Richard Huddy, AMD Gaming Scientist, Interview - Mantle, GameWorks, FreeSync and More!

[BallGum]

I disagree: AMD goes on the offensive about how closed source and secretive Nvidia is while at the same time only promising to open up mantle but not actually doing so: What's the fucking hold up? What's the difference between opening it up now and "later this year" or whatever? They keep saying that open code would help everybody including them so then why not release it?

 

Likely they're hoping for another major title to be released with Mantle support (I'm thinking BF: Hardline) so that they can capitalize on it before "opening" the API for all: That's quite fucking hypocritical of them.

 

Ok, let's go with the assumption that Mantle is closed and is being more readily embraced.

 

Mantle still doesn't negatively impact nVidia users. It provides a better experience for its users, but it doesn't mean developers cant optimise the DX / OpenGL version of the game for nVidia. Furthermore, isn't DX12 said to contain most of the things that were "revolutionary" about Mantle?

 

However, gameworks does negatively impact AMD users, and I don't see much of an upside for nVidia users with it either.

 

Now, I'm not arguing AMD isn't hypocritical. I'm not saying they're right. I just want to say that Gameworks =/= Mantle, and that Gameworks is a negative thing.

 

 

I am not really using it as a counter argument. I am using it to point out that AMD are hypocrites.

I am not trying to argue that GameWorks is good. It sucks ass and I want it to go away. I want it to go away just as much as I want AMD to stop trying to push their own proprietary solutions. What really pisses me off is that AMD tries to act as if they are angels and for open standards and solutions when they are guilty of the same things as Nvidia are. Everyone should stop pointing fingers going "look at how bad company Y is! We at company X is much better than they are because they do bad things!" and instead do something constructive. If AMD want to whine about Nvidia having closed source APIs then maybe they should make their own closed source APIs open source first.

The really sad thing is that people believe AMD's marketing bullshit. You have no idea how many times I've heard that Mantle is open source even though it isn't.

 

 

AMD most likely can't see the code for GameWorks, yes. Not even developers for the games can. Yes it is bad and it would be best if it stopped.

Sadly there will always be proprietary APIs though, and I don't think AMD is in any position to talk bad about Nvidia for GameWorks. It's like Stalin telling people "that Hitler guy sure sucks. We should all unite against him, right?", only less people dies.

I want people to stop siding with Stalin and see that both of them are doing some pretty stupid things which ultimately affects all of us in a negative way.

In the end though, both of them (as well as Microsoft) and companies and the main goal of any company is to make money. Giving away things you put lots of R&D money into is not the best way to make money and we will therefore always have propitiatory stuff like GameWorks.

One way to show that you disprove of proprietary solutions is to not buy games that uses them. In the end, it is the developers that choose to implement them and if we as customers continue to buy their products they will think it is okay. Nvidia and AMD won't stop as long as their tools are being used either.

 

Oh, then that's fine. I wasn't arguing which was worse.

[Misanthrope]

Ok, let's go with the assumption that Mantle is closed and is being more readily embraced.

 

Mantle still doesn't negatively impact nVidia users. It provides a better experience for its users, but it doesn't mean developers cant optimise the DX / OpenGL version of the game for nVidia. Furthermore, isn't DX12 said to contain most of the things that were "revolutionary" about Mantle?

 

The "negative impact" that we can confirm is exactly the same as nvidia gameworks: One sided for one vendor only. That stuff about how Nvidia intentionally cripples AMD it's just speculation: Unconfirmed AMD dribble.

[BallGum]

The "negative impact" that we can confirm is exactly the same as nvidia gameworks: One sided for one vendor only. That stuff about how Nvidia intentionally cripples AMD it's just speculation: Unconfirmed AMD dribble.

 

I don't know how I can break it down any further at this point. How I see it is that Mantle cannot possibly impact nVidia users negatively due to how it is implemented.

Gameworks, on the other hand, at least has the ability, to negatively impact AMD users. Whether it did or didn't is speculation, and AMD said it did. That is what can be (pointlessly) argued over.

[LAwLz]

Considering mantle's being given to developers as an open source api, and if AMD are strict enough with timing it will soon be available to everyone as such, that argument is completely ridiculous.

Oh Mantle is an open source API? Can you please tell me where I can download it. I would like to check it out.

