AMD have begun shipping Polaris GPUs - 2 different Polaris chips and 4 different GPUs spotted

[Trixanity]

I'm not sure if putting the control of game performance into the hands of game developers is a good thing considering the current state of things where not even driver specific optimizations can save the performance on horrible titles such as Batman and Assassin's Creed.

[insert movie trailer voice] Imagine a world where horrible game developers get full control of your gaming experience. When AMD and Nvidia can't save you, who can? Coming to a PC near you.

Seriously though, I expect DX12 titles to be very hit or miss, at least in the beginning.

[Tomsen]

It might pressure game studios into investing more at their PC ports.

But I don't believe for a second, that it will prevent neither AMD or Nvidia at optimizing titles for their GPUs. Might not be the same procedure..

[Humbug]

I'm not sure if putting the control of game performance into the hands of game developers is a good thing considering the current state of things where not even driver specific optimizations can save the performance on horrible titles such as Batman and Assassin's Creed.

[insert movie trailer voice] Imagine a world where horrible game developers get full control of your gaming experience. When AMD and Nvidia can't save you, who can? Coming to a PC near you.

Seriously though, I expect DX12 titles to be very hit or miss, at least in the beginning.

Arkham Knight / Assassin's Creed Unity / watchdogs are outliers. Most AAA PC games are way better optimized than that even if they aren't perfect.

 

With the current API ecosystem it's very difficult to squeeze out all the performance without help from AMD/Nvidia.

DX12 / Vulkan is a paradigm shift. It requires more knowledgeable devs, but those who are not comfortable with it can continue to use DX11.

Also the game engine developers like Epic, Dice, Valve, Unity, Crytek who have a lot of technical expertise will do the hard work and most devs will stand on their shoulders by using their engines.

 

IMO it's not a healthy situation where GPU makers have to put out drivers for every game to get the best experience. This is not how things are supposed to work. A driver should be a more standard piece of software. Is there any other field of computing where people are grabbing new drivers every few weeks in order to enable better performance in new apps?

[dragosudeki]

Yeah. If anything, it's that games have put more emphasis on tessellation. Where GCN IIRC beats Kepler, but Maxwell beats GCN. That's also why some people suspect Nvidia is intentionally influencing developers to put more tessellation in their games, even where it doesn't improve the visuals.

 

Just like with Crysis 2, back when Fermi was better at tessellation than VLIW5/VLIW4.

True Solution: Put an options menu that actually lets us change a lot of graphical options.

 

The amount of options we get to change in an options menu is ridiculously small compared to what we truly should be able to control. Then we wouldn't need to enforce a tessellation rate (like AMD's workaround for that in Witcher), but rather just let us adjust it while playing the game or something.

[Trixanity]

Arkham Knight / Assassin's Creed Unity / watchdogs are outliers. Most AAA PC games are way better optimized than that even if they aren't perfect.

With the current API ecosystem it's very difficult to squeeze out all the performance without help from AMD/Nvidia.

DX12 / Vulkan is a paradigm shift. It requires more knowledgeable devs, but those who are not comfortable with it can continue to use DX11.

Also the game engine developers like Epic, Dice, Valve, Unity, Crytek who have a lot of technical expertise will do the hard work and most devs will stand on their shoulders by using their engines.

IMO it's not a healthy situation where GPU makers have to put out drivers for every game to get the best experience. This is not how things are supposed to work. A driver should be a more standard piece of software. Is there any other field of computing where people are grabbing new drivers every few weeks in order to enable better performance in new apps?

The current situation is awful. No doubt. But as you say yourself, it'll require game engine developers to make their engines more bulletproof and they probably have to develop engines with input from AMD and Nvidia to avoid getting gimped performance on either team.

I expect lots of game developers to continue with dx11.3 to avoid any pitfalls.

I do believe a dx12 developer environment can thrive if the right safety nets are in place but these safety nets need to be in place from day one and work really well.

This doesn't mean that talented game developers don't exist. They do. But it looks like the majority are not, so they'll either need extra external help or stick to the old dx11 way of doing things.

[Jahramika]

A driver should be simple way for 2 pieces of hardware to talk to one another and once that link is made its all good. With GPS and software whole different game because no set standard which Dx12, Vulcan mantel is.