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Nvidia dismisses AMD's Batman accusations
Author: Tim SmalleyPublished: 3rd October 2009
The two figureheads behind Nvidia's The Way It's Meant To Be Played program have dismissed AMD's Batman accusations, saying AMD could have implemented AA if they wanted.
Ian McNaughton, a senior manager in Advanced Marketing at AMD, claimed that Nvidia blocked AMD from working on Batman: Arkham Asylum, Need For Speed: Shift and Resident Evil 5, claiming that they are "proprietary TWIMTBP titles". Ouch.
McNaughton complained that Batman: Arkham Asylum has an anti-aliasing mode on Nvidia hardware, which disappears when an ATI Radeon is recognised as the primary GPU in the system. The game also implements Nvidia's PhysX technology, too.
However, he neglected to mention that Batman: AA is based on Unreal Engine 3, which uses a deferred renderer on DirectX 9.0. Deferred renders don't support MSAA in DirectX 9.0 without a driver workaround, which is exactly what Nvidia's DevTech team helped to implement (and test). Because of the tight development schedule though, this couldn't be tested on ATI's Radeon graphics cards.
Ashu Rege, director of Nvidia's DevTech team, said that "you have no idea how tight the schedule was on Batman." He explained that there was less than a week to fix several critical bugs in the physics effects before the game went off for GfW approval because the Nvidia engineer working with developer Rock Steady on the PhysX implementation was just about to go on holiday when the bugs came to light.
Rege said "we had absolutely no time to go 'oh yeah, how can we screw ATI by the way?' Seriously, nobody ever has time to think about those kinds of things. In this situation, had we enabled something that was not tested on ATI GPUs [and broke the game as a result], there were a number of things that could have happened. The worst thing from my perspective is that the developers won't want our help in the future because we broke their game."
Tony Tamasi, senior vice president of Content and Technology at Nvidia, chimed in and said; "Even if we wished we could, we can't possibly expect to really support ATI's drivers. What if ATI changes the way its drivers apply AA and that breaks Rock Steady's game - whose fault is that?"
Tamasi later went onto say that "no game developer on the planet is going to let us do anything to a game which prevents it from running on ATI, or having a good experience. Whenever we go to do something, the first principle we apply is 'do no harm' - you never make it worse than before you went in. Ever."
"If we did that, next time, the developer is going to say 'sorry, we don't want to work with you guys' and that's the end of our existence," added Rege.
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"WELL YOU'RE AT FAULT BECAUSE WE DIDN'T GET ENOUGH TIME"
I'm really annoyed being caught up in this damn'd company politics. First physX, now AA.
AMD claims that NVIDIA actively blocked them from working with developers on the game and NVIDIA says that there just wasn't time to test on ATI hardware. That's not the same thing!
It wouldn't surprise me if a patch came out after all the reviews were done...
Not many sites go back and re-review a game again......
And then this:
"We didn't have time to implement the DX11 code due to tight release deadlines......"
I guess it's to be expected if one company or another are throwing money at software developers to get an edge, but i just wish the developer would be able to concentrate on optimising the software for the latest hardware out there, regardless of who manufactures it. Although, now we have mostly console ports it's debatable whether any new PC GPU hardware will be fully exploited in the near future.
this is the problem, ATI should stop complaining and get a developer support program setup, that way, the customer gains.
If AMD wants their cards to be supported properly by games maybe they should stop whining and start a program similar to TWIMTBP. That way they could block nVidia support and we would have a world in which you can only play half the games due to artificial limitations by the graphics card manufacturers.
Sure, nVidia wasn't unhappy about the fact that AMD hardware isn't fully supported but if AMD set up their own team properly they could possibly work together and make games enjoyable for everyone... no matter what hardware you have.
my 2 cents.
False.
UE3 does not support MSAA on DX9 HARDWARE. Does not exist any driver workaroud to do that, its tecnically impossible. What you can see with Dx9 HW is not MSAA, its just blur.
But it has to support MSAA on Dx10/10.1 and Dx11 cards, without any workaround. Its standard support. And in B:AA the MSAA with DX10/Dx10.1 hardware only works wiht nVidia cards.
nVidia is doing their part by investing and working with developers for a better gaming experience. nothing wrong with this and should not receive internet hatred for trying to improve the gaming experience.
in the end, you are not going to care which company trys to block the other. all customers should care is that the cards they've bought work with all the features, and nVidia have delivered that.
