Nvidia Gameswork Shenanigans, Ubisoft spin

[deathjester]

Oh and YES this is tech news as it relates to the two GPU brands most people have and this represents a major threat to PC Gaming, PC enthusiasts as a whole, those involved in the tech industry, retail, computer shops and crippling nearly half of peoples PC's for what is essentially bribe money with a closed library that is among the worst and most shady things I have ever seen involved with PC's. 

 

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/11/12/ubisoft-comments-on-assassins-creed-unity-pc-troubles

 

Then we have the recommendations for Far Cry 4 where a 290x is = to a GTX 680 when Games Works is involved. Keep in mind that the GPU's used in the consoles are SEMI Custom AMD GPU's and GCN architecture. So until the Nvidia closed library Games Works gets a hold of a game, AMD should be having damn near flawless performance.  This recommendation has not been rescinded or been said to be a misprint. 

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/microsoft-xbox-one-console-review,3681-4.html

 

Here is a video showing the disparity between the R9 290x/290/GTX 970/980 in AC Unity and this has nothing to do with the custom effects on top of the changed library, or "crashes and instability". Now I can see why a R9 290x is "recommended" for Farcry 4.

 

 

Keep in mind that some Games Works titles seem to use the closed library for the core of their game and some do not. Lords of the Fallen for instance has effects on top of the game, but an AMD beats the 970/980 in it. So basically Nvidia is working with developers to sabotage certain games. So far Ubisoft is the worst offender.

 

 

CDPR has also recently said this on their Witcher 3 forums.

 

Sidspyker (moderator). 

 

"There is always one of these posts/threads everytime Ubisoft releases another shit PC port...

 

Yes, Witcher 3 uses GameWorks.

 

The game has ditched Havok in favour of PhysX SDK and that runs entirely on CPU so GPU is irrelevant.

 

The game uses APEX Clothing and APEX Destruction modules, this again as nothing to do with the GPU brand because this will be present on the consoles as well.

 

The game will have optional like HBAO+, HairWorks, GPU Accelerated PhysX, TXAA. The latter two require a Nvidia GPU. HBAO+ doesn't and HairWorks at least partially works on AMD hardware too and it's based on DirectCompute and not CUDA.

 

The few of these things that DO require the GPU are OPTIONAL and you don't have to use them. If they aren't enabled then they obviously cannot affect the performance of the game."

 

So I have high hopes for Witcher 3. The Batman game? Not so much given the past with Nvidia. Also I find it pretty funny that "journalists" and tech sites can give this a free pass. You are purposely crippling a competitor's GPU by 20-30 FPS and ruining performance by a few video card tiers. This is possibly the most abhorrent thing I have ever seen and makes platform specific DLC look tame in comparison (which has been decried often). 

 

For anyone defending this, I would love to have them tell me how this is a good thing, seeing there are several big releases that are "AMD games", including Battlefront/BF5/Dragon's Age Inquisition, Mass Effect 4, Alien Isolation, out and coming out. How would you feel if performance was crippled like this on your GTX 970/980 and you were brought down to GTX 680 performance in those titles? 

 

Also the Game Works games that do perform much better on Nvidia are two of the WORST optimized titles we have ever seen on the PC. Watch Dogs and AC Unity. So changing the game library isn't doing much for you either. The claimed reason for it to exist is optimization, so the changed game library fails at it's job.

 

For the record I think Nvidia makes fantastic GPU's, but this is simply horrible and the last thing we need in PC Gaming and the enthusiast market. I don't see how anyone can condone or think this  behavior is good for the PC. There is a big difference between switching an entire game library and adding TXAA (which is just a budget AA) or some custom effects (which both vendors do).

 

[Nineshadow]

They aren't necessarily sabotaging AMD,even though that is a definite possibility.They've developed an API/framework/what you want to call it that is very efficient on their architecture.It can,of course,not be efficient on AMD's GCN architecture.

