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HairWorks is not something to be particularly upset about. Vast majority of players, even on high-end GPUs just keep turning off those "premium" IHV-specific fe
by bd 11y ago
HairWorks is not something to be particularly upset about. Vast majority of players, even on high-end GPUs just keep turning off those "premium" IHV-specific features as they are just so heavy.
BTW AMD kinda started this with their TressFX hairs (notably used in new Tomb Raider).
It had similar characteristics to HairWorks - extremely expensive feature for relatively small overall visual impact, better running on AMD than Nvidia GPUs, but still running pretty bad even on high-end GPUs.
Something to keep in mind: those super-duper features you see at GPU launch events, they are mostly just marketing, "halo effect" features, not practical enough to be used in games for almost everybody.
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We are speaking about miniscule fraction of all players who have GPUs powerful enough to runs all bells and whistles.
Titan X, the only GPU that can run Witcher 3 fast with HairWorks enabled [1], exists in so small numbers that it doesn't even show up in Steam Hardware survey [2].
GTX 980, the next most powerful GPU, is owned by less than 0.5% of all people who use Steam. And GTX 980 runs 1080p ultra with HairWorks just ~37-40 fps.
GTX 970, the next most powerful GPU, the most popular Maxwell GPU, huge bestseller, is owned by ~3% of Steam users. It's the only remaining GPU that can stay above 30 fps with HairWorks on.
So something like 95+ percent of all gamers are not affected by this issue at all.
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[1] http://pclab.pl/art63116-27.html http://pclab.pl/art63116-27.html
[2] http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/ http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/
- sjwright 11y ago> BTW AMD kinda started this The difference is AMD's TressFX source code is open, which allowed Nvidia to resolve the performance disparity without much fuss. Whereas the Nvidia's HairWorks source code is closed, leaving AMD unable to pitch in engineering resource for a diagnosis or solution.
- agapos 11y agoAlso note the dates: Tomb Raider's TressFX happened in 2013 while Crysis 2 and the 'flat-surface tessellation' happened in 2011 (with Patch 1.8 I believe). Not something one can call a start.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ivraatiems 11y agoI have an overclocked GTX 980 and am using it to drive three monitors, the largest of which (and the one I use for gaming) is at 1440p. The 980 has grunt, but it's still not able to push every game I want at 60FPS/1440p without settings compromises. That's partially because it only has 4GB VRAM, but mostly because the power for 1440p and especially 4K just isn't all the way there yet and many games are poorly optimized, especially past the 1080p mark. I wish more time was spent on making games run smoothly then on graphical gimmicks like better hair.
- bryanlarsen 11y agoYou don't want settings compromises, but you don't want graphical gimmicks like hair. You do realize that the difference between "high" and "extreme" setting is mostly graphical gimmicks, right?
- xirdstl 11y agoI can attest to this. I have a GTX 970 and disabled HairWorks because it seemed to cost me at least 10FPS.