Home Gaming Ubisoft’s Nvidia partnership to continue

Ubisoft’s Nvidia partnership to continue

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Gameworx

Watch Dogs on the PC is for many, still quite a mess. It’s just not performing as well as it should. The situation’s even worse for those who use AMD hardware, as the game’s been optimised for Nvidia’s technologies as part of Nvidia and Ubisoft’s GameWorks collaboration. It’s a partnership that’s set to continue.

Nvidia’s GameWorks suite of tools has previously brought superior effects to Ubisoft games when paired with Nvidia hardware. Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Blacklist: Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, and the most recent Watch Dogs all benefitted from the tech. Now they’ll be bringing “amazing PC gaming experiences to life” with Assassin’s Creed Unity, Far Cry 4, The Crew, and Tom Clancy’s The Division.

“Working with NVIDIA has enabled us to bring an enhanced gameplay experience to our PC players,” said Ubisoft’s Tony Key, senior vice president of sales and marketing in the press release. “We look forward to continuing our partnership with NVIDIA on our biggest upcoming titles.”

Nvidia’s pretty excited about the deal too.

“We’re excited to continue our long-term partnership with Ubisoft in bringing our latest PC technology to their games”, said Tony Tamasi, senior vice president of Content & Technology at NVIDIA. “Through GameWorks, we have been able to add unique visual and gameplay innovations to deliver amazing experiences for these stellar Ubisoft games, I can’t wait to play them myself.”

Gameworks might make for prettier games, but it also makes for angry AMD employees.

“Gameworks represents a clear and present threat to gamers by deliberately crippling performance on AMD products (40% of the market) to widen the margin in favor of NVIDIA products,” AMD Technical Communications, Software & Technologies head Robert Hallock told Forbes.

“Participation in the Gameworks program often precludes the developer from accepting AMD suggestions that would improve performance directly in the game code—the most desirable form of optimization.”

I think Ubisoft should focus more on making sure their games work properly on PC, instead of making sure they look amazing on a limited hardware set. It’s funny. With the new consoles all using AMD hardware, we’ve all expected PC games to be optimised for AMD hardware, and it seems the opposite is true. At least for Ubisoft’s games.

Last Updated: June 5, 2014

51 Comments

  1. Admiral Chief Blackburn

    June 5, 2014 at 11:35

    Bah, go suck eggs!

    Reply

    • Consumer of Little Rabbits

      June 5, 2014 at 12:22

      L
      O
      L

      Reply

      • FoxOneZA

        June 5, 2014 at 13:09

        The Green Team’s standard reply.

        Reply

  2. Admiral Chief Blackburn

    June 5, 2014 at 11:35

    This REALLY boggles my mind, oh well, luckily I have other things to keep me busy until they patch it

    Reply

  3. Jedi JJ

    June 5, 2014 at 11:35

    I’m seriously off Nvidia. Not going to get another one next time around.

    Reply

    • Kromas

      June 5, 2014 at 11:43

      Sounds about right. Join the AMD side young Skywalker.

      Reply

      • Jedi JJ

        June 5, 2014 at 11:44

        I’ve always been intrigued by the Dark Side, my Master.

        Reply

        • Alien Emperor Trevor

          June 5, 2014 at 11:59

          See red. Let hatred & anger for green & blue flow through you.

          Reply

          • Kromas

            June 5, 2014 at 12:20

            Also if you actually wanna use the Force properly you need to see red but more info at E3. 🙂

    • HisDivineOrder

      June 5, 2014 at 11:52

      You poor lost soul. You’ll come back once you get a taste of the other pasture because it tastes pretty foul.

      Reply

    • geelslang

      June 5, 2014 at 12:22

      Youll be back.

      Reply

      • Jedi JJ

        June 5, 2014 at 12:23

        Been with Nvidia all my life. Will definitely be new ground. But that G-force experience is such a damn headache.

        Reply

  4. Rincearbiterofhumour

    June 5, 2014 at 11:36

    Amd that is bad? Trolol

    Reply

    • Admiral Chief Blackburn

      June 5, 2014 at 11:36

      Nope, Ubi is that lazy

      Reply

      • Rincearbiterofhumour

        June 5, 2014 at 11:37

        Sorry, was trying to say ‘and’ 😉

        Reply

        • HisDivineOrder

          June 5, 2014 at 11:52

          Freudian typo.

          Reply

          • Rincearbiterofhumour

            June 5, 2014 at 11:54

            Nah, just AMD trying to run Watchdogs BOOM! Too soon? 🙂

    • FoxOneZA

      June 5, 2014 at 13:13

      No, it’s good for Nvidia and the Master Race 😛

      Reply

  5. Jedi JJ

    June 5, 2014 at 11:38

    Considering the amount of problems I’ve had with Nvidia’s “G-force Experience” it suits Ubisoft’s U(don’t)Play, quite perfectly.

