Actually, the DX10 codepath was already in the title. Our ISV Dev Rell made some suggestions to improve that code as well as further improve it with DX10.1 - the point being is that we could have just made the changes for DX10.1 and left it at that, generally speaking thats not the way our Dev Rel works though.

This is not a hypothetical situation but an actual one. Every DX10 owner that played the game reaped the benefits.

Actually after reading it again, Dave Baumann seems to be posing a less-than-honest hypothetical situation where AMD's "ISV" dev relations team secured a co-marketing deal and suggested DX10 optimizations first along with DX10.1 optimizations instead of simply focusing on DX10.1 optimizations that would've been limited to AMD parts, effectively locking Nvidia out.

The reason I say its less-than-honest is because DX10.1 is a strict superset of DX10 but offers few remarkable additional features. The only notable improvement it offers is a "gather" instruction which allows for multiple AA samples with a single call, which results in the slight performance gains with MSAA. DX10.1 implementation is going to include all necessary features for DX10 implementation, just as DX11 is going to fully support DX10 hardware with additional modular features.

Obviously Devs will look to support the lowest common denominator that gives them the largest potential install-base, this applies to just about every industry out there and a large reason why PC gaming has largely been tied down to DX9 (OS install-base and consoles being the most limiting factors). Obviously this begins to change with Win 7 and DX11 both raising the bar, but this change isn't significant enough to shift the paradigm completely to widespread DX11 support in games, it simply opens the door for widespread DX10 adoption with the potential for additional DX11 features.

1. Is that a joke? Obviously you're forgetting the countless rebrands of R200 and R300, not to mention HD2900 to HD3870, 4870 to 4890, hell even the 5870 could be considered a rebrand given its just the equivalent of 4870X2 fused to a single die.

2. The Vista issues that were largely corrected by MS in their numerous significant WDDM-specific hot fixes (at least 4). I'm sure we would've seen more ATI problems had they actually had any DX10 parts of note on the market, but of course, they didn't (see R600).

3. Yep, every company manages a turd of a chip every once in a while, I just find it funny how AMD supporters always bring up GeForce mobile problems yet fail to mention anything about that fireball of a chip ATI sold Microsoft for the Xbox 360. $1 billion RROD compared to $200 million GeForce Mobile problems...hmmmm lol. As for your cousin, if his laptop were an affected part, it would've been covered under warranty.

4. Both companies will charge what the market will bear, this is simple economics. Are you claiming ATI/AMD has never charged huge premiums on their parts when they were able to? For someone who has been "following the industry since the S3 Virge", I guess you must've slept through the X800XTX, X850XTPE, X1900XTX launches that were all $500-600+ at launch. Hell even the 4870X2 launched at $600 and the 2900XTX "Draggin' Head" was supposed to launch for $500+ before it got canned. Why? Because their relative performance lead in the market allowed for such a premium. Claiming either side is innocent of actions expected of any going concern in a capitalist economy is simply ignorant and hypocritical, but not unsurprising when dealing with AMD and its supporters!

5. Why would Nvidia support features their hardware cannot support, especially such unremarkable features as those offered by DX10.1? And no, this isn't the same as PhysX as I'm sure this is where your argument will turn next, as there's nothing preventing AMD from supporting PhysX on their own hardware other than their own agenda and reasons not to.

6. Uh, everyone does that, mock-ups are standard operating procedure for numerous industries, I guess you've never been to a car show or trade show like CES? You think all those motherboards or consumer electronic device prototypes are all working samples? As for no DX11 support, are you claiming Fermi won't support DX11? Just shows the extent to which certain people will attempt to discredit and undermine the competition I guess!

7. PhysX is clearly the biggest advancement in PC gaming since DX9 and will only continue to grow and impress with DX11/DirectCompute. Obviously AMD also sees value here or they wouldn't spend so much effort trumpeting their own ever-changing, vaporware alternatives. PhysX clearly improves every game its implemented in more than any other feature promised in DX11, but its funny you emphasize the performance hit incurred. You do realize Tesselation in DX11 results in a nearly identical performance hit when enabled right? Check out the Unigine Heaven benchmark results.....

8. Yes, with Nvidia you're expected to pay for additional features but at least you get that baseline level of support, working drivers in popular games, included free of charge. With AMD and its fans, apparently everything is supposed to come free and everyone else is supposed to fix their problems for them. I guess it should be no surprise that in the end, most of those problems simply don't get fixed. As for 3D Vision, the reviews speak for themselves, obviously other industries like TV and Movie also see value in it. 3D Vision's requirements are simply pushing the envelope and helping to advance technologies that will benefit all consumers down the road, most namely, True 120Hz LCDs.

Which brings us full circle about who is failing to deliver. Nvidia is offering support, solutions and innovative new features for their hardware, sometimes at a premium. AMD offers excuses, half-ass workarounds, and empty promises, all bundled with the power of community! I guess you get what you pay for!

