Nvidia Responds To Witcher 3 GameWorks Controversy, PC Gamers On The Offensive

Nvidia's GameWorks Library has always been controversial, being called a "Black Box" by both devs and hardware vendors in the past and being seen by many of us on the PC hardware scene as a way for Nvidia to work in an anti-competitive manner if they wish.

While the GameWorks library does place into the hands of developers a great collection of graphical tools and can greatly simplify game development, however the fact that these libraries are closed to most of it's users makes it a difficult thing to optumise for if you are not using an Nvidia GPU.

Here is a statement made by CD Project's Marcin Momot, claiming that Nvidia's HairWorks code cannot be optimized to perform well on AMD GPUs;

http://www.overclock3d.net/articles...nvidia_hairworks_unoptimizable_for_amd_gpus/1
 
Man this sucks, I remember when the consoles came out as AMD products. I was pretty happy that games would be optimized for AMD hardware but they are still optimized for NVIDA. That means that the consoles will have a hard time with the game, and we can't have a PC game that looks better than consoles, time to downgrade the graphics until it plays on AMD hardware... so everyone is losing.
 
I remember when the consoles came out as AMD products. I was pretty happy that games would be optimized for AMD hardware but they are still optimized for NVIDA

I was thinking the same thing and am surprised that the opposite is happening...when upgrading from my GTX 580 I was thinking about going with AMD for this reason...instead I went with a GTX 970 and am glad I did
 
non issue just pcmr having an AMD circlejerk

This. PCMR subreddit foaming at the mouth because of Project Cars runs like shit on AMD cards, mostly because rumors say it's a GPU Physx game that can never be optimized for AMD (which was later disproved by a dev of the game).

Still can't condone Nvidia blackboxing, but this is a run of the mill mob situation.
 
This. PCMR subreddit foaming at the mouth because of Project Cars runs like shit on AMD cards, mostly because rumors say it's a GPU Physx game that can never be optimized for AMD (which was later disproved by a dev of the game).

Still can't condone Nvidia blackboxing, but this is a run of the mill mob situation.

The older Kepler cards run like shit on project game-works, oh sorry project cars too. I have a 780 and in project cards it is just under the 960. Now how the hell did that happen.
 
It's so true though.

Their hardware is inferior, less efficient, yet people love to root for the underdog and the AMD apologists come out of the woodwork every time something like this happens.
 
It's so true though.

Their hardware is inferior, less efficient, yet people love to root for the underdog and the AMD apologists come out of the woodwork every time something like this happens.

People held in to the AMD performance CPU dream for years until they finally caved in. AMD is much closer in the GPU market, they need a new GPU launch to stay in the game.
 
I posted this over on rage3d:


unfair advantage blah blah blah. If AMD were to put out cards that could compete with Nvidia and support them with drivers and enticing features then perhaps we wouldn't be in this situation.


One could also say "screw it" and just buy an Nvidia GPU. I don't get people that refuse to "join the dark side" and insist on using AMD products. I get supporting a company to a point, but when it hurts performance and image quality? Nope. AMD dug their own grave. Perhaps the 390X will be their savior, but the problem they are going to have is gamers that have already joined/accepted the Nvidia Eco-System. (Gameworks, G-Sync, GeForce Experience, PhysX...) Pulling a gamer away from that is going to be impossible. Only time I could see it happening is when they go to upgrade their monitors, but even then I see them sticking with a G-Sync display.

The only downside to the Nvidia Eco-System is the "Nvidia Tax". You gotta pay if you want to play. Why is there this tax? AMD haven't been competing. Their hardware may be decent but damn, their marketing deparment is laughable compared to Nvidia's and Intel's. Though at times they really do hit one out of the park ("When we say 4GB we mean 4GB")

Also would like to point out that Intel does the same damn thing that Nvidia does in terms of hurting a competitors performance by detecting what CPU is being ran.
 
I posted this over on rage3d:


unfair advantage blah blah blah. If AMD were to put out cards that could compete with Nvidia and support them with drivers and enticing features then perhaps we wouldn't be in this situation.


