No matter how much research I do, I always end up asking myself 'Why doesn't Nvidia play
nice?'.
It would really help the gaming community as a whole.
Their PhysX physics technology is an example of one step forward, two steps back.
It was originally made from a company called Ageia and they sold their own PHYSICS cards
if you wanted to run the technology.
That's right- you'd need an extra card as well as your graphics card, dedicated simply
to physics.
If you're anything like me, you were intrigued by the idea of having cool physics in games,
but not so much that you'd buy a card just for it- it would be a slippery slope.
Imagine a future where you'd need dozens of separate components for each graphical effect!
Fortunately, in 2008 Nvidia bought them and magically, their own graphics cards suddenly
became capable of the physics, even if they had been released years before.
Brilliant!
Does this mean that games will soon implement these features in meaningful ways?
No, because AMD wasn't allowed to use the technology.
Because of this, Physx could never become a requirement for games since half the audience
wouldn't be able to run it.
Nvidia kept the technology to themselves and everybody suffered as a result.
Nvidia has a number of technologies and approaches like PhysX which sound good in practice, but
because Nvidia keeps them to themselves, they'll never become more than just gimmicks.
It's a shame, because AMD cards are capable of running these technologies, but simply
aren't allowed.
Next up is TESSELLATION, which is a technique used to smooth out pointy corners.
Interestingly, AMD was first to experiment with it back in 2001 and called it Truform.
It was shown in a couple of games like Deus Ex and Counter-Strike, though tessellation
wasn't ever widely adopted until DX11.
Ironically, Nvidia's cards are now better at it than AMD and the problem gets worse
the more it is used.
And it's important that this is mentioned since I believe it's the core of a lot of
problems, both intentional and accidental.
Let's go through a few examples.
Crysis 2's dx11 upgrade was widely encouraged and developed with support from Nvidia.
And yes, it made heavy use of tessellation.
However, it wasn't always used in the right places.
Take this concrete slab, which gained THOUSANDS of extra polygons , most of which didn't do
anything other than severely reducing framerates!
This wasn't good news for either company, but it hit AMD particularly hard since, as
I said earlier, their cards didn't handle tessellation quite as well.
This really isn't fair because in normal situations, AMD and Nvidia would remain competitive with
each other.
It's only because this one technology was used in such excess that AMD's cards suffered,
which makes me wonder if it was done deliberately to make AMD's cards look bad, or if developers
simply didn't notice because the patch was mostly tested on Nvidia's cards and they wouldn't
have struggled quite as much.
This isn't just a one-off, either.
Nvidia collaborated with the Fallout 4 developers and surprise, surprise, the God ray option
on ultra slowed down AMD cards a lot more once again due to heavy use of tessellation.
Users can easily lower the settings and get a similar graphical quality so in practice
it doesn't matter too much, but since most benchmarks run on ultra settings, AMD's cards
look bad in most comparisons done online.
And one more example: The Witcher 3 uses Nvidia's Hairworks, which makes hair look super wavy
and sexy... but relies heavily on tessellation so AMD cards struggle!
The route of all of these problems is Gameworks, which is a service that Nvidia provides for
developers.
They work with developers on their games before they're released to ensure that their games
run well and look good on Nvidia products.
The only problem with this is that they might suggest methods and technologies which favour
Nvidia graphics cards, making the games run significantly worse on AMD cards.
This apparently happened with the Witcher 3, where just months before the game was released,
Nvidia's hairworks was suddenly introduced and destroyed AMD's performance in the game,
despite them having worked with the developers since the beginning.
Don't get me wrong, I feel sorry for AMD if what they say is true and Nvidia intentionally
did this to ruin their performance.
And I can't even begin to imagine the work that is required to optimise a game for particular
hardware.
But you'd think that AMD, a company that's had previous BRUSHES with hairworks, would
have been prepared for its use in the Witcher and would have had a response ready either
in the form of their own hair technology or just some way of lessening the performance
impact it would have had.
