I haven't played the Witcher 3 but I will agree that using an older card as a PPU can make a nice difference for games that use PhysX. Couldon't find a buyer for my 660 TI so I threw it back in my system with its replacement, a 970 and using it as a PPU gained a decent amount of FPS on the Metro games.

Has there been any word on if F4 will support this?

I have the GTX 460 I took out and replaced with A GTX 960. I think my PS can handle both of them...

I don't think it's game dependant in the nvidia configuration you can set any card as physx card

Yep. but really there's no reason to worry at all about consoles as neither are in any competition with Nvidia. The game will (hopefully) run at peak performance for both systems. Beth wants to make money.. you don't make a lot of money if you piss off a large portion of consumers.

I'm literally only a couple days from ordering all the parts for building a brand new rig to play F4. I was going to buy an r9 380 after doing a lot of research on the best bang for the buck GPUs, but now I'm nervous that the card I picked out is going to be the worse option for the game I'm specifically building a machine to play. Ugh. I might end up needing to go for a GTX 960 instead...

Believe it or not but the consoles have very little to do with AMD apart from the hardware, both consoles have created their own direct to metal api. So in other words it couod just be generic hardware in there no amd or nvidia features used

I think it's fine and I think AMD cards should be able to run this.

However, unsatisfactory performance may be experienced as the code of many feature cannot be optimized for AMD products.

Reviews have confirmed that the feature takes a heavier toll on AMD cards than on Nvidia cards.

Gameworks is divided into VisualFX and PhysX

VisualFX supports:

Physics supports:

Here, eat a Snickers.

Yes, they do.

Which, in some ways, is encouraging. I suspect the take home message from this is that whatever PC hardware you have, so long as it is equivalent in power to the console hardware (well, a little more powerful than, PCs use their hardware less efficiently than consoles due to the higher OS and API overheads), then you'll get at least an equivalent experience to console.

Anything above that is a bonus. Maybe AMD users will have an advantage in some areas due to Bethesda's experience of working closer to the AMD hardware for consoles, and being able to make better use of Mantle [edit] (if they went with that - FO4 was surely in development too long ago to use Direct X 12?) [/edit]. Maybe Nvidia users will have advantages in some other areas like being able to turn on more detailed cloth and hair physics, or improved visual effects.

But I doubt any particular GPU brand will be penalised, unless you consider not getting some bonuses to be a penalty. But, really, these differences between AMD and Nvidia middleware have been known about for quite some time, and these days it's unreasonable to assume that developers won't make use of GPU specific features if it's easy and cheap enough for them to do so.

> Maybe AMD users will have an advantage in some areas due to Bethesda's experience of working closer to the hardware for consoles <

I don't know about XBOX One (obviously it should run OK too), but Pete Hines has stated exclusively that Fallout 4 will run on PS4 at 1080p - 30 fps (locked),

and that customers will be very pleased with the performance of the PS4. !!!

You contradict yourself, custom direct to metal api's mean all that a developper works with is the devtools from sony or microsoft. Cuts out the driver layer that makes pcs less efficient.

In other words there is no need for amd or nvidia software and features.. Look at the 360 halfway during its lifecycle they put a completely different brand cpu in with 0 issues and changes.

There is nothing bethesda learns about 'amd' by using the ps4 and xbox one, theyre learning more about working with the sony and microsoft devtools and os than anything

Of course that's true to an extent. However, my understanding was that the Sony and Microsoft APIs for consoles gave application developers much closer access to the underlying hardware than the high-level graphics APIs like Direct-X 11 and lower or Open GL. Indeed, that's one reason why AMD championed Mantle (because it gave closer access to the hardware than DX-11 and so favoured AMDs GCN architecture in a way DX-11 didn't), and possibly why Microsoft then went for DX-12.

The point is, having used Sony's and Microsoft's tools to gat closer access to the GCN architecture of the consoles, Bethesda may, if they ended up using Mantle, have more experience of getting the best out of the GCN architecture on AMD GPUs.

Getting the best out of Nvidia architectures would need Bethesda to use DX-12 and have experience doing so (though I gather DX-11 has tended to favour Nvidia's architecture).

And so PC users with PCs slightly more powerful than PS4 should be able to run FO4 at a reliable 30 fps at 1080p. Many people found 20+ fps was quite playable for FO3 or Skyrim, and I doubt FO4 will be much different.

Whether console performance is acceptable to someone used to much more powerful hardware is another matter, of course

Actually wrong. Tests with DX12 developed games showed that AMD drivers perform better under DX12. That's propably the reason why NVidia and it's [censored] make such a fuzz about gameworks. Still the article is pure clickbait to get attention of the [censored]. They hate gameworks fine for them.

Using both archtiectures (NVidia and AMD) I don't see any troubles atm. and I am pretty sure there won't be any with FO4.

At this time a dx12 only game is not feasible as its win 10 only, and youd be surprised by the amount of gamers staying on windows 7 and in a lesser extent on 8.1.

I think its going to be s long time before we see full dx12 games as the standard..

Most nvidia cards arent dx12 cards thats why..theyre dx 12 ready support some modules but mainly built for dx11, whereas amd looked at the future.

There are a number of recent titles with various Gameworks features, certainly not all of them performed worse on AMD cards: http://i.imgur.com/RfvX9Uh.png

http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2015/04/14/grand-theft-auto-v/ is another one which turned out to be quite optimized for both: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKyPHnZ6mKo

If FO4 does support certain Gameworks effects, we don't know which ones yet. If a particular effect turns out to be problematic, you can always turn it off, as most people did with Witcher 3, for example.

