What Is NVIDIA GameWorks?

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
What is NVIDIA GameWorks? Who better to explain than NVIDIA's very own Monier Maher, Director of GameWorks Product Marketing.

Our goal - to enable a next-gen gaming experience for games you can buy now. We introduced GameWorks at the end of 2013. Since then we have been providing lots of new tools, tech and improved gaming experience. It’s an effort that’s come full circle. Not only are we getting inquiries from game developers who want to make their games more like movies – we are hearing from people in the movie industry, too. NVIDIA GameWorks offers a wealth of tech and tools for anyone creating great real-time visuals.
 
I will only ever use NVIDIA GPUs but if the GameWorks options hit hard enough to drop me below 60FPS then I disable them and usually use the option just below it. When someone develops a fancy feature designed to work specifically with their product, I expect that product to handle the feature EXCEPTIONALLY WELL, yet I get what I would expect from something that is just another higher level of fidelity: A reduction in performance.

When NVIDIA GameWorks features stop dragging down my NVIDIA GPU (a GALAX GTX 970 EXOC Black), I'll start preaching the gospel, until then, it's just another feature I disable so that I can maintain 60FPS.
 
It's a wonderful feature that causes FC4 to crash within 5 to 60 minutes typically if enabled.
 
No gameworks game has had a smooth launch so far. Some times you have to realize how much of a fanboy you really are.... just praising NVIDIA and thinking they do no wrong is nor helping NVIDIA if we just ignore the fact that gameworks makes games run like crap then NVIDIA will just ignore it also.
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
That made me belly laugh, and no, you're not the only one.

Agreed. Extra eye candy as a bonus for using nVIDIA? Why the hell not?

Nor have I, but...
Click to expand...

You've missed the boat entirely, it's not more for using Nvidia. It's purposefully gimped effects on other manufacturer's hardware. No developer would purposefully gimp their game unless they were forced to by the publisher, who has taken a huge payoff from Nvidia. GameWorks is exactly the sort of shady, underhanded behavior that sunk 3DFX. Hell, most GameWorks effects don't even work very well on Nvidia cards.
 
Gameworks is a set of middlewares, nothing more, nothing less.

But I can see a log of uniformed posters in this thread already.

Lets do an experiment.

Raise you hand if you fullfill all criteria.:
A) You have written code in some sort for a game (not HTML).
B) You are against gameworks.

You need both A+B to raise you hand.

I will bet you that most that post against gameworks only can claim B + ignorance/fanboyism

Prove me wrong.
 
Quix said:
You've missed the boat entirely, it's not more for using Nvidia. It's purposefully gimped effects on other manufacturer's hardware. No developer would purposefully gimp their game unless they were forced to by the publisher, who has taken a huge payoff from Nvidia. GameWorks is exactly the sort of shady, underhanded behavior that sunk 3DFX. Hell, most GameWorks effects don't even work very well on Nvidia cards.
Click to expand...
And of course, you have explicit proof of all of this since you said it so matter-of-factly.
 
Quix said:
You've missed the boat entirely, it's not more for using Nvidia. It's purposefully gimped effects on other manufacturer's hardware. No developer would purposefully gimp their game unless they were forced to by the publisher, who has taken a huge payoff from Nvidia. GameWorks is exactly the sort of shady, underhanded behavior that sunk 3DFX. Hell, most GameWorks effects don't even work very well on Nvidia cards.
Click to expand...

Have you ever used an Nvidia card? You seem to lean "slightly" towards AMD products... :rolleyes:
 
Quix said:
You've missed the boat entirely, it's not more for using Nvidia. It's purposefully gimped effects on other manufacturer's hardware. No developer would purposefully gimp their game unless they were forced to by the publisher, who has taken a huge payoff from Nvidia. GameWorks is exactly the sort of shady, underhanded behavior that sunk 3DFX. Hell, most GameWorks effects don't even work very well on Nvidia cards.
Click to expand...


Obvious AMD troll is obvious....
 
Quix said:
You've missed the boat entirely, it's not more for using Nvidia. It's purposefully gimped effects on other manufacturer's hardware. No developer would purposefully gimp their game unless they were forced to by the publisher, who has taken a huge payoff from Nvidia. GameWorks is exactly the sort of shady, underhanded behavior that sunk 3DFX. Hell, most GameWorks effects don't even work very well on Nvidia cards.
Click to expand...

It's not for purposely gimping other manufacturer's hardware when you can turn the effects off. The issue these days is people (and many reviewers) seem to think GW settings are mandatory, i.e. the new "ultra", rather than as some added features that can enhance the image quality of a game. Would you rather they just take GW features out completely? I'd rather have them in and be able to go back to a game in a year or two with better hardware and be able to play it with better settings than before. GW is really just a bonus for people who have very high end hardware and for people who replay games after many years.
 
XxDaRkReAp3rxXdOtCoM said:
It's not for purposely gimping other manufacturer's hardware when you can turn the effects off. The issue these days is people (and many reviewers) seem to think GW settings are mandatory, i.e. the new "ultra", rather than as some added features that can enhance the image quality of a game. Would you rather they just take GW features out completely? I'd rather have them in and be able to go back to a game in a year or two with better hardware and be able to play it with better settings than before. GW is really just a bonus for people who have very high end hardware and for people who replay games after many years.
Click to expand...

