Nvidia's gaming commitment

[mtl]

Interesting article
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/11/4/batmangate-amd-vs-nvidia-vs-eidos-fight-analyzed.aspx?pageid=3

The discussion even brought some developers out of the woodworks who went on the record and disclosed the ways how nVidia is supporting them through TWIMTBP program. On XtremeSystems, developer known as DilTech said that he "can tell you first hand NVidia supports developers with things besides money. Certain people here will tell you about the toy they had in our hands back when the 7800GTX 512MB came out. They give developers hardware that never sees the light of day as far as the consumers know, just to make sure they have a way to test their code that isn't a software renderer. I can tell you right now that ATi have never put a single piece of hardware in our hands... and it's not like we haven't asked for anything to test on."
They have a test lab with just about every possible configuration when it comes to nVidia hardware to test your application on to make sure it's going to work across a wide spectrum of hardware. You also have to remember that nVidia employ a lot more people than ATI. They have people, whose sole job IS testing said applications, finding the bugs, verifying if it's the game code or the driver, and giving a list of possible fixes to the developer. If anything, nVidia does more for the game industry than ATi has ever dreamed of doing, and pays for it with the money the consumer spends on their video card... How is that bad for the consumer?"

[LordJuanlo]

Very interesting read...

From: Lee Singleton
Sent: 29 September 2009 18:06
To: Huddy, Richard
Subject: RE: Multisampling Anti-Aliasing in Batman: Arkham Asylum
Hi Richard,
I have taken legal advice from our general council who have advised us not to pursue a route which involves changing code that nVidia wrote, I am not prepared to go into any further details and share privileged information. We are working very hard to find a solution for ATI so please respect our position in this situation.
Best,
Lee

From: Huddy, Richard
Sent: 29 September 2009 17:30
To: Lee Singleton
Subject: RE: Multisampling Anti-Aliasing in Batman: Arkham Asylum
Lee,
Can you please be very specific about what your legal staff has recommended.
I believe that NVIDIA's code path is using only the DirectX API (except where it specifically shuts out AMD hardware), so I'm unclear why this would be an issue.
Ideally I'd like to understand this response so I can explain it to my management, rather than simply parrot it to my management. I suspect that if I just recite this to my management they'll treat it with great skepticism.
Thanks,
Richard "7 of 5" Huddy
Worldwide Developer Relations Manager, AMD's GPU Division

From: Lee Singleton
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 5:22 PM
To: Huddy, Richard
Subject: RE: Multisampling Anti-Aliasing in Batman: Arkham Asylum
Hi Richard,
We have worked closely with our local legal team today and we have been advised that we should not reuse or change the code written by nVidia. If ATI have robust sample code we can use it will accelerate any fix, if not Rocksteady will need to start from scratch.
Best,
Lee

[InqWoN1776]

This subject matter was discussed in a previous thread about 2 weeks ago... I bet neither company plans on changing the way they allocate their resources. If anything, nVidia will probably push more resources to software/drivers/dev support. Also, ATI has to allocate more of their resources to engineering to be able to compete or best nV. It's an unfortunate situation. The average consumer sees only benchmarks/reviews of hardware.

[Johnny C]

BSN is to ATi what Semi-accurate is to nVidia

After reading several BSN articles lately all by the same douche-bag...it's come to my attention that although his command of the English language is better and he's able to hide his motivations a little better than Charlie....he's still a fanboi with an agenda and this should preclude any "perceived" journalistic space from which to operate.

Cheers,

JC

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=20991

Let's round out the discussion here a bit.

[mtl]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nvidia-says-profit-jumps-74-apf-129434474.html?x=0&.v=2

Nvidia's revenue $903,000,000 well ahead of expectations and galling to all those ATIfanatics who are constantly complaining.

[Johnny C]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nvidia-says-profit-jumps-74-apf-129434474.html?x=0&.v=2

Nvidia's revenue $903,000,000 well ahead of expectations and galling to all those ATIfanatics who are constantly complaining.