 

And no,TXAA is not a form of budget AA.

[Faa]

Wasn't AMD claiming Gameworks were "nerfing" their GPU's performance? Go google any driver overhead tests and you'd see their DX drivers are causing a shitload of CPU overhead.





There are a bunch of those tests showing AMD really performing terrible (not always) in DX games regardless of having Gameworks or not.

[Imabigmac]

Just gonna to sit back on this and comment later when I can actually type properly.

[Vrbas]

Ubisoft already stated that the 290x was meant to be 280x

 

Blame Ubisoft not nvidia. Just don't buy their POS games simple.

[Guest Kloaked]

So if I'm understanding this correctly, the implication here is that Nvidia's GameWorks is what's to blame for Ubisoft's poor game development?

 

Lol.

 

If Witcher 3 runs fine on both cards, this bitching about Nvidia ruining a game's optimization for the other vendor needs to stop.

[warmmilk]

AMD creates Mantle and its the greatest thing in the world...

 

Nvidia creates its own api / library / framework / whatever giving its gpu an advantage and everyone loses their mind...

 

 

and to mirror what @Vrbas and @Kloaked are saying, lets not blame nvidia for ubisoft's crap

[EChondo]

Personally, I buy whatever has the best price:performance.

 

I may go Nvidia this time around, or AMD depending on what AMD brings to the table. The extra "features" from both sides is irrelevant to me, a consumer, because all I really want is surround gaming and an enjoyable 1080p60FPS experience.

 

AMD and Nvidia should be working towards opening up each other's advancements to one another so we can all benefit from it, and also work towards Linux.

[mr moose]

Just gonna to sit back on this and comment later when I can actually type properly.

 

ditto, plus I am going to wait for a few more opinions and citations to surface before drawing a conclusion.  Jumping on the hate bandwagon does nothing for ones ability to think critically.

[carolkarine]

1. I believe bifida is not acting in the best interest of gamers in general, and are crippling performance in games such as watch dogs and CoD: Ghosts via ridiculous levels of tenderloin through their gameworks program (which in those games is baked in and you are unable to turn it off)

2. I believe this provides a crutch for develiperz like Ubisoft to provide piss poor optimizations.

3. I do not blame Nvidia got the shitty ports we have been seeing recently. It was ubisofts decision to fail to make good games

4. I welcome Nvidia's innovation and hope it spreads to the rest of the market. I don't believe they are wrong for keeping their proprietary tech to themselves, but I feel as if their business decisions are a bit scummy.

[deathjester]

Ubisoft already stated that the 290x was meant to be 280x

 

Blame Ubisoft not nvidia. Just don't buy their POS games simple.

 

Do you see the difference in FPS in AC? 

 

AMD creates Mantle and its the greatest thing in the world...

 

Nvidia creates its own api / library / framework / whatever giving its gpu an advantage and everyone loses their mind...

 

 

and to mirror what @Vrbas and @Kloaked are saying, lets not blame nvidia for ubisoft's crap

 

Mantle easily translates to DirectX 12 which is why game companies are using it and it is using the DX library. There is no favoritism other than CPU overhead.  It helps Intel CPU's like the I7-920 as much as AMD CPU's. One is helping lower the price of a gaming PC and negating the need to push high overclocks. The other is crippling a competitors product.

 

Comparing Mantle to Nvidia switching out an entire game library is laughable. Also the two Games Works games that have done this run like absolute crap on Nvidia as well. So both GPU owners are getting screwed. Let me make this really simply for you. If a game runs at 1080p on a console it should run 4 times that on a R9 290/GTX 970. We should be running 4x MSAA at a minimum (at the same FPS more more) and 4x SSAA if the title is well optimized and not a REALLY cpu bound game. Having to use a budget AA like TXAA means the game is poorly optimized and the game is rendering things in efficiently. 

