NVIDIA shady business practises?

[Joegeddon]

I have no opinion on the matter, these are just the accusations made against NVIDIA.

Gameworks

NVIDIA's Gameworks API is a proprietary software that game developers can use to create games that can be supported by many GPUs and the SKUs of each chip. The issue with Gameworks is that it infamously makes games run like s**t on AMD graphics cards. As a result of this many high end AMD cards such as the R9 390X can be beat out by a GTX 960 in certain games. (PROJECT CARS) This game will probably be mentioned a lot in this post.

PhysX

PhysX is a physics program that is built directly into NVIDIA GPUs, in order for AMD users to utilize this they need to run PhysX on their CPU. Advanced PhysX also can't be run on any AMD card no matter what, NVIDIA have been accused of also preventing AMD graphics card users to use NVIDIA GPUs solely to run PhysX on their cards. PhysX is a fair use of competitive advantages as there are very effective ways to accomplish the same thing on other products.

Planned Obsolescence and AMD slowdowns

Supposedly NVIDIA have been finding ways to make older graphics cards run slower than Maxwell cards, mainly in a Gameworks title called Project Cars.  It should be noted that the GTX 780 is being beat by the GTX 960, this should not be occuring. It should also be noted that the 290X can't even maintain 60FPS in the game, despite the 290X being in the same tier as the GTX 980 which smashes the 290X with 70 FPS using the benchmarker's configuration. It should also be noted that the AMD results are slightly less consistent in terms of minimum to average FPS.

Benchmarks are credit to Techspot.com, the URL is at the bottom of the post.

Overuse of Tesselation

Way back in 2009, when Crysis 2 was released, the game for some reason in certain scenes used extreme tessellation on objects that either didn't require it or couldn't be seen at all, examples of this being the Jersey barriers and the water being rendered under the map. The reason this was done is that NVIDIA knew that their cards could handle tessellation better than AMD/ATI cards, so using this knowledge the overused tessellation to tank the competition's FPS. It should also be noted that this also reduced the potential FPS of NVIDIA's own cards.

More recently, Gameworks game The Witcher 3 by CD PROJEKT RED was discovered to use 64X tessellation in the hair of Geralt, this made no visual difference but did however affect performance on AMD cards more adversely than NVIDIA's, as there is no reason to do this it can be assumed that NVIDIA knew that Extreme tessellation would cause a bigger FPS drop in the competition than in their own cards.

Any user having issues with this on AMD's side can use the AMD Crimson program to change maximum tessellation to a more reasonable factor such as 16X.

If you found the article interesting, maybe you would be interested in participating in the poll I made, I want to get everyone's opinion, I realise the post seems biased but in truth this was mainly about the shady practises of NVIDIA. AMD may not be exempt from shady business practises themselves, this post is about NVIDIA however.

This post took forever to make so bear that in mind before you rip me to shreds calling me and AMD fanboy despite me owning an NVIDIA SHIELD tablet and a GTX 760.

Benchmark source: http://www.techspot.com/review/1000-project-cars-benchmarks/page2.html

[LokiFire]

Answer is no.

[Joegeddon]

1 minute ago, LokiFire said:

Answer is no.

I appreciate your opinion, also your rig is... interesting.

[LokiFire]

Just now, Joegeddon said:

I appreciate your opinion, also your rig is... interesting.

Plays BF4 maxed out.

[Cactu]

Just now, Joegeddon said:

I appreciate your opinion, also your rig is... interesting.

its so powerful, why buy a titan X and 4790X when you can have pentium II at 700MHz MOAR PLOWER

[Cactu]

1 minute ago, LokiFire said:

Plays BF4 maxed out.

FPS? also, what is the cpu strain, cuz 700MHz on a dual core sounds very unlikely to max something with as much phisics simulation as BF4

[LokiFire]

Just now, Cactusneedle_18 said:

FPS? also, what is the cpu strain, cuz 700MHz on a dual core sounds very unlikely to max something with as much phisics simulation as BF4

It's only 1 core here is a vid i made today.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMV4Blzio6U

[Joegeddon]

4 minutes ago, LokiFire said:

Plays BF4 maxed out.

I find your lack of cores disturbing...

[LokiFire]

Just now, Joegeddon said:

I find your lack of cores disturbing...

Best hope my RPG don't hit you out of the sky pal, it gonna be a long sweaty ride in the server with me.

[Mikius10001]

Chunk chunk chunk chunk, love it

Some good shots there though

[Cactu]

1 minute ago, LokiFire said:

It's only 1 core here is a vid i made today.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMV4Blzio6U

it looks like it runs at 5 FPS

[samcool55]

And that's why i care about benchmarks run at medium-high presets and not ultra.

Ultra = the max the engine can, and most of the time providing no improved visuals compared to high and usually causing unneeded load for no visual 

I would prefer that tech guys kick ultra presets in the nuts and draw a line that they choose where they believe visual appearance is as good as it's going to get without turning it all to maximum.

 

[Joegeddon]

Just now, Cactusneedle_18 said:

it looks like it runs at 5 FPS

Watch the rest of the video.

[LokiFire]

Just now, Cactusneedle_18 said:

it looks like it runs at 5 FPS

it's laggy when recording, when not recording i get around 60-100FPS, i overclocked the Pentium 3 to 850mhz it helps with the VOODOO 3's.

[ThePile]

Nvidia isn't being nice to AMD.

 

 

[Cactu]

Just now, LokiFire said:

it's laggy when recording, when not recording i get around 60-100FPS, i overclocked the Pentium 3 to 850mhz it helps with the VOODOO 3's.

i dont beleive you, no offense

[Joegeddon]

Just now, ThePile said:

Nvidia isn't being nice to AMD.

 

 

I don't really expect them to. It's the fact that they have the power to fuck over AMD that's a bit of an issue.

[LokiFire]

Just now, Cactusneedle_18 said:

i dont beleive you, no offense

Oh wait you thought this was serious? how dare you mislead me like this sir..

[Joegeddon]

Just now, LokiFire said:

Oh wait you thought this was serious? how dare you mislead me like this sir..

[Cactu]

1 minute ago, LokiFire said:

Oh wait you thought this was serious? how dare you mislead me like this sir..

its hard to get sarcasm through text

[Joegeddon]

Just now, Cactusneedle_18 said:

its hard to get sarcasm through text

That's true.

[LokiFire]

1 minute ago, Cactusneedle_18 said:

its hard to get sarcasm through text

Well you would have to be a very special person to think a Pentium 3 can max out BF4.

 

VooDoo 3 can't even DX9 let alone 11.

[MEC-777]

When I had an R9 290, it ran PCars at a much higher FPS than indicated on that cart in the OP and with more AA. Not sure where they got those number from... My 980 also runs the game better than the chart indicates - and at 1440p. Safe to say, that chart is very inaccurate. 

[Joegeddon]

Just now, MEC-777 said:

When I had an R9 290, it ran PCars at a much higher FPS than on that cart in the OP and with more AA. not sure where they got those number from... My 980 also runs the game better than the chart indicates - and at 1440p. Safe to say, that chart is very inaccurate. 

Hmm. I thought the chart was from a reputable source, sorry about that.

[Cactu]

11 minutes ago, LokiFire said:

Well you would have to be a very special person to think a Pentium 3 can max out BF4.

 

VooDoo 3 can't even DX9 let alone 11.

 

im not very familiar with old parts so i assumed the pentium III was more like that one that linus overclocked to compete with the 4690K