Nvidia denies assassination of DX10 code
Et tu, ATI?
NVIDIA HAS DENIED that it had anything to do with the pulling of DX10.1 support from PC game Assassin's Creed. Honest, guv.
As we previously reported, the upgraded DX10 path ran rather nicely on ATI hardware, giving a decent frame rate boost - even if there was the odd glitch here and there. But with Nvidia's TWIMTBP logo on the back of the box, the inclusion of a DX10.1 path - which most Nvidia hardware doesn't support - was always looking a little controversial.
But Graphzilla has said that it had nothing to do with the removal of the path, that it didn't have any access to the development team to push them to do so, and that no money ever changed hands anyway.
Green Team spokesman Ken Brown told News of the Screws that "We aren't in the business of stifling innovation - it's ludicrous to assume otherwise. Remember that we were the first to bring DirectX 10 hardware to the market and we invested hundreds of millions of dollars on tools, engineers and support for developers in order to get DirectX 10 games out as quickly as possible." Which, we have to point out, isn't exactly an outright denial - since Nvidia has always called 10.1 something of a non-innovation.
Further, Chief Spinster Derez Perez said that "Nvidia never paid for and will not pay for anything with Ubi. That is a completely false claim," when asked how much the TWIMTBP logo on the back of the Assassin's Creed box cost them. Of course, that isn't exactly true either - Nvidia might not pay straight up cash, but it pays quite a lot of dosh to fly engineers down to work with developers on 'correct' code implementation for 3D engines at zero cost to the developer or publisher.
For its part, Ubisoft said in a separate interview that "We are current investigating this situation", which doesn't exactly have the ring of urgency about it - which will surely cheese off ATI 3000-series owners who have had a performance-enhancing feature actively removed from their game.
In the increasingly-heated battle between Nvidia and DAAMIT, gamers are clearly unwitting pawns. µ
Comments
really!!
Come on Nvidia we know what you did "Read the official statement as to why 10.1 was removed??I smell something here..
Refuse of the bovine male is what I smell.While a graphzilla engineer was assisting the Ubisoft developers is probably when this "pointless" optimisation was removed.
SUE Nvidia!
First Intel and now Nvidia. I'm glad I have no love for either.Answer in the article
"even if there was the odd glitch here and there"Probably their ship date came around before they could track down these glitches. I wouldn't be suprised if they didn't issue a 10.1 patch once they sort it out.
What nV DX10.1 hardware?
You say "the inclusion of a DX10.1 path - which most Nvidia hardware doesn't support", shouldn't that be all nVidia hardware doesn't support? OR did they slip it into some part without letting anyone know?nVidia say they don't stifle innovation, but who doesn't think this is the exact same reason HDR+AA was handcuffed on Oblivion (but shipped on the X360), requiring the Chuck patch to prove it could be done and faster on the PC contrary to the TWIMTBP excuses.
Pot Calling The Kettle Black
It is worth mentioning that at no point prior to release had anyone at Ubisoft mentioned DX10.1 compatibility as a supported feature.Performance enhancing yes, but at the cost of visual quality. The DX10.1 path renders some particle effects badly and therefore reduces workload enough for a small FPS increase. This is no different to the over-reported Nvidia water rendering bug in Crysis. Funny thing is you don't see any ATI fanboys mentioning that!
Oh and for a real performance increase you need to have a crossfire configuration in particular AA modes. You would have to have a few screws loose to pay over the odds for that setup instead of an equivalently performing nvidia part.
If you are going moan about it wouldn't it be worth complaining over a decent game! Assassins Creed is a mediocre game at best and it looks no better than all the other hundreds of Unreal Engine games.
not nvidia's fault
As an avid gamer for close to 10 years, one thing any pc gamer will agree with me on is that ubisoft is one crappy pc game developer.it has great titles that it polishes for the console market, but it has always treated the pc market as an after thought. minimal patching zero support, even basics like dedicated server files are rarely released, no matter how many people beg for them, title after title.