The other thing that really bothers me is how unrealisitc some of you are, well in terms of ATI should get a program like this. They do, they have developer support, it's just not paraded around like Nvidia.
That said, it does give me a bit of incentive to buy an Nvidia card.
Exactly.
And if AMD have a programme like TWIMTBP, why keep it so secret? The only game I recall seeing an ATI logo on in my whole collection is Call of Juarez.
They are supporting driver-forced MSAA. The option in game just enables the driver workaround that Nvidia implemented for all UE3 games. It was announced back at the G92 launch and it's the same capability in Batman.
I think you're getting confused. :)
PhysX is proprietary, because it only works with Nvidia hardware (I don't like the fact that the game physics are limited to one vendor... and neither do you guys!), but the work they do on TWIMTBP goes well beyond just adding PhysX (or support for AA). Quite a lot of it is fixing the game (Nvidia's developer tools are pretty popular and things like NVPerfHUD work on ATI hardware), getting the developer to implement a proper PC interface and actually adding more so that the port from the consoles is less of a port.
Developers often have a miniscule budget to spend on the PC version of their game because that's not where the money is and the publishers are all about ROI. They often have very little time in their development schedule for the consoles because of that and it's why some console ports are exactly that - they've had no TLC and some often have the console button mapping on screen (press A to start the game, etc).
AMD = Advanced Marketing Drivel.
Pretty much.
I think ATI forget why a lot of people buy powerful graphics cards...for games! The drivers and the optimisations are every bit as important as the hardware.
ATI invests money in making better hardware for the consumer instead of giving money to developers to lock out any features that might give ATI a greater edge in performance.
It's not quite as clear cut as that. Nvidia spends a lot of money with a lot of developers, but actual hard cash changes hands "very rarely" according to Tony Tamasi, who runs the group. Most of the time it is spent on developer support with engineers, developer tools, the Game Test Labs in Moscow for debugging code and much more.
AMD also spends money on content, but it's less widespread than Nvidia. Here's a couple of recent games that AMD has spent money on: Codemasters for bundling Dirt 2 (first DX11 game... I know Battleforge has DX11 content via a patch, but I'm talking about the first game to ship with DX11 in the box); Techland on co-marketing and bundling of Call of Juarez (first real DX10 game... yes, there was Lost Planet and CoH, but they were again patched or had a novel DX10 implementation).
AMD has worked with other developers, but it's not clear whether they're entering into financial agreements where money changes hands.
One thing that's worth thinking about is something an Intel exec said to me a few years ago (this isn't a direct quote, but the meaning is all there): "without great software, the hardware is nothing, no matter how great the hardware is". Nvidia's largest engineering group is its software team... there are over 1,100 driver engineers, 200 engineers working on content/developer relations (across HPC/CUDA, mobile phones, PC gaming, etc). I know Intel also employs more software engineers than hardware engineers (not including process technology) and I presume the same is true for AMD - they unfortunately don't talk a lot about it though.
Exactly, so while ATI may get a bit of a hardware edge from time to time, it's performance is hampered by dreadful drivers and games that are released without the driver optimisations needed to make them shine, whereas Nvidia and their labs work with the developers to get the hardware. You pay more for a Nvidia card, but at least you know the software is going to work well with it because the vendor has made the effort.
I wouldn't go as far as saying current ATI drivers are dreadful. Batman: AA aside we've actually seen very few problems with ATI drivers in the lab with the 4xxx series cards (except the HD 4870X2). Shoddy drivers are more of an excuse with the HD 3800 series and earlier. In fact we've actually seen more anomalies with Nvidia drivers in our benchmarks with GTX 275s outperforming GTX 285s and stuttering in games like Fallout 3 where ATI cards breeze through them.
Absolutely, we wouldn't say the 5870/5850 were the cards to buy at the moment if the drivers sucked the big one! :)
As I see it this is a way for nVidia to feed or revive the (now outdated) assumption that you need to wait for drivers and patches for games to work well on ATi hardware. TWIMTBP is a good thing in general but it loses it's value when it is used to promote nVidia hardware (which is now a generation behind) by limiting the features available on alternative hardware whether it is PhysX on the CPU or AA on the GPU.
NVIDIA: The Way it's meant to be Gimped.
Only in this way can everything be fair! Thank you ATI for stating the clear and true logic stated above. How could we think of this without you :D
It's more like nVidia really had no reason to test it on ATI. Why in the world would you do your competitor a favor by fixing stuff to work with their hardware when your job is to implement it to make sure your hardware works?
