a new type of shilling - game developer locks content to specific Intel i7 CPUs [updated]

[christianled59]

12 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

I know, but it will not open on a HT dual-core processor.

 

Then it's based in ignorance and nothing more.

 

It shouldn't. It's not anti-consumer either. Consumers can choose to buy or not. There's nothing compulsory going on. 

 

I also sincerely doubt you understand optimization that much. That the content was locked to hyperthreaded CPUs with minimum 33% more cache than their I5 counterparts makes me further believe you have little clue.

 

To optimize for hyperthreading especially is incredibly meticulous, and most game dev studios don't have anyone with that expertise. 5 months can be nothing if you lack the skills to achieve your goals.

 

People are gnashing teeth over nothing but their own ignorance and a lack of disclosure.

I'm not going to sit here and argue with you all day. You know as much as what went on behind the scenes as I do. What have I said that implies I have "little clue" to optimizations? (I never suggested they didn't lock the content to cpus that have more cache than other tiers) I can see how this was done for optimizations. I'm not ignorant. I'm saying it could have been done differently. (they had a closed beta after all, why not include these modes in a beta build that users opt into?)

 

Quote

 

To optimize for hyperthreading especially is incredibly meticulous, and most game dev studios don't have anyone with that expertise. 5 months can be nothing if you lack the skills to achieve your goals.

 

The assumption was they had help from Intel. So this point is irrelevant in this specific case. However, there is no way of knowing if they had any help besides financial support, so I can agree this is a possibility. 

 

I'll also agree that the community is over reacting; considering they have listened and changed their decision. However prior to that, I think the resentment was understandable at the least. 

[Mr.Meerkat]

22 hours ago, Cheddle said:

I have a Haswell 5820k and I can play them..

I thought a 5820K is technically a 5th gen CPU no? Just because it's haswell-E doesn't mean it's discriminated and treated as just plain old haswell  

[porina]

Agree or not, here's another VR dev's view on on this topic and more in general.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/5h51dd/the_hard_truth_about_virtual_reality_development/

 

[dtaflorida]

Forget PCMR. i7 MASTAR RACE! 

i3 and i5 CPU plebeians

AMD proletariate

[S w a t s o n]

That apology letter is such bullshit. "We created these modes as a reward????? for people with high end VR setups." A reward for spending more money on a product you dont even sell? Fuck off.

 

3 hours ago, patrickjp93 said:

It shouldn't. It's not anti-consumer either. Consumers can choose to buy or not. There's nothing compulsory going on. 

 

I also sincerely doubt you understand optimization that much. That the content was locked to hyperthreaded CPUs with minimum 33% more cache than their I5 counterparts makes me further believe you have little clue.

Anti-consumer does not need to be a mandatory or compulsory effect. In fact, by your logic nothing would ever be anti consumer. No one is forcing you to buy anything ever.

 

And lol, what a joke. I wonder why it was locked to 4th gen minimum, 3rd gen would play it just fine too. Hmmmmmmmmmm I wonder, why could that possibly be.

[patrickjp93]

2 hours ago, christianled59 said:

I'm not going to sit here and argue with you all day. You know as much as what went on behind the scenes as I do. What have I said that implies I have "little clue" to optimizations? (I never suggested they didn't lock the content to cpus that have more cache than other tiers) I can see how this was done for optimizations. I'm not ignorant. I'm saying it could have been done differently. (they had a closed beta after all, why not include these modes in a beta build that users opt into?)

 

The assumption was they had help from Intel. So this point is irrelevant in this specific case. However, there is no way of knowing if they had any help besides financial support, so I can agree this is a possibility. 

 

I'll also agree that the community is over reacting; considering they have listened and changed their decision. However prior to that, I think the resentment was understandable at the least. 

It really couldn't have, something an actual game optimization engineer with standards would know.

 

Of course there was actual developer support. When has Intel ever stepped into helping game studios optimize financially or otherwise. It isn't a possibility. It's a certainty.

 

I mentioned the cache and hyperthreading because it is expertise only Intel would have in this case. It's an argument of my own claim there was actual development support.

 

It's only understandable in that it wasn't disclosed up front.

