LydianKnight
10-13-09, 02:54 AM
I think you're mixing apples and bananas. In order for the PC gaming to prosper there has to be some industry standards.
That is why we have for example the DirectX, Open GL, Havok which is not limited to one vendor hardware or even the Ageia's PhysX didn't have such limitation before NVIDIA bought it.
We also have PC Gaming Alliance (http://www.pcgamingalliance.org/Home/tabid/354/Default.aspx), NVIDIA is also member there.
One the purpose of the alliance is:
The above sure doesn't mean pushing proprietary stuff in gaming. Unfortunately some developers can be bought.
If ATI start paying the developers to cripple the games so they play better on their platform, we the customers will end up as big looser.
I do spend lot's off money every year for PC gaming, but sure don't want have two systems, one for the ATI games and the other for the NVIDIA optimized games.
If that ever will become common practice I better buy the consoles for gaming and save lots of money.
Sorry, was too sleepy yesterday at the time to answer and didn't explain myself enough well... Ok, here goes take two xD
You're right up to a certain point. Gaming standards (specially when it comes to graphics/physics/audio/input acceleration, etc) guarantees interoperability between platforms with different specifications or even the same platform with different specifications (which a PC is by nature).
But if we're talking about competition (and lately competition is becoming fiercer and fiercer every day it passes), the line between standards and optimizations become thinner and thinner up to the point it dissapears depending on what matter are we talking about.
Examples:
Intel denies 3rd-party production of DMI-compatible chipsets for their new systems (f**k NVIDIA)
NVIDIA denies PhysX function while 3rd-party cards are installed within the same system (f**k ATI)
ATI denies 3rd-party production of modified graphics card layout for certain products (f**k partners)
AMD/Intel decides to implement on-die memory controller for faster access and less latency (f**k 3rd-party chipsets)
and the examples could go on... standards, relations, manufacturers, you name it... when it comes to competition, rules are usually blurred quite a bit in order to provide a given company with a satisfactory result in terms of response to a certain competitor in a given point in time.
Let's face it... industry is a fierce combat field and sooner or later you'll end doing something nasty or anti-competitive in order to survive against a certain threat from a certain competitor. I get your point because you see it from an end-user point of view, same as I do, but I also see it from a company point of view, and things look different from that point. What is right becomes wrong, what is wrong becomes right...
Standards come into play to (try to) provide end-users with a certain set of technologies which, ultimately, aim to provide every single user with different hardware/software specifications the same chances of using a certain product (media players, games, computing software, whatever), but all of this works AS LONG AS companies decide it's convenient for them to do that way, which is not always the case, so... it should not be something surprising at all...
That is why we have for example the DirectX, Open GL, Havok which is not limited to one vendor hardware or even the Ageia's PhysX didn't have such limitation before NVIDIA bought it.
We also have PC Gaming Alliance (http://www.pcgamingalliance.org/Home/tabid/354/Default.aspx), NVIDIA is also member there.
One the purpose of the alliance is:
The above sure doesn't mean pushing proprietary stuff in gaming. Unfortunately some developers can be bought.
If ATI start paying the developers to cripple the games so they play better on their platform, we the customers will end up as big looser.
I do spend lot's off money every year for PC gaming, but sure don't want have two systems, one for the ATI games and the other for the NVIDIA optimized games.
If that ever will become common practice I better buy the consoles for gaming and save lots of money.
Sorry, was too sleepy yesterday at the time to answer and didn't explain myself enough well... Ok, here goes take two xD
You're right up to a certain point. Gaming standards (specially when it comes to graphics/physics/audio/input acceleration, etc) guarantees interoperability between platforms with different specifications or even the same platform with different specifications (which a PC is by nature).
But if we're talking about competition (and lately competition is becoming fiercer and fiercer every day it passes), the line between standards and optimizations become thinner and thinner up to the point it dissapears depending on what matter are we talking about.
Examples:
Intel denies 3rd-party production of DMI-compatible chipsets for their new systems (f**k NVIDIA)
NVIDIA denies PhysX function while 3rd-party cards are installed within the same system (f**k ATI)
ATI denies 3rd-party production of modified graphics card layout for certain products (f**k partners)
AMD/Intel decides to implement on-die memory controller for faster access and less latency (f**k 3rd-party chipsets)
and the examples could go on... standards, relations, manufacturers, you name it... when it comes to competition, rules are usually blurred quite a bit in order to provide a given company with a satisfactory result in terms of response to a certain competitor in a given point in time.
Let's face it... industry is a fierce combat field and sooner or later you'll end doing something nasty or anti-competitive in order to survive against a certain threat from a certain competitor. I get your point because you see it from an end-user point of view, same as I do, but I also see it from a company point of view, and things look different from that point. What is right becomes wrong, what is wrong becomes right...
Standards come into play to (try to) provide end-users with a certain set of technologies which, ultimately, aim to provide every single user with different hardware/software specifications the same chances of using a certain product (media players, games, computing software, whatever), but all of this works AS LONG AS companies decide it's convenient for them to do that way, which is not always the case, so... it should not be something surprising at all...