Nvidia publicly bashing Stardock developer over an ALPHA level game

Yakk

Supreme [H]ardness
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Don't read WCCF often, here is some interesting bit news...

Looks like Nvidia decided it didn't like the way Stardock is developing their game and talk publicly about it, and are probably breaking NDA in the process of publicly bashing them :

http://wccftech.com/nvidia-we-dont-believe-aots-benchmark-a-good-indicator-of-dx12-performance/

Seems it takes the CEO of at least a medium sized developer, who seemingly so far has not sold out to their Gameworks program to stand up to them :

http://www.oxidegames.com/2015/08/16/the-birth-of-a-new-api/

And the odd tweet : https://mobile.twitter.com/draginol/status/632957839556874240

Do these politics happen behind the scenes? Yes of coarse, and is the major reason I dislike Gameworks crap, but dragging this out into public and using market dominance to try and bully a developer for something in Alpha developement, that's not ok IMHO.
 
and where it's the problem?.. Nvidia its entirely right.. it's a Alpha game.. who can trust in the performance of a alpha state game?. even people don't trust in beta or pre-launch state of games..
 
"An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind." - Mahatma Gandhi

yAkA3KJ.jpg
 
and where it's the problem?.. Nvidia its entirely right.. it's a Alpha game.. who can trust in the performance of a alpha state game?. even people don't trust in beta or pre-launch state of games..
I think the problem stems from Ashes being the longest running dx12 project so far and alpha status or not it's the best benchmark we have.
 
Oxide and nVidia are both right here. nVidia is just being more aggressive and tactless about it. I was satisfied with Oxide's response and their blog post. They addressed and explained it while nVidia seemed to be more up in arms about it.
 
Since I know most people won't actually read the articles but just comment based on their biases here are a few quotes:

Unfortunately, we have to make some corrections because as always there is misinformation. There are incorrect statements regarding issues with MSAA. Specifically, that the application has a bug in it which precludes the validity of the test. We assure everyone that is absolutely not the case. Our code has been reviewed by Nvidia, Microsoft, AMD and Intel. It has passed the very thorough D3D12 validation system provided by Microsoft specifically designed to validate against incorrect usages. All IHVs have had access to our source code for over year, and we can confirm that both Nvidia and AMD compile our very latest changes on a daily basis and have been running our application in their labs for months. Fundamentally, the MSAA path is essentially unchanged in DX11 and DX12. Any statement which says there is a bug in the application should be disregarded as inaccurate information.

Being fair to all the graphics vendors

Often we get asked about fairness, that is, usually if in regards to treating Nvidia and AMD equally? Are we working closer with one vendor then another? The answer is that we have an open access policy. Our goal is to make our game run as fast as possible on everyone’s machine, regardless of what hardware our players have.

To this end, we have made our source code available to Microsoft, Nvidia, AMD and Intel for over a year. We have received a huge amount of feedback. For example, when Nvidia noticed that a specific shader was taking a particularly long time on their hardware, they offered an optimized shader that made things faster which we integrated into our code.

We only have two requirements for implementing vendor optimizations: We require that it not be a loss for other hardware implementations, and we require that it doesn’t move the engine architecture backward (that is, we are not jeopardizing the future for the present).

So they've been working with Nvidia (and Intel) for a long time, not just AMD.

SLI and CrossFire

Another question we get is concerning SLI and CrossFire situations. D3D12 allows us to have explicit support for Multi-GPU. This allows our engine to drive it. While we have some prototypes of this working, it isn’t yet ready to distribute for public review. There may still be OS level change that needs to happen, and we are still working with Microsoft to figure it out. However, we do expect it to be ready for public review before our game goes into BETA. Our current expectation is that scaling should be close to optimal, with minimum frame variance.

For those talking about how no one would use the multiple gpu features of DX12, looks like they've been working on it for a while already.
 
Nvidia mistakenly stated that there is a bug in the Ashes code regarding MSAA. By Sunday, we had verified that the issue is in their DirectX 12 driver. Unfortunately, this was not before they had told the media that Ashes has a buggy MSAA mode.
SOURCE
 
Or maybe RTFA.
All of the developers involved in recent GameWorks scandals said the same thing.
"AMD had access to the code for months", blah blah blah. If something has an Nvidia logo attached to it, we're skeptical. It's best to be skeptical of these results for the same reason.

