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Wait a sec... My gaming PC (2x AMD R9 290X, 8 GB video memory) is absolutely awful with a lot of (esp. Ubisoft) games like Assassins Creed or Watch_Dogs. I just

Wait a sec... My gaming PC (2x AMD R9 290X, 8 GB video memory) is absolutely awful with a lot of (esp. Ubisoft) games like Assassins Creed or Watch_Dogs. I just assumed the games weren't optimized for AMD hardware. That is based partly off the Nvidia logos that are shown during startup and in the graphical settings menu. There's also graphical issues at high resolutions. I've been planning on buying an Nvidia GPU so I can actually play games at a decent frame rate. Are you telling me part (or all?) of the problem is bad drivers? I got the drivers from Windows Update rather than from AMD so they would just update themselves and be the correct ones.

crooked-v 8y ago
Not bad drivers, bad game code.
- cpeterso 8y ago
  Or AMD drivers that are not adding "do what I mean" hacks to work around bad game code? Sounds like AMD and Nvidia took different approaches to Postel's Law ("Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept").
  - monocasa 8y ago
    IMO, there's a practical upper limit to how liberal you can be. There are some games that straight up don't call endscene and present and crap like that in DirectX land. Or have bugs in their shaders, expecting the driver ISVs to just completely rewrite them by hand anyway. Nvidia can get away with this because they have something like 10x the engineering staff as AMD's on the GPU sides of their companies. Apple never had a hope of competing in this space at the same level.
    - cpeterso 8y ago
      If Nvidia is adding workarounds in their drivers for crappy game code, how did those games work before Nvidia added the workaround for their crappy code? :)
monocasa 8y ago
In my mind, the problem is bad code from developers like Ubisoft, and the willingness of Nvidia to expend tons of engineering effort to hack around them on a case by case basis. It's not really fair to call standards compliant drivers "bad" in my mind. AMD pushed Vulkan (and Mantle previously) hard because it lets them break the cycle due to the layering concept in the driver stack. Intrinsic in how those drivers work is allowing end users to stick API verification layers in at load time. This will allow AMD to go to the press and say "see, it's not us, it's the application developer that wrote terrible code" without leaking any internal IP of those other shops.
- ksec 8y ago
  That is one of the reason why I think Metal is the right way to go. I can't understand how we will be able to sustain the current development of GPU, when more than half of the cost are in software drivers development and cost % is constantly moving up. Another reason why the Desktop GPU market is so hard to break in, as have we seen times and times again, from 3Dfx with poor Direct X Drivers, S3, 3D Labs, Matrox, PowerVR etc. But I tried making this point with an Intel GPU engineers and he said my point is moot. May be he knows something I don't.
CoolGuySteve 8y ago
Due to the windows certification process, the drivers from windows update are always six months to a year out of date. Or at least that's how it used to be, I haven't checked in years. It's always better to get graphics drivers from the chipmaker directly for both Nvidia and AMD cards.
- monocasa 8y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if certified drivers have some of the more egregious hacks disabled too.
Sharlin 8y ago
The fact that the drivers aren't special cased to compensate for Ubisoft's buggy code doesn't make the drivers bad. The games are bad.

crooked-v 8y ago

Not bad drivers, bad game code.

cpeterso 8y ago
Or AMD drivers that are not adding "do what I mean" hacks to work around bad game code? Sounds like AMD and Nvidia took different approaches to Postel's Law ("Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept").
- monocasa 8y ago
  IMO, there's a practical upper limit to how liberal you can be. There are some games that straight up don't call endscene and present and crap like that in DirectX land. Or have bugs in their shaders, expecting the driver ISVs to just completely rewrite them by hand anyway. Nvidia can get away with this because they have something like 10x the engineering staff as AMD's on the GPU sides of their companies. Apple never had a hope of competing in this space at the same level.
  - cpeterso 8y ago
    If Nvidia is adding workarounds in their drivers for crappy game code, how did those games work before Nvidia added the workaround for their crappy code? :)

monocasa 8y ago

In my mind, the problem is bad code from developers like Ubisoft, and the willingness of Nvidia to expend tons of engineering effort to hack around them on a case by case basis. It's not really fair to call standards compliant drivers "bad" in my mind. AMD pushed Vulkan (and Mantle previously) hard because it lets them break the cycle due to the layering concept in the driver stack. Intrinsic in how those drivers work is allowing end users to stick API verification layers in at load time. This will allow AMD to go to the press and say "see, it's not us, it's the application developer that wrote terrible code" without leaking any internal IP of those other shops.

ksec 8y ago
That is one of the reason why I think Metal is the right way to go. I can't understand how we will be able to sustain the current development of GPU, when more than half of the cost are in software drivers development and cost % is constantly moving up. Another reason why the Desktop GPU market is so hard to break in, as have we seen times and times again, from 3Dfx with poor Direct X Drivers, S3, 3D Labs, Matrox, PowerVR etc. But I tried making this point with an Intel GPU engineers and he said my point is moot. May be he knows something I don't.

CoolGuySteve 8y ago

Due to the windows certification process, the drivers from windows update are always six months to a year out of date. Or at least that's how it used to be, I haven't checked in years. It's always better to get graphics drivers from the chipmaker directly for both Nvidia and AMD cards.

monocasa 8y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if certified drivers have some of the more egregious hacks disabled too.

Sharlin 8y ago

The fact that the drivers aren't special cased to compensate for Ubisoft's buggy code doesn't make the drivers bad. The games are bad.