News - AMD exec says NVIDIA neglecting gamers

[nightkhaos]

Wow busy night from all fronts.

IIRC the main reason MS developed DirectX was that there were several different competing standards trying to gain dominance over PC gaming hardware and it was damaging sales. Different games would support different hardware and people were confused, this lead to many abandoning PC gaming in order to switch to consoles. DirectX brought a standardized model to interacting with a computer's hardware that allowed games developers to then concentrate on programing a game rather than having to directly program for hundreds of variations of sound, video and controller hardware.

That is precisely the reason. But you must understand that when Microsoft first came on the scene things got interesting for the first few years. There was OpenGL, GLIDE AND DirectX on the market before the ease of access of the DirectX engine (due to it being shipped with Windows by default and no third party engine like GLIDE needing to be installed) became the de-facto standard. This has the unfortuante caviat of limiting games to be developed for the Windows platform (unlike OpenGL, which by the way is also universally supported) but it did clean up the mess, and I don't see game developers moving en-mass to OpenGL just because it is operating system neutural.

We seem to be slipping back to what we had before, with specific games needing specific hardware in order to run at the standard envisioned by the programmers. If this continues then PC gaming will again schism and gamers will switch to consoles just so they know that there games will actually run.

Unfortunately this has been happening for a while with PhysX, Havoc, CUDA... etc. These technologies, yes that includes you AMD, are damaging to the market. However AMD, I am glad you seemed to have dropped Havoc development and switched to OpenCL, which NVIDIA is welcome start using since it is an open standard.

But I do agree completely with the killing the market. One of two things has to happen, one of the companies dies, and given it's current behaviour I'm leaning towards NVIDIA taking the fall, or they learn to get along. You have to also remember that technologies like CUDA, Havoc and PhysX also prevent a thrid competitor from entering the market.

The way I'm reading this:

• NVidia wrote some "Glue" code for UE3, to enable AA on their cards, optimising it to enable the best capabilities on their cards that they know support it (Basically, saying "If GT280, enable everything, if 9600, enable most, if FX5900, or some other unknown card, disable everything", or something similar).
• NVidia tested, QA'd the code, and made sure it worked as intended on all their cards.
• NVidia gave the glue code to Rocksteady to use in Batman Arkham Asylum.
• AMD/ATI asked Rocksteady "You've got AA, look, it works with NVidia cards! Can't you just enable that code on our hardware too?"
• Rocksteady replied "No. That code belongs to NVidia, and we don't want to get into a legal tussle with them over who owns what part of what code. We don't have the time to write AA glue from scratch, but if you give us some code that makes it work, we'll gladly add it."
• AMD/ATI said "Oh.", and started slinging dirt, as they were unwilling/unable to write some glue code for their own hardware.

Actually I think based upon the paraphasing by Richard at the bottom of the email chain that AMD attempted to give Eidos some AntiA code, but it turned out to be in conflict with NVIDIAs such that it could not be implemented without causing instablity in the game. There are reasons why you should never code two modules that do the exact some thing a slightly different way, and this is one of them.

Weather or not this is a ploy by AMD to hide the fact that their developers didn't attempt to get some AntiA code pushed into Batman AA after this email chain from Eidos we shall see at a later date. I would like to see more evidence from Richard Huddy on this point.

Yippee, bug for bug compatibility. Everyone likes compatibility problems, don't they? Especially two years and two hardware generations later. Bug for bug compatibility is one of the many nightmares of developers coding software for various similar platforms. This case is an instance, with both buggy, incomplete software (see MS, AMD, and nVidia) and buggy hardware (which nVidia puts out a ton of, software patches in drivers before and after release is a reasonably easy fix and can always fix everything, right? Well, except for a poor choice of underfill. Software did, to some degree, fix hardware bugs when it came to the R600 and AA by AMD.) Especially considering that the GT200 series and G92 series are almost certainly bug filled monstrosities that have the worst bugs worked around by an ugly black box known as the drivers. The bugs probably only affect performance, the non-working parts of the hardware are probably "optional" for full DirectX compliance. The works of a certain Alan Turing, would seem to indicate that one could emulate a Core i7 with three 5870 cards on a single, standard 8080. With that in mind, however, the frame rate might be best measured in frames per decade for Batman: AA on one of the first 8080 processors. So nearly any hardware problem can be worked around.

There is probably a reason there is no freely available documentation for Geforce cards, the errata list would be embarrassing to read and properly working software nearly impossible to create independently. Having said that, I think most software developers would rather have consistent, well documented, software APIs than needing to spend ten times as much time and money to code directly for the bare hardware especially with all the warts in the OS already.

To draw a parallel, the same situation happened a few years ago with the Browser wars, and is finally coming to a close, albeit the fact that Internet Explorer 8 only meets the most commonly used standards rather than those in development and given Microsoft's release model for this particular browser it is unlikely that Internet Explorer 8 ever will.