Through the cloudiness of discontent and fogginess comes a voice of reason.

Some facts about GameWorks 3D effects in games.

1.) They work on both AMD and NVIDIA (except for PhysX of course, but I look at that as an entirely different thing) All 3D effects work on both vendors as they are DX11 API calls.

2.) The effects can be turned off if you really really don't like either the performance demand, or the benefit of better graphics.

3.) It is up to the game developer to implement these features, or not. No one is holding a gun to their head, they chose to use them, or they chose not to. Instead of being mad at GameWorks, how about being mad at the game developer for using it if you really really are against its use in a game.

I for one want better graphics in my games, I want graphics effects to move forward, to evolve. I don't want graphics reduced or stripped away. If NVIDIA and AMD have some great ideas for how to do 3D effects efficiently on their own GPUs and they want to share that with game developers so game developers can implement them if they chose (which is optional and up to the game dev) then fine by me. Who am I to tell a game developer what he or she should or should not implement in their own game. They have a vision for it, let their vision be. I will sit back and evaluate the end result.

GameWorks features have not been the direct cause of game's instability problems recently, rather, rushed games, unfinished games being pushed by publishers is the cause, game's need more time in the oven and have been pushed out too fast, pre-orders are partly to blame there. I haven't had any game recently where turning on a GameWorks feature caused it to crash. There have been some issues with flashing shadows, but that happened even with the regular game's shadows.

I for one think AMD needs to be a lot more aggressive with evangelizing its features to game developers. I thought TressFX looked great in Tomb Raider. I was hoping we'd see it a lot more in games, but we haven't. That tells you something. It tells you something how much GameWorks being adopted, and AMD's features aren't as much. NVIDIA is very aggressive with its features, it is here to win, AMD needs to push equally as hard if not more to overcome NVIDIA's momentum with GameWorks.

One game I really enjoyed AMD's features in was Alien Isolation, we need more games like that, I want to see competition - http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/11/06/alien_isolation_video_card_performance_review/
 
Last edited:
Factum said:
Gameworks is a set of middlewares, nothing more, nothing less.

But I can see a log of uniformed posters in this thread already.

Lets do an experiment.

Raise you hand if you fullfill all criteria.:
A) You have written code in some sort for a game (not HTML).
B) You are against gameworks.

You need both A+B to raise you hand.

I will bet you that most that post against gameworks only can claim B + ignorance/fanboyism

Prove me wrong.
Click to expand...

i can only claim A.

maybe time will show me otherwise, but if the features arent mandatory, and are like the "cherry on top" for eye candy (like the glorious physx implementation in Borderlands 2), hell yeah give me more.

seriously, physx in Borderlands 2 was awesome. a singularity grenade + multiple fluids + debris ... why wouldnt you want that?! is it just the "have nots" being jealous? i must be missing something.
 
What Gameworks is...by the DIRECTOR of MARKETING.... wow.

As n nVidia user that can plan more than two steps in a chess game:
Down with Gameworks, don't turn the PC market into a gated community, one "Creative labs" disaster is enough.
 
XxDaRkReAp3rxXdOtCoM said:
It's not for purposely gimping other manufacturer's hardware when you can turn the effects off. The issue these days is people (and many reviewers) seem to think GW settings are mandatory, i.e. the new "ultra", rather than as some added features that can enhance the image quality of a game. Would you rather they just take GW features out completely? I'd rather have them in and be able to go back to a game in a year or two with better hardware and be able to play it with better settings than before. GW is really just a bonus for people who have very high end hardware and for people who replay games after many years.
Click to expand...

Considering PhysX was fully blocked on AMD hardware than Gameworks is much better in that regard as it at least works on non Nvidia GPUs.
 
cinnamonandgravy said:
i can only claim A.

maybe time will show me otherwise, but if the features arent mandatory, and are like the "cherry on top" for eye candy (like the glorious physx implementation in Borderlands 2), hell yeah give me more.

seriously, physx in Borderlands 2 was awesome. a singularity grenade + multiple fluids + debris ... why wouldnt you want that?! is it just the "have nots" being jealous? i must be missing something.
Click to expand...

I don't think you will find the A+B combo, unless you talk to an AMD (PR) employe.

This thread seems to confirm it.
We should make a new fallacy:

Argumentum Ad Techne Ignorantiam

Posting negatively about technology based soley on your own ignorance of said technology,
Click to expand...
 
I guess this thread demonstrates the hypothetical, what if someone sat down and explained what GW actually is, would they still be totally ignorant about it? :D
 
pxc said:
I guess this thread demonstrates the hypothetical, what if someone sat down and explained what GW actually is, would they still be totally ignorant about it? :D
Click to expand...

There is a lot of posts in this thread that seems to confirm that even when people are explained about a technological feature still are ignorant...or willing choosing to ignore facts.
 
