nVidia obfuscating code to sabotage AMD optimisation.

[Edge]

Another dick move from nVidia as they lock out AMD from having any opportunity to view code and optimise AMD cards for Ubisoft's latest title, Watch_Dogs, and this may be an issue for all further titles that use nVidia's proprietary Gameworks toolkit.


“Gameworks represents a clear and present threat to gamers by deliberately crippling performance on AMD products (40% of the market) to widen the margin in favor of NVIDIA products."

“Participation in the Gameworks program often precludes the developer from accepting AMD suggestions that would improve performance directly in the game code—the most desirable form of optimization.”

So a partner studio like Ubisoft can suggest or write enhancements to the GameWorks libraries, but AMD isn’t allowed to see those changes or suggest their own.

“The code obfuscation makes it difficult to perform our own after-the-fact driver optimizations, as the characteristics of the game are hidden behind many layers of circuitous and non-obvious routines,” Hallock continues. “This change coincides with NVIDIA’s decision to remove all public Direct3D code samples from their site in favor of a ‘contact us for licensing’ page. AMD does not engage in, support, or condone such activities.”

You can see from the benchmarks how bad this really is. The GTX 770 outperforming the far superior 290x hardware in all except the most stressed test.

Compared to AMD's open-source, shareable approach, it's in my opinion pretty shitty behaviour, as we are unfortunately coming to expect after the whole G-Sync vs FreeSync debacle. Either way, it's not good for the PC gaming industry, it's not good for the market, and it's either going to lead to angry gamers giving nVidia a monopoly over the industry - or cause AMD to be forced to change their approach to the same underhand methods in order to stay in the game.


Source - http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonev...d-potentially-the-entire-pc-gaming-ecosystem/

 

[ShaunB-91]

That's ridiculous, if that's the way things are going then whats the point in PC gaming, you'll never know which brand of GPU will be able to run the game, or you could buy two top end GPU's, yeah that's not really an option.

 

[SuB]

You can see from the benchmarks how bad this really is. The GTX 770 outperforming the far superior 290x hardware in all except the most stressed test.

Actually the graph shows it only beat it in the lowest one,

This is sad to hear about tbh.. I know they have their ways and stuff but I didn't realised it was this bad

 

[Dicehunter]

I could see this coming a mile away as soon as I heard about Gameworks last year, Eventually I can see AMD being cut out of a lot of games performance wise.

First it was Physx *AGEIA*, Not a huge feature but it's still nice, And now this, It's not going to get any better

 

[theDTP]

Actually the graph shows it only beat it in the lowest one,

This is sad to hear about tbh.. I know they have their ways and stuff but I didn't realised it was this bad

Yeah but look at the GPUs in comparison... It should be compared with a 780ti and not a 770 yet even against a 770 the 290x still doesn't pull lead, pretty even. £200 Nvidia on par with £400 AMD.

 

[SieB]

Although Gameworks is a bad thing and it is bad for AMD, I doubt very much that that graph is legit.
Also what drivers were they using because the Nvidia WD optimized drivers came out yesterday but the AMD 14.6 one are not out yet.

It would be interesting if people with a 770, 780 and a 780Ti on OC3D could post their frame rates so people with AMD cards (with 14.6 drivers) can post theirs to compare.

That way we have actual user benchmarks and not just some random graph to go off

 

[Tripp]

with my rig i average about 45fps, with major dips into the 20's (i even seen 5fps last night) thats an ultra at 1080. i believe that graph is talking out of its arse

 

[barnsley]

Oh for F**ks sake, just as people were starting to finally realise that AMD don't make drivers that are utter crap anymore. Its a good thing that Nvidia so far have only managed to buy Ubisoft off thus far. Hopefully they'll be the only ones...

Seriously now considering to not buy that 780. I don't want to give Nvidia money so they can act like dicks. There is being competitive and then there is this.

 

[SuB]

I could see this coming a mile away as soon as I heard about Gameworks last year, Eventually I can see AMD being cut out of a lot of games performance wise.

First it was Physx *AGEIA*, Not a huge feature but it's still nice, And now this, It's not going to get any better

To be fair Ageia came about as an independent company with their own cards (which were fuckin' baller btw, I still have one lying about) Those cards were and probably still are better than the code/physics simulations running via the GPU.
Unfortunately before they had a chance to really shine, nVidia bought them, and adapted their tech to work via some kind of funky GPU shader code or something if I recall.
I get why, there isn't really space in today's pc's for ANOTHER expansion card, but those things kicked some serious ass at massively parallel physics processing and were only running about half their potential before they got vito'ed, it's a shame nVidia jumped on the tech, but that's just kinda how it is.

Yeah but look at the GPUs in comparison... It should be compared with a 780ti and not a 770 yet even against a 770 the 290x still doesn't pull lead, pretty even. £200 Nvidia on par with £400 AMD.

I'm aware of the comparison, my point was that the text said 'all but one' but in fact it was 'only one'

 

[Kushiro]

This is just sad, AMD was already making do with what they had and now this... Well I guess AMD users will just have to wait a little while longer upon game releases. Though I dont think AMD will do a similar move in retaliation as in a way this will work in favor of AMD's public image, while damaging Nvidias, only problem is whether or not the users are using AMD out of loyalty or performance/value.

Also I fail to see why you brought up the 770 to 290x comparison to add fuel to the fire theDTP... We already know that the reason that the performance is so bad is because of AMD being cut out of the coding process... there was no need to rub it in or anything.

 

[SuB]

Also I fail to see why you brought up the 770 to 290x comparison to add fuel to the fire theDTP... We already know that the reason that the performance is so bad is because of AMD being cut out of the coding process... there was no need to rub it in or anything.

