AMD cancels primitive shaders driver support

[Trixanity]

So the Vega debacle continues. The implementation of primitive shaders on Vega in the driver stack has been cancelled according to comments made to the press at CES. This isn't an official announcement though.

Quote

At one of its 2018 International CES interactions with the press, AMD reportedly announced that it had cancelled the implicit driver path for primitive shaders. Game developers will still be able to implement primitive shaders on AMD hardware, using a (yet to be released) explicit API path. The implicit driver path was the more interesting technology though, since it could have provided meaningful performance gains to existing games and help cut down a lot of developer effort for games in development. AMD didn't state the reasons behind the move.

 

So what does this mean? It means something similar to multi GPU support in DX12. The implicit primitive shaders have been cancelled. That, like implicit multi GPU, relies on driver support putting the burden on AMD to make sure it works.

 

Likewise explicit support means that the developer needs to do the work to implement it. This means AMD will (at a later date) provide an API for developers to play around with but ultimately they're on their own and need to spend time doing the work. 

 

This could mean very limited developer support. Far Cry 5 supposedly uses explicit primitive shaders. But that's only one title. AMD needs much bigger market penetration to benefit from this.

Primitive shaders could become a unicorn or in other words: dead in the water.

 

Source

[ItsMitch]

1 minute ago, Trixanity said:

This could mean very limited developer support. Far Cry 5 supposedly uses explicit primitive shaders. But that's only one title. AMD needs much bigger market penetration to benefit from this.

 

so this is kind of like the bullshit nvidia pulled with Tessellation and them raping amd cards source: 

 

[Trixanity]

9 minutes ago, SC2Mitch said:

so this is kind of like the bullshit nvidia pulled with Tessellation and them raping amd cards source: 

 

Well, this technology should help counteract excessive tessellation so I'm not sure what you mean.

 

I don't think Far Cry 5 will harm Nvidia cards. Especially since not all AMD cards support primitive shaders to begin with. Anyway they might use two separate code paths or maybe some modular approach where explicit primitive shaders can easily be implemented. I don't know anything about how it's done or how the API looks nor do I know enough in general to comment on how much this affects game development.

[Dabombinable]

38 minutes ago, SC2Mitch said:

so this is kind of like the bullshit nvidia pulled with Tessellation and them raping amd cards source: 

 

Both this and tessellation are good for gamers and gaming as it keeps both AMD and Nvidia improving on their products through the miracle of competition:

[M300843499]

I own a Radeon 4890 what is this.

[Energycore]

5 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

Both this and tessellation are good for gamers and gaming as it keeps both AMD and Nvidia improving on their products through the miracle of competition:

The problem wasn't the existence of Tessellation. It was that Nvidia cranked Tessellation levels to a point where there wasn't any visual improvement but there sure as hell was a lot more compute work needed (that Nvidia cards happened to do more easily). It doesn't show on Heaven, but it does show  in The Witcher 3 and other titles I can't recall right now.

[Dabombinable]

14 minutes ago, Energycore said:

The problem wasn't the existence of Tessellation. It was that Nvidia cranked Tessellation levels to a point where there wasn't any visual improvement but there sure as hell was a lot more compute work needed (that Nvidia cards happened to do more easily). It doesn't show on Heaven, but it does show  in The Witcher 3 and other titles I can't recall right now.

Which is why AMD has had an "AMD optimised" tessellation setting for years-with their cards while improving a bit each generation at the same time (at least up to and including Tonga-Fiji was derived off it) . And Nvidia isn't the one developing games....its up to developers as to how far they push the games setting. Most games have barely any difference between the high and ultra settings-yet people don't complain that "the texture/shader uality is too high"

[cj09beira]

43 minutes ago, Energycore said:

The problem wasn't the existence of Tessellation. It was that Nvidia cranked Tessellation levels to a point where there wasn't any visual improvement but there sure as hell was a lot more compute work needed (that Nvidia cards happened to do more easily). It doesn't show on Heaven, but it does show  in The Witcher 3 and other titles I can't recall right now.

heaven is an example of bad implementation of tessellation, they use it even to make staircases, like WtF

 

[Energycore]

17 minutes ago, cj09beira said:

heaven is an example of bad implementation of tessellation, they use it even to make staircases, like WtF

 

It's more of a proof of concept than a game, that's why

[cj09beira]

1 minute ago, Energycore said:

It's more of a proof of concept than a game, that's why

its a benchmark, in which tesselation is over used leading to nvidea having an advantage that they dont have under normal scenarios

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 hour ago, M300843499 said:

I own a Radeon 4890 what is this.

