Project CARS Devs Address AMD Performance Issues

[Deleted member 162929]

That generalization is like comparing a Honda 2.0 liter fourbanger to a Chevy V8. The Honda may be more fuel efficient, like say a 2GB 750Ti, but I'll take the more powerful option like a 3GB 280 for the same price any day. Oh, and you said that NVidia cards run cooler and quieter than AMD competitors? Interesting... a shame facts don't support that, since NVidia typically uses cheap inferior coolers.

295x2 $650 vs Titan X $999 Thermal Imaging... oh, and look at that graph, notice how the extra $350 gets you LOWER performance and louder fan noise? Oops!

How about you compare the rest of their lineups; or address my other points. Oops! indeed

 

[RagingCain]

That generalization is like comparing a Honda 2.0 liter fourbanger to a Chevy V8. The Honda may be more fuel efficient, like say a 2GB 750Ti, but I'll take the more powerful option like a 3GB 280 for the same price any day. Oh, and you said that NVidia cards run cooler and quieter than AMD competitors? Interesting... a shame facts don't support that, since NVidia typically uses cheap inferior coolers.

295x2 $650 vs Titan X $999 Thermal Imaging... oh, and look at that graph, notice how the extra $350 gets you LOWER performance and louder fan noise? Oops!

295x2 Load DBa: 38

Titan X Load DBa: 40

I maybe mistaken, but isn't that the water cooled AIO R9 295x2?

 

[Ducman69]

How about you compare the rest of their lineups; or address my other points. Oops! indeed

Post 297, I posted the lineup... and you had another point? Please explain to the class what "special technologies" one is required to code for on AMD products, considering there are none (and no Mantle doesn't count because its not actually required). And Linux gaming? LOL! I have no idea if that's true or not, but I'll buy you and the other Linux gamers worldwide a 2-liter Mt Dew you can split among yourselves.

 

[Ducman69]

I maybe mistaken, but isn't that the water cooled AIO R9 295x2?

Yup, its pretty insane! For $550 (currently on sale actually), you get a watercooled card that runs the card quieter and far cooler, wheras for around $1000 with NVidia they don't even give you a free backplate. We see similar more advanced and virtually silent coolers such as on the Saphire TriX 290x also on sale for $270. We're talking whisper quiet cards. You can get watercoolers for your NVidia card, but then we're really talking big bucks.

Now there are some cards like say the Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 980 that have nice air coolers and a backplate, but the best sales I've seen have been $530 IIRC, which is damn close to the price of a 295x2... when it typically takes two GTX 980s to match up to a 295x2.

 

[RagingCain]

Yup, its pretty insane! For $550 (currently on sale actually), you get a watercooled card that runs the card quieter and far cooler, wheras for around $1000 with NVidia they don't even give you a free backplate. We see similar more advanced and virtually silent coolers such as on the Saphire TriX 290x also on sale for $270. We're talking whisper quiet cards. You can get watercoolers for your NVidia card, but then we're really talking big bucks.

Now there are some cards like say the Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 980 that have nice air coolers and a backplate, but the best sales I've seen have been $530 IIRC, which is damn close to the price of a 295x2... when it typically takes two GTX 980s to match up to a 295x2.

As an owner of the Devil 13 before it had any price reductions, that was not ithe 295x2 launch price or the Devil 13

I can also tell you that not everyone has room for an AIO on a GPU.

Lastly, after the issues I have dealt with owning a Devil 13, 6990, 2x 690s, 2x 590s.... You are always better off with a single powerful GPU, and if ever feeling frisky later on, add a second.

However, price performance has been AMDs strongest sales point to me.

 

[Ducman69]

Who doesn't have a 120mm fan opening on their case? That's really standard, and would leave a small niche of people that only have a 80mm opening.

Which games in 2015 do you know of that don't work well in Crossfire? And I hope we're not going to cite a NVidia sponsored shillware game as an example, LOL!

In fact, [H]ardOCP described their crossfire experience as " the best gaming performance we have ever experienced", and even hybrid crossfire is scaling excellent (which is something I'm strongly considering with all the great prices lately): http://www.digitalstormonline.com/u...-crossfire-review-multi-gpu-scaling-idnum251/

After conducting our tests, it's safe to say that multiple-GPU scaling is definitely a lot better than before. Going from one, to two, to even three GPUs showed no issues on the Hawaii graphics cards. Even though we mixed a dual-GPU card and a single-GPU card, there were no hiccups besides having to turn off the monitor and back on after enabling CrossFire. If you are running a multiple-display setup or even a 4K monitor, we would highly recommend choosing a 3-GPU setup for an insane gaming experience.

But its a bit moot anyways, as the GTX 980 has proven its not up to the task of 4K gaming by and large by itself, and if you're going SLI, that's still a dual graphics solution. And GTX Titans are hugely overpriced for the framerates you get in most games.

