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280°

Ex-NVIDIA Driver Developer on Why Every Triple-A Game Ships Broken & Multi-GPUs

DSOGaming writes: "We’ve all known that most triple-A games release broken on the PC, however it’s good witnessing a former NVIDIA dev publicly acknowledging this while at the same time revealing some new ‘inside’ information about what’s happening with those ‘Game-Ready’ drivers we’ve been getting when really big games come out."

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dsogaming.com
4083d ago Replies(1)
traumadisaster4083d ago

I'm genuinely interested in this subject, yet I won't go to this website. They have spent their credibility long ago.

gedapeleda4083d ago

Don't mention it

We’ve all known that most triple-A games release broken on the PC, however it’s good witnessing a former NVIDIA dev publicly acknowledging this while at the same time revealing some new ‘inside’ information about what’s happening with those ‘Game-Ready’ drivers we’ve been getting when really big games come out.

GameDev’s forum member ‘Promit‘ (who was an ex-NVIDIA driver developer) claimed that nearly every triple-A game ships broken (or at least shipped broken when he was working for the green team):

“Nearly every game ships broken. We’re talking major AAA titles from vendors who are everyday names in the industry. In some cases, we’re talking about blatant violations of API rules – one D3D9 game never even called BeginFrame/EndFrame. Some are mistakes or oversights – one shipped bad shaders that heavily impacted performance on NV drivers. These things were day to day occurrences that went into a bug tracker. Then somebody would go in, find out what the game screwed up, and patch the driver to deal with it. There are lots of optional patches already in the driver that are simply toggled on or off as per-game settings, and then hacks that are more specific to games – up to and including total replacement of the shipping shaders with custom versions by the driver team. Ever wondered why nearly every major game release is accompanied by a matching driver release from AMD and/or NVIDIA? There you go.”

Promit shared his opinion about a lot of topics, and talked a bit about multi-GPUs. As NVIDIA’s former developer said, multi-GPUs are f’ing complicated.

“You cannot begin to conceive of the number of failure cases that are involved until you see them in person. I suspect that more than half of the total software effort within the IHVs is dedicated strictly to making multi-GPU setups work with existing games. (And I don’t even know what the hardware side looks like.) If you’ve ever tried to independently build an app that uses multi GPU – especially if, god help you, you tried to do it in OpenGL – you may have discovered this insane rabbit hole. There is ONE fast path, and it’s the narrowest path of all.”

Promit concluded that these issues will be mostly addressed by the new APIs. The new APIs, Promit said, are the right step, and they’re retroactively useful to old hardware.

It remains to be seen whether developers will be able to code properly for these new APIs!

Anonagrog4083d ago (Edited 4083d ago )

Go to the source itself on the GameDev.net forums:

http://www.gamedev.net/topi...

If you're interested in the subject you may want to read the whole thread in context too then.

4083d ago
Grave4083d ago

I'm definitely dumping my SLI setup and going single card. Probably getting the Kingpin.

ShottyGibs4083d ago

I use SLI, if you learn how to use Nvidia Inspector you can get all games running well with SLI way before official drivers come out. I love SLI.

Grave4083d ago (Edited 4083d ago )

I've been using SLI for years and am very familiar with Inspector and it has helped. I am just tired of almost every release being a troubleshooting session before I can get it to run properly. And if I don't I'm stuck waiting for a proper SLI profile. I'm done with it.

Mikeyy4083d ago

So we are paying $60 for sloppy coded pc games and gpu vendors have to do all the work to make the games run decent, free of charge.

no wonder PC is so easy to develop for, they don't bother optimizing anything, somebody else will do it for you. When people complain on your tech support forums you bide time till Nvidia fixes it for you.

Real classy guys.

Grave4083d ago

I've actually got PC buddies who are selling their setups and getting PS4s because they're sick and tired of this crap on PC.

traumadisaster4083d ago

Then they have old hardware they don't want to upgrade.

Poor game performance is frustrating and a capable card and cpu is required to not have problems.

Out of 400 pc games only a few had issues.

4083d ago
The_Kills4082d ago (Edited 4082d ago )

@LogicalReason

I actually switched from consoles to PC right before this gen started. Mainly due to the fact I could finally afford it.