Haha I own a Radeon HD 4850.

[Dabombinable]

3 minutes ago, cj09beira said:

its a benchmark, in which tesselation is over used leading to nvidea having an advantage that they dont have under normal scenarios

Like async can lead to AMD having an advantage that they don't have under normal circumstances.....

[Energycore]

6 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Haha I own a Radeon HD 4850.

Are we trying to see who owns the weakest GPU? Because I own a working PCIe Nvidia 6200 Turbocache which doesn't have VRAM and stuttered while playing 720p video

[silberdrachi]

Ignoring the talk about stupid benchmarks, i dont blame AMD for canceling an extra "feature" for something like this. This is the exact same situation with the dwindling SLI/Crossfire support, it costs too much money to upkeep these very fragile systems to work in every game and every configuration under the sun. It is much easier for them (and some what by extension the consumer) for the game developer to handle this. This does add excess load on the developer, but seeing as these features are normally "nice to haves" no developer is going to put in more effort than they think is needed to support it.

 

Id personally love for both companies to stop using black boxed techniques and proprietary tech, and this is one way that it will happen. When the cost of implementing it on the driver side outweighs the benefits the company gets from people using it.

 

Next lets cross our fingers that nVidia gets off their high horse and decides to support both adaptive/freesync on top of their overpriced as hell G-Sync stuff.

[Crunchy Dragon]

2 minutes ago, Energycore said:

Are we trying to see who owns the weakest GPU? Because I own a working PCIe Nvidia 6200 Turbocache which doesn't have VRAM and stuttered while playing 720p video

I've got a 6200 but is on 8x AGP.

[Energycore]

Just now, Crunchy Dragon said:

I've got a 6200 but is on 8x AGP.

See? We have so much in common!

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, Energycore said:

See? We have so much in common!

Also got a GTS 250.

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

I've got a 6200 but is on 8x AGP.

https://www.ebay.com/i/282738022095?rt=nc

can we go deeper?

[Zodiark1593]

17 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Also got a GTS 250.

 

I've an ATI Rage IIC kicking around somewhere. It is PCI, so it should actually work in my system..

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, RorzNZ said:

https://www.ebay.com/i/282738022095?rt=nc

can we go deeper?

We're talking GPUs here lol.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, Zodiark1593 said:

 

I've an ATI Rage IIC kicking around somewhere. It is PCI, so it should actually work in my system..

My GTS 250 is PCIe as well, I threw it in my system to confirm that it is working. Currently don't have anything old enough that supports AGP, might be able to get my hands on a system like that with some looking around. Luckily systems like that are basically worthless these days that I can usually get them for free.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

We're talking GPUs here lol.

I have an ISA lying around. Its older than me haha. Still works probably,

[leadeater]

3 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

I've an ATI Rage IIC kicking around somewhere. It is PCI, so it should actually work in my system..

Matrox G200 

[NumLock21]

Back then I want a new video card and was eyeing on the all new GeForce FX5200, but my buddies kept on telling me to get the GeForce Ti 4400 cause it was faster. But for me I want that new DX9 feature. So glad I went with the FX5200 cause playing GTA:VC shows pretty water effects.

[Dabombinable]

50 minutes ago, Energycore said:

Are we trying to see who owns the weakest GPU? Because I own a working PCIe Nvidia 6200 Turbocache which doesn't have VRAM and stuttered while playing 720p video

Oh it does have vRAM, just only 16-64MB of DDR it over a 64bitBUS. Now my AGP 6200A...it has 512MB DDR2 1066 over the same BUS. And since its the AGP model it really does have 512MB vRAM-and more bandwidth than the original with DDR.

 

Also, Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 Pro 4MB/Virge DX 4MB.