You would need to download their forum on a daily basis to actually see the complaints and bitching over time, because that has to be the most moderated developer forum ever!! There is at least 100 threads a week removed just so they can look good to newbs who hope they will have a quality game.
Now one could say this happens on most dev forums, but ubisoft takes the crown, almost everyone i know has sworn never to buy another ubisoft PC game after getting screwed by one previous purchase, because Ubisoft is so indifferent to the PC market.
So to sum up there is no nefarious deal between Nvidia and Ubisoft, Ubisoft just exploits the PC market by making the cheapest console port they can, this pattern of extream corner cutting is well known by the longtime gamers out there, no matter how much they try and censor their forum to use it as a positive marketing tool for their crappy ports.
DX10.1 would have ment spending money on a programmer just for that coding, ubisoft is just too cheap to do this, heck forget about nvidia paying them to not put it in, someone would have had to pay them to include it lol
Gasping for Air
DAAMIT fanboyism eat your heart out! Shout out about it enough and you might get your 2% FPS increase. I am sure it will make the game much more superior in every way... Then again it might just look identical to the vanilla version. Can't you people read? It was withdrawn because it did not render effects properly, which means all the benchmark scores are invalid!I just don't understand why its caused such an outburst. The game is good at best and your time is better spend elsewhere. DX10.1 is not widely supported and will not be whilst Nvidia dominate the market with its products and TWIMTBP marketing machine. It has been like it for years and will continue to do so whilst Nvidia's marketing machine still exists. It may be bad for competition, but at least they support the development teams and gaming community in some way. ATI and Intel do very little in comparison. What is their equivalent and when was the last time it was mentioned in the press?
Bin it
I had a hell of a job getting Assassin Creed to work with my 8800GT it really did not like the game at all.I wonder if that was because of 10.1?! it was my first try of Nvidia Graphics cards and it lasted 3months before i ripped it out and went back to ATi and a 3870x2. My one big gripe with Nvidia is there lack of Driver updates, where as ATi push one out every 4/5 weeks I was having to wait 10 or more for Nvidia and there was never an idea as to when you could expect one.I'll stick with ATi thanks even if there not always to fastest.re: Assasins creed beng UE3
I'd check again ... but its engine is most definitely not UE3 ;) I reckon the boys working on Scimitar are probably already miffed that so many people think their work is Epic's.Innane
"Performance enhancing yes, but at the cost of visual quality. The DX10.1 path renders some particle effects badly and therefore reduces workload enough for a small FPS increase."The IQ differences between the rendering paths have been shown to be non-existent. Rendering divergence between IHVs can be as large based on DX10 codepath alone. The DX10.1 path collapses an additional pass that is required by DX10 only. That's where the speedup is. I certainly wouldn't mind a ~20% perf boost for similar effects/codepaths in upcoming games.
The rest is just fanboi nonsense...
Fixed
Checking the contents of the readme with the 1.0.2 patch:Fixed broken post-effects on DirectX 10.1 enabled cards.
Guess that's that. No more "conspiracy" theories regarding Assassins Creed.
To trevorpj
Well, the only glitch proven in the game is some missing dust in the ground, that's not enough to increase the FPS considerably when Anti Aliasing is on like it's currently happening. Remember that DX10.1 have performance improvements when MRT buffers are used with Anti Aliasing.nVIDIA *SUCKS*
I *HATE* this lame company, as one wise person once said:"nVIDIA produce crap and market it like gold.
ATi produce gold and market it like crap"
Go ATi!
Redux...
" Checking the contents of the readme with the 1.0.2 patch:Fixed broken post-effects on DirectX 10.1 enabled cards.
Guess that's that. No more "conspiracy" theories regarding Assassins Creed."
I guess that would be a big fat no...
They've simply removed the 10.1 path entirely. That's what you call fixing it. DX10 AA still suxorz. DX9 AA & previous DX10.1 AA is/was superior. Plenty of "fixed" bugs, still...