Oh right, I forgot. You can't get Mantle because AMD is hiding it from everyone except a handful of developers. Soon© it will be released for everyone though. Because AMD has such a great track record for being quick with bug fixes and releases, right (*cough* cursor bug, MST DisplayPort hub, micro stuttering, Bulldozer, glGenerateMipmap, Catalyst 14.1 (Mantle driver) AMD_pinned_buffer, the list goes on *cough*). All I am saying is that you should not trust a company that just says something will be released "soon". A date or even specifying the quarter would be nice. Last time I heard they said 2014 or 2015, so they couldn't even narrow it down to which year it would be released. They can't claim it is open source until they actually release the source code.

 

Mantle was given on a silver platter to Nvidia, Nvidia refused. Not all the facts have been revealed, but personally I can think of no compelling reason Nvidia would deny mantle other than purely out of spite to AMD, which is completely understandable as they are competing corporations but not in the best interest of consumers.

Wait, you know the contract AMD proposed to Nvidia? I have looked for it but couldn't find anything. All the info I was able to find was someone from AMD saying that they would be okay with offering it to Nvidia. I could not find any info about what (if any) demands AMD had in return or if implementing it would cause issues for Nvidia (like having to redesign their GPUs).

We don't know if it was handed to them on a silver platter. The only reason anyone would assume it was would be if that person was a fanboy that expects AMD to be the good guy and Nvidia to be made out of pure evil who would rather deny their customers higher performance than to use something a competitor has designed (which, by the way, they are already doing in a lot of areas including the SoCs). I think it is silly to assume that Nvidia would say no to free performance. I think it is more likely that there would be some drawback to including support for Mantle and they didn't think it would be worth it.

 

Marketing a content creation GPU at a gaming audience in order to essentially rip them off for £1500 more than the comparable competition. Titan Z.

Denying mantle for no concievable reason despite considerable performance improvement to budget buyers AT NO R&D COST, which is what really takes the cash out of the GPU industry.

Gameworks working better with Nvidia cards than on comparable AMD cards in THREE SEPERATE CASES and with REPRODUCABLE RESULTS.

The first argument is silly. Yes the price to performance is bad, but so is the price performance on the really low end stuff as well. Would you say the same thing about AMD when they are selling the R7 240 for 70 dollars? That they are in a "dodgy position" and are trying to "rip people off"? Not all products have the same price:performance ratio. Deal with it. Oh and yes, all companies puts profit first. This is true for both Nvidia and AMD. That's why they aren't classified as non profit organizations.

 

Your second argument is 100% based on your previous assumption being true, even though you have absolutely 0 evidence to support it.

 

Your third and last argument is kind of valid. I know of one cases it applies to. I don't count Watch_Dogs because that game performs horribly on all GPUs, and most benchmarks look like you'd expect. That Forbes benchmark is the exception rather than the norm.

In Batman AMD themselves have said it is because of tessellation. Tessellation is included in DirectX 11 and AMD GPUs has in general been worse than Nvidia GPUs in this ever since the 400 series launched. So the results in Batman are caused by AMD cards simply not being good at tessellation, not because Nvidia or the developers intentionally added extra code only AMD GPUs has to run.

I haven't looked into Splinter Cell and honestly I don't care so yeah, it is biased towards Nvidia GPUs. I won't jump to the conclusion that it is intentional though, or that the performance gap is there because Nvidia lowered the performance on AMD GPUs (there is a big difference between lowering the performance of your competitors, and helping to increase the performance on your products).

 

So yeah, I would say we got 1 example where there MIGHT be something fishy going on. It's only 1 game though and it's not uncommon that some games every now and again performs better on cards from Nvidia or AMD. Assuming that the performance difference is there because Nvidia intentionally crippled the game for AMD cards is unfair if you ask me.

 

 

Nvidia are, in my eyes and until more info comes out, in the wrong. Defending them in spite of the evidence against Nvidia and the utter lack of evidence Nvidia gave to the community, is the very definition of fanboyism.

That's stupid. They are innocent until proven guilty. Right now we have next to no info so you assume they are guilty. If that's not a sign of being biased then I don't know what is.

We have 0 evidence that Nvidia are intentionally crippling performance on AMD cards. Also, I have no idea how you can say I am defending them. I have not said a single good thing about them in the entire thread, unless you count "Nvidia cards are simply better at tessellation", in that case I have said 1 good thing. The rest of the things I have said about Nvidia have been negative. Pretty much all things I have said about AMD have been negative as well. I am not defending anyone, I am criticizing both of them for things we have proof of, and I am indifferent on things which are pure speculation.