So a benchmark finally swings in AMD's favor and it just so happens to be a former Mantle tech demo with their name attached to it? :rolleyes:

Nvidia's already making a fool of themselves by being overly vocal about the results. Although it does remind me of Richard Huddy's recent tirades against GameWorks.
We're seeing the same story play out on the opposite side of the aisle.

I think it's strange how we can argue about how awful GameWorks is non-stop for the last 6 months but then we flip it in AMD's favor and suddenly everything is on the level. Are you people goldfish?
 
I feel like the more important data is that DX12 so far shows no improvement on 6 - 8 core chips over quads and nVidias DX11 performances is a lot better than AMD

The only reason AMD had a better increase with DX12 was to catch it up to nVidia, it snot like they did any better its a huge jump for them over the crappy AMD dx12 drivers

It should be assumed that once an actual game not in alpha beta stage is out that nVidia will work hard to improve there drivers.
 
All of the developers involved in recent GameWorks scandals said the same thing.
"AMD had access to the code for months", blah blah blah.

Except the major, major difference is AMD never gets access to gamework source code, hell the developers don't get access unless they pay extra for it. Only Nvidia has access to the source.
 
The ONLY people getting bent over all this are worthless fanboys. Big deal AMD finally does better in one benchmark and the top cards are not even tested at all. Its is funny Oxide telling Nvidia to tread lightly. This hole thing benefits everyone since now nvidia will pour boatloads of money optimizing drivers for this game. Looks to me like everyone wins
 
This game is the successor to Supreme Commander. I can't wait for it to hit Steam on the 20th of August. :) PCPer was very generous to Nvidia during the testing by not turning on MSAA. I can understand that Nvidia doesn't want their equipment shown in a negative light, but we all know that new drivers with optimizations will come.

And it is nice to see where AMD's R&D time went. Personally I don't see how Nvidia can be upset that a 390X matches the GTX 980. I thought they were the same as far as performance goes from the beginning. [H]ardocp tested the R9 390X and GTX 980 today and came to the same parity conclusion.
 
So that's it ?

Unless you use hardware with cripled dx11 drivers from certain company all we get is few frames more ?
 
The ONLY people getting bent over all this are worthless fanboys. Big deal AMD finally does better in one benchmark and the top cards are not even tested at all. Its is funny Oxide telling Nvidia to tread lightly. This hole thing benefits everyone since now nvidia will pour boatloads of money optimizing drivers for this game. Looks to me like everyone wins

I don't see NVIDIA fans crying about this at all which is very much unlike all the drama AMD fans create over GW. Personally I think this game will be forgotten once real DX 12 games are out in the market. NVIDIA would have been better served just staying quiet.
 
and where it's the problem?.. Nvidia its entirely right.. it's a Alpha game.. who can trust in the performance of a alpha state game?. even people don't trust in beta or pre-launch state of games..

The game is pre-beta, the engine is mature. Naturally a game is more than the underlying tech. It's a valid benchmark.

This is not like gameworks. Even after someone posted portions of the blog post people still want to pretend it is. The game started out as a dx11 game that was very well optimized for dx11, then was ported to mantle then to dx12. ALL companies involved had access to the code for around a year and nvidia code is actually in the game since they offered some improvements.

One KEY thing oxide says they do is require any suggestions from these companies not to damage the performance of the game on another vendors hardware. NOT like gameworks at all.
 
I thought nvidia might not actually want dx12 or have wanted it in the current form. They would have wanted to keep their advantage in dx11
 
I don't find the statements from either company to be particularly controversial (my we get excited about everything these days) but I did have to lol at Oxide saying their alpha versions are of higher quality than most other companies' release versions. That was pretty ballsy.
 
#FirstWorldPointZeroZeroZeroZeroZeroZeroOnePercenterNerdboyProblems
 
Remember when the hype was that we wouldn't have to worry about drivers anymore because devs are going to have direct, "low-level", "to the metal" access to the GPUs and the driver is just a really super-thin layer and it was all going to be sunshine and rainbows?

And now Oxide is telling us that it's going to take time for DX12 drivers to mature. That their code is fine and if there are any performance issues, they're in the driver somewhere.





WHOOPS.


I told y'all from day one that this whole thing is a marketing snow-job. Yeah, these APIs have some nice improvements and better threading and such, but they've been way oversold.
 
They still need drivers.

The difference is you won't need per game optimizations and specific drivers.
 
I'm pretty sure drivers are still required with any API, unless it truly is fully to the metal, where the game engine talks directly to the GPU.
 
