

[4K_shmoorK]

Alot of these Gameworks discussions going on lately. These options are optional and largely insignificant when playing at Ultra/High settings. If you think these options are game changing, you've either never used them or are lying to yourself.

If you don't like the way Nvidia does business, don't buy Nvidia.

If you don't want to use Gameworks, don't use Gameworks.

If enough people agree with your sentiment, Nvidia will change its ways. Anything else is equivalent to throwing bouncy balls at a dart board in hopes of them sticking.

/thread

 

[Keysplayr]

Alot of these Gameworks discussions going on lately. These options are optional and largely insignificant when playing at Ultra/High settings. If you think these options are game changing, you've either never used them or are lying to yourself.

If you don't like the way Nvidia does business, don't buy Nvidia.

If you don't want to use Gameworks, don't use Gameworks.

If enough people agree with your sentiment, Nvidia will change its ways. Anything else is equivalent to throwing bouncy balls at a dart board in hopes of them sticking.

/thread

Weve been telling them to just turn off gameworks. They dont want to. They want those features but only on an AMD gpu and they want nvidia to do it for them.
We went through this same outrage with physx. It did nothing for games according to AMD users, but started threads asking how to hack physx.
You see, its all bull. The solutions are mind numbingly simple. Either buy an nvidia gpu to suit your needs, or buy AMD and turn off gameworks. Nobody is honest about what they want and hide behind this "open standard" kumbaya mantra, when all they really want is for AMD to have the stones to do the same thing to Nvidia that Nvidia is doing to AMD. Dominate.

 

[Stuka87]

Weve been telling them to just turn off gameworks. They dont want to. They want those features but only on an AMD gpu and they want nvidia to do it for them.
We went through this same outrage with physx. It did nothing for games according to AMD users, but started threads asking how to hack physx.
You see, its all bull. The solutions are mind numbingly simple. Either buy an nvidia gpu to suit your needs, or buy AMD and turn off gameworks. Nobody is honest about what they want and hide behind this "open standard" kumbaya mantra, when all they really want is for AMD to have the stones to do the same thing to Nvidia that Nvidia is doing to AMD. Dominate.

You are aware not all gameworks features can be disabled right? Hairworks can, but there is a lot of other stuff that has no configuration.

And no, gamers do NOT want AMD to do the same thing. Gamers want a game to be optimized equally for every GPU makers. Only a fool would want to be locked into a single vendor.

 

[monstercameron]

Hmmm, if I buy a game I want to use all the features on any card I buy...end of story. Hardware level compatibility aside, I really hate false gating of features to one specific brand.

 

[railven]

Response to new OP:

I favor open standard, through and through. It is important to make these assets available to as many people as possible.

However, I'm starting to see that devs/consumers/publishers aren't interested in free assets so much more "interest." EDIT: Flair! Would be a better word, at least on the PC side.

When I say interest, I mean the concept of a better value. Before PhysX alone wasn't enough to make people feel the cost of an NV product was worth it over an AMD card. Now, you got specific functions being woven into games that are pushing interest towards NV cards. Is it anti-consumer? Oh hell yeah, but consumers doesn't seem to mind (look at sales, woof).

I've noticed over the years AMD doesn't do much to get their technologies adopted. They don't market them as much, they don't sell it to devs/publishers, and they either A) get adopted into the greater scheme (Tess/unified shaders/now Asynchronous shaders) or they go relatively ignored (tess when it originally was talked about years ago/TressFX is in like 4 games, and their Bullet Physics spiel).


From my experience owning an NV card for a whole year as my primary card (after decades of AMD/ATI cards), it plays the games I want the same or better, but now in select games I get some features/functions I wouldn't get on my AMD/ATI cards. So essentially, it's made my experience better (even though I know I'm locking myself into their ecosystem by enjoying it.) If AMD fought back, things would get more interesting and we might not even be here or we'd be some where else. Who knows.

