Is it a coincidence that now AMD cards are having a problem with Batman Arkham Knight

[Deleted]

Are we forgetting the mess that was TressFX?

Because that ran shit on the 6xx serie from Nvidia?? Which had more to do with the shitty compute performance of those cards then anything else....

[Deleted]

Some people see conspiracies, while most people see coincidences.

AMD is blatantly lying about having problems with GameWorks because they fixed Witcher3 in two weeks. It proves there's nothing wrong with the game, problem is AMD is slacking with driver support of AAA titles. Nvidia has new "Game Ready" driver up for every major AAA release because they care. Yes, sometimes those cause problems, but at least they're doing fast updates.

...and yet almost all games reliant on Gameworks have had issues on all cards. Funny, that.

For a slightly different point, most of those games weren't optimised for technolgoy older than 12 months, which is problematic in its own right.

That analogy doesn't quite work because the GameWorks titles are proven to be better for Nvidia card owner. What you're asking for is marxism where everybody is beaten down to lowest common denominator to be equal with everybody else. I'd rather have capitalism where innovation and marketing is allowed and benefits the consumers.

...So, once again, Gameworks isn't an innovation. It's a step back. Stop calling it an innovation, please, because doing so is dishonest.

[Remilia]

Some people see conspiracies, while most people see coincidences.

To an extent, the only game that I know that has a gameworks feature that didn't implode on itself is FFXIV and that's only HBAO+. Yes with it on it does run a bit worse on AMD.
If something happens over and over and over and over with the same person involved, it's a tad hard to see it as coincidence. Maybe if every developer in the world is incompetent then.

AMD is blatantly lying about having problems with GameWorks because they fixed Witcher3 in two weeks. It proves there's nothing wrong with the game, problem is AMD is slacking with driver support of AAA titles. Nvidia has new "Game Ready" driver up for every major AAA release because they care. Yes, sometimes those cause problems, but at least they're doing fast updates.

Ehh... considering that the Batman Arkham Game Ready driver with SLI profile didn't have an SLI profile and you had to update it through GFE to get it... and SLI runs worse than a single card on an nvidia sponsored game is a tad... silly. You can blame the port team for the overall performance but SLI is something that nvidia handles, even in their driver update note says SLI has issues.

AMD and Nvidia aren't great at drivers at all. Having constant updates is one thing, having good constant updates is another. Having a lot of iterations of the same thing can and will break things that was placed before.

[fixx]

...and yet almost all games reliant on Gameworks have had issues on all cards. Funny, that.

If something happens over and over and over and over with the same person involved, it's a tad hard to see it as coincidence. Maybe if every developer in the world is incompetent then.

It's always the super-buggy shitty console ports that gets into the news and then AMD runs to blame GameWorks. Once the bugs are cleared and drivers optimized from both sides there's nothing wrong with those titles. With GameWorks enabled or disabled. It's funny how nobody whines about GameWorks on titles that werent released as alpha quality garbage. Quality of PC games is simply crap because devs get away with it with preorders and early accesses. People need to stop supporting crap and then we maybe will get slightly better working releases.

...So, once again, Gameworks isn't an innovation. It's a step back. Stop calling it an innovation, please, because doing so is dishonest.

Marketing, not innovation. What you quoted from me shouldn't have been hard to misinterpret unless you did it on purpose (speaking of dishonest) because I already called it marketing few posts ago.

To an extent, the only game that I know that has a gameworks feature that didn't implode on itself is FFXIV and that's only HBAO+. Yes with it on it does run a bit worse on AMD.

Blizzard also added HBAO+ in WoW for 6.1.

AMD and Nvidia aren't great at drivers at all. Having constant updates is one thing, having good constant updates is another. Having a lot of iterations of the same thing can and will break things that was placed before.

At least one of those companies is trying which is whole lot more in my books than the excuses from the other company. AMD has always focused more on hardware than software, ever since they were called ATI. Those who have been PC gamers since last millenia know already what to expect from the red team. Nice value for money but shitty support if something breaks.

