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

[TeknoBug]

Mantle isn't supposed to be closed source, Nvidia is allowed to use it.

 

Good thing I didn't buy Watch_Dogs, not my type of game anyways.

[Scionyde]

I have no problem with paying developer teams to make a game or program run better on specific hardware. More money invested in the final product usually means a better product in the end.

 

I am on the fence about paying the developer to not release the software to competing hardware manufacturers until the release date, but at least the competition is allowed the chance to optimize the software (even if it is after the release of the software).

 

What I have a problem with, is a hardware manufacturer removing the ability of anybody else to make the game work equivalently well on their hardware. nVidia, with their GameWorks package, doesn't even let the game developers see the code - let alone AMD.

 

I think your post brings up an interesting question; is Nvidia paying Ubisoft to use GameWorks, or does Ubisoft pay Nvidia for all those development tools? I'm not totally clear on this.

[LAwLz]

Okay so now that more reviews are out it's pretty safe to say that Forbes are click bating, or something went wrong. The other reviews I have seen on it seems to have far more balanced results than they posted.
ExtremeTech posted a pretty good article about it and here is their conclusion:
 

More research needed
Right now, there are three things we can say about Watch Dogs: Its multi-GPU scaling is poor, benchmark results are erratic, and it uses colossal amounts of VRAM above 1080p — which means comparisons above this point tend to favor AMD to a progressively greater degree as the resolution increases.
The question of which benchmark results are accurate and what the R9 290X vs. GTX 770 comparison looks like is something I intend to investigate in more detail now that the final version of the game is available for purchase.

 

So my stance on Watch_Dogs right now is, don't take benchmarks too seriously. The game runs as if it was programmed by a bunch of dogs so results can vary greatly for no reason.

Also, it would be best if proprietary stuff, be it Nvidia, AMD or Intel (all three of them have in the past, or are doing it and yes, that includes AMD) would cease to exist. Sadly I doubt it will.

[Scionyde]

Okay so now that more reviews are out it's pretty safe to say that Forbes are click bating, or something went wrong. The other reviews I have seen on it seems to have far more balanced results than they posted.

ExtremeTech posted a pretty good article about it and here is their conclusion:

 

Yeah, I'm not sure how balanced Forbes has been with some of their benchmarks. Their 295x2 benchmarks showed it beating 780 Ti's in SLI at 1440p in pretty much every game they tested, but results on AnandTech and Tom's Hardware ended up being quite different. Certain forum members really loved showing those Forbes graphs in the 'First R9 295X2 Reviews, Beats 780 Ti SLI' thread, but at that resolution, more reputable sites seem to show half the games going Nvidia, and half going AMD. 

 

I like reading articles on Forbes, but they're not really my go-to when it comes to benchmarking and hardware reviews...

[_ASSASSIN_]

Good news

fanboys are stupid. You realize that if you have it so that AMD is dead, all competition is dead and then Nvidia has a monopoly on GPUs which leads to an lack of innovation and increasing prices. These monopolistic tactics from either side are bad things. You want fair market in a marketplace with only 2 real contendors.

[nokturrduk84]

fanboys are stupid. You realize that if you have it so that AMD is dead, all competition is dead and then Nvidia has a monopoly on GPUs which leads to an lack of innovation and increasing prices. These monopolistic tactics from either side are bad things. You want fair market in a marketplace with only 2 real contendors.

AMD is dead already

[_ASSASSIN_]

AMD is dead already

no they aren't. Their GPU's still hold a significant part of the market, 40% is definitely a sign of thriving. However on the CPU side, that's a different story.

[nokturrduk84]

no they aren't. Their GPU's still hold a significant part of the market, 40% is definitely a sign of thriving. However on the CPU side, that's a different story.

I agree with that.

[CoffeeBlack]

No they did not.

Do you know what the deal is between AMD and the dev for those games?

[DaRk0]

AMD Mantle was not bad at all it forced microsoft to improve directX and AMD knew they would do this they said it many times because microsoft is one of those companies that only improves a product if theres viable competition

Also Mantle is open source so nvidia could easily do whatever optimisations they wanted to do easily unlike with the physX crap

How did AMD force Microsoft to improve DirectX with Mantle?

[pixeldensity]

I feel that mantle, while it currently is kinda proprietary mostly b/c I believe both companies refuse to work with each other out of pride, Gameworks is worse b/c there is no work around the assets that UBI uses from Gameworks. Correct me if I am wrong but Gamework provides necessary Graphical assets right? While for Mantle, NV was free to optimize for DX as much as they like w/o much worrying about hitting a brick wall to have access to the coding necessary for proper optimization. Also as users we don't have the option of having any alternative choosing other assets that are not from gameworks.