[patrickjp93]

43 minutes ago, Swatson said:

That apology letter is such bullshit. "We created these modes as a reward????? for people with high end VR setups." A reward for spending more money on a product you dont even sell? Fuck off.

 

Anti-consumer does not need to be a mandatory or compulsory effect. In fact, by your logic nothing would ever be anti consumer. No one is forcing you to buy anything ever.

 

And lol, what a joke. I wonder why it was locked to 4th gen minimum, 3rd gen would play it just fine too. Hmmmmmmmmmm I wonder, why could that possibly be.

That's fair. Keeping the community average closer to the edge of tech allows dev studios to put in more effects of higher quality.

 

No, anti-consumer is always choice-limiting or compulsory without legitimate technical or cost reasons. Read up on legal definitions for once.

 

128MB of eDRAM is a huge optimization tool. The more of your program and data you can fit in cache at a time, the faster it will run, with biases toward upper levels. As for the HEDT line, 15MB is a Hell of a lot more than 8MB.

[S w a t s o n]

36 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

That's fair. Keeping the community average closer to the edge of tech allows dev studios to put in more effects of higher quality.

 

No, anti-consumer is always choice-limiting or compulsory without legitimate technical or cost reasons. Read up on legal definitions for once.

 

128MB of eDRAM is a huge optimization tool. The more of your program and data you can fit in cache at a time, the faster it will run, with biases toward upper levels. As for the HEDT line, 15MB is a Hell of a lot more than 8MB.

No, read up on english grammar and word definitions for once. Nothing is ever compulsory to be purchased, you cannot use that word to discredit an argument against anti-consumerism.

 

If you think the cache difference would make a real fps difference you're delusional, you can simply check benchmarks. 3rd gen vs 6th gen isnt going to make or break the experience. Especially since the 6770k vs the 3770k have the same cache for example. Their reasoning is bullshit and you know it.

[patrickjp93]

6 minutes ago, Swatson said:

No, read up on english grammar and word definitions for once. Nothing is ever compulsory to be purchased, you cannot use that word to discredit an argument against anti-consumerism.

 

If you think the cache difference would make a real fps difference you're delusional, you can simply check benchmarks. 3rd gen vs 6th gen isnt going to make or break the experience. Especially since the 6770k vs the 3770k have the same cache for example. Their reasoning is bullshit and you know it.

I believe they call it a necessities market for a reason, but hey, microeconomics....

 

Yes you can, I just did, and regulatory agencies do it all the time.

 

I said it can, just as cache optimization makes enormous differences in HPC software. Simply see Scott Meyers' "CPU caches and why you care" or (game developer) Mike Acton's CPPCon 2014 presentation. They can and do, but if you don't design for it from the start, building it in later on a massive scale is next to impossible.

 

No, it's not, and I know it.

[Albatross]

On 12/7/2016 at 3:40 PM, Syntaxvgm said:

they can go fuck themselves 

it's not only locked to intel customers, but intel's "best" customers

"fuck our customers that only bought an i5. You can wait 4 months, peasants"

Exactly what I was going to express.

[S w a t s o n]

11 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

I believe they call it a necessities market for a reason, but hey, microeconomics....

 

Yes you can, I just did, and regulatory agencies do it all the time.

 

I said it can, just as cache optimization makes enormous differences in HPC software. Simply see Scott Meyers' "CPU caches and why you care" or (game developer) Mike Acton's CPPCon 2014 presentation. They can and do, but if you don't design for it from the start, building it in later on a massive scale is next to impossible.

 

No, it's not, and I know it.

I actually couldnt find any references to a necessities market but again, no one is forcing you to buy your products from any one store or company. Even your necessities.

 

You cannot in good faith imply that something is not anti-consumer just because it's not "compulsory", NOTHING in our society is compulsory other than laws.

 

Edit: Oh and the fact that it's a timed exclusivity pretty much proves they were doing it just because intel paid them money. Waiting 6 months doesnt make your i5 suddenly more powerful lol

[patrickjp93]

28 minutes ago, Swatson said:

I actually couldnt find any references to a necessities market but again, no one is forcing you to buy your products from any one store or company. Even your necessities.