[Deleted]

Marketing, not innovation. What you quoted from me shouldn't have been hard to misinterpret unless you did it on purpose (speaking of dishonest) because I already called it marketing few posts ago.

That's true - you did call it promotion. I apolgise for that.

MY concern is still that Gameworks is problematic as it ties devlopers to a single hardware vendor. However, the first patch for the game on PC has been released, and it doesn't fix much. Source for this.

Basically, SLI and Crossfire still don't work, and the optimizations there are are nowhere near complete. It's not quite shoddy work, but this should not have happened in the first place, and I think that's where you and I agree.

[fixx]

Basically, SLI and Crossfire still don't work, and the optimizations there are are nowhere near complete. It's not quite shoddy work, but this should not have happened in the first place, and I think that's where you and I agree.

Yep, quality of PC games, especially ports has gone down in last few years. It used to be only Bethesda releasing beta-quality products but now it's everybody with few positive exceptions

[mrgreenthump]

Yep, quality of PC games, especially ports has gone down in last few years. It used to be only Bethesda releasing beta-quality products but now it's everybody with few positive exceptions

Tbh, it was better for the past 2 years before the bad AAA ports started coming.. Remembering back to Xbox 360 and PS3 times they were far far worse. Sometimes you couldn't even play the game(granted you can't place Arkham Knight, but this happened 3-4 times a year back then till they got patched or we modded them ourselves).

And what comes to Bethesda, their Console games are plagued with the same bugs, so their ports are A+ quality tbh. But you won't see Bethesda ports anymore on PC, as since Skyrim, they develop things on PC first and then port to consoles(or they said they would).

[Rennadrel]

Tbh, it was better for the past 2 years before the bad AAA ports started coming.. Remembering back to Xbox 360 and PS3 times they were far far worse. Sometimes you couldn't even play the game(granted you can't place Arkham Knight, but this happened 3-4 times a year back then till they got patched or we modded them ourselves).

And what comes to Bethesda, their Console games are plagued with the same bugs, so their ports are A+ quality tbh. But you won't see Bethesda ports anymore on PC, as since Skyrim, they develop things on PC first and then port to consoles(or they said they would).

Considering there were massive game breaking bugs with Fallout 3 on the PC depending on your hardware and version of Windows, it is hard not to be worried about that happening again.

[mrgreenthump]

Considering there were massive game breaking bugs with Fallout 3 on the PC depending on your hardware and version of Windows, it is hard not to be worried about that happening again.

Sure, but as far as I know they should be doing it differently this time around. Sort of like Skyrim, and while Skyrim did have some bugs, they were mostly funny and not gamebreaking like crashing when lockpicking fails, that happened in Fallout 3.

Maybe the biggest nod to how good Bethesda games are.. is that we still play them and love them, even when they are buggy messes.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Sure, but as far as I know they should be doing it differently this time around. Sort of like Skyrim, and while Skyrim did have some bugs, they were mostly funny and not gamebreaking like crashing when lockpicking fails, that happened in Fallout 3.

Maybe the biggest nod to how good Bethesda games are.. is that we still play them and love them, even when they are buggy messes.

I played Skyrim on launch and it was crashing without warning every ~5 minutes, I had to spawn in quest items or .kill NPCs via the terminal because they wouldn't spawn/die, not to mention graphical glitches. I've used early alpha software that was more stable than Skyrim at launch.

[mrgreenthump]

I played Skyrim on launch and it was crashing without warning every ~5 minutes, I had to spawn in quest items or .kill NPCs via the terminal because they wouldn't spawn/die, not to mention graphical glitches. I've used early alpha software that was more stable than Skyrim at launch.

Oh well, guess I missed all of that, cause I had no problems at all. Not a single one and I was there day 1.

[yurano]

Because that ran shit on the 6xx serie from Nvidia?? Which had more to do with the shitty compute performance of those cards then anything else....

Are we also forgetting how Nvidia didn't have access to Tomb Raider prior to release, due to an agreement between Square Enix and AMD?

Are we also forgetting how Nvidia performance was perfectly fine after a driver update?

Clearly, Nvidia is the only company to blame, never AMD.

