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Comment by the_mitsuhiko | Hacker News Reader

> It's just an extension of the systemic AMD problem: they [very likely] have the best hardware but their Windows drivers are horrific and not only do they not have developer support

You are strongly misrepresenting the actual situation. AMD is painfully aware that their drivers lack compared to Nvidia but they disagree with the reason. AMD does not want to put nearly as many hacks into the drivers as Nvidia does. They went quite far (by making Mantle) to make the drivers leaner and more predictable.

Nvidia traditionally detects misbehaving game code and patches it up with various degrees in the driver.

> AMD didn't set out to do anything: once again they sabotaged themselves by not getting involved.

AMD made the right step and backed the only thing that will evolve the situation from the status quo: Mantle and now Vulkan/DX12. Otherwise they would always end up playing this game of magical drivers that NVidia supports but nobody likes.

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> ...as many hacks into the drivers as Nvidia does.

That sounds like an absolute nightmare to maintain.

It sucks actually because when I've written custom game engines, one doesn't know if one is using OpenGL properly because NVIDIA just makes things work even if you did a bad call. Then when you try to run it on other drivers that are more compliant, it all fails all over the place.

The solution I guess is to try and find a highly compliant, picky driver, and develop using that, because it is easier to get it right at the beginning than to go back and try to fix things.

See also: HTML.

I think there are debug wrapper for GL; too much overhead to run in production, but should tell you if you're Doing It Wrong (tm). Have you tried something like Regal?

> Mantle and now Vulkan/DX12

The issue here isn't that at all. The issue is a turn-key hair rendering solution. ~~Which AMD does not provide.~~ Correction: AMD provides TressFX, which had bad NVIDIA performance before NVIDIA stepped in and fixed it. ~~In fact I can't find any graphics code samples on their website, contrasted with the abundance on the NVIDIA website.~~ Correction: AMD does have samples.

> The issue here isn't that at all. The issue is a turn-key hair rendering solution.

That is incorrect. The issue here is hair rendering which AMD has a turn-key solution for it: TressFX.

Right, I stand corrected. However, do keep in mind that NVIDIA had similar performance issues during the Tomb Raider launch - and instead of complaining about it NVIDIA stepped in and, as I've been saying, helped the game developer improve TessFx compatibility with their cards.

Note that the source of TressFX is fully available in the DX samples. This cannot be said about whatever Nvidia does which cannot be disclosed to IHVs.

> Note that the source of TressFX is fully available in the DX samples

What does that have to do with my core point of AMD sitting back and complaining?

> This cannot be said about whatever Nvidia does which cannot be disclosed to IHVs.

NVIDIA provides restricted source to everything but TXAA, PhysX and beta libraries.[1] I'll re-iterate my point: AMD would have access to the code if they walked in the door.

[1]: http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Editorial/NVIDIA-and-AMD-Fight-...

> What does that have to do with my core point of AMD sitting back and complaining?

AMD: here is the code, optimize it.

NVidia: there is the binary blob (you can't look at the code), feel free to make your card exhibit the same performance characteristics as our geforce reference cards without infringing on our patents. No, you can't change the code. You could hot patch game executables though.

AMD is not allowed to look at the source.

I think the issue is that the licensing of GameWorks, which HairWorks is part of, prevents the game developer from sharing it's source code with anyone other than other licensees. That means AMD has to reverse engineer it if they want to optimize their drivers for it. That isn't the case for TressFX, which is freely available to anyone and allowed Nvidia to quickly add support for it after Tomb Raider released.

Right, that makes sense. It may not be an issue depending on which conflicting piece of information you go with.[1]

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9582304

Do keep in mind that NVIDIA received the code for the game so they could optimize their driver for it [1].

There is no chance of the same happening with AMD and TW3, since at least at the beginning of 2014:

    According to Nvidia, developers can, under certain licensing circumstances, 
    gain access to (and optimize) the GameWorks code, but cannot share
    that code with AMD for optimization purposes.

See [2] for the source of that statement.

The situation is really that different.

[1] http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-03-07-nvidia-apologis...

[2] http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/173511-nvidias-gameworks-...

It seems as though that might have changed[1] (dated 1 year after yours). In truth those in the AAA industry might only be privy to what is actually going on, as I'm seeing a lot of PR bullshit/he-says-she-says from both sides.

If NVIDIA is actively restricting access to the code for HairWorks that is indeed very scummy, however, they would technically still be within their rights.

[1]: http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Editorial/NVIDIA-and-AMD-Fight-...

Yes, the FUD seems to be everywhere, I concur. And we'll never know the truth unless a GameWorks contract gets leaked in full, aka never. Business as usual. :)

Intel was still within their right (technically) when it forced their own compiler to compile non-optimized code for AMD CPUs. That does not make it right for us, the customers, this is the point I wanted to make.

> That does not make it right for us, the customers, this is the point I wanted to make.

That's an discussion that's likely to never come to a sensible conclusion :). The AMD/NVIDIA situation is definitely one of the negative outcomes of an open/competitive marketplace.

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