The only way you would see my posts as favoring Nvidia would be if you read them like this:

"Oh good he is shitting on Nvidia that's great! It's so true, Nvidia sux ! Wait... He said something bad about AMD!? He is such a fanboy for saying that!!"

[LAwLz]

I don't know how I can break it down any further at this point. How I see it is that Mantle cannot possibly impact nVidia users negatively due to how it is implemented.

Gameworks, on the other hand, at least has the ability, to negatively impact AMD users. Whether it did or didn't is speculation, and AMD said it did. That is what can be (pointlessly) argued over.

It depends on which parts of GameWorks they implement. A lot of the stuff in GameWorks has other alternatives that aren't made by AMD or Nvidia (and should therefore not favor any of them). For the things that doesn't have any alternative (or the alternative is considerably worse) they could just add an option to turn it on/off like they did with PhysX in Mirror's Edge. I think that's a fair compromise. Nvidia users can get some nice effects offered by for example PhysX, and AMD users can enable it if they are OK with lower performance. The best solution would be if everything was free and open source, so that everyone could get the best possible experience but that won't happen.

It is only the developers that force AMD users to run GameWorks code, not Nvidia. Again, don't blame the gun manufacturer if someone shoots another person with it.

[papeles]

The "negative impact" that we can confirm is exactly the same as nvidia gameworks: One sided for one vendor only. That stuff about how Nvidia intentionally cripples AMD it's just speculation: Unconfirmed AMD dribble.

just this. I can't understand why amd claims that Gameworks cripples AMD hardware. Why does AMD have to use Gameworks technology? I don't get it. Can some1 show me why they need? 

 

So yea, it would be the same. Mantle is for nvidia what Gameworks is for AMD. Just a technology from the oposing team... That's why i find it retarded from AMD to see all this crying.

[BallGum]

It depends on which parts of GameWorks they implement. A lot of the stuff in GameWorks has other alternatives that aren't made by AMD or Nvidia (and should therefore not favor any of them). For the things that doesn't have any alternative (or the alternative is considerably worse) they could just add an option to turn it on/off like they did with PhysX in Mirror's Edge. I think that's a fair compromise. Nvidia users can get some nice effects offered by for example PhysX, and AMD users can enable it if they are OK with lower performance. The best solution would be if everything was free and open source, so that everyone could get the best possible experience but that won't happen.

It is only the developers that force AMD users to run GameWorks code, not Nvidia. Again, don't blame the gun manufacturer if someone shoots another person with it.

 

TL:DR On / Off switches.

[papeles]

(...)

Finally some1 that sees things as i do. And i am an AMD user. I'm just tired of this media cryout from AMD with 0 concrete stuff actually being true.

[ZeroBreaker]

Snip

Fair enough, I had read on this forum that Mantle was offered to Nvidia by AMD while it was being developed but failed to check up for a source, and further looking got me nowhere. My bad.

On the subject of mantle being open sourced, what we do know it is currently being given to developers only, with a goal to make it open source this year. Don't understand why and am skeptic of the holdup myself, but Nvidia has not even given this reassurance - Gameworks is remaining closed and hidden for the forseeable future. I sincerely doubt AMD would keep the api closed source after disclosing it's intentions to the internet at large, simply because i don't believe they are that stupid - lying to the internet, as we have seen recently with the watch dogs mods and ubisofts statements, never goes down well. It's fair enough if you believe AMD can't be trusted to uphold their promise, and i'm not going to lie that my thoughts on the subject are influenced by my experience with AMD, but my experience with Nvidia is limited to terrible linux drivers, the Titan Z marketing and Gameworks. Nvidia should be making a far greater effort to appeal to consumers, but everything ive seen from them recently pushes me away from their products.

With the Titan Z, I cannot agree. It's not about price to performance, it's simply that the card is not a gaming GPU. It's a workstation card, in the wrong lineup. It excels at content creation, rendering and all that good stuff, but it is not a gaming card and it's performance is matched by the 295x2 in some situations. It was clearly marketed at the gaming crowd, with the tagline 'the most powerful gaming card yet' and yet it is simply not true, it presents very little performance benefit at more than double the cost of the competition. There are plenty who will look at the titan z, see that it's at the top of the Nvidia lineup, and think 'oh, good company, high price, must be amazing'. It's the most blatent money grab I have seen from AMD or Nvidia full stop. It enrages me to no end that there are so many people willing to put their trust into Nvidia and they are treated like sacks of money. No doubt AMD is guilty of plenty of f-ups, but at this moment in time where AMD have promised an open source api for everyone to benefit with and Nvidia have disclosed no information at all on the gameworks situation, nor even apologised for the horrendous marketing of the Titan Z, i know full well whos side I am on.