[Vash The Stampede]

Are we also forgetting how Nvidia didn't have access to Tomb Raider prior to release, due to an agreement between Square Enix and AMD?

Are we also forgetting how Nvidia performance was perfectly fine after a driver update?

Clearly, Nvidia is the only company to blame, never AMD.

That's why I said that AMD and Nvidia shouldn't be involved in "enhancing" games. But Nvidia is expanding Gameworks instead of killing it.

[fixx]

That's why I said that AMD and Nvidia shouldn't be involved in "enhancing" games. But Nvidia is expanding Gameworks instead of killing it.

Again there's nothing wrong with promotion. It's the game devs that need to stop producing shit.

[Rennadrel]

Sure, but as far as I know they should be doing it differently this time around. Sort of like Skyrim, and while Skyrim did have some bugs, they were mostly funny and not gamebreaking like crashing when lockpicking fails, that happened in Fallout 3.

Maybe the biggest nod to how good Bethesda games are.. is that we still play them and love them, even when they are buggy messes.

If they at least attempted to support and fix some of their bugs though, I would be a much more satisfied customer. I had a bug where I could ride up the side of the mountain to High Hrothgar on a horse and as soon as I got to a certain elevation, my horse fell off the mountain and me along with it, losing about 2 hours of game time because of it, not to mention I hadn't saved since I left the last village.

- - - Updated - - -

Again there's nothing wrong with promotion. It's the game devs that need to stop producing shit.

A finger needs to be pointed at Nvidia though because they intentionally designed Gameworks to run like ass cancer on AMD cards, whereas AMD has designed Mantle and TressFX to both be compatible with Nvidia cards. Sure, blame AMD for not supporting developers enough but it isn't their problem if those same developers opt to make Gameworks mandatory for certain features and not even bother to put in TressFX and Mantle support as well. I see a lot of people trying to blame AMD for those issues when that is on the developers and Nvidia both.

[fixx]

whereas AMD has designed Mantle and TressFX to both be compatible with Nvidia cards.

Sources for Mantle and TressFX was released year after the software itself and those were proprietary closed stuff for a very long time and neither is still Nvidia optimized.

developers opt to make Gameworks mandatory for certain features

But it's not mandatory. It can be turned off.

not even bother to put in TressFX and Mantle support as well

One game (IIRC) used TressFX, Tomb Raider. There's very little point for it now with hairworks having more features. Mantle is too little too late. On average games benefited from it less than 10% in FPS (including BF4) so why bother when the devs and both GPU makers knew probably few years ago already (under NDAs) that DX12 is coming).

AMD is trying really hard to make their own stuff to compete with GameWorks, but the sad truth is AMD is rather awful in software development. Hopefully they'll manage to pull their shit together someday.

[Remilia]

It's always the super-buggy shitty console ports that gets into the news and then AMD runs to blame GameWorks. Once the bugs are cleared and drivers optimized from both sides there's nothing wrong with those titles. With GameWorks enabled or disabled. It's funny how nobody whines about GameWorks on titles that werent released as alpha quality garbage. Quality of PC games is simply crap because devs get away with it with preorders and early accesses. People need to stop supporting crap and then we maybe will get slightly better working releases.

Won't disagree on the preorder stuff, but it's a fact it runs worse on AMD... it's a blind man's stab for optimization.
You'd think a game sponsored/supported by nvidia would run well, except every single gameworks game hasn't. Is the port team part to blame? Sure, but the one also helping them put the feature aren't to blame? Okay...
I like the nickname some people gave it "Gamebarelyworks".

Blizzard also added HBAO+ in WoW for 6.1.

Which explains why it runs better for Nvidia, haven't payed attention to WoW in ages. Tech Power Up actually HAD to make a bar separating some of the GameWorks game which showed a few percent difference in the overall performance summary.

At least one of those companies is trying which is whole lot more in my books than the excuses from the other company. AMD has always focused more on hardware than software, ever since they were called ATI. Those who have been PC gamers since last millenia know already what to expect from the red team. Nice value for money but shitty support if something breaks.