I see it as a case of butthurt because AMD can't get their sh*t together.
Like how Opera complains IE ships with Windows. Get the f*ck over yourself and do a better job at marketing your crap then FFS, don't sit there and cry like a little b*tch because you're not doing anything to improve the experience on your hardware.
AMD seem to expect things to fall into their lap.
I know folders love nvidia because it's just better.. and programs like badaboom and vreveal (I use these) are very nice to speed things up- something ati has to get on with dx11.. I'm positive nvidia could have had something out to match this card if they weren't so milky.. just be happy ati is around to keep pressure up, without them nvidia would be full of overpriced fail waiting on larribee to mature- glad ati's come out with a good one this time finally
I mean these arguments like on evga.. seen a guy just the other day buy a gtx295 on a mass forum recommendation over the 5870- he was asking about the two.. I mean that to me is strait fanboy- your buying a dx10 part that works off of sli and that somehow makes sense to these guys
and look, the 5870 caused them to turn around and attempt to make a 3 billion transistor part =] but then listening to them say it will be out end of the year- you gotta start wearing boots..
Your kidding right? I can remember problems with ATI's x1900 drivers, especially for crossfire. The performance was pathetic and I questioned if a dual card setup was right. I stuck in a couple of 8800GTX's and Nvidia have proved they can get there drivers working a damn sight better than ATI ever could.
I'm not a fan bot, I'm prepared to give either Nvidia or ATI another crack of the whip... but the way it's going I think I'll stick with Nvidia for my next purchase. PhysX isn't the show stopper it was promised to be but it would be handy to be able to support anyway!
In any case, it should be obvious this guy McNaughton has no credibility. To claim they couldn't get early enough access to RE:5 is not only a joke, but an insult to the reader's intelligence. I guess AMD is going to claim this one just popped up on their radar last minute, given its in the top 5 for console sales this year, been complete for months and already had a PC benchmark released months ago. Same for NFS: Shift, another highly anticipated title from a major publisher, EA, so really there shouldn't have been surprises there. Lastly there's Batman: AA, which has generated a lot of buzz for at least a year and of course is garnering deserved GOTY buzz.
For AMD to claim they didn't have time to work on these titles but instead spent their time and resources focusing on garbage features for garbage titles like BattleForge, Stormrise, HAWX, STALKER Pripyat under their own Get in the Game DevRel label is a slap in the face to their customers, plain and simple. They have poured money into Dirt2 for DX11 support which is a promising title, but I think its obvious Nvidia is better managing their resources with their selection of TWIMTBP titles as demonstrated by the resulting additional features and product.
FYI, this workaround simply reduces the processing load by decreasing the number of calculations used for PhysX, most noticeably collision detection. This leads to some unexpected and undesirable results....
But to better illustrate how poorly the CPU handles advanced physics calculations, you can see below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUOr4cFWY-s#t=1m10s
Looks like batman stepped in some gum....then some toilet paper....hell I guess he just figured he might as well tar and feather himself for the fun of it. Also notice the horrendous frame rates. But that's what you get with these hack job workarounds instead of proper vendor support. You can run PhysX in full fidelity by turning off GPU acceleration and run it on the CPU also, you just got unplayable 5-10 FPS framerates even with the fastest CPUs on the planet.
Also, the common fallacy that Nvidia's TWIMTBP somehow hurts all consumers is clearly false, it benefits all Nvidia's customers which by any metric is the vast majority (2:1) of Gamers and PC gaming hardware purchasers. As for the AA issue, its more of the same with UE 3.0, if you own a UE 3.0 game having to force MSAA via the driver shouldn't be anything new, especially given UE3.0 has always required compatibility flags that aren't exposed normally for both AA and SLI/CF. For Nvidia users that means relying on nHancer until a patch flags those bits in a driver update. For AMD users, that means renaming your game .exe to UT3 or Bioshock until they get around to flagging the proper bits in their (hidden) game-specific profile.
You do realize we're in 2009, right? And it's pretty close to the end as well...
AMD's [oh, yeah... in case you didn't know: They bought ATi a while ago] drivers are a lot better than in the times where you could still buy new x1xxx cards whereas nVidia seems to have gone from near-perfect driver support to pretty awful in some cases and a-bit-better-than-average in the vast majority. Resting on their laurels it seems.
Nvidia say "Go tell ya mommy and ask her how my kids are doing!"