Arkham Origins situation explained here :http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/173511-nvidias-gameworks-program-usurps-power-from-developers-end-users-and-amd/2

That tesselation is shown in the ground and the cape. As the article states, it's subtle visual increase at a huge cost to AMD cards.

I made a post earlier in this thread, and said that, intentional or not, those are the pure results. While forbes had the most difference in watch dogs, all the benchmarks I have seen have shown a greater gap between Nvidia and AMD cards than there is any right to be - around 5% ish less than it should be, which is consistent amongst reviews. AMD market far more to the budget buyers than the high end, so this matters to them. As such, I stand by my statements.

I don't care if it was intentional or not, in all honesty. Gameworks was made for Nvidia cards, and it probably wasn't built to reduce AMD performance. The fact that Nvidia is not giving any information out, despite AMD coming out with their own opinions, simply suggests to me that they are either hiding something or not bothered. Personally, I think it's the latter, and if that's true then it's sad.

[LAwLz]

Why does AMD have to use Gameworks technology? I don't get it. Can some1 show me why they need? 

Because developers are too lazy to implement this:

TL:DR On / Off switches.

[BallGum]

As an aside, what would you consider "proof" toward Gameworks affecting AMD cards negatively?

[thewhitestig]

The Nvidia apologists in this thread got their asses handed to them, yet they still try to fight it off with vague arguments. There's no point of arguing with those guys because it'll lead you to nowhere. LAwLz's whole spiel was "We don't know shit and even if you present me  evidence I'm still gonna claim the evidence doesn't exist and even if it does, it doesn't prove shit". Well what do you want buddy? The whole source code in front of you? In these situations we gotta deal with what we have. And all the information put forward till now favors AMD. That's it. No if's and buts. It's still not 100% conclusive, but the overwhelming majority of information we have on this subject still favors the AMD side. 

[LAwLz]

The Nvidia apologists in this thread got their asses handed to them, yet they still try to fight it off with vague arguments. There's no point of arguing with those guys because it'll lead you to nowhere. LAwLz's whole spiel was "We don't know shit and even if you present me  evidence I'm still gonna claim the evidence doesn't exist and even if it does, it doesn't prove shit". Well what do you want buddy? The whole source code in front of you? In these situations we gotta deal with what we have. And all the information put forward till now favors AMD. That's it. No if's and buts. It's still not 100% conclusive, but the overwhelming majority of information we have on this subject still favors the AMD side. 

I am not an Nvidia apologist. I don't understand how you can interpret these statements:

I would be glad if Mantle died with the release of DirectX 12. We don't need more proprietary bullshit. I would be even happier if DirectX died out and something like OpenGL (preferably a better version of it) replaced it. The same goes for GameWorks.

I think GameWorks is bad and should not exist.

[...]

Don't get me wrong, GameWorks is bad, but AMD is trying to make it sound like Nvidia are buddies with Satan and AMD is a glorious angel who own tries to help everyone. They are both pretty horrible and doesn't deserve even half the praise they get.

I am not trying to argue that GameWorks is good. It sucks ass and I want it to go away.

[...]

AMD most likely can't see the code for GameWorks, yes. Not even developers for the games can. Yes it is bad and it would be best if it stopped.

Sadly there will always be proprietary APIs though, and I don't think AMD is in any position to talk bad about Nvidia for GameWorks. It's like Stalin telling people "that Hitler guy sure sucks. We should all unite against him, right?", only less people dies.

I want people to stop siding with Stalin and see that both of them are doing some pretty stupid things which ultimately affects all of us in a negative way.

[...]

One way to show that you disprove of proprietary solutions is to not buy games that uses them. In the end, it is the developers that choose to implement them and if we as customers continue to buy their products they will think it is okay. Nvidia and AMD won't stop as long as their tools are being used either.

as me defending Nvidia. Apparently calling Nvidia Hitler isn't enough to show how much I dislike them...

 

If you had read any of my posts you would know that yes, I do in fact want the whole source code for both GameWorks and Mantle in front of me. That is exactly what I want.

If you are referring to what I want to prove that Nvidia are deliberately implementing things in order to reduce performance for AMD then pretty much anything as long as it is conclusive and factual will be enough. That means, absolutely no speculation has to be involved, and it has to be reproducible under controlled tests.