One could also say "screw it" and just buy an Nvidia GPU. I don't get people that refuse to "join the dark side" and insist on using AMD products. I get supporting a company to a point, but when it hurts performance and image quality? Nope. AMD dug their own grave. Perhaps the 390X will be their savior, but the problem they are going to have is gamers that have already joined/accepted the Nvidia Eco-System. (Gameworks, G-Sync, GeForce Experience, PhysX...) Pulling a gamer away from that is going to be impossible. Only time I could see it happening is when they go to upgrade their monitors, but even then I see them sticking with a G-Sync display.

The only downside to the Nvidia Eco-System is the "Nvidia Tax". You gotta pay if you want to play. Why is there this tax? AMD haven't been competing. Their hardware may be decent but damn, their marketing deparment is laughable compared to Nvidia's and Intel's. Though at times they really do hit one out of the park ("When we say 4GB we mean 4GB")

Also would like to point out that Intel does the same damn thing that Nvidia does in terms of hurting a competitors performance by detecting what CPU is being ran.

AMD has been phoning it in since they bought ATi...on both the gpu and cpu front

mantle was an attempt to sell cards and cpus before dx12 dropped but they are so far behind and have no dev support nothing came of it
 
I will not purchase any game going forward that uses NV Gameworks, I will also stop purchasing NV cards as long as this BS continues.
 
I will not purchase any game going forward that uses NV Gameworks, I will also stop purchasing NV cards as long as this BS continues.



This is going to sound ridiculous but the analogy works:




McDonald's does the same thing Nvidia is doing with GameWorks. McDonal'ds secret recipe for their Big Mac sauce is a company secret, a "black box" if you will.


My point is = all companies do this. At the end of the day Nvidia is in this game to make money
 
Man, the comments in this thread are surprising.

If AMD decides to do what Nvidia does like people here are saying they should, eventually every game out there will either run well only on Nvidia hardware or AMD hardware. It's going to be great needing two completely different graphics cards just to play all the games out there!
 
Man, the comments in this thread are surprising.

If AMD decides to do what Nvidia does like people here are saying they should, eventually every game out there will either run well only on Nvidia hardware or AMD hardware. It's going to be great needing two completely different graphics cards just to play all the games out there!

means nothing.

directx 12 fixes everyone's little red wagon.

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/microsoft-confirms-directx-12-mix-amd-and-nvidia-multi-gpus.html
 
So you would keep buying AMD cards even if they weren't competitive?

I would buy the AMD card that fits my needs, since my needs are not usually the top end (playing @ 1080p), then even a current 290x fits my needs.

I made the mistake of getting a GTX 970, to see if it's any better in Premiere / AE. (seems like it's not noticeably better) and getting rid of my 290x.
 
Man, the comments in this thread are surprising.

If AMD decides to do what Nvidia does like people here are saying they should, eventually every game out there will either run well only on Nvidia hardware or AMD hardware. It's going to be great needing two completely different graphics cards just to play all the games out there!

If that happens, you can kiss AMD goodbye. AKA 3DFX and Glide all over again.


Cause of decline


Although 1997 was marked by analysts as a turning point for 3dfx due to the marketing led by the new CEO Greg Ballard, there was criticism of Ballard's understanding of R&D in the graphics industry. Single-card 2D/3D solutions were taking over the market, and although Ballard saw the need and attempted to direct the company there with the Voodoo Banshee and the Voodoo3, both of these cost the company millions in sales and lost market share while diverting vital resources from the Rampage project.[3] Then 3dfx released word in early 1999 that the still-competitive Voodoo2 would support only OpenGL and Glide under Microsoft's Windows 2000 operating system, and not DirectX. Many games were transitioning to DirectX at this point, and the announcement caused many PC gamers–the core demographic of 3dfx's market–to switch to Nvidia or ATI offerings for their new machines.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3dfx_Interactive#Cause_of_decline




Actually, reading that wiki page, it is striking the amount of similarities between 3DFX and AMD. AMD going "More GPU's", while NVidia says "One Strong GPU". AMD going "Mantle API!", while NVidia says "DirectX". And finally most people that are buying new GPU's today are going Nvidia. Nvidia is close to 80% market share currently in terms of discrete GPU's
 
This is going to sound ridiculous but the analogy works:




McDonald's does the same thing Nvidia is doing with GameWorks. McDonal'ds secret recipe for their Big Mac sauce is a company secret, a "black box" if you will.