 

Mantle is not crippling Nvidia whatsoever or Intel. In fact a cpu like a I7-920 is seeing the most benefit. More than 40 percent on FPS. This is at 4 MSAA. You would need two GTX 970's to do this on a "games work" library piece of crap like Watch Dog's/AC Unity. 

 

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Dragon-Age-Inquisition-PC-236767/Specials/Technik-Test-1142136/

[Sky Daddy]

Wasn't AMD claiming Gameworks were "nerfing" their GPU's performance? Go google any driver overhead tests and you'd see their DX drivers are causing a shitload of CPU overhead.

There are a bunch of those tests showing AMD really performing terrible (not always) in DX games regardless of having Gameworks or not.

fx cpu's definitely have less single core performance, that's undeniable. The devs just aren't optimizing to use more than 2 cores/threads.

[Faa]

1. I believe bifida is not acting in the best interest of gamers in general, and are crippling performance in games such as watch dogs and CoD: Ghosts via ridiculous levels of tenderloin through their gameworks program (which in those games is baked in and you are unable to turn it off)

Crippling? It's a well known problem AMD suffers from their DX drivers having significantly more overhead on the CPU that could (read: could) lead into a CPU bottleneck that will then limit the full potential of their GPU's.

Compare the APU here between the 780 Ti & 290x at DX mode;

A 780 Ti performs like 30-35% better than a 290x in DX with that A10 APU. GameGPU lately has been doing these kind of tests as well, same story.

 

 

fx cpu's definitely have less single core performance, that's undeniable. The devs just aren't optimizing to use more than 2 cores/threads.

That's not the point at all, in that Dead Rising 3 test the 9590 performed with a 980 100% faster than the 290x. And no the 290X wasnt running at its full potential because it was held back by the CPU due to that massive overhead on the CPU the drivers were causing. The 980 probably was on full potential or almost, no gpu loads being mentioned and seeing that gap between the 9590 & 5960x you could assume the 980 was still slightly bottlenecked by the 9590.

[PopReference]

Saw this topic coming, ho boy.

 

Not that I'm taking sides or blaming but before I get in to deep I'll say this: With as bad as this game is, glitches and optimization, Nvidia should be ashamed to have their name attached to it, let alone being one of the many contributors to the development. That is that.

[ACatWithThumbs]

Do you see the difference in FPS in AC? 

 

 

Mantle easily translates to DirectX 12 which is why game companies are using it and it is using the DX library. There is no favoritism other than CPU overhead.  It helps Intel CPU's like the I7-920 as much as AMD CPU's. One is helping lower the price of a gaming PC and negating the need to push high overclocks. The other is crippling a competitors product.

 

Comparing Mantle to Nvidia switching out an entire game library is laughable. Also the two Games Works games that have done this run like absolute crap on Nvidia as well. So both GPU owners are getting screwed. Let me make this really simply for you. If a game runs at 1080p on a console it should run 4 times that on a R9 290/GTX 970. We should be running 4x MSAA at a minimum (at the same FPS more more) and 4x SSAA if the title is well optimized and not a REALLY cpu bound game. Having to use a budget AA like TXAA means the game is poorly optimized and the game is rendering things in efficiently. 

 

Mantle is not crippling Nvidia whatsoever or Intel. In fact a cpu like a I7-920 is seeing the most benefit. More than 40 percent on FPS. This is at 4 MSAA. You would need two GTX 970's to do this on a "games work" library piece of crap like Watch Dog's/AC Unity. 

 

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Dragon-Age-Inquisition-PC-236767/Specials/Technik-Test-1142136/

AC Unity performance without any real patches and one beta driver is completely irrelevant not to mention that it runs crappy on everything including consoles.

Also TXAA is not a budget AA it's like using 4xMSAA combined with FXAA.

And Watchdogs is runs like crap on every system the game stutters like crazy on my GTX670 and was a pain to play through.

