Nvidia's GameWorks Program, Will it Benifit PC Gaming?

[WYP]

Over the last few months AMD and Nvidia have promised better support for developers, with AMD's Mantle API making the most headlines.

Nvidia's most significant response has been their GameWorks developer support program. One of the main features of this program is a set of optimized libraries that developers can use to implement certain affect in-game as well as access to Nvidia's CUDA development tools and GPU profiling software.

Yesterday Extremetech published an article showing how this program will affect developers and gamers alike.

Libraries

Simply put, a library is a collection of implemented behaviors. They are not application specific — libraries are designed to be called by multiple programs in order to simplify development. Instead of implementing a GPU feature five times in five different games, you can just point the same five titles at one library. Game engines like Unreal Engine 3 are typically capable of integrating with third party libraries to ensure maximum compatibility and flexibility. Nvidia’s GameWorks contains libraries that tell the GPU how to render shadows, implement ambient occlusion, or illuminate objects.

In short these libraries are made to simplify development which is a good thing, but the closed nature of these libraries however are not as they prevent the developers or AMD to make further optimizations (Especially for non-Nvidia Hardware).

The article further explores how the implementation of these libraries affect users, comparing two technically similar titles (Batman Arkham City and Batman Arkham Origins).

Previous Arkham titles favored Nvidia, but never to this degree. In Arkham City, the R9 290X has a 24% advantage over the GTX 770 in DX11, and a 14% improvement in DX9. In Arkham Origins, they tie. Can this be traced directly back to GameWorks? Technically, no it can’t — all of our feature-specific tests showed the GTX 770 and the R9 290X taking near-identical performance hits with GameWorks features set to various detail levels. If DX11 Enhanced Ambient Occlusion costs the GTX 770 10% of its performance, it cost the R9 290X 10% of its performance.

The problem with that “no,” though, is twofold. First, because AMD can’t examine or optimize the shader code, there’s no way of knowing what performance could look like. In a situation where neither the developer nor AMD ever has access to the shader code to start with, this is a valid point. Arkham Origins offers an equal performance hit to the GTX 770 and the R9 290X, but control of AMD’s performance in these features no longer rests with AMD’s driver team — it’s sitting with Nvidia.

One worrying remark that Extremetech also made was that AMD had tried to give the Warner Bros. Montreal code with improvements to the code which would improve tessellation performance and fix multi-GPU issues in their game. This developer turned down AMD's improved code giving AMD a performance disadvantage in this game.

AMD attempted to provide Warner Bros. Montreal with code to improve Arkham Origins performance in tessellation, as well as to fix certain multi-GPU problems with the game. The studio turned down both. Is this explicitly the fault of GameWorks? No, but it’s a splendid illustration of how developer bias, combined with unfair treatment, creates a sub-optimal consumer experience.
Under ordinary circumstances, the consumer sees none of this. The typical takeaway from these results would be “Man, AMD builds great hardware, but their driver support sucks.

This is in contrast to what AMD did with TressFX and other effect AMD has developed, with open code which allows Nvidia to optimize their hardware/drivers to give their users good performance on what is AMD tech.

Nvidia has closed of their code making AMD unable to develop drivers and improve performance in the latest Nvidia optimized titles, effectively making Nvidia the one in control of AMD's performance in these titles.

What do you guys think of this? Do you believe Nvidia are using dirty tactics or do you believe this is fair game? Please comment below.

I recommend that you all read the source article below.

Source - Extremetech

 

[Chadwokie]

Iv been thinking about the old nvidia vs amd war recently (mainly because im trying to decide on my new gfx card) and what i keep coming back to is the console gfx cards are amd and game devs in "theory" will be designing the games to work best on those machines (atleast for the next couple of years)

personally i dont see any problem with nvidea saying no you cant use our code its what companys do you dont see ford sharing any tech with the other car companys.

i think it is more a case we should commend amd for keeping there code open sourced rather than chastise nvidea if that makes sense?

 

[SieB]

It all sounds good apart from

"Nvidia has closed of their code making AMD unable to develop drivers and improve performance in the latest Nvidia optimized titles, effectively making Nvidia the one in control of AMD's performance in these titles."

TressFX and AMD optimized games don't stop Nvidia from making better optimized drivers for them.
Nvidia have controlled PhysX and not allowed AMD to make use of it so how they can use the excuse AMD did the same with TressFX I don't know.

Sounds like Nvidia is getting a bit petite and resulting to dirty tactics. It's not the first time they have done something like this, when Batman Arkham Asylum came out they wrote code into it to make it run worse on AMD cards.

I don't have as much respect for Nvidia as I do for AMD, Nvidia are always doing crap like this, charge ridiculous prices for their GPUs and don't seem to care about their customers. Look what they did to people that bought the Titan, they basically shoved the middle finger up their ass when they released the 780 a month later for £300 less and basically did the same thing again when they released the 780 Ti.

Doing crap like this is basically saying if you want good performance in Nvidia optimized games using Gameworks then you have to use a Nvidia GPU. Thats not developing something good for gamers and making things better, it's creating a dictatorship and making it so people have to buy your product to have a good experience.

That is not what AMD are doing with Mantle, Nvidia can still optimize for games that will use Mantle seen as they will also be DX11 games. The only downside to Nvidia is not being able to use Mantle, it still doesn't stop them from having good performance and optimization in the DX version, which is what this Gameworks would do to AMD cards.

 

[WYP]

One thing that i had been wondering recently was why AMD are so far behind when it came to optimized drivers for Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag.

Now the reason seems to be Nvidia, while AMD is far from a perfect company Nvidia seem to be more and more willing to make things as hard as possible for AMD, making many Nvidia technologies either unusable by AMD or nigh impossible to optimize by AMD

 

[Zoot]

Nvidia has closed of their code making AMD unable to develop drivers and improve performance in the latest Nvidia optimized titles, effectively making Nvidia the one in control of AMD's performance in these titles.

This kind of proprietry stuff is nasty because it hurts us consumers the most, as a result I'll be voting with my wallet and making a conscious effort to buy AMD GPUs as long as Nvidia is doing this kind of stuff.

I was considering a GTX 780 as my next upgrade, but not any more. ^_^

 

[SieB]

One thing that i had been wondering recently was why AMD are so far behind when it came to optimized drivers for Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag.

Now the reason seems to be Nvidia, while AMD is far from a perfect company Nvidia seem to be more and more willing to make things as hard as possible for AMD, making many Nvidia technologies either unusable by AMD or nigh impossible to optimize by AMD

Using AC4 as an example, imagine if all Nvidia optimized games were the same with AMD as how it is with AC4 now.

That would not be fair at all and just makes it so people are forced to buy Nvidia to enjoy the game fully. This is how it would be if this Gameworks goes the way they are saying.

AMD haven't done anything like this to Nvidia, as I said above Mantle doesn't stop Nvidia form optimizing for the DX version of Mantle games. Nvidia GPU users can still have good optimization and a good experience. If Nvidia do what this article says then AMD GPU users will have a bad experience with Nvidia optimized games with no other way than buying a Nvidia card to have a good one.

The same goes for AMD optimized games, Nvidia can still optimize for those and still have good performance. TressFX is just the same to Nvidia as PhysX is to AMD. But with Gmaeworks this makes everything Nvidia only good if you have a Nvidia GPU which is not a good thing at all.

 

[Edge]

Wondering how much truth there is to all this nVidia.. spiel. Very disappointed so far. Kinda glad I've stuck to AMD for the last few years.