- Sunday, 29 November 2009
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Ubisoft nixes first DX10.1 support
AFTER BEING THE FIRST games company to implement Direct X 10.1 in a video game, Ubisoft has now said that it plans to remove the support from the game to address concerns over alleged graphical glitches.
Assassin's Creed is a PC port of last year's console favourite, and is the first PC game on the market to support DX 10.1, the updated version of the Vista-only 3D technology that ships with Service Pack 1. Of course, DX10.1 is supported primarily in ATI's Radeon 3000-class GPUs, with Nvidia choosing to eschew support for the most part, claiming that there was nothing important to be missed.
But a new graphical analysis of the game running under DX10.1, which you can see over at HardOCP here, has shown that there is actually a large performance boost to be had from a couple of the more efficient rendering algorithms in the updated spec. Author Mark Warner called the boost 'significant', pumping the frame rate up by as much as 20% with anti-aliasing enabled - although with no discernable improvement in image quality.
However, Ubisoft says that the performance gain is due to a bug in the rendering process - despite there being no visible difference in image quality - and will be promptly removing 10.1 support from the game in an upcoming patch. This seems rather non-sensical when image quality is good and there are performance improvements to be had. There is no suggestion from Ubi that there is any instability here - they are simply taking a performance boost for Radeon cards and removing it.
HardOCP's own Kyle Bennett makes what is sure to be an interesting point: Assassin's Creed is an Nvidia 'The Way It's Meant To Be Played' title, and the firm has almost certainly invested a few dollars in making sure the PC port runs well on Green Team graphics boards.
Could there possibly be any financial pressure to remove support for a feature Nvidia GPUs, for the most part, lack? Shurely shome mishtake. µ
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I wonder - when will ATi sue Nvidia for its "The Way It's Ment To Be Sold" enterprise?
'The Way It's Meant To Be Played'

someone is eating their hat, listening to their iTunes with their VIA computer I think...
Your article states: "...Could there possibly be any financial pressure to remove support for a feature Nvidia GPUs, for the most part, lack?..."

I sincerely believe that ALWAYS happens on TWIMTBP titles (which seems to be just about all titles). If game developers were free to optimize for ATI products, they would probably outperform Nvidia. TWIMTBP actually holds back graphical improvements -- and, thus, Nvidia actually retards the development of the spectacular graphics all us aficionados want to see. 

Meanwhile, The Inquirer is one of the three sites I click several times a day -- great scoops here.
Nvidia... you are very low people.... Ubisoft... you should be ashamed.... this is why dispite the (general) higher fps of Nvidia my heart still goes to ATI...
I really hope some pro-Ati hacker hacks this patch and removes all Ati-performance breaking code. 
Either that or the foolish Ati-card owner will be the one who makes that patch his own.

This is just sickening and like a poster said, this has probably been going on since the start of "The Way Ati Is Meant To Be Shafted".
Im doent know how much Nvidia pays [H]ardOCP each month to print the BS they do, but I do not read that site for a unbiosed opinion. [H]ardOCP believes 27 frames per second is playable for a first person shooter. I wonder how many people playing these games are getting sick or are suffering from headaches and doent know why.
I guess it means that the upcoming GT200 from Nvidia will not support DX10.1 at all.

Perhaps Nvidia wants to keep ATI at a disadvantage when it comes to anti-aliasing, by trying their hardest to make sure there's no DX10.1 in games this year. Even FutureMark's new benchmark Vantage which is supposed to be as "next-gen" as possible, does not include DX10.1 optimizations. 

ATI needs to become more aggressive (publicly). All ATI has to do is speak up and make a rant about it, and then we will all listen and support ATI against the ulterior motives of Nvidia. If Nvidia can be big-mouthed in the public to the point where it gets embarrassing against Intel ("CPU's are dead", oh plesae... quad-cores, 8-core, 12-core, and so on, and then die as the cores multiply), ATI certainly can speak up to the public.
ATI had my heart until they released that pathetic CCC with their drivers (I know ATI victims still can use ati tray tools, but the vendor should provide a decent way to configure their drivers). .NET crap infected computers and Ati devs... Shame on them.
I am happy with NVIDIA since then, but now Ubisoft need to show where the bug was and release an updated patch ASAP to keep their honor.
ATi is the real deal.
Sad info. you call this competition, Nvidia? so true Allen...
Why don't you come over to the Graphzilla side of the farce, young Ferret?
I would like to suggest that the INQ and all other gaming sites to ask Ubisoft why they are removing DX10.1 support when there is a performance boost to ATI cards ? ...com'on ! a 20% boost with no apparent degradation in image quality ? ...this needs further investigation!!!!!

TWIMTBP = dictatorship !
What I got out of the HardOCP review was one less rendering pass but ever so slightly improvement in image quality. And how is that bad?



"The performance gains seen by players who are currently playing Assassin’s Creed with a DX10.1 graphics card are in large part due to the fact that our implementation removes a render pass during post-effect which is costly."

"Without DX 10.1, the edge is rough and jagged, even when AA is enabled. With DX 10.1 it receives AA with ATI Radeon HD 3000 series GPUs."

"...NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX. As is plainly evident, the edge where the Animus screen intersects with the frame geometry is not receiving AA, whether with or without Windows Vista Service Pack 1 installed."

"So that was it. That was the only difference we could spot. "



I wonder what "bug" they are referring to (what affects only the DX10.1 path)?
The Way It Means To Be FUCK!