IHV-specific Enhancements in Games

Thanks for doing this analysis Carsten. I can't view the graphs though - do you guys use flash for those?

nvm, looks like it was just the mobile site I'm having trouble with. They show up on the regular version.

 

Obviously it's not the worst out there. The problem I see is that there's chips that are faster and on the same tech level or even higher, yet they can't use the better "Tegra optimized graphics" due nVidia, and have to instead use worse graphics which are necessary to be included for the games to work on slower devices too.

 

Ok, gotcha so far I believe. And now for the numb-minded (me): Whose fault is this exactly?

 

The way I see it, from customer point of view, nVidias.
In my view, it's ok to pay to add features you want in the game, but when you pay to add features and block them from other brands which are capable of same features, things go wrong.

 

So you're suggesting that customers will be happier if nobody gets the added features?

If you were running nVidia how exactly would you go about it? Taking into consideration, of course, the high level of software and hardware fragmentation in the Android ecosystem.

 

I could turn that question around and say would customers be happier when confronted with the choice of should I buy hardware A so I can have feature X in my games, or hardware B so I can have feature Y in my games or hardware C so I can have feature Z in my games?

 

Not necessarily, but I'm suggesting that in "open enviroment" where different manufacturers run software based on standards, the brand shouldn't decide what features you get, only what your hardware is capable of. Just like in most PC-games, excluding the few where nVidia has done the exact same thing.

 

So, an open environment would have the advantage of all being equally tied to not having the better graphics, whereas in the real world, where one company tries to establish a selling point for a specific audience, only those (indirectly) paying customers get the benefit, the manufacturer of their SoC paid for.

It's not like anybody is keeping Qualcomm, Apple & Co. from having games utilizing their flagship model's in order to provide, say, a higher rendering resolution or more particles or whatevs thanks to more horsepower and better programmability.

Under these circumstances, being evil makes perfect sense from a company point of view, I'd say. They want to sell their product.

 

That perfectly describes today's smartphone and tablet market. Product differentiation is not inherently a bad thing.

Have you seen a smartphone game with user controllable settings? How exactly will a developer target and validate the multiple generations of Qualcomm, nVidia, Samsung, Apple, TI and Intel mobile platforms out there?

You guys are complaining about nVidia but don't seem to have an alternate solution to offer.

 

IIRC at least Max Payne has adjustable graphics settings, and possibly some of the other Rockstar-released games too

 

What I meant is that strength is a relative notion: your product's strengths cannot be determined until you know what the competition can do. If you do know (because the competing products are out) then you can play to your strengths, as you put it. If you don't know, the best you can do is guess.

 

https://forums.geforce.com/default/...e-a-look-at-tomb-raider/post/3752523/#3752523

Thanks Crystal Dynamics and AMD for sabotaging Nvidia & GeForce users experience.

 

Yeah for once the situation is reversed. I think it's ridiculous that it happens at all and don't condone it but the amount of times this has happened to AMD, I can hardly feel sorry for Nvidia users.

 

I haven't used AMD hardware since the R3xx days and don't usually play new games so I'm out of the loop here. When is the last time that something like this has happened to AMD where a game was glitching out on their hardware but working fine on nVidia's?

 

Is this sarcasm?

 

Coming from trinibwoy, I bet it isn't.
It should be, though.

 

Nope. Do you have any examples?

I recall performance differences and proprietary lockout (PhysX, AA) but when has a game been so broken (rendering artifacts, constant crashes etc) on AMD hardware at launch?

Like I said I don't play new games and don't have AMD hardware so obviously don't have first hand experience with that. I don't recall hearing anything like this though.

 

NVIDIA have had TressFX builds for a number of weeks now, but for sure the app was still being worked on and we saw the final build at the same time (hence the lack of videos etc.). I saw people reporting that earlier driver builds were working fine with the app - could be that the performance optimisations they jammed in are not working great with with the final release?

 

But nv are saying the earlier build had better stability, image quality and performance.

Rage possibly bf3 or the beta (dont have it so not sure)

 

Can you explain why this final software build would cause "substantially decreased stability, image quality and performance over a build we were previously provided" on Geforce cards and only Geforce cards? That is extremely troubling to say the least. Crystal Dynamics is really at fault here for releasing a game that is potentially unstable for a significant percentage of their customer base.