Compitition, unregulated compitition without an indepdent authority, results in unfair tatics from all sides. If AMD were a normal company, or if we had reached this crossroads a few years ago, they would continue to follow the standards up until the point they gain enough market share that they can release their own properity technology to make there tech "better" than the competition.

However, AMD, always being the underdogs in terms of CPU technology, or maybe having intelligent management, never seem to move away from the standards, or are kind enough to supply these standards to their competition (i.e. AMD64). They are turning into the Opera of hardware vendors in that respect.

However, if we draw that parrellel, then AMD will always be cursed, as Opera has, because of developers not sticking to standards code so that they can do "cool stuff" like PhysX. Also, if we draw that parrellel, NVIDIA Geforce is the Internet Explorer of GPU technology.

With that in mind, AMD keep following the standards, and if you want to attack NVIDIA for not following the standards, or using their market dominice to push no standards code to market: back it up with cold hard facts. If you do that, I will support you. However, if you just try and sprout FUD, I, and the rest of the gaming scene, will backlash against you.

And NVIDIA, drop the properity stuff, you do not want to Geforce to be tranished by being considered like Internet Explorer by the gaming market. The thing about gamers, unlike web browser users, is that we know our tech. And we won't take that kinda crap.

[scaryjim]

It seems to me that at some point during development, NVidia have said "this engine won't necessarily support anti-aliasing in all (any?) circumstances, we can provide some code that'll fix that." - what I don't get is why, at that point (and AFAICT), the developers or publishers didn't say "great, will this work with everyone's graphics cards?" and when it didn't, why they didn't then say "fair enough, we'll approach the other graphics vendors and ask them to get involved in making it work for them.". To me that would seem the pragmatic solution, so the questions I want answering are

a) did this happen? Did the developers / publisher of the game realise that NVidia's AA code would not work with all graphics cards, and did they take any action to inform other graphics vendors of this and give them a chance to contribute their own AA code?

b1) if not, why not? At what point in the chain of events did this fairly pragmatic approach break down? Who was responsible for this break down?
or
b2) if this did happen, why is there no AA code for ATI cards in the game? Was none submitted? Was it submitted but rejected?

Fairly obviously, either NVidia / Eidos / Rocksteady / whoever has to some extent locked out non-NVidia graphics products from getting the full benefit from the title, or ATI have been lazy / negligent in not providing AA code for the title, or, most likely in my opinion, there's been a bit of both going on. On the evidence presented so far it seems that it's probably a bit more of the former, but frankly neither graphics vendor is coming out with huge credit here...

[tejas84]

You know Richard, this attitude will really not win you sympathy and customers for AMD CPU's, Motherboards, etc... I would love to know what CEO Dirk Meyer would have to say about all of this.

AMD is clearly throwing a tantrum because they could not benefit from Nvidia's time, money and QA. I understand this is because AMD is deep in debt and you don't have the funds to support developers, but this mudslinging is not the reason that I have bought multiple AMD CPU's and motherboards.

Why on earth should Nvidia subsidise AMD GPU game optimizations??? I can bet that AMD have not optimized Dirt 2 for Nvidia cards...

Intel does not subsidise AMD CPU optimizations in games, even though both CPUs run on the x86 architecture. You really want a free lunch. I though AMD knew that no such things exist?? AMD need to step up to the plate on dev rel, it is as simple as that.

Really you should hold fire from attacking/ demonizing a good partner like Nvidia that has supported your CPU Opteron line and still sells more OEM AMD chipset logic than AMD, Mr Huddy.

[kalniel]

Why on earth should Nvidia subsidise AMD GPU game optimizations??? I can bet that AMD have not optimized Dirt 2 for Nvidia cards...

No-one is asking them to - simply to stop adding in vendor specific code and cease from IMHO anti-competative practises that hurt users and the industry in the long run.

Really you should hold fire from attacking/ demonizing a good partner like Nvidia that has supported your CPU Opteron line and still sells more OEM AMD chipset logic than AMD

I don't think that's going to be the case for much longer..

[nightkhaos]

You know Richard, this attitude will really not win you sympathy and customers for AMD CPU's, Motherboards, etc... I would love to know what CEO Dirk Meyer would have to say about all of this.

AMD is clearly throwing a tantrum because they could not benefit from Nvidia's time, money and QA. I understand this is because AMD is deep in debt and you don't have the funds to support developers, but this mudslinging is not the reason that I have bought multiple AMD CPU's and motherboards.

Why on earth should Nvidia subsidise AMD GPU game optimizations??? I can bet that AMD have not optimized Dirt 2 for Nvidia cards...

Intel does not subsidise AMD CPU optimizations in games, even though both CPUs run on the x86 architecture. You really want a free lunch. I though AMD knew that no such things exist?? AMD need to step up to the plate on dev rel, it is as simple as that.

Really you should hold fire from attacking/ demonizing a good partner like Nvidia that has supported your CPU Opteron line and still sells more OEM AMD chipset logic than AMD, Mr Huddy.

The thing we do not know is weather or not AMD was actually able to submit AntiA code that did not conflict with NVIDIAs AntiA code. Until we have this information, sprouting blame will achieve nothing.