I'm not sure he was adding fuel to the fire mate, he was just pointing out that the comparison graph is probably screwy, or if true, is a bit of a low blow to AMD.

 

[Wraith]

Not only is this going to affect AMD GPU users but both next gen consoles use AMD hardware... Don't they?? Bad move nVidia.

 

[Kushiro]

strategically this is actaully a bold move by Nvidia and could possible work in their favor, as developers will slowly move to nvidia once it has a large enough amount of control over existing devs even without being bought over simply due to the high likely-hood that users will switch to nvidia simply because they want to be able to obtain the best experience possible and be able to play games at launch, after a while AMD will go bankrupt due to insufficient sales, then Nvidia becomes ruler of the world and charges whatever they want simply because consumers will have no alternative. After that it is time to move on to dominating intel muhahaha. It would be really funny if this is what Nvidia has planned lol (wouldnt be laughing if they succeeded though), though pretty sure Nvidia vs intel, intel would win.

@SuB, sorry I may have mis-interpreted, as it showed no indication of providing support to your post and simply stated the value of the cards that are of equal footing in the graph, saying that the cheaper Nvidia card is providing more performance. Anyways apologies to the poster and SuB.

Edit: As for consoles, I dunno. Cant they just switch if they really want to? There are always some loop-holes.

 

[barnsley]

strategically this is actaully a bold move by Nvidia and could possible work in their favor, as developers will slowly move to nvidia once it has a large enough amount of control over existing devs even without being bought over simply due to the high likely-hood that users will switch to nvidia simply because they want to be able to obtain the best experience possible and be able to play games at launch, after a while AMD will go bankrupt due to insufficient sales, then Nvidia becomes ruler of the world and charges whatever they want simply because consumers will have no alternative. After that it is time to move on to dominating intel muhahaha. It would be really funny if this is what Nvidia has planned lol (wouldnt be laughing if they succeeded though), though pretty sure Nvidia vs intel, intel would win.

Can't help but feel this is a massive troll, oh well :').
That'd be true if AMD performance was bad in everything else. 'cept its not. Nvidia won't win much by doing this with some games, at the end of the day they still cost more for slightly less.
The performance isn't even that bad it seems so this might just have been a scare. Besides AMD make money from the consoles and every other game doesn't have a preference.
What will really happen eventually is ARM/Samsung vs intel/AMD (whoever perfects low power mobile cpus first). Low power clusters are the future. Which is sad

 

[Dicehunter]

To be fair Ageia came about as an independent company with their own cards (which were fuckin' baller btw, I still have one lying about) Those cards were and probably still are better than the code/physics simulations running via the GPU.
Unfortunately before they had a chance to really shine, nVidia bought them, and adapted their tech to work via some kind of funky GPU shader code or something if I recall.
I get why, there isn't really space in today's pc's for ANOTHER expansion card, but those things kicked some serious ass at massively parallel physics processing and were only running about half their potential before they got vito'ed, it's a shame nVidia jumped on the tech, but that's just kinda how it is.

I had a BFG Physx PPU, It was cool as hell, Loved playing the Cellfactor game




Shame Nvidia bought the company, I bet if AGEIA just said no we would have a butt load more games with proper Physx available to all with the help of a little PPU which was quite cheap.

 

[Kushiro]

Can assure you that I am not trolling, simply speculating

What I meant from my post was after Nvidia had more devs under their payroll and making it as hard as they can for AMD, as there is no law or anything that prevents them from doing this, as for a majority of users experience and value is what they want.

Crap saw a major error in my post haha. wont bother editing it, bring on the shame xD

@Dicehunter: Unfortunately money talks.. big time, how much was the buy out again, forgot haha. But definately agree, sad how Physx is being kept as Nvidia exclusive to use. But such is how business works I guess. Also I noticed that Nvidia is using marketing psysx as a big plus that you get from Nvidia, but have they actually made many if any improvements to it?

 

[SuB]

I had a BFG Physx PPU, It was cool as hell, Loved playing the Cellfactor game




Shame Nvidia bought the company, I bet if AGEIA just said no we would have a butt load more games with proper Physx available to all with the help of a little PPU which was quite cheap.

cellfactor was awesome!

Aye I've got teh BFG one, stuck a Maze waterblock on it as well lol, for shit n giggles!

Remember playing Graw with PhysX on, was a right laugh ALL THE THINGS ASPLODE!

 

[Edge]

My main concern at the moment is that while AMD keeps their tools open (Mantle, TressFX, etc, all useable by other manufacturers), nVidia has total lockdown over Gameworks. Obviously they want to force people to buy their product, but this is not healthy for the gaming market at all, and if AMD didn't have a lot of income via consoles for the next 8 years, I'd be very worried about a monopoly. Either way, it's shitty practice, and I won't be buying nVidia cards because of it. The G-Sync shit was just the start, clearly.

And let's not forget that Unreal Engine 4 has Gameworks built into it's core. That's not going to be good news.

 

[Dicehunter]

Unfortunately money talks.. big time, how much was the buy out again, forgot haha. But definately agree, sad how Physx is being kept as Nvidia exclusive to use. But such is how business works I guess. Also I noticed that Nvidia is using marketing psysx as a big plus that you get from Nvidia, but have they actually made many if any improvements to it?

Not really, It's in the both Borderlands games and all the Batman Arkham games and it does look cool in them but that's it, There are a few more games but nothing worth mentioning.

Nvidia buying out AGEIA in my eyes was a big set back for realistic Physics options in games, It's hardly ever implemented, Such a waste of a good technology.

 

[Kushiro]

Damn why did I not bring that same point up in this thread, yet did in a CPU thread... Silly.