Nvidia's HairWorks supposedly crippeling Witcher 3 performance on AMD cards

[freakstyler3]

According to a Arstechnica post( http://arstechnica.co.uk/gaming/2015/05/amd-says-nvidias-gameworks-completely-sabotaged-witcher-3-performance/ )

The Perfomance of the Witcher 3: Wild hunt is very much crippled due to the fact that AMD cards can't run Hairworks properly because the technology source code is unavailable to them AMD. This does not only cause the witcher 3 to run better on nvidia cards but also give nvidia an unfair advantage, me not owning an nvidia card went on the web and found that performance does actually differ quite between AMD and Nvidia.

Not only HairWorks is crippling but also GameWorks itself. as many project cars fans who owned amd cards where dissapointed because of the very,very,very poor performance of the game and many seek to blame AMD even though AMD was not the culprit because it whas Nvidia's GameWorks Project cars was build with in Gameworks which is technology which is exclusive to Nvidia meaning that AMD cannot acces the code and thus not optimize it's drivers for it which means that there is a lot of unnecessary processing happening which intern led to worse performance. The team behind Project cars knew this but still opped to hop on the Nvidia bandwagon and optimize for Nvidia only. again I feel this is very uncompetetive like the Intel compiler lawsuit.

[Delphi1662]

there is what 3 different threads on this topic already?? all talking about something different but driving at the same point .....

[HeathCliff]

This is why I like Hitman: Absolution. 

[Trik'Stari]

(I'm running out of popcorn)

[werto165]

I thought AMD didn't need the source code, all they needed to do is make their drivers better. It just seems like an excuse by AMD.

[ZetZet]

It does the same to nvidia gpu's.

[Norman_the_Owl]

It does the same to nvidia gpu's.

Not nearly as bad IIRC

[EthanTheFrogMan]

this is why I have a 970. and not a stupid AMD GPU

[DEDRICK]

Project Cars doesn't use Gameworks

[MrDynamicMan]

Yeah, this has gotten too out of hand. Either gameworks goes open-source or a lawsuit happens.

Also inb4 idiots say

"lulz, I had Nvidia card, AMD sucks. Not my problem ."

Edit.: shit, too late.

[Trik'Stari]

this is why I have a 970. and not a stupid AMD GPU

(I'm not reiterating the views expressed by @EthanTheFrogMan, simply responding to them, although I do have a 970 )

[werto165]

Project Cars doesn't use Gameworks

I thought its physics engine used Physx. Yes technically not game works but still a part of it.

[The Pizza Thief]

Nvidia Cards are also loosing some performance when Hairworks is activated, other than that you may just have a crappy card, which one are you using ?@freakstyler3

[Ostwind]

Apparently this works just fine http://wccftech.com/witcher-3-run-hairworks-amd-gpus-crippling-performance/though I'm running Nvidia hardware so I can't confirm. There's a thread about it somewhere around here.

[MrDynamicMan]

I thought AMD didn't need the source code, all they needed to do is make their drivers better. It just seems like an excuse by AMD.

They need it to optimize their drivers.

[Lotus]

As I've said before, NVidia is abusing it's market share to get developers to write code that only works on NVidia products, therefore creating an unfair barrier to entry in the market segment. IMO if this continues, they deserve to be broken up trust-busting style.

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

Isn't this already obvious? Hair works is physX stuff. Which is Nvidia's property... 

[Gibbons]

Apparently this works just fine http://wccftech.com/witcher-3-run-hairworks-amd-gpus-crippling-performance/though I'm running Nvidia hardware so I can't confirm. There's a thread about it somewhere around here.

 

So all that needs to be done is add a tessellation slider option to the HairWorks setting instead of ON/OFF.

[MrDynamicMan]

Nvidia Cards are also loosing some performance when Hairworks is activated, other than that you may just have a crappy card, which one are you using ?@freakstyler3

The point is that while hair works will result in a performance hit, but AMD can't optimize for it because of the walled garden of gameworks and it is causing a massive performance hit.

Basically Nvidia sponsors a Dev and let's them use gameworks which has the game running on heavily Nvidia optimized software. But AMD can't optimize their drivers. Then you get idiots saying AMD is shit for not optimizing their drivers.

[freakstyler3]

Nvidia Cards are also loosing some performance when Hairworks is activated, other than that you may just have a crappy card, which one are you using ?@freakstyler3

I have an FX 6300+stock cooler (cuz im poor) and a r9 285 16 gig ram 60 gig ssd(boot) 2 terabyte drive

[Notional]

I feel really bad for CD Project RED. They made a great game, is one of the most open and ethical game devs out there, and they even optimized this game really well.

 

Unfortunately, they decided to implement GameWorks VisualFX effects, primarily HairWorks. HairWorks is a closed source black box for AMD, which means they cannot optimize for it. The results speaks for itself, with a 970 being 34% faster than a 290x with it enabled. Without any Gameworks effects, a 970 and 290x are neck and neck (290x @ 1030mhz, and 970 OC'ed a LOT to 1300mhz).:

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/The-Witcher-3-PC-237266/Specials/Grafikkarten-Benchmarks-1159196/

 

So yes, HairWorks is a horrible unoptimized mess, for both NVidia and AMD, but more for kepler (780) and a LOT more for AMD.

If only CDPR had used TressFX, this would not have been an issue.