I mean, AMD users can manually lower tessellation amounts in AMD's control panel to fix this
problem, but why can't AMD have that happen automatically in these sorts of situations?
To give Nvidia credit where it's due, they are often the ones to come up with technologies
first.
But AMD's solutions, although often a bit later, tend to be open-source which is much
better for the gaming community as a whole since everybody can use them.
In response to Nvidia's PhysX, for example, AMD have collaborated with companies such
as Havok and Bullet to provide open-source physics for games.
And instead of Hairworks, AMD has Tressfx.
And this is where it's not fair!
I said previously how much trouble AMD had with hairworks in the Witcher 3.
Tomb Raider, in comparison, uses AMD's Tressfx instead.
Upon release, Nvidia's cards didn't do well with it but a quick patch later, they ran
just as well as AMD's could.
This is in stark contrast with the Witcher 3, where AMD can't make a fix so easily.
In short, Nvidia doesn't lose out if a game uses AMD's solutions.
But AMD loses out if they use Nvidia's.
And this is just because, despite Nvidia keeping their own technology to themselves, AMD still
shares theirs with everybody.
And just a week ago they went one step further again by announcing GPUOPEN, an open-source
alternative to Gameworks which combines all of AMD's technologies into one big thing.
This is BIG BIG BIG news and could ultimately pave the way for a nicer, fairer future that
would benefit everybody apart from Nvidia, who would have to give up the advantage that
Gameworks currently gives them.
In the past they've refused to accept AMD's offers for collaboration, both with Mantle
and with AMD's requests to make Gameworks open-source.
This new standard will require the support of game and software developers, and maybe
even a helping hand from AMD's other rival: Intel.
It's still early days but I hope it succeeds.
Nvidia's closed-door approach extends to technologies like 3D Vision- which provides 3D- and Gsync,
which allows for smoother looking motion even at low frame-rates.
AMD's competing products take the shape of HD3D and Freesync.
Surprise, surprise, unlike Nvidia's, these are open-source for anybody to use.
Unfortunately I personally found AMD's 3D solution inferior to Nvidia's on an individual
game level, but their freesync is a lot better than gsync.
The Nvidia option requires monitors to have their own custom chips, which adds a large
price premium to the product.
AMD's, on the other hand, is free since it's included in the current standard!
And right now there aren't any monitors that can support both technologies.
At least, unlike Gameworks features, these hardware technologies don't directly throw
a spanner in the works for AMD.
But I feel -and somewhat hope- that Nvidia's greedy approach could backfire on them here,
since users choosing the Nvidia route will have to pay extra for the privilege, while
AMD users can instead get a freesync monitor and save some money, which could go towards
getting a more expensive, superior graphics card instead!
And yet Nvidia's cards have one beautiful, incredible technology that AMD is yet to match.
And that's screen-capture support.
Nvidia's Shadowplay is awesome.
I can't fault it.
It's a hassle-free, near flawless tool to record anything on my screen, with very little
performance hit.
And I really hope that before I have to upgrade that AMD can offer a viable alternative, since
this is the one thing that- as a Youtuber- greatly makes my life easier and will certainly
be a deciding factor when I choose to upgrade.
I mean, yeah, you could suggest GVR and OBS instead, but from my testing they can't hold
a candle to Shadowplay for efficiency and support.
So there you go.
In short: Nvidia, please, cooperate with the rest of the gaming community!
With every technology I've looked at, AMD offers a fairer, open-source alternative.
It seems that Nvidia goes out of their way to avoid direct comparisons with their rivals
and hardly ever fights on a level playing field.
I hate the idea of being a fanboy, it really limits my upgrade options.
But provided AMD can offer a competitive alternative to Shadowplay then I'd rather go with them
for my next upgrade, simply out of principle.
Plus then I can keep up this alternating purchase scheme that I've been maintaining ever since
getting into PC gaming <3