Their trying is also pissing off Kepler owners. None of them are great, both of em are updating their drivers accordingly. The main thing that AMD needs in terms of drivers is more consistent CrossFire profiles. CrossFire works better than SLI at the moment which they should really emphasize on it.

Sources for Mantle and TressFX was released year after the software itself and those were proprietary closed stuff for a very long time and neither is still Nvidia optimized.

Not sure how Mantle can or can't be optimized when Nvidia never implemented it.
Last I remember AMD went out of their way to help Nvidia optimize TressFX.

But it's not mandatory. It can be turned off.

Or unless you're Project Car.

One game (IIRC) used TressFX, Tomb Raider. There's very little point for it now with hairworks having more features.

64x tesselation and 8x MSAA on the hair is... more features? The PhysX based hair in Alice Madness Return is better than both TressFX and Hairworks quite honestly.

Mantle is too little too late. On average games benefited from it less than 10% in FPS (including BF4) so why bother when the devs and both GPU makers knew probably few years ago already (under NDAs) that DX12 is coming).

I guess that's why DX12 and Vulkan has some Mantle in them, because they were developed before Mantle. /nod.
Their response when Mantle was going to be no longer used was literally "Job done".

DX12 just gives more control, it is not bare metal API. Bare metal graphics programming fortunately died in the 90's when DirectX forced all GPU makers to adhere to certain rules for Windows compatibility.

It's more or less impossible with all different hardwares to have to the metal programming.

Feels like I have to mention this, but TressFX > AMD's fault. Nvida GameWork > AMD's fault.

[Gorgodeus]

Which explains why it runs better for Nvidia, haven't payed attention to WoW in ages.

It is merely one of the many options to use, and can be turned on or off.

[fixx]

Which explains why it runs better for Nvidia, haven't payed attention to WoW in ages.

HBAO+ is an "ultra" level setting for the game and was off by default when it was introduced. AMD cards have always had more problems with Blizzard games, mostly driver issues with missing textures.

Tech Power Up actually HAD to make a bar separating some of the GameWorks game which showed a few percent difference in the overall performance summary.

"Some" means it's up to the devs to make sure that doesn't happen.

CrossFire works better than SLI at the moment which they should really emphasize on it.

Multi GPU support has almost always been better on AMD cards, but emphasizing it is kinda pointless when it's so rare to have more than one card per PC.

Not sure how Mantle can or can't be optimized when Nvidia never implemented it.

No idea of the real timeline, but something like this probably happened:
- AMD releases mantle info
- Nvidia & Intel asks Microsoft "What are you going to do about it?"
- Few days later and after signing NDA Microsoft replies "We've been working on DX12 to have the same features as our DX11.X has for the Xbox that does pretty much the same"
- Nvidia "Oh... Ok... We can ignore that Mantle thing then and focus on our own stuff"

The PhysX based hair in Alice Madness Return is better than both TressFX and Hairworks quite honestly.

Have they released an SDK for it? How come you're not complaining that PhysX is Nvidia thing?

[Remilia]

"Some" means it's up to the devs to make sure that doesn't happen.

The fact that it happens to have one game favor one hardware is already plainly bad.
I don't know why a lot of hardware reviewers are using hardware biased games like Project Cars as a benchmark quite honestly.
Not everything is always blame the devs, sure there are some, but not everything... Everyone that's participating in it takes a piece of the blame pie.

Multi GPU support has almost always been better on AMD cards, but emphasizing it is kinda pointless when it's so rare to have more than one card per PC.

Doesn't mean they shouldn't. It helps improve the overall image that they need.

No idea of the real timeline, but something like this probably happened:
- AMD releases mantle info
- Nvidia & Intel asks Microsoft "What are you going to do about it?"
- Few days later and after signing NDA Microsoft replies "We've been working on DX12 to have the same features as our DX11.X has for the Xbox that does pretty much the same"
- Nvidia "Oh... Ok... We can ignore that Mantle thing then and focus on our own stuff"

That's some very nice random thing you pulled out of no where.

Have they released an SDK for it? How come you're not complaining that PhysX is Nvidia thing?

NVidia released the source for PhysX recently which is why I'm less bitter about PhysX.