With the state of affairs in gaming today. It's really annoying to see how consoles have benefits to some folks even after (personally) dishing out over 2.5k for my first build ever. This is considerably more than consoles. Really odd to see how you can pay so much yet still feel robbed in a certain way with the garbage some of these developers are putting out. Then again this PC has replaced all tech in my home (I still got the PS3 and tv with cable etc..) aside from my cell phone.

For those wondering:

i7 4790k
Nvidia gtx 980
GSkill TridentX 2x 8gb at 2133mhz
128gb m.2 storage from plextor
250gb Samsung 850 Evo SSD
Asus Maximus hero VII

4083d ago
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40°

Veteran artist behind Mass Effect, Halo, and Overwatch 2 weighs in on Nvidia DLSS 5

Darryl Linington from Notebookchect.net writes, "The backlash around Nvidia’s AI push and DLSS 5 has opened a broader question in game development. Beyond performance and image quality, veteran artists are now weighing what AI-driven rendering means for authorship and visual control. If a system can add or reinterpret detail after the fact, the issue is no longer just technical. It becomes a question of how much of the final image still belongs to the people who built it."

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notebookcheck.net
50°

NVIDIA DLSS 4.5 Frame Gen 5x & 6x Come to RTX 50 Series GPUs + Dynamic Multi Frame Gen

The latest GeForce driver introduces DLSS 4.5 Multi Frame Generation 5x and 6x alongside Dynamic Multi Frame Generation to RTX 50-series GPUs. The former increases the number of interpolated frames to 4 and 5 (between every two rendered frames), further reducing reliance on the CPU.

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pcoptimizedsettings.com
blacktiger42d ago

Big corp bowing down to another big corp is nothing more than helping each other. But try any games it doesn't work

Smellsforfree42d ago

I don't mind frame gen but only use it if I'm already >70fps without it. It is kinda nice but if I see any visual artifacts I will turn it off. Whenever I'm playing games on my 120Hz LG C3 I will almost never use it because frame rates >120fps look really bad. I think spatial super sampling is a far more interesting and beneficial tech than frame gen. Boosting 30fps to 60fps with framegen is just garbage.

SimpleDad41d ago

Tvs were doing this 15 years ago with their telenovela effect... Idk how anyone can play with this on.

There is definitely input lag there and artifacts.

CornholioX41d ago

It's commercial how they show it. Typical any company does that.

Goodguy0141d ago (Edited 41d ago )

Frame gen just has too much latency and visual glitches for me, don't think I can ever use it for most games. I'd compare with it on and off and it's a world of difference in the feel. I need the very least input lag in my gaming. Companies should rely on actual optimization. As for potato hardware, I suppose it could have it's use.

40°

Is the AI Push in AAA Gaming Giving Indie Developers A Golden Ticket?

WTMG's Jordan Hawes: "With the advent of NVIDIA's DLSS 5 tools, and the whole debacle surrounding AI usage in AAA gaming, is this new push an opportunity for smaller studios to showcase they are the ones vouching for artistic integrity in the gaming industry?"

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waytoomany.games
Obelisk9252d ago

They already are. Indie studios are the only developers that constantly strive to publish innovative and experimental experiences. There has been little to no art in AAA gaming, with just a few exceptions.

Yi-Long52d ago

Indie-studios have been showcasing their creative superiority and bravery over AAA-studios/releases for a while now.

Personally. I have zero interest in AI slop in any of my entertainment, so regardless of what Sony, Ubisoft, MS, EA, etc believe the future is, I'm just not gonna touch any of that stuff.

blacktiger52d ago

Everything you said but for me MS is always the problem.

isarai_lee52d ago

One more thing in a long list of things that already give indie Games an advantage

Miacosa52d ago (Edited 52d ago )

In reality a dev having a simplistic tech statck does not really impact the end user experience. If the game is good and worth playing is what matters. In other words some cooks make care if 2 or 3 eggs were used to make a cake but the person eating it doesn't. And in the case of DLSS 5 the chef is soley responsible for the recipe and how its mixed together.