Remember when the hype was that we wouldn't have to worry about drivers anymore because devs are going to have direct, "low-level", "to the metal" access to the GPUs and the driver is just a really super-thin layer and it was all going to be sunshine and rainbows?

And now Oxide is telling us that it's going to take time for DX12 drivers to mature. That their code is fine and if there are any performance issues, they're in the driver somewhere.





WHOOPS.


I told y'all from day one that this whole thing is a marketing snow-job. Yeah, these APIs have some nice improvements and better threading and such, but they've been way oversold.


But but..draw calls..DX12 revolution..to the metalz!
 
anyone doubting how badly drawcalls crippled PC games is being ignorant, when an Xbox 360, can push more draw calls than a modern PC, there are issues :)
 
lots of ignorant people. Think they are being smart denying the role drivers still play
 
anyone doubting how badly drawcalls crippled PC games is being ignorant, when an Xbox 360, can push more draw calls than a modern PC, there are issues :)

Yea, but it's fun to be cute and make sweeping generalizations about the first DX12 game, still in beta, on early drivers (Win 10 has not even been out a month). AMD gets up to a 80-90% boost, and Nvidia actually goes backwards, obviously there is a bug in the driver or game for nvidia and/or the game is just not graphics bound.
 

Instead, we are seeing a combination of the work AMD did on Mantle /Vulkan APIs and the generalization of game engines that is bound to happen when an engine has more direct access to the GPU hardware than they have ever had. And it doesn’t hurt that AMD has been working with Oxide and the Nitrous engine for many years as it was one of the few game engines to ever really implement Mantle.

Oh yeah it is bad now :) BAD AMD!

Remember when the hype was that we wouldn't have to worry about drivers anymore because devs are going to have direct, "low-level", "to the metal" access to the GPUs and the driver is just a really super-thin layer and it was all going to be sunshine and rainbows?
And now Oxide is telling us that it's going to take time for DX12 drivers to mature. That their code is fine and if there are any performance issues, they're in the driver somewhere.
WHOOPS.
I told y'all from day one that this whole thing is a marketing snow-job. Yeah, these APIs have some nice improvements and better threading and such, but they've been way oversold.

You mean that it is impossible that Nvidia drivers would not have a problem because that is how it always has been. Oxide is right about drivers needing some time to mature but this has nothing to do with the issue they discovered

http://www.oxidegames.com/2015/08/16/the-birth-of-a-new-api/
Fundamentally, the MSAA path is essentially unchanged in DX11 and DX12. Any statement which says there is a bug in the application should be disregarded as inaccurate information.

So what is going on then? Our analysis indicates that any D3D12 problems are quite mundane. New API, new drivers. Some optimizations that the drivers are doing in DX11 just aren’t working in DX12 yet. Oxide believes it has identified some of the issues with MSAA and is working to implement workarounds on our code. This in no way affects the validity of a DX12 to DX12 test, as the same exact workload gets sent to everyone’s GPUs. This type of optimization is just the nature of brand new APIs with immature drivers.

Big deal right, developer finds bug tries to fix it exciting really ;)
 
Silver lining is AMD competing well with Nvidia on DX12, can't say its a bad thing for us gamers. Landscape might change dramatically in the next 2 years but Nvidia have a big war chest and we know the they put a lot of effort in to competing (wining).
 
Nvidia's response is no surprise, they are going to fight back tooth and nail at anything that attempts to tarnish the immaculate perception their drivers enjoy in consumers minds currently, without that reputation their ability to charge a premium reduces substantially. With the amount of resources they have its a safe bet they will do whatever it takes to maintain the status quo and throw gobs of money at the problem.
 
Nvidia's response is no surprise, they are going to fight back tooth and nail at anything that attempts to tarnish the immaculate perception their drivers enjoy in consumers minds currently, without that reputation their ability to charge a premium reduces substantially. With the amount of resources they have its a safe bet they will do whatever it takes to maintain the status quo and throw gobs of money at the problem.

Does anyone really give a shit what AMD or nVidia tells us? Both rampantly lie, the Dx12 benchmarks on actual games will tell the true story.

I take everything with a grain of salt until I hear it from [H]. Why am I in this thread again? :)
 
Does anyone really give a shit what AMD or nVidia tells us? Both rampantly lie, the Dx12 benchmarks on actual games will tell the true story.

I take everything with a grain of salt until I hear it from [H]. Why am I in this thread again? :)

This is a DX12 benchmark from a game.
 
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