See, I've been following the industry far long than you have and yes there was a time I actually preferred ATI and AMD hardware, but then I came to realize it was worthwhile to simply pay a little more for a superior product with superior support.

And I don't disagree with that statement, what I do disagree with is the notion either company is responsible for ensuring any value-add features are fully supported on their competitor's hardware when they've already invested the time and effort to exceed expectations. For example, do you think its AMD's responsibility to somehow get multi-monitor 3D up and running on Nvidia hardware now that they've launched Eyefinity? Its certainly not a new feature, Nvidia hardware has supported multi-monitor 3D for years on their Quadro parts, so I guess AMD should do the right thing and support Nvidia hardware too right? Of course not!

What's amazing however is in this case, AMD isn't even providing that baseline level of support for their products and rather than doing what is right and simply fixing the problem for their customers, they choose to instead point fingers and wage a PR campaign against Nvidia! Amazing! Honestly, how an AMD employee can claim they were denied access to majorly anticipated titles like NFS: Shift, Batman, or RE:5 in time to fix performance issues or feature support when simple workarounds such as renaming .exes offers a better solution than what AMD offers in their drivers is simply mind-boggling.

As for Dave Baumann's quote, not sure where the the "ISV" reference was directed, but its obvious any DX10.1 implementation would need to piggy-back a DX10 implementation given market conditions dictated as much with Nvidia clearly dominating market share with their DX10 parts. DX10 was largely ignored by dev houses because of Vista's low adoption rate and the fact console capabilities are still limited to DX9, obviously a 40% install-base with DX10 would make more sense than catering to a 10% install-base for DX10.1 features that are largely unremarkable.

Actually quite the opposite, I'm the one paying Nvidia good money and unlike some people, I actually have some expectations for what I get in return. I have no problems supporting products that are consistently superior to what the competition offers, which is why I've preferred Nvidia parts over the last few years with few exceptions.

As for being a plague on PC gaming....lol. Its funny because we have one company that produces solutions to differentiate PC gaming from the consoles by working with developers to implement basic value-add features like AA or innovative new features like SLI, PhysX and 3D Vision. And we have another company that offers empty promises, lies and excuses when they fail to deliver.

AMD has certainly picked up their efforts with their Game program and DX11 work along with their own value-add features like Eyefinity, but honestly, some of the excuses and lies made in public outlets by AMD employees cannot be interpreted as anything less than insulting and deceitful.

It is a solution designed and tested on Nvidia hardware by their own software engineers. Nothing is being locked out as the check is for an Nvidia vendor ID string to enable the feature. If it were a lock-out, the launcher would check for an ATI vendor ID string and then disable the feature, which is clearly not the case.

If AMD doesn't want to properly support their own hardware via the normal channels, perhaps they should just rename all their hardware to Nvidia Vendor IDs and trick all the various TWIMTBP games into allowing them to reap the benefits of Nvidia's hard work for free?


How is it difficult to understand? Eidos/Rocksteady would've been just as happy to release the game as-is without any in-game AA implementation just as the other 90% of UE3 games have done in the past. Why would you think they would volunteer to QA this Nvidia value-add feature on AMD hardware when they weren't going to bother with AA at all to begin with? That's the point, Nvidia designed, wrote and QA'd the feature in its entirety because Eidos/Rocksteady would not have done so otherwise....

As for customer satisfaction and support, again, that's probably the biggest reason for not enabling the feature on AMD hardware. If there were any problems with it and no QA was done, AMD would just do as they usually do and feign indifference for an "unsupported" feature. Then who does support and negative publicity fall upon? Eidos/Rocksteady of course. You'd then have AMD fans blaming Eidos/Rocksteady demanding a patch for a feature they didn't even want to implement on AMD hardware to begin with, similar to the sentiment voiced in this thread from the various AMD supporters. No thanks!

Anyways, I've already provided a link about Eidos' position on this. The ball is clearly in AMD's court now if they want to go back and QA AA for their hardware and work on a patch with Eidos to get it working on their hardware. My guess is nothing will come of it though, game has already been out for 1 1/2 months and they've already issued their excuse for Batman. As you can see in this thread, they've already clearly moved on and need to offer up more excuses and finger-pointing for new games, like Borderlands.

Actually AnonymousGuy#34453, the facts suggest Nvidia is providing superior driver and developer support in new and popular titles with their TWIMTBP program. AMD, its supporters and its apologists on the other hand are simply providing excuses and pointing fingers at everyone but themselves as to why their hardware and drivers are less supported and problematic in these very same games. Complaining about Nvidia and game developers will not fix your AMD hardware and drivers. No amount of crying or claims of foul play will change this unless you direct the complaints at the only party responsible and capable of changing the situation - AMD. And that's a fact.

Wrong again, Nvidia provided the AA solution in a game engine and API path that does not support AA by default. They are not blocking anything on ATI hardware, they are simply checking for their own vendor ID string and enabling the feature on their own hardware. How is this hard to understand?