 

You cannot in good faith imply that something is not anti-consumer just because it's not "compulsory", NOTHING in our society is compulsory other than laws.

 

Edit: Oh and the fact that it's a timed exclusivity pretty much proves they were doing it just because intel paid them money. Waiting 6 months doesnt make your i5 suddenly more powerful lol

A necessities market is any market of products necessary for someone to sustain life, or to sustain a minimum quality of life in a given environment (food, clothing, purified water, toilet paper, etc..)

 

The price of apples is fairly constant across large vendors despite the fact they come in from multiple sources because it's a commodity. You are compelled to pay that price with no lower option because it's a necessity and the market sets the price. Sorry but someone clearly paidno attention in economics classes, and that someone is not me.

 

No it doesn't. After optimizing for hyperthreading in which the pipelining takes care of scheduling gaps between threads, to optimize for non-HT, you have to do thread and process fusion. That's an enormous amount of code refactoring.

 

Seriously, actually do some research on what C/C++ optimization actually is and looks like. You VASTLY underestimate the time involved to do it right. It's not about the I5 being more powerful. It's about squeezing every last cycle out of it in a useful way.

[S w a t s o n]

9 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

A necessities market is any market of products necessary for someone to sustain life, or to sustain a minimum quality of life in a given environment (food, clothing, purified water, toilet paper, etc..)

 

The price of apples is fairly constant across large vendors despite the fact they come in from multiple sources because it's a commodity. You are compelled to pay that price with no lower option because it's a necessity and the market sets the price. Sorry but someone clearly paidno attention in economics classes, and that someone is not me.

 

No it doesn't. After optimizing for hyperthreading in which the pipelining takes care of scheduling gaps between threads, to optimize for non-HT, you have to do thread and process fusion. That's an enormous amount of code refactoring.

 

Seriously, actually do some research on the what C/C++ optimization actually is and looks like. You VASTLY underestimate the time involved to do it right.

Actually I did pretty well in all of my business courses. See the price of apples like the price of many things is controlled by many market factors, and apples are NOT a necessity BTW. Food overall is a necessity but there's no special rule or force acting upon the apple industry just because food as a whole is a necessity. You're blatantly wrong that the price is fairly consistent too. The type of apple, where you live and what season you are currently in all affect the price of apples.

 

Are you trying to say they are using the 6 months to optimize? From what have you inferred that??? Just earlier you argued that the 5 month delay meant nothing because they might not even have the people skilled to do it. You're free associating about the inside workings of a company you dont have a connection to.

 

 

[patrickjp93]

9 minutes ago, Swatson said:

Actually I did pretty well in all of my business courses. See the price of apples like the price of many things is controlled by many market factors, and apples are NOT a necessity BTW. Food overall is a necessity but there's no special rule or force acting upon the apple industry just because food as a whole is a necessity. You're blatantly wrong that the price is fairly consistent too. The type of apple, where you live and what season you are currently in all affect the price of apples.

 

Are you trying to say they are using the 6 months to optimize? From what have you inferrred that. Just earlier you argued that the 5 month delay meant nothing because they might not even have the people skilled to it. You're free associaaating about the inside workings of a company you dont have a conneciton to.

 

 

Food is a necessity. I just used one concrete example. Someone has a problem with red herrings and conflating things not meant to be conflated. Markets are also regional, but the price is compulsory in each one for a given species of apple, and no single vendor can do a damn thing about it.

 

Again, you are conflating and now selectively quoting me. The fact Intel gave them financial and developer support gives reason for those six months. Do you think the training and development happens overnight?!

 

I don't have to have a direct connection to smell the roses, especially when it's my sphere of expertise as an HPC programmer. The answer is obvious. Did no one teach you about Occam's razor either?

[S w a t s o n]

5 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

Food is a necessity. I just used one concrete example. Someone has a problem with red herrings and conflating things not meant to be conflated. Markets are also regional, but the price is compulsory in each one for a given species of apple, and no single vendor can do a damn thing about it.

 

Again, you are conflating and now selectively quoting me. The fact Intel gave them financial and developer support gives reaso for those six months. Do you think the training and development happens overnight?!