My point is = all companies do this. At the end of the day Nvidia is in this game to make money

No, this analogy doesn't work at all, because your consuming a product, which has no bearing on any other product you enjoy. EG you don't need a bigmac to go out and ride your bike.

you NEED a video card to play games(at least with Eye Candy on)

if you want a good example / analogy.

This is more like Intel providing "optimized" compilers,
 
No, this analogy doesn't work at all, because your consuming a product, which has no bearing on any other product you enjoy. EG you don't need a bigmac to go out and ride your bike.

you NEED a video card to play games(at least with Eye Candy on)

if you want a good example / analogy.

This is more like Intel providing "optimized" compilers,

That is a bad example too, Intel optimized compilers, AMD had no where to go, because those same compilers are what they used. With Gameworks the code is open to the developers they can choose to optimize the AMD path on their own, its not that hard to do, it takes time and money yes but they have the capability to do it, they don't need AMD's help to do it either.
 
With Gameworks the code is open to the developers they can choose to optimize the AMD path on their own, its not that hard to do, it takes time and money yes but they have the capability to do it, they don't need AMD's help to do it either.

Not entirely true...
If they pay for a use license they can't see or touch it.
If they pay for a full license, they can manipulate it to a degree but Nvidia is good at what they do.
 
Not entirely true...
If they pay for a use license they can't see or touch it.
If they pay for a full license, they can manipulate it to a degree but Nvidia is good at what they do.


yes that is true, but big name game titles and publisher they pony up the money, and its not that much compared to the cost of a team, and making a product. and no with the source nV can't control the developer at all, they can do pretty much anything they want, in fact my company is working on optimizing one of the game works libraries now for both IHV's, and we aren't taking to either of them to do it, they only time we do is when we come across something that we don't have control over (driver issues) even then we don't share our code with either of them because the way we are integrating with our program we would have release code of the program which we aren't going to do at all.

What we do in that situation is send over an executable version and they can run the test the way they want and give use feedback of what they find.
 
and indies, and non-AAA?

what do they do?

they dont have the cash....and even if they did, AMD still cant optimize...

its pay-to-play anyway you slice it, and its bullshit...
 
and indies, and non-AAA?

what do they do?

they dont have the cash....and even if they did, AMD still cant optimize...

its pay-to-play anyway you slice it, and its bullshit...


well very few indie and non AAA games that are used in benchmarks by major sites, so I don't think you need to worry about that. There is a reason for this indie games usually don't sell as much at AAA games. Now unfortunately those games will run worse on AMD hardware but that is a very small percentage of game players that buy those games.

And if they had the cash, AMD doesn't need to optimize, the developer can do it on their own.

And please don't take to me about programming, we went down that road before.
 
I'm honestly sad to see people defending this.

Yes, legally NVIDIA has every right to do what they have done. They wrote the middleware, they own the IP. It's still bad for gaming, and unless you never game at all, it should matter for you too. Locking a significant chunk of the market to inferior performance unless the company you are working with ponies up the money to access the code and then optimize it for you goes against how gaming on PC has worked for years.
 
The older Kepler cards run like shit on project game-works, oh sorry project cars too. I have a 780 and in project cards it is just under the 960. Now how the hell did that happen.

It's pretty obvious, isn't it? nVidia wants you to upgrade. They already got the money for your 780. They don't care anymore. It's just business. ;)
 
So you would keep buying AMD cards even if they weren't competitive?

It's obvious it's nVidia who can't compete since they feel the need to have unoptimizable code in their game features. This will backfire on them. They need to take as much advantage as they can while DX11 is still viable.
 
This is going to sound ridiculous but the analogy works:




McDonald's does the same thing Nvidia is doing with GameWorks. McDonal'ds secret recipe for their Big Mac sauce is a company secret, a "black box" if you will.


My point is = all companies do this. At the end of the day Nvidia is in this game to make money

They don't force BK to use it with missing ingredients though. (To even attempt to use this worthless analogy.)
 
Couldn't one argue that ATI was first to use exclusive features that couldn't run on Nvidia hardware? (TruForm)




They don't force BK to use it with missing ingredients though. (To even attempt to use this worthless analogy.)



You can turn gameworks features off though...
 