Finding truth is difficult and the road to it is rough.

As seekers of the truth you will be wise to withhold judgement and not simply put your trust in the writings of the ancients.

You must question and critically examine those writings from every sign.

You must submit only to arguments and experiments and not to the sayings of any person, for every human being is vulnerable to all kinds of imperfection.

As seekers of the truth we must also suspect and question our own ideas as we perform our investigations, to avoid falling into prejudice or careless thinking.

Take this course, and truth will be revealed to you.

 

I don't even know what "overwhelming majority of information" you are talking about. If you ask me we have next to no info about anything Nvidia and AMD are doing. I am a strong believing in "innocent until proven guilty" and right now we simply don't have enough info to be sure about anything really.

Both of them are very opaque about stuff.

 

 

As an aside, what would you consider "proof" toward Gameworks affecting AMD cards negatively?

We already have proof that some GameWorks features run really bad on AMD cards. Just turn on PhysX in any game and your performance will drop like a rock unless you got an Nvidia card.

If it affects performance negatively or not is not really the main debate here though. The main point is, is Nvidia doing it on purpose or is it just a side effect of the APIs being developed by Nvidia (and therefore more optimized for their GPUs) and/or are the developers of the game the ones to blame.

[BallGum]

I am not an Nvidia apologist. I don't understand how you can interpret these statements:

as me defending Nvidia. Apparently calling Nvidia Hitler isn't enough to show how much I dislike them...

 

If you had read any of my posts you would know that yes, I do in fact want the whole source code for both GameWorks and Mantle in front of me. That is exactly what I want.

If you are referring to what I want to prove that Nvidia are deliberately implementing things in order to reduce performance for AMD then pretty much anything as long as it is conclusive and factual will be enough. That means, absolutely no speculation has to be involved, and it has to be reproducible under controlled tests.

 

I don't even know what "overwhelming majority of information" you are talking about. If you ask me we have next to no info about anything Nvidia and AMD are doing. I am a strong believing in "innocent until proven guilty" and right now we simply don't have enough info to be sure about anything really.

Both of them are very opaque about stuff.

 

 

We already have proof that some GameWorks features run really bad on AMD cards. Just turn on PhysX in any game and your performance will drop like a rock unless you got an Nvidia card.

If it affects performance negatively or not is not really the main debate here though. The main point is, is Nvidia doing it on purpose or is it just a side effect of the APIs being developed by Nvidia (and therefore more optimized for their GPUs) and/or are the developers of the game the ones to blame.

 

Lol. I guess this is why it is always important to objectify a discussion before having one. What I was arguing had already been established.

Anyway, there're quite a few solutions to the problem, which either nVidia or the developers can take care of on their end, to ensure that Gameworks remains a feature rather than something that degrades performance on AMD cards (whether or not that this was the intention is, and always will be, speculation).

[papeles]

The Nvidia apologists in this thread got their asses handed to them, yet they still try to fight it off with vague arguments. There's no point of arguing with those guys because it'll lead you to nowhere. LAwLz's whole spiel was "We don't know shit and even if you present me  evidence I'm still gonna claim the evidence doesn't exist and even if it does, it doesn't prove shit". Well what do you want buddy? The whole source code in front of you? In these situations we gotta deal with what we have. And all the information put forward till now favors AMD. That's it. No if's and buts. It's still not 100% conclusive, but the overwhelming majority of information we have on this subject still favors the AMD side. 

you really have trouble interpreting stuff. You don't even read the complete points posted by people. You just read what you want and then post this. What is funny is that you look so brainwashed that you believe in stuff without a single shred of proof, just because they were said by a wellspoken man from AMD. 2 videos come out from one of the sides and for you it's an absolute truth, proof material, whatever.

 

It also amazes me that you didn't understand that this isn't a war or something like that. Do you really think that AMD or nvidia actually care about this? Dude, it has been like this for years. And i think i mentioned to you before, i ain't even an nvidia fanboy and i own AMD stuff. This whole situation just turned hilarious for me. Reading all the hate/fanboyism comments from people with clearly no knowledge of facts.

[7850OC]

Mantle is a beta, and this is a fact

 

(fact = beyond question)

 

(beta = unfinished product)

 

To me it seems like AMD are huge hypocrites right now.

and then call everyone else who has a different opinion to yours "fanboy"

 

you are a "hypocrite" LAwLz

[LAwLz]

Mantle is a beta, and this is a fact

 

(fact = beyond question)

 

(beta = unfinished product)

 

and then call everyone else who has a different opinion to yours "fanboy"

 

you are a "hypocrite" LAwLz

Please explain how I am being a hypocrite.

