Nvidia Official Response on Tomb Raider

Agreed. It is the publishers fault but I suspect it may have been intentional personally, done at AMD's request to make NVIDIA look bad. Or possibly not but I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was the case as they are competing with each other in the same market and both have been known to use underhand tactics in the past to outdo the other.

 

Which the consumer ends up paying for.

 

Well i played first cave level with tressFX on and tessellation on

At the beginning in that cave or any cave later on (with tressFX on) there are a lot of pauses (direct compute latency issues), also there is one big one when you exit first cave., but no crashes and i think Wanny said the same.

That's why i find it a bit weird, although it could be only SLI users that have most issues - crashes.

 

**** happens. Nvidia will get us new drivers unlike AMD who will leave busted issues for months. This happens 90% of the time with new games, but its usually AMD that this happens too. No biggie, give them a break. With almost every other game launch Nvidia's drivers are optimized for out of the box already.

 

I had 1-2 second hitching too with TressFX and tessellation during the start section before exiting the cave and they even occurred during the opening intro (which is FMV!!!) as well. The game did not crash until the clearing where Lara finds Sam's backpack. It was after the second crash in that location after resuming my save that I turned only tessellation off and was able to play for almost two hours and without any hitching until I called it a night.

 

I had a similar issue with Crysis 2 where the game would crash to desktop on some particular scenes after the dx11+tesselation patch. All those scenes were large, open areas.

An official solution from nvidia and Crytek never came out, however someone in nvidia forums suggested a minor voltage tweaking of the gpu through MSI afterburner (or similar software) would fix the issue.
After playing with it I managed to find a sweetspot where the game was perfectly stable. I haven't changed that setting since and I've never had any problems with other games crashing to desktop again.

Maybe that's the reason I don't have any issues with tesselation enabled on Tomb Raider now.

For the record, my original voltage on Zotac gtx580 was 1013mV and I changed it to 1065mV. So a 50mV increase/decrease could make a difference if somebody wants to try it.

But it might not work for everybody because it depends on the gpu vendor.

 

Its 2013, pc game development from scratch from all games companies should work coherent on drivers build and support, code/build should be parallel to benefit each other and the target audience, so everyone on release date is happy maybe leaving only a few glitches for patches, and no bullshxt excuses.

 

nVidia started all this ****!
Payback is a bitch...

 

The problem is company deadlines and procedures. It happens with other products/services being rushed early in the market too. It's purely financial and most of the time it's the publisher's fault.

The official launch date of a game is not the "true" launch date. If a game/software is let's say 80% ready, it's good enough for production. The rest can be sorted out during production and after release with patches.

The correct (for consumers) procedure for Tomb Raider or any other game would be:
-100% finished code
-submit final code to nvidia/AMD
-nVidia/AMD optimize the drivers
-submit final drivers back to game developer for further testing
-both sides make sure everything works
-distribute the drivers to the public
-release the game to the consumer

But all this would have a heavy impact on the game's actual release date (maybe even six months later). Not that publishers care about us being anxious to play the game but simply it doesn't fit their financial schemes (the sooner the better for them).

What they currently do instead is to give unfinished code to gpu companies and consumers alike and try to sort out any potential problems after. But they already got the cash!

I don't see this changing any time soon (or ever) because this is how economics for big publisher companies work and access to internet today just make it a lot easier for them. Let's have the money today and fix the problems tomorrow.

 

This
TressFx looks nice but I don't get it. Is this only property of Crystal engine or is new ATI trademark in future games like Physx?
Also, ATI should respond to Nvidia's gas dynamics in Hawken demo.
This gas flow on surfaces did better impression on me than tressfx.

 

Id back in the day used to say when its ready its ready, and from a game buyer point of view that's correct I dont give a toss about financial implications.

 

Very, very few developers have the power to say that over to their publishers, especially today with the recession. Everything is interconnected, the market is already flooded with tons of games and the competition is steep. Studios are being shut down every month.

As for id after the flop called Rage, I bet Zenimaxx have them by their balls now.


I think the only developer today that can say "when its ready its ready" is Blizzard. Nobody else.

 

I don't remember having such issues with games in the past! I don't even remember when updating graphics drivers used to be THAT crucial! I just installed the game and played!

It IS possible, but it's not happening today. I don't think it takes 6 months, though. Game engines and code aren't usually alien to Nvidia or AMD; many engines have been used in previous games, and just updated (or not even touched).

 

Well back in the past not everybody had broadband connection in their home/mobile phones/laptops/cars/underpants. The idea of "multi-hundred MB of patches after release" was a luxury many potential buyers could not afford.
If a game had problems the word was out and the company bankrupt.

 

Valve is a studio that goes by the "when it's done" standard. Problem is they haven't released anything since 2007 I've been interested in.

id still go by their "when it's done it's done", problem is now their games go through ZeniMax/Bethesda's QA department before release.
And it's no secret ZeniMax's QA for PC releases is crap.

While I didn't have any bugs or problems with RAGE, I know a lot of other people (AMD users specifically) did. And DisHonored was the only other game from ZeniMax I didn't run into countless issues with.
Everything else from them... riddled with bugs and issues. I love ZeniMax as a publisher... but hate, HATE them for their lack of "quality" in the QA area.

 

Funny thing is Tress FX can be done by NVidia cards on the other hand PhysX like Hawken, borderlands 2, batman arkham city and other physics title the radeon end user cant even use it.

 

Thats the benefit of using unified physics like opencl and directcompute.

 

I want to se some opencl goodies till the end of the year. Like gas dynamics of Hawken Physx I was talked about.

 

Calling a game with almost 3 million units sold a flop is a bit far fetched don't you think? And those numbers are just what's public as Steam doesn't release sales figures.

 

Dunno what the fuss is all about, ati users have been living with this pain due to the countless nvidia exclusives (esp all that physX crap, or nvidia tuned games where amd cards need a couple of months for the drivers to catch up) for a few years now. Oh well, ive 2pcs one with a 570 and one with a 6970, and i cant remember anyone creating so much drama with aaa titles that my 6970 had issues running at launch. Tough luck, but suck it up and run without the fancy hair for a while. Stuff like that shouldnt happen but it's been happening to the "other" side for years. Get used to it now with all the upcoming consoles running on amd hardware