 

Not that I'm taking sides or blaming but before I get in to deep I'll say this: With as bad as this game is, glitches and optimization, Nvidia should be ashamed to have their name attached to it, let alone being one of the many contributors to the development. That is that.

 

And AMD partnered with Battlefield 4 and that game was unplayble for almost a half year should they also be ashamed?

 

[deathjester]

Crippling? It's a well known problem AMD suffers from their DX drivers having significantly more overhead on the CPU that could (read: could) lead into a CPU bottleneck that will then limit the full potential of their GPU's.

Compare the APU here between the 780 Ti & 290x at DX mode;

A 780 Ti performs like 30-35% better than a 290x in DX with that A10 APU. GameGPU lately has been doing these kind of tests as well, same story.

 

What? A reference model that throttled at a low resolution  and pitiful settings which will never be used?  Please. LTT used a reference R9 290 (which SUCKS compared to aftermarkets) and it beat A GTX 970 at 4k in Shadows of Mordor and that is a customized AC engine that also happens to look better and have perfect optimization and while it has Nvidia's name on front of the game? No BS library crippling the game for everyone, but AMD GPU users even more. 

 

See Ryse benchmarks (Crysis Engine). A good brand aftermarket 290/290x is as good as it gets on high resolutions/supersampling and it has to do with bandwidth. 

 

http://www.overclock.net/t/1517881/pcgh-ryse-son-of-rome-benchmarks

 

We all know that Intel is ahead of AMD Faa on CPU. No one is debating that. That is why I have a OC 4770k... We also know that reference R9 290's were bad on temps/clocks and being able to keep that clock playing a game.

 

The higher the resolution, the higher the AA setting, the better AMD GPU will do and the reason is as simple as opening up GPU-Z and looking at bandwidth. 

[deathjester]

AC Unity performance without any real patches and one beta driver is completely irrelevant.

Also TXAA is not a budget AA it's like using 4xMSAA combined with FXAA.

Watchdogs is runs like crap on every system the game stutters like crazy on my GTX670.

 

And AMD partnered with Battlefield 4 and that game was unplayble for almost a half year should they also be ashamed?

 

 

Did the game show a two tier swing on GPU's? They also worked on Alien Isolation (probably the best optimized "next gen" game we have), and Crysis 3. What is your point? We are talking about one GPU performing much better than another due to a changed library. Not the game itself. A broken game is a broken game.

 

A BS game library crippling performance on one card is completely different.

 

Sniper Elite 3 is also extremely well optimized and has AMD ties. I run this game at a 4k super sample/downsample at damn near a locked 60 FPS. That is 4 times the resolution of the console versions. Again. Performance is not hurt on a Nvidia card whatsoever.

 

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Sniper-Elite-3-Performance-Maxwell-vs-Hawaii-DX11-vs-Mantle

[PopReference]

And AMD partnered with Battlefield 4 and that game was unplayble for almost a half year should they also be ashamed?

I said I wasn't  taking sides. You quoted me say that. Wat are you doing? Who do you work 4? WHRE IS TAH BOM!!11!!one

[Sonefiler]

AMD creates Mantle and its the greatest thing in the world...

 

Nvidia creates its own api / library / framework / whatever giving its gpu an advantage and everyone loses their mind...

 

 

and to mirror what @Vrbas and @Kloaked are saying, lets not blame nvidia for ubisoft's crap

The difference is that AMD is improving their own performance, Nvidia is decreasing their competitor's performance.

It's Pro-Consumer vs Anti-Competition. The former is always better. The latter is what ISPs like Comcast like to do.

[Sonefiler]

4. I welcome Nvidia's innovation and hope it spreads to the rest of the market. I don't believe they are wrong for keeping their proprietary tech to themselves, but I feel as if their business decisions are a bit scummy.

Their proprietary tech is literally JUST TO CRIPPLE AMD. It isn't even improving their product? That's anti-competition, anti-consumer, and anti-innovation! This is like instead of working to win a contest, you just poison your biggest rival's food!