I haven't even called anyone a fanboy. The closest I came to calling someone a fanboy was when I said something along the lines of "if you think like this <explain train of though> then you are not as unbiased as you think you are".

 

 

Just calling something beta does not make you immune from criticism. Would you be alright with GameWorks if Nvidia added a little text that said "beta" in the corner of the logo? I wouldn't. Being in beta is not a valid reason for keeping it closed source. The same goes for Mantle.

[mr moose]

I can't believe there are people who are that gullible that they believe everything a paid spokesperson says about a competing company.  Would you guys believe a coke rep if he insinuated that pepsi put drain cleaner in their cola?

[BallGum]

I can't believe there are people who are that gullible that they believe everything a paid spokesperson says about a competing company.  Would you guys believe a coke rep if he insinuated that pepsi put drain cleaner in their cola?

 

No, but I'd look into it before dismissing it entirely.

Perhaps I'm naive, but what would AMD have to gain by lying? If anything, they'd be losing customers who feel that nVidia cards perform better.

[papeles]

but what would AMD have to gain by lying?

Exactly what was shown on this thread. Brainless believers that will turn into future consumers.

[mr moose]

No, but I'd look into it before dismissing it entirely.

Perhaps I'm naive, but what would AMD have to gain by lying? If anything, they'd be losing customers who feel that nVidia cards perform better.

 

They have lots to gain, The whole thing is just marketing  and marketing works. It positions people to consider that any performance issues seen in AMD products are the result of underhanded software manipulation by Nvidia.   It is no different than the console game devs referring to resolution and frame rates as "just numbers" or Sony having a jab at MS with it's "how to share games" demo at the launch of ps4.  Non off these things are how they seem, non of them are definitively accurate yet they all follow the same pattern of consumer manipulation.  Insinuating a negative about their competition to hide the flaws in their own products.  Why do they do this, because it works, because research (and they spend lots researching consumer habits and trends) tells them that that's what convinces people to buy their product.  

[DaRk0]

Maybe Nvidia knew about DirectX 12 and thought "we will just focus on that instead". We just don't know how everything went and why decisions were made.

 

Nvidia did knew about DirectX 12. There's article on their blog stating they're working with Microsoft on DX12 for over a 4 years now, so there's really no reason for them to embrace Mantle.

[Nomelas]

Exactly what was shown on this thread. Brainless believers that will turn into future consumers.

The backlassh would be far greater if they were in fact lying. Besides, the guy in the video has stated multiple times that it was speculation but it is a highly educated guess going off the evidence they had.

[Nomelas]

Nvidia did knew about DirectX 12. There's article on their blog stating they're working with Microsoft on DX12 for over a 4 years now, so there's really no reason for them to embrace Mantle.

They would never embrace mantle anyways for the simple fact that it's their competitor's product.

 

I can't believe there are people who are that gullible that they believe everything a paid spokesperson says about a competing company.  Would you guys believe a coke rep if he insinuated that pepsi put drain cleaner in their cola?

It's not being gullible, it's a "Hey look at what AMD is saying about Nvidia, take it with a grain of salt, but still educate yourself instead of blindly following one or the other" and if you fail to even consider the possibility, you are the one blindly following Nvidia, not the ones you claim are blindly following AMD... Step back and take an unbiased approach to the situation.

 

I'm not a fanboy of any name brand, I buy products that are proven to work & my pair of PCs have components from all different manufacturers because I went with what is good for the price, not because it had one name or the other (although, the name on a product can still influence purchases) I've used both AMD and nvidia products (and use both currently) but my driver right now is AMD because I like the direction they are going. That doesn't mean I wont switch to nvidia down the road if they deserve it.

[LAwLz]

It's not being gullible, it's a "Hey look at what AMD is saying about Nvidia, take it with a grain of salt, but still educate yourself instead of blindly following one or the other" and if you fail to even consider the possibility, you are the one blindly following Nvidia, not the ones you claim are blindly following AMD... Step back and take an unbiased approach to the situation.

That's how it should be, but just look at the comments in this thread. People are already saying Nvidia are guilty and how they will never buy any Nvidia products again, simply because someone from AMD said that he think they might be crippling their performance.

No proof whatsoever, and people are already boycotting Nvidia.