And finally, can you find proof that AMD actually helped with the development via developer relations with Dirt2? As I understand it the only reason they are marketing it with their products is because it is the only DX11 enabled game, not because of a vested interest in it like NVIDIA has with Batman AA.

[aidanjt]

Intel does not subsidise AMD CPU optimizations in games, even though both CPUs run on the x86 architecture.

You should *really* have stopped talking, right here.

[tejas84]

The proof that Dirt 2 is an AMD/ATI game is here.

Go to the Dirt 2 website and note the ATI logo. Enough said I think.

There is no case for any so called "anti competitive actions by Nvidia" since Intel are graphics market leaders by GPU shipments. Nvidia are merely second and ATI a distant third. I really can't believe how petty AMD are being over anti-aliasing in a game. They really should blame Eidos and Rocksteady for the whole situation. I do...

@aidanjt

Actually I WILL exercise my right to free speech and continue to comment (within Hexus guidelines of course!)

[shaithis]

The proof that Dirt 2 is an AMD/ATI game is here.

Go to the Dirt 2 website and note the ATI logo. Enough said I think.

Is there any evidence at all that Dirt 2 will have features missing when played on a DX11 nVidia part?

Has AMD forced the developers to only enable certain DX11 features on AMD gfx cards?


Until nVidia has a DX11 part available, I guess it's speculation at best.....my guess would be it will be fully DX11 compliant and not have any vendor filtering in the code....

[ajones]

The proof that Dirt 2 is an AMD/ATI game is here.

Go to the Dirt 2 website and note the ATI logo. Enough said I think.

... And if NVidia collaborated with Dirt 2 then maybe there would be a green logo on the site too.... Oh wait, NVidia doesn't have anything with DX11 in it at the moment.... If it transpires that Dirt2 disables functionality if the game detects an NVidia DX11 card, then your point is well made. As it stands, the proof is moot.

Off topic;

Actually I WILL exercise my right to free speech and continue to comment (within Hexus guidelines of course!)

Do we have a right to free speech in this country? This may just be my ignorance, but I didn't think us Brits had a constitution; in which case you have no rights other than Hexus guidelines.

Off topic part 2; Can someone please run a spell checker on this thread...!

[kalniel]

Do we have a right to free speech in this country?

Nope, unless you're in parliament.

There's certainly not any right to free speech on Hexus forums.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I wonder what will happen when Lucid enters the fray with their Hydra 200?? Will AMD and Nvidia try screw them over in some way??

[Novo]

Fairly obviously, either NVidia / Eidos / Rocksteady / whoever has to some extent locked out non-NVidia graphics products from getting the full benefit from the title, or ATI have been lazy / negligent in not providing AA code for the title, ...

1. Eidos Interactive / Rocksteady Studios agreed to nVidia's licencing agreement. Therefore, ultimately, the developers are responsible for the lack of AntiA in the game for non-nVidia cards.
I'd be nice if could Mr. Huddy acknowledge this.

2. How do the game developers and Epic Games get away with not being lazy or negligent? The problem is a game engine issue - not a directX issue and not a GPU issue.

[Zhaoman]

'Developer relations' between one company and the next are OK in my book as long as they have put in the time and money and have reached an agreement to bring the best product out for your hardware. However what some specific posters seem to have ignored is that nVidia have not only optimised the best experience for nVidia cards (which is fine) but they have also hindered performance of a competitor's cards (by disabling AA) which is not OK at all. It's one thing to eat a healthy breakfast in preparation for the race and it's another to steal your competitor's trainers and throw them into the river. Anyone arguing that nVidia put more effort into helping developers (which, let me stress again, is OK) is an empty argument because it completely misses what the real issue is: nVidia using tactics designed to undermine the performance of competitiors' products.

[Muska]

anyone else noticed that the emails in the topic were going back in time?

[nightkhaos]

anyone else noticed that the emails in the topic were going back in time?

No idea what ya mean there Muska. AMD was explaing that if the code was standards complaint it would work with AMD hardware, Eidos said the legal team had advised against unlocking code, AMD asked for more detail, Eidos gave it. Latest email first. Looks like Richard just gave HEXUS the email chain as it would appear, and HEXUS copied it ver-batim with some formating.

[Leki]

For the guys that say "why should anti-aliasing work on ATI cards when nvidia paid for it". Well lets look at this from the other side. ATI is working with developers (which costs ATI money) to make there games have DX11 support, for example Dirt2. Now since ATI is working with them to add DX11 features to this game and nvidia doesn't even have a DX11 card out yet (and wont until next year) then should ATI make the dirt2 developers make DX11 only work on ATI cards?

So when nvidia eventually gets a DX11 card out and a gamer uses one to play dirt2 hoping to have DX11 features on his fermi he cant get them due to being locked out by vendor ID and has to run in DX9 mode. Would that be fair? No....and i respect ATI for not doing anti-competitive things like this like nvidia does.