 

[4K_shmoorK]

You are aware not all gameworks features can be disabled right? Hairworks can, but there is a lot of other stuff that has no configuration.

And no, gamers do NOT want AMD to do the same thing. Gamers want a game to be optimized equally for every GPU makers. Only a fool would want to be locked into a single vendor.

Do you have an article that supports this claim that turning off gameworks related options does not fully disable them? I'd like to read up on that.

And I'm sorry but if AMD we're in Nvidia's position, you can BET they would be employing the same practices as Nvidia. Plain and simple. Businesses are businesses.

I get it, I had 6950s in my last build and a 980 Ti in this build. But this argument is obviously biased in one direction...

 

[Keysplayr]

You are aware not all gameworks features can be disabled right? Hairworks can, but there is a lot of other stuff that has no configuration.

And no, gamers do NOT want AMD to do the same thing. Gamers want a game to be optimized equally for every GPU makers. Only a fool would want to be locked into a single vendor.

The truth is, gamers want a game optimized for their choice of gpu. I dont believe for an instant any AMD user would be upset if AMD came out with a new feature for their gpus and its customers. We wouldnt hear a peep. Well, not the peep you might be thinking of anyway. But im quite sure we would hear about the advantage it would have over its competition and how it should affect buying decisions. Eyefinity? Mantle? Never heard the end of those AMD technologies.
Like I said. Hardly anyone is honest about what they really want.

 

[Stuka87]

Do you have an article that supports this claim that turning off gameworks related options does not fully disable them? I'd like to read up on that.

And I'm sorry but if AMD we're in Nvidia's position, you can BET they would be employing the same practices as Nvidia. Plain and simple. Businesses are businesses.

I get it, I had 6950s in my last build and a 980 Ti in this build. But this argument is obviously biased in one direction...

GameWorks consists of several modules. VisualFX contains things like HairWorks, FaceWorks, HBAO+, and TXAA.

There are other modules such as PhysX and OptiX. I am not sure if anybody has used OptiX, but PhysX is used in many GameWorks titles.

Now PhysX runs on the CPU side on AMD cards, and the GPU side on nVidia cards in I think all the games that use it (Unless forced to be on the CPU, which there are lots of forum post on people doing this to boost performance on kepler cards). So this has two side effects. On AMD systems they suffer higher CPU usage, while on nVidia hardware they suffer higher GPU usage.

Now yes it can be argued that any time you add these effects it will increase load on the system, and this would be correct. But the question is how much of a difference in performance is there between the PhysX effects, and in engine effects which are typically capable of doing the exact same thing.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Now PhysX runs on the CPU side on AMD cards, and the GPU side on nVidia cards in I think all the games that use it (Unless forced to be on the CPU, which there are lots of forum post on people doing this to boost performance on kepler cards). So this has two side effects. On AMD systems they suffer higher CPU usage, while on nVidia hardware they suffer higher GPU usage.

Can you list some specific games? The games that I know of like Borderlands 2 run PhysX on the CPU for both nvidia and AMD by default. GPU PhysX must be turned on for nvidia not turned off. It's also used to add extra fluff, not to change the ragdolls or other core behavior.

And the extra fluff from hardware PhysX is underwhelming in BL2 so I've never turned it on.

 

[iiiankiii]

The truth is, gamers want a game optimized for their choice of gpu. I dont believe for an instant any AMD user would be upset if AMD came out with a new feature for their gpus and its customers. We wouldnt hear a peep. Well, not the peep you might be thinking of anyway. But im quite sure we would hear about the advantage it would have over its competition and how it should affect buying decisions. Eyefinity? Mantle? Never heard the end of those AMD technologies.
Like I said. Hardly anyone is honest about what they really want.

I like optimizations. I don't like GameWorks b/c I'm not seeing any optimizations. Nvidia needs to do a much, much better job of optimizing GameWorks. Even with the best hardware it's designed for (Maxwell), GameWorks tank peformance. The visual fidelity over having it off is laughable. GameWorks need to be improved upon to be less taxing on GPUs, or improve visual fidelity to justify that performance hit. Right now, to me, it's just a bullet point "feature" for the marketing team at Nvidia. I wouldn't considered GameWorks an "advantage".