 

[tybert7]

Here is the issue: nvidia is better dedicated to making the gaming experience as good as possible.

So where is AMD's PhysX counterpart that the devs can plug in to get the same functionality for AMD cards? Is that HairFX? Or should devs write their own library from scratch using OpenCL (which BTW has been a trainwreck in AMD drivers)?

Same thing with GameWorks. Hey, nvidia is trying to push the envelope of what PC games can do. What is AMD doing? I'll bet that what you find in GameWorks is code that takes advantage of some of the architectural details of nvidia GPUs (Kepler, Fermi, etc.). You know, all that "low-level" crap some of you people fawn over. And now we have some here demanding that developers should just stick to the high-level standards of DirectX for the purposes of abstraction. Just wait until you see how bad it gets when DX12 / Vulkan titles start rolling out and things are fundamentally broken at the level of an individual GPU line.

I keep saying this but the GAME ENGINES need to have their own god damn hair effects and physics effects that game developers can tap into. Game engines, you know, the things that undergird hundreds/thousands of games !!!!!!!

Then optimizations can be gpu maker neutral and not so heavily weighted towards one or the other.

EA did that with frostbite, why can't ubisoft do that? they are not some tiny impoverished developer, are they so f*cking lazy/cheap they can't be bothered? Assasins creed had WAY too much crap going on even for their nvidia sponsored graphics in dx11, that should have been tweaked to work with mantle and updated for dx12 later on. THAT was the PRIMARY performance advance that game needed, not god damn filtering effects.


Honestly, some of these game devs come across as if they are making business decisions over technical engineering decisions. I can understand that with smaller devs, even if nvidia is not PAYING them outright, project cars basically has in game ads for nvidia in exchange for a team of nvidia game optimizers farming out their own jobs to make the game run smoothly. But why does ubisoft do that? Even HATED EA can get their engine in order so what the hell is wrong with everyone else?

The unity devs? NO one else wants hair and physics effects that can be used instead of some proprietary crap like gpu accelerated physx?


seriously? wtf is wrong with this industry.

 

[tetris42]

I keep saying this but the GAME ENGINES need to have their own god damn hair effects and physics effects that game developers can tap into. Game engines, you know, the things that undergird hundreds/thousands of games !!!!!!!

Then optimizations can be gpu maker neutral and not so heavily weighted towards one or the other.

EA did that with frostbite, why can't ubisoft do that? they are not some tiny impoverished developer, are they so f*cking lazy/cheap they can't be bothered? Assasins creed had WAY too much crap going on even for their nvidia sponsored graphics in dx11, that should have been tweaked to work with mantle and updated for dx12 later on. THAT was the PRIMARY performance advance that game needed, not god damn filtering effects.


Honestly, some of these game devs come across as if they are making business decisions over technical engineering decisions. I can understand that with smaller devs, even if nvidia is not PAYING them outright, project cars basically has in game ads for nvidia in exchange for a team of nvidia game optimizers farming out their own jobs to make the game run smoothly. But why does ubisoft do that? Even HATED EA can get their engine in order so what the hell is wrong with everyone else?

The unity devs? NO one else wants hair and physics effects that can be used instead of some proprietary crap like gpu accelerated physx?


seriously? wtf is wrong with this industry.

Well according to Huddy's interview, he says it's not uncommon for AAA publishers to have 7 figure contracts paid from Nvidia in order to get their branding on the game (and make some of their code mandatory). The problem is it's not the actual devs making these decisions, it's the business manager who can say "look, I brought in an extra 1-2 million for our game", completely divorced but what technical impact it may or may not have on the game itself. In general the devs aren't responsible for these decisions, they're sandwiched in between the money and business interests.

 

[jwcalla]

Do what I do: don't buy the games.

They're all console ports anyway.

 

[RagingCain]

Who doesn't have a 120mm fan opening on their case? That's really standard, and would leave a small niche of people that only have a 80mm opening.

Which games in 2015 do you know of that don't work well in Crossfire? And I hope we're not going to cite a NVidia sponsored shillware game as an example, LOL!

In fact, [H]ardOCP described their crossfire experience as " the best gaming performance we have ever experienced", and even hybrid crossfire is scaling excellent (which is something I'm strongly considering with all the great prices lately): http://www.digitalstormonline.com/u...-crossfire-review-multi-gpu-scaling-idnum251/

But its a bit moot anyways, as the GTX 980 has proven its not up to the task of 4K gaming by and large by itself, and if you're going SLI, that's still a dual graphics solution. And GTX Titans are hugely overpriced for the framerates you get in most games.

Why would you buy a Titan, just get a 290X? Especially when AMD haS the best bang for your buck.

