Nvidia’s GameWorks program usurps power from developers, end-users, and AMD

[herulach]

Another interesting point in this general area is that, AFAIK, Batman:AO actively blocks AMD/nVidia combos that have been hacked together. Whether that's a side-effect of using newer GameWorks libraries or whether nVidia are turning the screw on the developers they have in their pocket, I am not sure.

Sauce? Has someone got AMD & Nvidia chips running in SLI? I've seen differentSLI drivers, but thats a whole new level of awesome.

[shaithis]

Sauce? Has someone got AMD & Nvidia chips running in SLI? I've seen differentSLI drivers, but thats a whole new level of awesome.

Hybrid Physx, not SLi.

Until VERY recently, a hack readily available would bypass the nvidia physx driver check for an AMD card as primary adapter.....so far there seems to be no way to play Batman:AO with hybrid Physx, it is blocked in the game code it seems.

[herulach]

Hybrid Physx, not SLi.

Until VERY recently, a hack readily available would bypass the nvidia physx driver check for an AMD card as primary adapter.....so far there seems to be no way to play Batman:AO with hybrid Physx, it is blocked in the game code it seems.

Ah, that makes more sense.

[scaryjim]

I'm not suggesting for a second that it is. My issue is that the article clearly tries to give the impression that this was some nefarious intervention by nvidia, when actually all there is evidence of is lazy development practices.

Well, I find it hard to believe that nvidia don't know that games written with GameWorks can't be targetted for driver performance enhancements by other vendors. The question is whether they point that out to devs, or just tell them it's an easy way to add cool DX11 features to their game engine. It's a case of "Our tools will make your life easier" vs. "Our tools will make your life easier, but might not perform very well on AMD and Intel graphics". I'd put a small wager on them not mentioning the potential performance issues with other vendors.....

I'd still make the point that mantle whilst an open API will be designed to give a competitive advantage on AMD hardware if it takes off (for example, SSE which required hardware support took amd 2 years to implement). If it isn't then AMD are daft.

Absolutely - AMD have put in the initial work and they'll reap the initial benefit. But they're not looking to lock down Mantle as an AMD-only feature, or a feature they are in strict control of. The way GameWorks has been implemented mean nvidia have an absolutely be-all, end-all control over it. If they can find a DX11 codepath that crashes an AMD card, they can implement it in GameWorks and suddenly GameWorks games are effectively vendor-locked to nvidia, despite GameWorks theoretically being a DX11 toolset. And since AMD can't find out what DX11 code is causing they crash, they can't fix it.

Now, I could be wrong about how nvidia are selling GameWorks, but I'd be amazed if they weren't pushing it as a vendor-neutral DX11 toolkit. My concern is that, without any openness at all, it actually just becomes a lock-in tool. Much like PhysX. The APIs could be open but under nvidia control, so they could still get a competitive benefit from GameWorks (and PhysX) without screwing AMD and Intel, much the way AMD will be looking to do with Mantle. But nvidia prefer to take their ball with them, so you get vendor lock-in.

[herulach]

Well, I find it hard to believe that nvidia don't know that games written with GameWorks can't be targetted for driver performance enhancements by other vendors. The question is whether they point that out to devs, or just tell them it's an easy way to add cool DX11 features to their game engine. It's a case of "Our tools will make your life easier" vs. "Our tools will make your life easier, but might not perform very well on AMD and Intel graphics". I'd put a small wager on them not mentioning the potential performance issues with other vendors.....



Absolutely - AMD have put in the initial work and they'll reap the initial benefit. But they're not looking to lock down Mantle as an AMD-only feature, or a feature they are in strict control of. The way GameWorks has been implemented mean nvidia have an absolutely be-all, end-all control over it. If they can find a DX11 codepath that crashes an AMD card, they can implement it in GameWorks and suddenly GameWorks games are effectively vendor-locked to nvidia, despite GameWorks theoretically being a DX11 toolset. And since AMD can't find out what DX11 code is causing they crash, they can't fix it.

Now, I could be wrong about how nvidia are selling GameWorks, but I'd be amazed if they weren't pushing it as a vendor-neutral DX11 toolkit. My concern is that, without any openness at all, it actually just becomes a lock-in tool. Much like PhysX. The APIs could be open but under nvidia control, so they could still get a competitive benefit from GameWorks (and PhysX) without screwing AMD and Intel, much the way AMD will be looking to do with Mantle. But nvidia prefer to take their ball with them, so you get vendor lock-in.

I think we agree that stuff like this is generally not good for anyone except the vendor providing the libraries, although any developer that doesn't see this kind of thing as an inevitable consequence of using these kinds of libraries is a mug.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The article has been updated.

Update (1/3/2014): According to Nvidia, developers can, under certain licensing circumstances, gain access to (and optimize) the GameWorks code, but cannot share that code with AMD for optimization purposes. While we apologize for the error, the net impact remains substantially identical. Game developers are not driver authors and much of the performance optimization for any given title is handled by rapid-fire beta driver releases from AMD or Nvidia in the weeks immediately following a title’s launch. When developers do patch GPU performance directly, it’s often after working with AMD or Nvidia to create the relevant code paths.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It seems Watch Dogs is a Gamworks Title.

Why 'Watch Dogs' Is Bad News For AMD Users -- And Potentially The Entire PC Gaming Ecosystem:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasoneva...ing-ecosystem/

An R9 290X is gimped to GTX770 levels.

[scaryjim]

I think his extended benchmarking article is more interesting:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasoneva...-cards-tested/

R9 290X turns in almost identical figures to an R9 280X. Something is *seriously* up with this game.

[Biscuit]

All the screenies i have seen of watchdogs have put across the impression of something rather rough around the edges.

I wont be buying it i don't think. Even though i have Nvidia cards i have no interest in encouraging this kind of behaviour from Nvidia.

I still haven't played any of the Batman games that has fallen victim to this BS.

[jigger]

I've been out of the loop for a while and I'm not sure if I am reading this right, but are Nvidia really still pulling this crap and this the case for all of the GamesWorks titles?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I saw this mentioned on another thread:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...44&postcount=1

Not looking good for AMD card owners for The Witcher 3. At least TressFX worked OK on Nvidia cards like my GTX660.

Hopefully,performance will be OK for AMD card owners with the special effects switched off.

[watercooled]

The ironic thing being they'll probably work fine on the AMD-powered consoles...

[scaryjim]

The ironic thing being they'll probably work fine on the AMD-powered consoles...

Presumably nvidia's GameWorks library isn't available for console development? Wouldn't make a lot of sense for them to support development on a platform they have no business interest in....

[watercooled]

I seem to recall reading some features would be available to use on the consoles. I think it was Far Cry 4 which allegedly used the HairWorks library.

Plus PhysX effects worked fine on the 360 despite using no Nvidia hardware.

NVM just found this before posting: http://images.anandtech.com/doci/854...ew-%287%29.jpg
From here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8546/n...th-less-effort