    Reply

  6. Kromas

    June 5, 2014 at 11:40

    Hmm … Watchdogs … a passing fad with maybe 2 more okay games before it becomes CoD (Nvidia) or Star Wars:Battlefront,Mass Effect:Unnamed and Dragons Age? (AMD)

    You decide what looks better.

    Edit: I forgot the new Mirrors Edge as well. Pretty much any new EA game.

    Reply

    • oomjan

      June 6, 2014 at 08:45

      Yes and Mantle is build into the Frostbite engine so that’s good. Hope those games will look good and work great when it comes out.

      Reply

  7. InsanityFlea

    June 5, 2014 at 11:47

    Runs fine on my AMD R9 290. Yes it could get more FPS than 75, but it’s okay. really.

    Reply

    • Admiral Chief Blackburn

      June 5, 2014 at 21:02

      Barely runs on my 7870 OC

      Reply

  8. Alien Emperor Trevor

    June 5, 2014 at 11:50

    Read this (fairly length) article earlier in the morning related to this – was quite interesting. Basically boils down to Nvidia is (probably) not deliberately sabotaging AMD, but they could quite easily.

    http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/183411-gameworks-faq-amd-nvidia-and-game-developers-weigh-in-on-the-gameworks-controversy/1

    Reply

    • FoxOneZA

      June 5, 2014 at 13:11

      GameWorks is basically a hit squad to take down AMD whilst giving making the PC the defacto system for the best visual experience in gaming.

      Reply

  9. HisDivineOrder

    June 5, 2014 at 11:51

    I agree. I’d say the same of any publisher who worked on a Mantle version of a game, though. Especially DICE.

    Reply

  10. Aries

    June 5, 2014 at 12:01

    Dont know why AMD so angry, dont they do the same with games?

    Reply

    • Labey-Kun

      June 5, 2014 at 12:59

      Nope, AMD opens their codes to everyone to use. On the other hand Nvidia doesn’t because they are too scared of the competition.

      Reply

      • Jack

        June 5, 2014 at 13:09

        Amd gaming evolved nuff said they did the same with dirt showdown so please try to do some research next time amd fanboy

        Reply

        • Labey-Kun

          June 5, 2014 at 13:20

          I know Dirt 3 was also played dirty by AMD but remember AMD started the DX11 game with Dirt 2 so they probably wanted to promote Dirt 3 even further for their hardware, remember nvidia has a bigger market share so it makes sense that amd wanted to give users better performance on their hardware do people can buy their new gpu’s and before you starting going fanboy crazy I just wanted to give you a heads up that I own both Nvidia And AMD graphics cards.

          Reply

  11. derp

    June 5, 2014 at 12:10

    Ah nothing like the tears of the “master race”…

    Reply

  12. Hammersteyn

    June 5, 2014 at 12:16

    I knew there was a reason I bought a console

    Reply

    • Aries

      June 5, 2014 at 16:20

      i knew there was a reason i won one

      Reply

      • Hammersteyn

        June 5, 2014 at 16:31

        A PS4?

        Reply

        • Aries

          June 5, 2014 at 16:37

          YIP

          Reply

          • Hammersteyn

            June 5, 2014 at 16:41

            AWESOME! Funnily enough I won my first PS3. So I know the feeling. Hope you enjoy it as much as I have mine

          • Aries

            June 5, 2014 at 18:26

            i will, once i figure out my psn password, need ps+

  13. Xcalibersa

    June 5, 2014 at 12:18

    Can we all not just get along :

    Reply

    • Jedi JJ

      June 5, 2014 at 12:23

      Who are you? An Agent?!

      Reply

  14. Consumer of Little Rabbits

    June 5, 2014 at 12:22

    Team green for the win

    Reply

  15. oVgeeeeee Comet Drop

    June 5, 2014 at 12:22

    Don’t forget the Wii U version 🙂

    Reply

    • Alien Emperor Trevor

      June 5, 2014 at 12:53

      Thumb cramp!

      Reply

    • Alien Emperor Trevor

      June 5, 2014 at 12:54

      Also, after being a dick about it, his arm IS going to get sore.

      Reply

  16. Morne Nell

    June 5, 2014 at 12:40

    I wonder if PC owners actually comprehend to understand how difficult it is to put different parts together that on the service would give super performance. But was never designed in such a way that they can work together,
    Plunk on top of that hardware, different operating system and service pack releases.
    Then install a game and blame the game designers.
    I am sure if you use exactly the same specifications that is on the box, games will perform optimally because that is the specs that they used to test.

    Reply

    • Sir Rants A Lot Llew. Jelly!!!

      June 5, 2014 at 13:27

      “I am sure if you use exactly the same specifications that is on the box, games will perform optimally because that is the specs that they used to test.”

      Completely incorrect. Sorry I don’t want to sound nasty or argumentative but it’s not the case at all.