 

[Keysplayr]

I like optimizations. I don't like GameWorks I'm not seeing any optimizations. Nvidia needs to do a much, much better job of optimizing GameWorks. Even with the best hardware it's designed for (Maxwell), GameWorks tank peformance. The visual fidelity over having it off is laughable. GameWorks need to be improved to be less taxing on GPUs, or improve visual fidelity to justify that performance hit. Right now, to me, it's just a bullet point "feature" for the marketing team at Nvidia. I wouldn't considered GameWorks an "advantage".

A lot of people would disagree with most of this. I will agree that there is always room for improvements in any technology, be it hardware or software.
That goes without saying though. What card are you currently using?

 

[Stuka87]

Can you list some specific games? The games that I know of like Borderlands 2 run PhysX on the CPU for both nvidia and AMD by default. GPU PhysX must be turned on for nvidia not turned off. It's also used to add extra fluff, not to change the ragdolls or other core behavior.

And the extra fluff from hardware PhysX is underwhelming in BL2 so I've never turned it on.

Batman Arkham Knight uses Turbulence, Environmental PhysX, Volumetric Lights, FaceWorks and Rain Effects.

The Witcher 3 uses PhysX, but its CPU only, regardless of GPU (nVidia control panels shows it as being CPU as well). All the particle effects during spells and such use PhysX. Which a lot of people blame for the spells looking terrible compared to the gameplay videos from last year. The in-engine ones looked better.

Not sure what other games such as ProjectCars uses (short on time to look into it right now), but its probably similar.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

The Witcher 3 uses PhysX, but its CPU only, regardless of GPU

No, it uses the gpu for some things with nvidia control panel on default.

But the workload is so small you're better off running it on a cpu, especially on kepler which doesn't like graphics and compute at the same time.

 

[sandorski]

Maximum Eyecandy with Minimal Performance Hit on Widest Range of Hardware.

That's the preferred approach.

 

[Lepton87]

I paid 2000$ not so long ago and I couldn't even enjoy the miraculous hairworks in W3 without a slideshow. How cool of NV to do that. Too bad fury is so much worse than 980Ti after OC, otherwise I would not support the company that showed me the finger after paying 2k $ for their cards. It is so stupid to make a feature less efficient just because it's going to be even less efficient on the competitor's cards.

The truth is, gamers want a game optimized for their choice of gpu. I dont believe for an instant any AMD user would be upset if AMD came out with a new feature for their gpus and its customers. We wouldnt hear a peep. Well, not the peep you might be thinking of anyway. But im quite sure we would hear about the advantage it would have over its competition and how it should affect buying decisions. Eyefinity? Mantle? Never heard the end of those AMD technologies.
Like I said. Hardly anyone is honest about what they really want.

NO, they want just optimised games because gamers do change GPUs. If someone is brand-locked then to me he is also braindead

 

[monstercameron]

Maximum Eyecandy with Minimal Performance Hit on Widest Range of Hardware.

That's the preferred approach.

I'm sorry but that would make too much sense. It would be better to make broken software and tout the advantages it provides a certain subset of hardware, now that makes much more sense.

 

[iiiankiii]

A lot of people would disagree with most of this. I will agree that there is always room for improvements in any technology, be it hardware or software.
That goes without saying though. What card are you currently using?

Ok. I can't speak for "a lot of people". Apparently, you can? Of course there is room for improvement. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying, as of right now, GameWorks suck for me. GameWorks is not running well. There better be room for improvement or else Nvidia has a pretty big problem to solve.

As for the hardware I'm running. Does it matter regarding this discussion? Does me running Nvidia prevent it from running like crap? Less crappy? Sure. I can say that. The census is pretty clear. There's a huge performance hit with GameWorks enabled. That's not up for discussion. However, it can be argued about the worthiness of those "features" with regards to the performance hit. Personally, I really don't think it's worth the hit.