Current CFX issues I personally have:

One GPU gets stuck off, or worse the inability to disable CFX anymore in the Devil 13 or 295s.

Alien Isolation has terrible screen tearing in CFX.
Dragon Age has occassional CFX issues, from flickering to gamma problems.
Dying Light has objects flicker, its really bad, in CFX mode only.
Microstutter is pretty bad in DX9 for me, still.

I have switched to 780 Ti SLI though while drivers improve for me. Dual GPU cards are extremely dependent on drivers.

Now, I game at either 2560x1440 at 110 Hz or 2560x1080 at 75 Hz, so to get that higher frame rate at resolutions I play at, I generally need 2 GPUs.

 

[c3141hf]

Although I am not here to cast stones, I do have to wonder about the claim that Nvidia is doing the work for free. Either they are paying them money or getting advertisement space. On the other hand, I was not even aware that this game is out?

NVIDIA absolutely will help developers optimize games, even going so far as to send their own programmers over and providing developers with top of the line hardware.

Developer relations has traditionally been NVIDIA's strength and that's why so many games have the NVIDIA logo. AMD/ATI, by contrast, has traditionally lacked in this area.

 

[Ducman69]

NVIDIA absolutely will help developers optimize games, even going so far as to send their own programmers over and providing developers with top of the line hardware.

Developer relations has traditionally been NVIDIA's strength and that's why so many games have the NVIDIA logo. AMD/ATI, by contrast, has traditionally lacked in this area.

That's not "helping", that's paying off developers.

Use our product and we'll give you a free engine and a free employee to reduce your development costs, and *cough screw over competitors by artificially crippling their product and make you plaster NVidia logos all over your game cough*

Developers should be developing games, not NVidia and AMD in order to screw up their competitors. That's NOT a good thing, its a cancer. And as was mentioned, there are plenty of vendor agnostic game engines available on the market that don't care what brand card you have, as it should be.

 

[c3141hf]

That's not "helping", that's paying off developers.

Use our product and we'll give you a free engine and a free employee to reduce your development costs, and *cough screw over competitors by artificially crippling their product and make you plaster NVidia logos all over your game cough*

Developers should be developing games, not NVidia and AMD in order to screw up their competitors. That's NOT a good thing, its a cancer. And as was mentioned, there are plenty of vendor agnostic game engines available on the market that don't care what brand card you have, as it should be.

No it's called good marketing. This isn't something new, hardware makers have been doing this for ever. AMD does the same thing, just not to the same extent. NVidia isn't providing them with a free employee, they are simply providing programming expertise because NVidia programmers are familar with the ins, outs, and nuances of their hardware.

I guarantee you the Project CARS performance issues are driver related. No developer is going to deliberately sabotage the performance of their game and alienate potential customers. AMD's drivers simply suck and this goes back to the ATI days. That has always been their Achilles' heel and I speak from experience in actually doing graphics programming (and god forbid you have to use OpenGL because that's even worse than their DirectX support).

 

[robnitro]

Unfortunately many at the pcars forum are believing the stories brought by the "official" posts.

I'm always dumbfounded when there's an obvious pattern of something and people will rather believe the official report.

NVIDIA "optimized" games have a history of running slow on AMD. However, AMD "optimized" games are not really an issue for NVIDIA. So, as we hardOCPer's know, this has been and will be. So why is it so hard to explain to anyone else?

Perhaps they have no clue how much trickery is involved in programming?

 

[Ducman69]

I guarantee you the Project CARS performance issues are driver related. No developer is going to deliberately sabotage the performance of their game and alienate potential customers.

But the developer didn't develop their engine or physics on their own, nor use open source vendor neutral options like bullet or cryengine or whatever, they used an NVidia product.

And you bet your ass that NVidia product, that knows they really only have ONE competitor, is designed to run poorly on AMD products. Read up in the thread, there is a lot of evidence demonstrating that NVidia is intentionally crippling AMD cards with their products, and yes a handful of developers are willing to shill for NVidia and advertise NVidia cards in their games and use NVidia engines with NVidia engineers for development assistance because of the payoff.

 

[jwcalla]

But the developer didn't develop their engine or physics on their own, nor use open source vendor neutral options like bullet or cryengine or whatever, they used an NVidia product.

apparently that's not true

 

[jwcalla]

Unfortunately many at the pcars forum are believing the stories brought by the "official" posts.

I'm always dumbfounded when there's an obvious pattern of something and people will rather believe the official report.

NVIDIA "optimized" games have a history of running slow on AMD. However, AMD "optimized" games are not really an issue for NVIDIA. So, as we hardOCPer's know, this has been and will be. So why is it so hard to explain to anyone else?

Perhaps they have no clue how much trickery is involved in programming?

Alternatively, believing everything on the Internet doesn't make for an informed opinion either.