Factum said:
There is a lot of posts in this thread that seems to confirm that even when people are explained about a technological feature still are ignorant...or willing choosing to ignore facts.
Click to expand...

It's not hard to understand. Many people against GW - including myself as an nVidia user - are not concerned about the technological aspects, but rather the marketing/consumer side.

If they made/make GW open source so any GPU company - AMD, Intel etc - could study the internals and be able to optimize accordingly, then no big deal. But a company with 80 percent market share pushing a "black box" between drivers and DirectX is highly anti-competitive and anti-consumer in the long run.
 
Wierdo said:
If they made/make GW open source so any GPU company - AMD, Intel etc - could study the internals and be able to optimize accordingly, then no big deal. But a company with 80 percent market share pushing a "black box" between drivers and DirectX is highly anti-competitive and anti-consumer in the long run.
Click to expand...

It's not a black box and the source code is available if you pay a licensing fee to Nvidia. I don't know what the cost or licensing terms are though.

It's also not between drivers and DirectX. It's just a middleware component that developers integrate to their graphics implementation in much the same way as Speedtree can be used for tree rendering for example. Unlike PhysX (which is Nvidia-only due to CUDA), at least Gameworks work on both Nvidia and AMD GPUs even though it definitely favors Nvidia's own cards and it's no surprise it does as they have little desire to optimize it for anything else.
 
kasakka said:
It's not a black box and the source code is available if you pay a licensing fee to Nvidia. I don't know what the cost or licensing terms are though.
Click to expand...



Its a black box until the developers pay a lot extra to gain access, but they still can't share that code with AMD to help AMD improve their drivers or offer ways to improve the code, so its still pretty much a black box for AMD.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...rps-power-from-developers-end-users-and-amd/2

They've been doing everything they can to hamper AMD (and Intel) performance on games that use Gameworks by not allowing for them to optimize. Please name games that released this year w/o issues that used gameworks.
 
kasakka said:
It's not a black box and the source code is available if you pay a licensing fee to Nvidia. I don't know what the cost or licensing terms are though.

It's also not between drivers and DirectX. It's just a middleware component that developers integrate to their graphics implementation in much the same way as Speedtree can be used for tree rendering for example. Unlike PhysX (which is Nvidia-only due to CUDA), at least Gameworks work on both Nvidia and AMD GPUs even though it definitely favors Nvidia's own cards and it's no surprise it does as they have little desire to optimize it for anything else.
Click to expand...

Can you actually show a legal document describing all of the Game Works contracts from Nvidia as licensee ?
 
Wierdo said:
It's not hard to understand. Many people against GW - including myself as an nVidia user - are not concerned about the technological aspects, but rather the marketing/consumer side.

If they made/make GW open source so any GPU company - AMD, Intel etc - could study the internals and be able to optimize accordingly, then no big deal. But a company with 80 percent market share pushing a "black box" between drivers and DirectX is highly anti-competitive and anti-consumer in the long run.
Click to expand...

You calling it "black box" is argument from ignorance, not way to suagarcoat it sorry.

So my point stands.
 
Pieter3dnow said:
Can you actually show a legal document describing all of the Game Works contracts from Nvidia as licensee ?
Click to expand...

Still loooking for the "gods of gaps" eh?

If you knew anything about GameWorks and it's licensingg you would not that information is not for the public...like most other stuff under a legal contract?

So either you made an argument from ignorance...or you are being willfully deceptive/intellectual dishonest?
 
Factum said:
You calling it "black box" is argument from ignorance, not way to suagarcoat it sorry.

So my point stands.
Click to expand...

Instead of simply adding noise and empty posts to an otherwise civil discussion among adults, why not spend your effort editing the wikis instead?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameWorks_(API)

GameWorks is distributed in the form of compiled DLLs rather than traditional source code.[2] The competing solution offered by AMD is TressFX which is open source instead of proprietary in nature.
...
GameWorks has been criticized for its proprietary and closed nature. Competitors such as AMD, which do not offer a similar middleware, are unable to properly optimize Nvidia's libraries for their hardware.[3][4][5]
...
developers who use GameWorks are contractually forbidden to work with AMD.[2]
Click to expand...

Nuff said.
 
Gameworks is an easy way for game developers to make extra cash featuring Nvidia's gimmick in their game.
 
Gameworks is a middleware blackbox developed by nvidia. AMD/Intel can not see, and developers can't see unless they pay and then are not allowed to work with AMD/Intel to fix the performance in the code or aid them with driver updates for said gameworks title.

Game developers not taking part in the gameworks program can send their source code and can collaborate with GPU vendors to optimize their games and gpu vendors can optimize their drivers for said games.

what is better for the industry folks?
 
Last edited:
Since there's already a thread on Gameworks, I might look for some input here.

Currently when running The Witcher 3, everything maxed out at 4k resolution I'm getting about 36-37 fps on a single 980Ti.
This is with Hairworks on, 8x Hairworks AA and preset set to High.

Now, if I turn Hairworks off, I get 40 fps.
That's 3 fps difference.

So what are all these reviews saying about losing 40% of fps when you activate Hairworks?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top