Batman AA is a very good game and was sure to be big hit on the back of The Dark Knight movie. Don't you think it would have been in AMD's best interest to get onboard at the very beginning and help their hardware customers.
AMD are to blame here not Nvidia. AMD could have said "Here, have all this equipment and development tools and let's see if we can get it working on our hardware" but no, they sat on their hands and instead got the marketing department to plan a strategy to fill the media with more whining.
Why not put that energy into helping their customers instead of just pissing them off.
You're full of it.
I am the author of that video and you must be that retarded fanboi from HardOCP (Atech I believe is your name there).
The problem you have here, my son, is that you have challenged individuals who are your intellectual superiors. Here is why your argument doesn't hold water.
A. PhysX is written in CUDA (Which is a variant of either Fortran, C++ or C with special nVIDIA CUDA extensions).
B. The framerate is actually in the 40-50s. The video is locked to 29FPS (FRAPS video recording). So not only is the CPU handling the PhysX in that clip, it's also recording and encoding the clip into an AVI file.
So let's see how both of these two pieces of evidence relate to your argument. You claim that because CPUs can't execute special CUDA code as well as CUDA architecture based GPUs can; that GPU > CPU in terms of Physics? Correct?
You are correct to mention that the level of Physical Interactions (the precision so to speak) is lowered. But what this does show is that you can get the same effects (the way it looks) contrary to those nVIDIA comparisons.
Let's have a look here:
http://www.realworldtech.com/page.cfm?ArticleID=RWT090909050230
Do you notice something? Oh yes, a Nehalem based Core i7 is pretty much on par with a GT200 based nVIDIA GPU when it comes to horsepower. This also explains why the PhysX engine used in Ghostbusters (Infernal Engine) produces far more collisions than we see in Batman yet remains playable:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGQue3ruGVw
PhysX CUDA Libraries are coded to run like crap on CPUs and deliberately limited to show CPUs in a bad light (thus selling more nVIDIA cards). When you code a Physics engine properly (for a CPU as the Infernal Engine demonstrates) you can get damn close to GPU Physics without the hassle.
Know your place :)
I don't disagree that PhysX is poorly written for CPUs, but what I do disagree with is the fact you're using theoretical double precision throughput as a measure for efficiency when it comes to PhysX calculations. Since PhysX is supported by all Nvidia GPUs since G80, it doesn't make use of double precision FP ops since G80 doesn't support double precision.
RV770 is still a more efficient GPU when it comes to overall peak theoretical throughput in single precision ops, but the VLIW architecture makes things a little more interesting for the developer if they want to achieve maximum throughput.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GyKCM-Bpuw#t=5m25s
With Cypress we're starting to see diminishing returns and as a result, the 5870 scales much worst than expected. Nvidia on the other hand has made numerous changes to their core arch by doubling SFU and dispatch, decoupling those units from SP within an SM, and allowing concurrent kernels to be run across each SM in the GPU. And on top of all that, they doubled SP just to be safe. I guess we'll see which turns out to be a better design decision, but I'd say Nvidia's design has been clearly more efficient given its performance typically outperforms ATI in just about every GPGPU application to-date.
I mean I remember looking at my buddy and going wth is this.. we were getting full frames too
when nvidia bought them, it was pretty common knowledge physx was a gimmick- was a great idea.. but I have to agree with elmo- if coded correctly physics works fine off the cpu.. heck look at crysis
if you look at how much cpu is used gaming on the core 2's and up- throwing physics at current cpu's is perfect.. I see it as nothing but marketing to tell you the truth.. seen nothing in any physx game that I said- wow they couldn't do that with havoc.. it just sells more nvidia cards
Still, PhysX was always a gimmick.
tutorial: how activate AA on demo release 1.0 and HD4000 w/o CCC
link <--Google translation, sorry......
To an ATI user yes, to a Nvidia user it is added value/polish.
I can't really agree, if only because PhysX hasn't changed the gameplay much, so far, it's pretty cloth movements and corpses. Perhaps a window here and there and a few bricks, but there's no real gameplay change with PhysX to warrant a purchase of a second card..
Get the same 60FPS (vsync on) with it disabled or enabled, but the experience is much better with it disabled.
How odd, I had the 192 core 260 and it run smooth with Physx on.
It isn't supposed to change gameplay - there are always going to be people who bought ATI cards who can't use it. AA and AF don't change gameplay either yet we still crank them up.