AMD: R9xx Speculation

[SimBy]

You'd probably do well to avoid attributing to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Malice or stupidity, both are equally unacceptable They had 1 year to test and optimize for 5000 series yet they didn't even get the most important feature to work at all.

nV made a phone call about DX10.1 in Assassins Creed and it was removed the next day. I guess they made another phone call for HAWX 2. But I don't blame nV, I blame Ubisoft.

 

[homerdog]

Seems like at this point, the biggest threat to ATI is NVIDIA paying devs to limit features or degrade performance on Radeon hardware. I was hoping ATI's utter dominance of the DX11 market would put a stop to this behavior...

 

[Harison]

Seems like at this point, the biggest threat to ATI is NVIDIA paying devs to limit features or degrade performance on Radeon hardware. I was hoping ATI's utter dominance of the DX11 market would put a stop to this behavior...

Nvidia wont be doing this for long. They are bleeding cash and losing entire markets as we speak. As soon as NV will stop paying devs for special "treatment", devs will focus on cards which dominate the market, i.e. Radeons.

 

[Sontin]

Seems like at this point, the biggest threat to ATI is NVIDIA paying devs to limit features or degrade performance on Radeon hardware. I was hoping ATI's utter dominance of the DX11 market would put a stop to this behavior...

That's not 100% correct:
" the biggest threat to ATI is NVIDIA paying devs to force features which degrade performance on Radeon hardware"

 

[trinibwoy]

Yes. Perhaps it could even be standardized across review sites. I'd suggest Framebuffer Amount Is Limiting, or some sort ot initialization thereof.

Love it I agree with psolord's general point - it makes no sense benchmarking cards at settings that are unplayable on all the competitors. It's useful to see how a 5870 fares against a 5450 yes but when focused on a segment - say 5450 vs 210 anything over 1280*1024 low-medium settings is a waste of time.

 

[RobertR1]

Seems like at this point, the biggest threat to ATI is NVIDIA paying devs to limit features or degrade performance on Radeon hardware. I was hoping ATI's utter dominance of the DX11 market would put a stop to this behavior...

Why would the dev care? If a game has appeal, the monetary impact by the amount of people put off by such actions by a dev is minute compared to the check written.

One of these days, AMD will understand the old "if you can't beat em, join em." The poor me, PR callouts don't resolve the problems. Often, AMD ends up being late to the party and over time, people just become conditioned to buying nvidia cards because they can expect it to work well with new games. In that sense, TWIMTBP program is doing it's job and quite successfully. Much better than ATI's similar efforts in the past.

 

[Rebel44]

Why would the dev care? If a game has appeal, the monetary impact by the amount of people put off by such actions by a dev is minute compared to the check written.

One of these days, AMD will understand the old "if you can't beat em, join em." The poor me, PR callouts don't resolve the problems. Often, AMD ends up being late to the party and over time, people just become conditioned to buying nvidia cards because they can expect it to work well with new games. In that sense, TWIMTBP program is doing it's job and quite successfully. Much better than ATI's similar efforts in the past.

Well, for example PC version of Ubisoft games shouldnt expect good sales anytime soon (thanks to their stupid DRM), so they are likely to take such offer.

 

[Zaphod]

Love it I agree with psolord's general point - it makes no sense benchmarking cards at settings that are unplayable on all the competitors.

I agree too. Kind of. - It's a balancing act. Conveying that one card can usably do something some other card can't is relevant information, but it should be conveyed in such a fashion that it won't be used as an invalid point of extrapolation for unwarranted comparisons.

 

[Dave Baumann]

If framerates are playable at a certain resolution due to different framebuffer sizes to a competing product in the same segement then it would be insane not to highlight that - its a significant selling point of the product.

 

[Zaphod]

I'm sure you feel that way about those particular 15 seconds of Unigine Heaven or the Stone Giant benchmark at extreme tesselation settings too, right? There's often a fine line between informative and misleading in those kind of situations.

 

[neliz]

I'm sure you feel that way about those particular 15 seconds of Unigine Heaven or the Stone Giant benchmark at extreme tesselation settings too, right? There's often a fine line between informative and misleading in those kind of situations.

what have benchmarks to do with "Playable framerates"?

No one sees "Does benchmark X really well!" as a selling point, right?

 

[digitalwanderer]

That's not 100% correct:
" the biggest threat to ATI is NVIDIA paying devs to force features which degrade performance on Radeon hardware"

Which they have a history.................................of doing.

 

[compres]

Well proof are sales. Compare the numbers to console games, its not even a contest. And its getting worse every year.

Game devs screwing and alienating half of its buyers with their shenenigans does not help.

And we were just discussing about the millions of DX11 GPUs versus the millions of XBOX360 sold. Those are sales.

 

[Richthofen]

Which they have a history.................................of doing.

And which is absolutely fine and understandable. They have a business to run and me and a lot of others are pretty much tiried about AMD' PR people always whining about Nvidia's strategies regading developers. Stop crying and get your ass up AMD and invest in the software base around your products.
I as a consumer just want my product run as good as possible and i have to say that on Nvidia's side i am a lot more secure in that case.

 

[Zaphod]

what have benchmarks to do with "Playable framerates"?

No one sees "Does benchmark X really well!" as a selling point, right?

I agree. It's a fair cop. Although, some company is fairly enamored with galaxy simulators these days. It goes both ways.

 

[Florin]

what have benchmarks to do with "Playable framerates"?

No one sees "Does benchmark X really well!" as a selling point, right?

Kinda curious why 3DMark is in those AMD confidential slides. Or why Sapphire and MSI sponsor 3DMark, for that matter.

 

[AlphaWolf]

And which is absolutely fine and understandable. They have a business to run and me and a lot of others are pretty much tiried about AMD' PR people always whining about Nvidia's strategies regading developers. Stop crying and get your ass up AMD and invest in the software base around your products.

That sounds great but...

I as a consumer just want my product run as good as possible and i have to say that on Nvidia's side i am a lot more secure in that case.

This is damaged by the above. If Nvidia managed to convince half of the developers to code for their products and AMD manages to convince the other half to them to code for AMD. You as a consumer are not a net winner. You are the one being most damaged by these type of tactics.

 

[Sontin]

Which they have a history.................................of doing.

Thx god, their is one company who wants Tessellation in games before 2012.

 

[fbuffer]

And which is absolutely fine and understandable. They have a business to run and me and a lot of others are pretty much tiried about AMD' PR people always whining about Nvidia's strategies regading developers. Stop crying and get your ass up AMD and invest in the software base around your products.
I as a consumer just want my product run as good as possible and i have to say that on Nvidia's side i am a lot more secure in that case.

and yet you and these other same people would b!tch up a storm like no other if AMD and Intel both used their respective positions to harm nVidia's product path.. IF say Intel and AMD both released BIOS/UEFI updates that forced graphics PEG slots to 1x IF an non-AMD/Intel GPU was present. I mean after all it was Intel and AMD that both invested in their respective CPU architectures and chipsets and all the while nV is piggy backing on Intel/AMDs already hard work ?! Pot/Kettle ?

 

[neliz]

Kinda curious why 3DMark is in those AMD confidential slides.

Oh yeah, I forgot they mentioned the framerates for 3DMark

Or why Sapphire and MSI sponsor 3DMark, for that matter.

I always liked having the latest 3DMark with my new Sapphire cards, I would install it.. and run it occasionally to check for OC effects or something like that.. but I surely don't have 100+ hours logged in playing 3dmark.

Don't you hate it when AIB's bundle a game that you absolutely don't like with their graphics card? I got Tomb Raider:AoD with a card once..

shudders...

oh.. what was your point again?