 

I don't have to have a direct connection to smell the roses, especially when it's my sphere of expertise as an HPC programmer. The answer is obvious. Did no one teach you about Occam's razor either?

What? Intel gave them money so they must have optimized for HT first and then non-HT over the next 6 months? How far up your butt are you reaching to find this?

 

I'm not conflating anything nor am I selectively quoting you, I dont believe I quoted you at all just then. You've used the word compulsory incorrectly again, why don't you google the definition. The apple vendor can set their prices how they want, they could try to undercut people and take a loss in profts or they could charge more and sell fewer units, nothing is stopping them.

 

Additionally, I'm quite aware of occam's razor, in this case you seem to disagree which scenario fits. " The principle can be interpreted as stating Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. "  Now I'm making no assumptions here. We know intel gave them money. You however are making assumptions.

[patrickjp93]

1 minute ago, Swatson said:

What? Intel gave them money so they must have optimized for HT first and then non-HT over the next 6 months? How far up your butt are you reaching to find this?

 

I'm not conflating anything nor am I selectively quoting you, I dont believe I quoted you at all just then. Additionally, I'm quite aware of occam's razor, in this case you seem to disagree which scenario fits. " The principle can be interpreted as stating Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. "  Now I'm making no assumptions here. We know intel gave them money. You however are making assumptions.

Intel gave them money because that's what Nvidia and AMD do to get studios supporting new optimization and effects. That it required optimization for Hyperthreading to be feasible up front is not remotely surprising. It's clear game studios aren't ready for vectorization still, so it makes perfect sense to anyone with a background in game development and especially HPC programming.

 

Yes you are, provably. If you had quoted me in full you'd have also captured where I said Intel provided development support for optimization, which is obvious to anyone who isn't thick as a brick.

 

You are making seven assumptions. I'm making two.

[S w a t s o n]

1 minute ago, patrickjp93 said:

Intel gave them money because that's what Nvidia and AMD do to get studios supporting new optimization and effects. That it required optimization for Hyperthreading to be feasible up front is not remotely surprising. It's clear game studios aren't ready for vectorization still, so it makes perfect sense to anyone with a background in game development and especially HPC programming.

 

Yes you are, provably. If you had quoted me in full you'd have also captured where I said Intel provided development support for optimization, which is obvious to anyone who isn't thick as a brick.

 

You are making seven assumptions. I'm making two.

I am making 7 assumptions and you are making 2? How did you even come up with that. My hypothesis is that intel paid them to do this. That is at best one assumption (since we dont literally see a contract that intel paid them). You are making assumptions about their development cycle and timing.

[patrickjp93]

23 minutes ago, Swatson said:

I am making 7 assumptions and you are making 2? How did you even come up with that. My hypothesis is that intel paid them to do this. That is at best one assumption (since we dont literally see a contract that intel paid them). You are making assumptions about their development cycle and timing.

No, that is an explanation for having Intel give the devs money which is only formable by 7 assumptions, but more on that after I'm done explaining mine.

 

Nope, I'm assuming exactly one thing about their development: Intel helped them to optimize for new effects in the extra content. The other assumption is that they went in order of technical ease.

 

Now, these two assumptions lead to the conclusion this delay is completely benign in nature and Intel didn't necessarily compel the studio to instill it.

 

These assumptions are based on FACTS.

 

1) Optimizing a codebase of at least one million lines (engine and game) takes significant time no matter how many people you have. 6 months is short if anything.

 

2) The games industry is at minimum 5 and at worst 10 years behind the HPC world in optimization practices (citing Herb Sutter and Andrei Alexandrescu at CPPCon 2015). That leaves them in a position where they very likely need expert help. Intel gave them financial support, so it follows Intel gave development support, because it's clear there is an optimization for hyperthreading.

 

3) Optimizing for Hyperthreading lays the groundwork for recognizing where tasks and even instructions can be best interleaved to minimize idle cycles in a pipeline. It requires that recognition. Then, optimizing for non-Hyperthreading requires refactoring the code from a thread level to a task level. It requires breaking down the code, slicing and interleaving where the scheduler and out of order engine WOULD do it in the CPU to get the same optimization level out of the same overall processor sans Hyperthreading.