WTF does that have to do with this thread?

[LydianKnight]

It probably means NVIDIA is in a comfortable position to feed the TWIMTBP program, whereas ATI could do the same but in a more difficult fashion, so for now, we can say NVIDIA is well-positioned about developer funding programs.

[josiahsuarez]

they certainly have a lot of money to throw around. I can't believe they actually payed someone money to draw these dumbass cartoons.

http://www.intelsinsides.com/page/home.html
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e16/josiahsuarez/feature_image03.jpg

[Muppet]

Very interesting read...

That is very interesting indeed. I hope some around here can understand that.

[uibo]

Interesting article
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/11/4/batmangate-amd-vs-nvidia-vs-eidos-fight-analyzed.aspx?pageid=3

The discussion even brought some developers out of the woodworks who went on the record and disclosed the ways how nVidia is supporting them through TWIMTBP program. On XtremeSystems, developer known as DilTech said that he "can tell you first hand NVidia supports developers with things besides money. Certain people here will tell you about the toy they had in our hands back when the 7800GTX 512MB came out. They give developers hardware that never sees the light of day as far as the consumers know, just to make sure they have a way to test their code that isn't a software renderer. I can tell you right now that ATi have never put a single piece of hardware in our hands... and it's not like we haven't asked for anything to test on."
They have a test lab with just about every possible configuration when it comes to nVidia hardware to test your application on to make sure it's going to work across a wide spectrum of hardware. You also have to remember that nVidia employ a lot more people than ATI. They have people, whose sole job IS testing said applications, finding the bugs, verifying if it's the game code or the driver, and giving a list of possible fixes to the developer. If anything, nVidia does more for the game industry than ATi has ever dreamed of doing, and pays for it with the money the consumer spends on their video card... How is that bad for the consumer?"

Wow and still games run on ATI cards (some even faster than Nvidia) and the initial ATI vista drivers were more stable. How do they do it?
Anyway I say giving hardware is almost the same as giving money since you can obtain cards with money, unless its something unreleased. I do think that the dx11 title developers (DIRT 2, Battleforge) had the access to the new ATI cards before release.

[mtl]

This is why nvidia's investment is important for gamers. A recent article.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/11/03/resident_evil_5_gameplay_performance_iq/10


When all is said and done, AMD has some driver problems to work through in this game. Thankfully, we have made AMD aware of the graphics bug and they are duplicated the issue and say that a fix will come in a later Catalyst driver version. However, while AMD is waiting to get that fix out to gamers, those same gamers can already enjoy Resident Evil 5 on current generation NVIDIA GeForce cards with no graphics bugs, no performance dips, and really great performance right now. Once again we see AMD lagging behind when it comes to driver support in new games, and in fact Resident Evil 5 isn’t even that brand new, it has already been out a month and a half on the PC. The fact we have to wait even longer until a new Catalyst release for these fixes is very depressing.

[Ninja Prime]

This is why nvidia's investment is important for gamers. A recent article.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/11/03/resident_evil_5_gameplay_performance_iq/10


When all is said and done, AMD has some driver problems to work through in this game. Thankfully, we have made AMD aware of the graphics bug and they are duplicated the issue and say that a fix will come in a later Catalyst driver version. However, while AMD is waiting to get that fix out to gamers, those same gamers can already enjoy Resident Evil 5 on current generation NVIDIA GeForce cards with no graphics bugs, no performance dips, and really great performance right now. Once again we see AMD lagging behind when it comes to driver support in new games, and in fact Resident Evil 5 isn’t even that brand new, it has already been out a month and a half on the PC. The fact we have to wait even longer until a new Catalyst release for these fixes is very depressing.

No one really cares NV fanboy squad, until they deliever a product, and its better than ATI at gaming, no one cares. Please take your PR campaign elsewhere.

[Viral]

Having more money can just mean they try to muscle their way through problems by stubbornly throwing more money at things, like intel did with netburst, itanium and is currently doing with larrabee.