[Faa]

What? A reference model that throttled at a low resolution  and pitiful settings which will never be used?  Please. LTT used a reference R9 290 (which SUCKS compared to aftermarkets) and it beat A GTX 970 at 4k in Shadows of Mordor and that is a customized AC engine that also happens to look better and have perfect optimization and while it has Nvidia's name on front of the game? No BS library crippling the game for everyone, but AMD GPU users even more. 

 

See Ryse benchmarks (Crysis Engine). A good brand aftermarket 290/290x is as good as it gets on high resolutions/supersampling and it has to to with bandwidth. 

 

http://www.overclock.net/t/1517881/pcgh-ryse-son-of-rome-benchmarks

 

We all know that Intel is ahead of AMD Faa on CPU. No one is debating that. We also know that reference R9 290's were bad on temps/clocks and being able to keep that clock playing a game.

 

The higher the resolution, the higher the AA setting, the better AMD GPU will do and the reason is as simple as opening up GPU-Z and looking at bandwidth. 

A reference 290 that's bottlenecked like crap won't be overheating obviously.

And you're missing the point; we aren't comparing the 290x vs 780ti in terms of performance. We are comparing which one are doing better when the CPU is the bottleneck and NOT when the GPU is the bottleneck, so it's basically a driver overhead comparison. Once that GPU hits 99% even if the drivers have CPU overhead for that game (you can still get rid of the CPU bottleneck a driver caused with a better CPU) there's the typical 5-10% difference between the 780ti/290x because they both are at their full potential. That's the point I'm trying to make, AMD GPU's aren't always at their full potential because of their massive driver overhead. That's not in any way an argument to claim Gameworks is crippling AMD's performance.

Lets look this time at a gameworks game;

Top of the graph read "Driver overhead test". Now go somewhere in Watch Dogs, show me your GPU loads & FPS and tell me your settings, take a screenshot when it's running at 99% load. I'll go to the same place and show you a single 780 or 970 with the same settings with a load of 99% as well, there will be just a 1-5 fps difference which we get to the point that we are comparing which GPU's are more powerful.

Besides I wasn't talking about which CPU is better, I was comparing the 9590's performance between the 980 & 290x. That's not a CPU comparison.

[Vrbas]

The difference is that AMD is improving their own performance, Nvidia is decreasing their competitor's performance.

It's Pro-Consumer vs Anti-Competition. The former is always better. The latter is what ISPs like Comcast like to do.

Are you serious? Lmao "nvidia decreasing their competitor's performance"? Is this the excuse you are using haha. Again if anyone is to blame it's ubisofts shit development.

[LAwLz]

The difference is that AMD is improving their own performance, Nvidia is decreasing their competitor's performance.

Their proprietary tech is literally JUST TO CRIPPLE AMD.

[Citation Needed]

[OlekKing]

How the fuck is this post a News article?

Speculation and accusations? With some random youtube videos.

[deathjester]

How the fuck is this post a News article?

Speculation and accusations? With some random youtube videos.

 

This is about libraries being changed in games. This has everything to do with the majority of the people who visit this site who are tech enthusiast.  The FPS difference in Watch Dogs was a matter of record and this game has the same problem. 

 

 

Are you serious? Lmao "nvidia decreasing their competitor's performance"? Is this the excuse you are using haha. Again if anyone is to blame it's ubisofts shit development.

 

Nice avatar...and people call console gamers who fanboy a product "peasants"...Too funny. It appears PC gamers are just as pathetic with their backing/fanboying of a product. 

 

Oh and I guess you would be ok with AMD changing the entire library on "AMD titles"? Cus that will eventually happen. A better solution would be a lawsuit having to do with unfair practices and this crap stopping right now.

 

Bottom line? Nvidia is making a r9 290x into a GTX 680. AMD can do the same thing and turn a 980 into a 680. That is simply what you are supporting.