This my thought too. Driver support is a big deal. AMD will go months without a driver release, while Nvidia is constantly releasing Day 1 driver support for big AAA games. For instance, I bet on Nov. 10th, Nvidia will release a driver optimized specifically for Fallout 4.

Oh, I agree. I don't want to see AMD fail, but they've been consistently behind for years. I mean, underdogs are cool and all, but eventually you lose more and more consumers to the company that has consistently delivered better performance and support. I gladly pay a little more for Nvidia cards given their track record.

And I am EXCITED by this information about Fallout 4 using Gameworks. The fan base is always complaining to Bethesda about using old tech and dated technology, and now, finally, we have a Bethesda release that is pretty much cutting edge tech-wise. Volumetric lighting, material shaders, and Gameworks features. And people are [censored]ing about it.

HBAO+ and TXAA are amazing, and much less performance impacting on an Nvidia card than their alternatives. And if you haven't used it, the Geforce Experience that comes with Nvidia cards is incredible for optimizing game settings - it gives side-by-side screenshots from inside the game with features turned off and on. And Shadowplay is magical for recording gameplay footage. I pretty much keep it running, and don't see a negative impact on FPS, and I can just hit record AFTER I do something cool in-game and get it recorded.

Gameworks sabatoges performance on Nvidia hardware as well. It's meant for more than one NV GPU.

I never had a problem running all Gameworks on for every game that has it on my system, and I still maintain more than 60fps. That includes Arkham Knight. Will it decrease performance - YES. But so does every graphical setting. Claiming Gameworks sabotages performance is like claiming High-res textures or Anti-Aliasing is sabotaging performance.

If you want realtime physics, hair, volumetric smoke effects, etc. OF COURSE it is going to lower FPS. The question is whether or not those effects are worth the FPS hit to you.

And for reference, my GPU is an Nvidia GTX 980 TI.

This is true from my experience.

I recently played Borderlands 2 which uses PhysX.

Playing at 1080p with a 980 Ti I saw fps drops into the 20s with PhysX turned up.

I hope Fallout 4 isn't the same.

That's a known issue with that specific game.

Wow just wow,

Ok I'll say it again, its proven that in games that off Nvidia Gamesworks Features that your best bet to gain FPS is actually to have a slaved card for it.

Conditions,

1) Both cards have to be Nvidia based GPU.

2) These do not have to be the same card

3) No bridge required

4) You do need a slot, card(s), and PSU that supports this though. So I guess that might bugger some cause using 2 Cards does have some requirements.

Other than that there are people like myself that meet all of those requirements. So from my experience these features are extra's but!!! I have seen substantial gains in FPS first hand its not just me either basically if you have just upgraded your Card you should just slap both in if you can, cause we are talking 10-25 more FPS here easy.

I'm stoked about this bit of news, really its great news not bad news this is FREAKING awesome news.

So if you were in a spot where you just had to say upgrade your card well you might be looking at better FPS than your new replacer card could have offered on its own

Its pretty sweet and its on AMD that they didn't do something like this.

This FPS gain is shown to be more substantial at times than SLI/Crossfire configurations. So basically its like getting SLI but without having to go in for 2 expensive cards. Just one Good card and one cheaper card is all you need....Well and a decent PSU and MOBO cause uh slots and power requirements for multiple cards is ugh way more than a single card.

IF you have played Witcher, Borderlands, Metro games with this setup you will absolutely see the difference and LOVE IT.

-----------

I'm sure people that have a 2X SLI 900 series card plus and old GTX card will absolutely go ape with this news. Cause uh your talking about being able to downscale from say 1440 to 1080p and play with amazing FPS here....With the downsampling there might not be a need for some graphics options cause its kinda redundant as a lot of them are just to make the edges of objects more crisp.

Its going to be awesome cant wait to play it now!

It is?

The only other game I've played that used Nvidia specific features was Batman Arkham City and I turned those off since I was playing on an HD 7970.

Hopefully if Fallout 4 does make use of Gameworks it won't have any issues.

Yeah, if you check the Borderlands 2 forums, there are lots of threads on the issue of PhysX drops.

Basically with Nvidia Gameworks you can either run a slave card, or if you have enough overhead on your current card, you can run them on a single GPU. Since I have a 980 TI and game at 1080p, I can play a locked 60fps and still have 30-40 FPS free above that to run intensive features like Gameworks.

Yeah I love having a locked 60fps so that's why I game at 1080p with my 980 Ti.

It's very likely our cards will have no problem maxing Fallout 4 but you never know.

Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, Borderlands 2, Alice Madness Returns, Assassin's Creed 4, and Witcher 3 just to name a few have issues with Nvidia PhysX on a single card. Arkham Origins did run surprisingly well all maxed out with high physx minus antialiasing. But that is the exception, not the norm. (That was on a single Gtx 660 non-TI)

Also, bear in mind Arkham Origins used a more approximate approach to physx than it's predecessors, even it's use of tessellation was more conservative than Arkham City. Even today with an i5-3570k and GTX 970 I cannot play Arkham City or Arkham Asylum or Alice 2 without GPU physx off. Games need to be approximate with Nvidia physx in order to be playable on a single GPU.