If AMD QA'd their own hardware to ensure this feature was also enabled on their cards, then the launcher would also check for their vendor ID string and enable AA for their hardware. Eidos has already said they didn't devote the resources to enabling AA to begin with, Nvidia built the AA implementation from scratch for Batman. Why would you think they would spend the time and resources to QA AMD hardware when they didn't bother to support in-game AA to begin with?

The problem is there's clearly people who do believe this is the case, even if you don't truly think so yourself. Spreading lies and and perpetuating propaganda like this, which often originates and disseminates directly from AMD representatives, is not only a huge disservice to you and every other loyal AMD customer, it empowers AMD to continue their deceitful methods and validates their inferior level of driver and hardware support. Again, if you really want better support for your hardware, you need to start demanding more from AMD directly rather than buying their excuses wholesale.


Here's a simple enough question for you, if Nvidia did not get involved with their TWIMTBP program, what would the PC version of Batman look like? Its simple, it would've been the same as every other console to PC port with higher resolutions and maybe a few eye candy tweaks. There would've been no in-game AA and no enhanced PhysX effects for either AMD or Nvidia hardware because the developer simply would not have devoted the resources necessary to implement it.

Nvidia directly supported implementation of AA in Batman (DX9), which again, is not supported by UE3.0 by default, by sending software engineers directly to Rocksteady. They also did the same for PhysX and actually coded in the advanced PhysX elements you see in the game. You can see the names of these Nvidia employees in the game's credits, as they actually wrote the code needed to implement these features. Without their involvement, these features would not exist in Batman.

The common fallacy posed by AMD and its supporters is that Nvidia is somehow blocking these features or crippling performance on AMD hardware, when its clearly not the case. They are simply enabling these features on Nvidia hardware or optimizing their drivers prior to a game's release. Nvidia has no responsibility to enable these features on AMD hardware by default as its not their responsibility to support AMD hardware or drivers. Their only responsibility is to support their own hardware, which they clearly did with these value-add features. As numerous quotes have already stated, AMD was also given the opportunity to QA their hardware to enable AA in Batman but they declined.



Obviously someone isn't being truthful here.....the ball is in AMD's court whether or not they want to invest the resources to get AA working on their hardware for Batman; they've already issued their excuse and waged their negative PR campaign against TWIMTBP though, so I doubt they'll bother to actually support their hardware in Batman at this point.


And again, all I'm saying is that if you're unhappy with AMD's support and are wondering why its not as good as Nvidia's support in new and popular titles, crying foul about Nvidia is NOT going to change your situation for the better. If you want better support from AMD, you need to let them know about it. Regurgitating their lame excuses and perpetuating their conspiracy theories isn't going to improve support for your hardware and only validates AMD's policy of deflecting blame away from themselves by attributing their problems and shortcomings on Nvidia and its TWIMTBP program. Seriously, some of the excuses made by Ian McNaughton about some of the most popular games of the year is nothing short of an insult to any AMD supporter's intelligence.

LOL, again, there is no deal, embargo, or conspiracy cooked up by Nvidia and game developers to cripple ATI hardware. Its really simple, TWIMTBP provides hardware to developers to help develop and QA their games. They also provide software engineering resources and support to developers, whether thats over the phone, e-mail/internet correspondence, or sending engineers to dev houses in person to provide direct coding support. Nvidia also has at least 2 major QA test centers that allow developers to test their games on over 250 different hardware configurations with all kinds of Nvidia GPUs.

You can read more about some of the details here:

www.bit-tech.net/bits/200...

Again, AMD has a similar program called Game! or Get in the Game or Vision, they just devote their resources to games you may not care about. Just look at any 5870 launch review, AMD can't tell you fast enough about their work with developers to get DX11 features implemented into Battleforge, Dirt 2 and STALKER: Pripyat. But when asked about why their hardware and drivers perform so poorly in major titles like Batman, NFS: Shift and Resident Evil 5 they come up with lame excuses like blaming Nvidia or the developer for not getting a build soon enough....lol. I mean these are only some of the biggest titles of the year-to-date....

www.gizmogamer.com/conten...

AMD's developer relation program simply isn't as far-reaching and comprehensive as Nvidia's and their inferior driver infrastructure also makes any omissions that much more glaring. For example, if Nvidia fails to get optimizations or profiles in for a particular game release, the end-user still has recourse as they can manually set the required compatibility flags for AA or SLI using a vast database built from all previous optimizations and compatibility flags with nHancer.

With AMD, you're much more limited in terms of forcing compatibility and there are no pre-made game profiles visible to the end-user. If the default optimizations in CCC don't work, you're forced to try renaming the .exe or hoping ATI flags the correct bits for that game in the next driver release.

This extra profile granularity along with more frequent driver profile updates (they're often included a month or so in advance of release) are what make TWIMTBP and Nvidia's game profile support vastly superior. Crying about Nvidia and their TWIMTBP program will not change anything for AMD users, the only ones who are capable and responsible for improving their driver support is AMD.