      The problem doesn’t come in with the specs but rather the memory handling and how the components are interlinked and talk to eachother.

      The busses on a PC are far different to the busses on a console and that’s where the difference comes in.

      Yes you get a vast range of differant products on PC but they all use the same memory architecture and instruction sets with AMD/Intel/nVidia each having a few special instruction sets that devs can make use of if they chose to do so.

      The PCIe bus that connects the GFX to a CPU is the same on an Intel system and AMD system. They don’t need to go and optimise for each piece of hardware config because the instruction sets are standard with the difference being performance of each component and whether the component can use a specific instruction set (Which is why older hardware eventually becomes legacy and can’t run games because they lack a specific instruction set).

      Now I will grant that coniguration of hardware plays a role but not as big as you’d think.

      It all comes down to this:

      A game created on nextgen consoles (which use PC components but just interconnected different) will run one way by handling the instruction sets and memory according to the config of said console (XBone and PS4 being vastly differant in implementation) and if they want to port across to PC then they just need to standardise how the game uses a PC and its memory config and how each part is interconnected.

      People put far too much emphasis on differant configs for PC and completely forget the PC has a very, very standardised layout and memory handling that doesn’t change when each PC has different components

      end rant

      Apologies if I came across as attacking. That’s not my intention

      Reply

      • Morne Nell

        June 5, 2014 at 13:44

        No problem it just shows the misperception. An example is the motor industry and the hardware that goes in cars. A simple example is the window regulators, most people do not even understand that they are small computers, and one size does not fit all.
        The best pc configuration is not where your graphics card is the biggest, but your ram dates back to 1920. But the optimal is where the sum of the parts talk to one another perfectly. That is why a mac is so expensive even though on the service the specs look bad compared to what you can get for the same price.

        Reply

        • Sir Rants A Lot Llew. Jelly!!!

          June 5, 2014 at 17:47

          And you are mostly right but the example is slightly wrong. A car motor is a computer yes but it’s not a desktop PC and it’s a custom built circuit board hence why each one is different in config, size, shape, and language.

          A PC is standardized. There is a PCI bus that connects your GPU to the CPU. A RAM bus that connects to the CPU, A SATA controller that connects to a bus connected to the CPU… you see where this is going. It’s all connected to the CPU which is the central part that tells everything where to go and how to do it via whatever busses and these are all standardised across the board, across manufacturers.

          Now as for the developer saying “it works on my machine” it’s not really mostly due to config but rather what instruction sets he has in his native OS environment. Such as a specific .net release or specific DLL file that he has that the other machine doesn’t etc.

          It also comes down to the dev sometimes having 16GB of RAM (as an example) and doesn’t realise the program uses 10GB at a time and so when it hits another PC with the standard 4 or 8gb that it suddenly grinds the PC to a halt or underperforms. So yeah hardware plays a role but not as large as one would think.

          That’s where devs headaches come in. Where your DLL’s and instructions sets for the OS are concerned. That’s why they need to include special little DirectX files and .net frameworks within their installs.

          A GPU and CPU come with a standard set of instructions that work together with eachother and RAM controllers etc to make sure that it works. A dev just needs to code for that specifically. Yeah you get tweaks between brands but the same is true between PS4 and XBox.

          As for your statement of having RAM that’s from 19-prehistoric, yes I will agree that creates big problems because the standard instruction sets are differant. But that’s why games have minimum requirements. Minimum requirements aren’t just “harware that is needed to make a game run at least playable” but rather, minimum hardware that meets the instruction sets needed to handle what they have coded.

          I’m not saying your completely wrong. Obviously config matters and a GTX560Ti would perhaps do better than a 590 simply because some small oversight in instruction set handling was missed. But that’s simply down to the fact that in this case Ubisoft specifically optimised around a set of hardware that has a huge differance in library’s of instructions between each product. That was their own fault and they didn’t optimise correctly.

          But, I will still agree that coding for the new generation of console is probably going to be easier than PC simply because consoles, as you pointed out, are far more simple in the fact that there hardware cannot change at all and remains a 100% constant…

          Unless your XBox and reserve power for Kinect and then remove it again…

          Reply

      • Rincearbiterofhumour

        June 5, 2014 at 13:54

        “But how do they fit all the busses in?!”http://i.imgur.com/xdaREQb.gif

        Reply

        • derp

          June 5, 2014 at 16:15

          What is this?
          A bus for microbits?

          Reply

          • Sir Rants A Lot Llew. Jelly!!!

            June 5, 2014 at 17:50

            *dying*

  17. oomjan

    June 6, 2014 at 08:40

    Funny thing is they have partnership but it still runs like dog poo on Nvidia and AMD. LOL. Nvidia gameworks sucks cause if it worked as intended then Watch dogs would have run fine for most people and looked better.

    Reply

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