Couldn't one argue that ATI was first to use exclusive features that couldn't run on Nvidia hardware? (TruForm)

Who cares about features that you can't run? How many recent games use PhysX as a key component of the gameplay?

This is about features you can run on either brand but purposefully runs as poorly as possible on the other brand.
 
Who cares about features that you can't run? How many recent games use PhysX as a key component of the gameplay?

This is about features you can run on either brand but purposefully runs as poorly as possible on the other brand.



Please provide proof that features are purposefully coded to run as poorly as possible on one brand vs. another? Could just be optimized to run well on NVidia.
 
Please provide proof that features are purposefully coded to run as poorly as possible on one brand vs. another? Could just be optimized to run well on NVidia.

Like locking out a brand from using generic AA code that the brand had publicly talked about and discussed their optimizations to the code?

Like adding ridiculously high tessellation to unneeded objects? Like relatively flat geometry, concrete barriers, a cape or water that you can't see due to it being underneath the level/map?

Or coding some features for OpenCL then disabling it and eventually remove it?
 
yes that is true, but big name game titles and publisher they pony up the money, and its not that much compared to the cost of a team, and making a product. and no with the source nV can't control the developer at all, they can do pretty much anything they want, in fact my company is working on optimizing one of the game works libraries now for both IHV's, and we aren't taking to either of them to do it, they only time we do is when we come across something that we don't have control over (driver issues) even then we don't share our code with either of them because the way we are integrating with our program we would have release code of the program which we aren't going to do at all.

What we do in that situation is send over an executable version and they can run the test the way they want and give use feedback of what they find.

You think they pay nVidia? It's the other way around. If it's not with actual cash then it's with "support". Nobody pays the IHV's to put their code in their games. At least not that I've ever heard of.

well very few indie and non AAA games that are used in benchmarks by major sites, so I don't think you need to worry about that. There is a reason for this indie games usually don't sell as much at AAA games. Now unfortunately those games will run worse on AMD hardware but that is a very small percentage of game players that buy those games.

And if they had the cash, AMD doesn't need to optimize, the developer can do it on their own.

And please don't take to me about programming, we went down that road before.

So as well as the Devs paying the IHV's they are going to optimize their drivers as well?

I'm honestly sad to see people defending this.

Yes, legally NVIDIA has every right to do what they have done. They wrote the middleware, they own the IP. It's still bad for gaming, and unless you never game at all, it should matter for you too. Locking a significant chunk of the market to inferior performance unless the company you are working with ponies up the money to access the code and then optimize it for you goes against how gaming on PC has worked for years.

It goes against everything that has made the PC the universally accepted platform that it is today. Imagine having to worry if particular software is compatible with your hardware? Might as well buy a Mac.
 
Nvidia's GameWorks Library has always been controversial, being called a "Black Box" by both devs and hardware vendors in the past and being seen by many of us on the PC hardware scene as a way for Nvidia to work in an anti-competitive manner if they wish.
My favorite response: "AMD should just be more competitive and not allow things like this to happen". Wow.
So if AMD started buying off publishers/developers and putting their own black boxes in games which potentially cripple Nvidia hardware, the ~75% Nvidia playerbase would suddenly be saying things like "Good job, AMD!" What a joke.

This kind of stuff shouldn't be happening at all in the software industry.

The fact of the matter is, we have people trying to justify massive performance losses for 25% of the PC gaming community and that makes me sad.
Just remember while you're sitting here talking up Nvidia's business practices I'm squeaking through Project Cars at 20fps.

AMD & DICE should make Battlefront Mantle-only just so some people can get some perspective.
 
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AMD have only themselves to blame since it took them from 5870 to Tonga before they fixed their tesselation performance.

I won't be suprised if radeon 285 takes much smaller hit in fps compared to 280X/290 when using hairworks.
 
Still have not forgiven Nv for the core2 sli bullshit, or their no PhysX on a NV card if a AMD/ATI card is present in the system BS. Their habits have not changed. No reason to change my buying habits.
 
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AMD have only themselves to blame since it took them from 5870 to Tonga before they fixed their tesselation performance.

I won't be suprised if radeon 285 takes much smaller hit in fps compared to 280X/290 when using hairworks.

They fixed that awhile ago...
43145.png
 
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