I think a better discussion is how Nvidia can improve upon GameWorks for all GPUs. If more people understood how GW worked, it would give us a better understanding of how improvements can be made. Is GameWorks taking advantage of tessellation? Is that why Maxwell is doing so well? Why is there such a big hit with some of these features turned on? Nvidia probably knows the answer. But since it's closed, it is just that much more difficult to understand the inner workings of GW. Don't get me wrong. I don't pretend to know the technicality of it all. But, if more is understood about GW, smarter people can make current GPUs and future GPUs adapt to take advantage and improve upon GW. That would be nice for us gamers.

 

[sandorski]

I'm sorry but that would make too much sense. It would be better to make broken software and tout the advantages it provides a certain subset of hardware, now that makes much more sense.

:'(

 

[Keysplayr]

Ok. I can't speak for "a lot of people". Apparently, you can? Of course there is room for improvement. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying, as of right now, GameWorks suck for me. GameWorks is not running well. There better be room for improvement or else Nvidia has a pretty big problem to solve.

As for the hardware I'm running. Does it matter regarding this discussion? Does me running Nvidia prevent it from running like crap? Less crappy? Sure. I can say that. The census is pretty clear. There's a huge performance hit with GameWorks enabled. That's not up for discussion. However, it can be argued about the worthiness of those "features" with regards to the performance hit. Personally, I really don't think it's worth the hit.

I think a better discussion is how Nvidia can improve upon GameWorks for all GPUs. If more people understood how GW worked, it would give us a better understanding of how improvements can be made. Is GameWorks taking advantage of tessellation? Is that why Maxwell is doing so well? Why is there such a big hit with some of these features turned on? Nvidia probably knows the answer. But since it's closed, it is just that much more difficult to understand the inner workings of GW. Don't get me wrong. I don't pretend to know the technicality of it all. But, if more is understood about GW, smarter people can make current GPUs and future GPUs adapt to take advantage and improve upon GW. That would be nice for us gamers.

You can turn off Gameworks no matter what gpu you use. So actually, you really don't have to deal with anything, do you..?
I was just curious what GPU you ran. You don't have to tell me, obviously.

 

[Rvenger]

I think a better discussion is how Nvidia can improve upon GameWorks for all GPUs. If more people understood how GW worked, it would give us a better understanding of how improvements can be made. Is GameWorks taking advantage of tessellation? Is that why Maxwell is doing so well? Why is there such a big hit with some of these features turned on? Nvidia probably knows the answer. But since it's closed, it is just that much more difficult to understand the inner workings of GW. Don't get me wrong. I don't pretend to know the technicality of it all. But, if more is understood about GW, smarter people can make current GPUs and future GPUs adapt to take advantage and improve upon GW. That would be nice for us gamers.

I don't think Nvidia will lift a finger to help AMD or even Intel. I do think AMD should be a little more proactive and just start "AMD Optimizing" Gameworks through the driver. 64x Tessellation, sure no problem, AMD driver will force it to 16 - 32x through the driver as a default. User notices no difference and reviewers won't bother looking into it because most reviewers use the default settings in the driver. If it don't affect image quality then it is not a problem IMHO. I can bet you Nvidia does this proactively on some of their weaknesses in their Uarchs.

 

[AnandThenMan]

I much prefer transparency from the likes of Nvidia and AMD, plus it is the job of reviewers to look into things like image quality and not "blindly" leave settings at default and assume all is well.

 

[iiiankiii]

You can turn off Gameworks no matter what gpu you use. So actually, you really don't have to deal with anything, do you..?
I was just curious what GPU you ran. You don't have to tell me.