 

4) That extra performance gives room for new effects, higher frame rates, higher polygon counts, and more. Where game companies use up this performance budget is up to them, but they do use it.

 

As for your claim, next post.

[S w a t s o n]

9 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

No, that is an explanation for having Intel give the devs money which is only formable by 7 assumptions, but more on that after I'm done explaining mine.

 

Nope, I'm assuming exactly one thing about their development: Intel helped them to optimize for new effects in the extra content. The other assumption is that they went in order of technical ease.

 

Now, these two assumptions lead to the conclusion this delay is completely benign in nature and Intel didn't necessarily compel the studio to instill it.

 

These assumptions are based on FACTS.

 

1) Optimizing a codebase of at least one million lines (engine and game) takes significant time no matter how many people you have. 6 months is short if anything.

 

2) The games industry is at minimum 5 and at worst 10 years behind the HPC world in optimization practices (citing Herb Sutter and Andrew Alexandrescu at CPPCon 2015). That leaves them in a position where they very likely need expert help. Intel gave them financial support, so it follows Intel gave development support, because it's clear there is an optimization for hyperthreading.

 

3) Optimizing for Hyperthreading lays the groundwork for recognizing where tasks and even instructions can be best interleaved to minimize idle cycles in a pipeline. It requires that recognition. Then, optimizing for non-Hyperthreading requires refactoring the code from a thread level to a task level. It requires breaking down the code, slicing and interleaving where the scheduler and out of order engine WOULD do it in the CPU to get the same optimization level out of the same overall processor sans Hyperthreading.

 

4) That extra performance gives room for new effects, higher frame rates, higher polygon counts, and more. Where do game companies use up this performance budget is up to them, but they do use it.

 

As for your claim, next post.

1. you dont get get decide my assumptions.
2. those aren't all facts, some are your opinions. You can't state a "fact" about an entire industry vs another as a fact, that's not how that works. Facts are easily proven and observable.

[patrickjp93]

3 minutes ago, Swatson said:

1. you dont get get decide my assumptions.
2. those aren't all facts, some are your opinions. You can't state a "fact" about an entire industry vs another as a fact, that's not how that works. Facts are easily proven and obseravble.

1) No, you decide them, but I can deduce them in order of likelihood.

 

No, those are all incontrovertible facts.

 

They are proven and observed.

[S w a t s o n]

13 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

1) No, you decide them, but I can deduce them in order of likelihood.

 

No, those are all incontrovertible facts.

 

They are proven and observed.

No the first two are not proven and observable, the FACT that the words " minimum 5 and at worst 10 years " were used shows that what was stated was not a fact but an estimation. Unless it was researched and shown to be done in a scientific method that was unbiased, it's all opinion.

 

My only assumption is: Within the agreement intel reached with the dev they agreed to implement this lock. I have assumed nothing else.

[S w a t s o n]

double post

[goodtofufriday]

9 minutes ago, Swatson said:

double post

Bruh stop. Wasitn your time. This is the dude that tried to argue with me that water cant be a human right because then itd be legal to eat people for the water in their bodies. 

[patrickjp93]

10 minutes ago, Swatson said:

No the first two are not proven and observable, the FACT that the words " minimum 5 and at worst 10 years " shows that what was stated was not a fact but an estimation. Unless it was researched and shown to be done in a scientific method that was unbiased, it's all opinion.

 

My only assumption is: Within the agreement intel reached with the dev they agreed to implement this lock. I have assumed nothing else.

No, those are facts, related by experts, based on information available in their Q&A session. It was done in scientific method. You, again, assume something that frankly you can't. Seriously, impugning chief developers at both Microsoft and Facebook who do nothing but optimize code? You have oversized balls for your knowledge and abilities.

 

No, you made two more beside it and four backing assumptions to the one you listed here. You may not realize you made them, but you did, just as you claimed I didn't observe my own assumptions.

[patrickjp93]

1 minute ago, goodtofufriday said:

Bruh stop. Wasitn your time. This is the dude that tried to argue with me that water cant be a human right because then itd be legal to eat people for the water in their bodies. 

Just because it sounds absurd doesn't mean it is. To have a right to something requires that something be indivisible and unalienable. Definitions, learn them.