AMD gets beaten by NVidia, any plans?

[plastikman]

If you want everything NVidia offers, then return your ATI card and get an NVidia one. You will be doing all of us a great favor.

Absolutely brilliant comment!

[t.s.]

so - and with which of the games physx makes any difference?

also, and that is VERY important, amd CAN'T USE CUDA BECAUSE IT IS NVIDIA'S TECH.
Maybe you should think a moment before you start edit-quoting people like in #13?
Same with PhysX. They BOUGHT THE DAMN COMPANY. IT IS THEIRS. What should AMD do about it. Please answer that.

And OpenCL - well if a game shall run on MacOSX - opencl is the way to go. Linux? opencl. Any other non-MS platform? opencl.

CMIIW, I've read somewhere that NVidia offering Physx and CUDA to AMD which rejected by AMD.
I've sh**ty internet connection here so I can't confirm (with i.e. searching the article(s) on inet). So fast, man! ~2.1 KBps. Yummy. With the advantages of can't-googling.

@ReadNC
Oh, And if you want an NVidia card, wanna change with me? I've 8600GT, heheh.

edit: finnally, can googling. I've used `nvidia+offer+amd+physx` and there's several result. U can read it by yourself.

[RealNC]

I felt the urge to whine yesterday when I made the thread. It was because of a discussion I had in a friend's house who owns an NVidia. His dual boot system (openSUSE + Windows XP) runs so well with his NVidia. He can use PhysX for his games, showed a CUDA video *encoder* called "badaboom" (I think) that was extremely fast, his Linux desktop is awesome on the NVidia.

From AMD all I get is promises. In the Windows world you get told by ATI fanbois "PhysX is a hype, DX11 will have physics processing anyway". Yeah, sure, doesn't help my 4870 which is DX10.1 though, now does it. In Linux, I get told "but there's things in the making that will be awesome". Well, doesn't help my 4870 RIGHT NOW, now does it.

So yes, I'm pissed. I want this stuff too, OK? I did jump on the wrong train with my 4870. That's the realization for me.

Sorry if my posts were trollish.

[bridgman]

Just curious, what are we promising other than ongoing improvement ?

I assume you are aware of the transcoder for your 4870 ?

[RealNC]

Well, the point is that NVidia already has the improvement for quite some time. AMD is still working on it.

And I know the following may not be AMD's fault, but my GeCube 4870 says on the box: "Hardware accelerated physics processing on GPU". Which is obviously a lie. I think this claim on the box even breaks some law in some countries. "Deceptive marketing."

Edit:
On another note, NVidia is pushing their features like no tomorrow. Every game out there tells me "the way it's meant to be played". They obviously work with the gaming industry more closely than AMD. DX10.1 was a failure, ATI Stream is something no one plans to use. NVidia made PhysX acceleratable on their hardware. Why isn't AMD trying to keep up here? Wasn't NVidia offering to allow for PhysX and even CUDA on ATI hardware? Why didn't AMD go for it? It would benefit its customers.

[bridgman]

The transcoder has been shipping for a while. There were some encoding artifacts reported in certain cases (64-bit OS maybe ?) but AFAIK those have been fixed.

I don't know the details, but I was under the impression that we were shipping physics support before the competition, and that was what prompted the PhyxX purchase. AFAIK we decided that physics wasn't going to be a big issue in the short term once Intel bought Havok, NVidia bought Aegia (PhysX) and everyone went proprietary. Havok is still being pretty good about working with us though.

A number of hardware vendors and game developers had been working with the physics companies before that, and there are some good examples out there of where physics can help, but I don't see single-vendor APIs catching on with the game developers except for specific, vendor-funded projects. We think focusing on cross-platform APIs like OpenCL and DX11 Compute Shaders is the right way to go, since those APIs *are* likely to be broadly used (OpenCL for GL apps, Compute Shaders for DX apps); hopefully that will turn out to be a good decision.

[RealNC]

The transcoder has been shipping for a while.

I know. I tried it. Both back then with my 1950, and now again with my 4870. It's buggy. And it produces videos that are of the worst quality I ever saw in a video encoder. There are even artifacts in there. It's just a proof of concept application with no real use.

I don't know the details, but I was under the impression that we were shipping physics support before the competition, and that was what prompted the PhyxX purchase. AFAIK we decided that physics wasn't going to be a big issue in the short term once Intel bought Havok, NVidia bought Aegia (PhysX) and everyone went proprietary.

I don't remember physics ever working. The only configuration I know of that somehow worked was with 3 graphics cards (lol) on the X19xx generation. No, thanks :P

And PhysX isn't only about framerate. The game offers much more details with hardware PhysX. You don't even get to see this stuff with ATI cards. It gets disabled. Many people think it's just about FPS. No, play for example Gears of War on NVidia and you'll see the game is more detailed, with bullets and a crapload of particle effects flying over the place. "The way it's meant to be played" :P

Is it too much to want this on my rig too?

A number of hardware vendors and game developers had been working with the physics companies before that, and there are some good examples out there of where physics can help, but I don't see single-vendor APIs catching on with the game developers except for specific, vendor-funded projects.

The list of PhysX games grows and grows though. The gaming industry is making use of it. PhysX is useful. Almost every game needs physics. Havok and PhysX offer this. But right now, games are going PhysX because it's hardware accelerated on the majority of people's PC. AMD should have supported it. There's really no excuse other then corporate politics that are of no value to me.

We think focusing on cross-platform APIs like OpenCL and DX11 Compute Shaders is the right way to go

Even if AMD will release DX11 drivers for my 4870, it will take time until the gaming industry goes DX11. But I don't think my 4870 will ever see DX11 drivers. So how's DX11 actually helping me?

NVidia was supporting even their 8xxx cards with PhysX. *That* is nice support.

And, I don't know if PhysX is or will be useful in Linux too, but at least it is supported in Windows and maybe Wine will work with it. But AMD completely lacks it either way.

[cb88]

@RealNC dude grow up or get an Nvidia card

I will continue to use my ATI Rage Pro Turbo AGP 2x in bliss... :-) getting a whole 20FPS or so in quake

(no im not that entirely that deprived I have an Geforce2 400MX as well)


DONT FEED THE TROLLS he came here to whine as he said himself

[RealNC]

This thread is about real hardware dude :P

[curaga]

Rage is real hardware, no-one made it up. I have some Rage cards too

I don't see what's the big problem. Nvidia has proprietary APIs, so has everyone else. They don't mix'n'match.