No, I get that you can turn it off. That's not what I'm getting at. I'm trying to say that GameWorks need some more work to get it running smoothly. You're right, I do turn it off. There is some visual gains that I want to turn on because I do notice some visual improvements. Except it's just so taxing on the GPU that I experience slow downs and that's with a Titan X. It's not that I'm straight up against GameWorks. The idea of giving more visual fidelity is nice. I just wished it was better optimized. That's all.

 

[Keysplayr]

No, I get that you can turn it off. That's not what I'm getting at. I'm trying to say that GameWorks need some more work to get it running smoothly. You're right, I do turn it off. There is some visual gains that I want to turn on because I do notice some visual improvements. Except it's just so taxing on the GPU that I experience slow downs and that's with a Titan X. It's not that I'm straight up against GameWorks. The idea of giving more visual fidelity is nice. I just wished it was better optimized. That's all.

Sure, I can understand that. Some games will need more optimizations than others. Makes sense. I understand what you are getting at, I don't know why you think I don't because I actually said there is always room for improvements. So I am sort of agreeing.

 

[Mistwalker]

Weve been telling them to just turn off gameworks. They dont want to. They want those features but only on an AMD gpu and they want nvidia to do it for them.　... Nobody is honest about what they want and hide behind this "open standard" kumbaya mantra, when all they really want is for AMD to have the stones to do the same thing to Nvidia that Nvidia is doing to AMD. Dominate.

Insulting, disingenuous post. You've managed to turn a desire for open standards into a smokescreen to hide hurt feelings, while insisting no one actually cares about the industry, just that their side wins. That may be your reality but looking down in derision on anyone that actually cares about the consumer over the corporation? Really now.

The truth is, gamers want a game optimized for their choice of gpu. I dont believe for an instant any AMD user would be upset if AMD came out with a new feature for their gpus and its customers. We wouldnt hear a peep. Well, not the peep you might be thinking of anyway. But im quite sure we would hear about the advantage it would have over its competition and how it should affect buying decisions. Eyefinity? Mantle? Never heard the end of those AMD technologies.
Like I said. Hardly anyone is honest about what they really want.

No, Keys, YOU want games optimized for YOUR GPU. GAMERS want as many people as possible to enjoy games in whatever optimal way they can. Eyefinity? I used nothing but AMD in those days and guess what? I thought it unfortunate a feature like that was limited to one camp, and glad Nvidia developed their own solution. I thought Mantle was a great idea but was disappointed it was unlikely to help users of non-AMD GPUs, but now we have DX12 benefiting everyone, so happy ending there. Every technology developed by either team has been great, but I've never wanted any of them denied to the other. As a gamer, I want everyone to have the maximum number of options for enjoying their hobby. The ONLY people who believe, truly believe that their side "winning" is all gamers care about, are either total corporate sellouts or fanboys. Period.

I don't care or want anyone to "win" a features war that is about gating, and thus limiting, access to options. If one company is demonstrably, consistently going in that direction, then I do believe it hurts gaming as a whole where the end-user is concerned. Do not presume to tell me the name on my GPU is really all I care about.

Do you have an article that supports this claim that turning off gameworks related options does not fully disable them? I'd like to read up on that.

And I'm sorry but if AMD we're in Nvidia's position, you can BET they would be employing the same practices as Nvidia. Plain and simple. Businesses are businesses.

I get it, I had 6950s in my last build and a 980 Ti in this build. But this argument is obviously biased in one direction...

The only time you see folks saying "you can bet everyone else is just as bad!" is when your chosen company has done something bad. And for the record, no, not all companies follow the same route to profit, no matter how much you say it's so. See: Sony and Microsoft.

 

[Silverforce11]

I'm a PC Gamer, I like features in games to be brand agnostic, because locking myself into one vendor is just like console gaming. It removes my purchasing power to dictate which hardware offer the better value.

I don't want to see AMD go dirty like NV. I want AMD GE titles to run well on all hardware. Because the situation if they play dirty, is if you want to play GE games, you need an AMD GPU, then if you want to play a GW game, you need an NV GPU. That's screwing up gamers.