Yes, many of those special Nvidia functions can be sent to the CPU.... which means it drags your game performance into the dirt. So your options are: turn off the pretty, turn on the pretty & deal with crappy performance, or buy an Nvidia card.

Maybe Nvidia's PhysX part that runs on AMD CPU's drags your performance down.

I played on a AMD video card from 2009 to 2011 some PC versions of video games that use Nvidia's PhysX physics engine at a friends house and the performance wasn't that bad.

I also played on PC versions of video games that use Nvidia's GameWorks libraries like HairWorks on a AMD video card like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and performance is not bad at all. At least not after the last few patches.

Seems to me that there has been enough reviews on graphics cards to know all to well where to buy your card from.

I bought an Nvidia card, paid the extra money and I don't feel bad about that decision.

This just means that if you have an Nvidia card your getting your monies worth, which if you paid more for the card well pat yourself on the back cause it was a good choice.

Nvidia Owners will get to slot an additional card to use as a dedicated PhysX card and this will certainly improve their performance, cant complain about that here on my end.

So basically what if Bethsada Games Studio's didn't implement new graphics features and technologies just to satisfy more gamers?

Well that would mean we would be drowning in even more threads about bad graphics.

Sorry not everyone gets to be happy.

Well, even though gameplay is extremely important, graphics is becoming as or more important than gameplay nowadays. Visual fidelity is the real mainstream today, propelled not only by many gamers but companies like Nvidia who have instilled on the masses that cutting edge graphics is the future; the way. If Bethesda doesn't play along, well, you just got a small glimpse of what can happen.

Well Nvidia's graphics rendering technology and software was always way more advanced than AMD's software or Havok's physics engine.

Personally though, I'm very happy Nvidia is starting to make more of their software work on AMD hardware as well.

None of that works well out of the gate on AMD hardware if at all. It took forever for AMD to get hairworks in TW3 to be somewhat doable and even what they ended up with was not that great. The bigger point here that you seem to want to ignore in favor of praising nvidia while trashing AMD is that when a developer uses GWL AMD gets locked out. On a grander scheme that is a big problem. Being a blind really devoted fan isn't going to change it. And no AMD can't keep up with with nvidias R&D nor can they match their well documented sleazy business practices.

That is nice if they're working together although I wouldn't want one buying off the other. I like competition. The more competition the marrier. I've never had an AMD graphics card not because I don't like AMD but simply because the gaming laptops I've bought came with an Nvidia card built in. One thing I would hate to see is when any of these two companies start to play dirty. And I've heard rumors about Nvidia doing shady things against AMD in the past.

Lots of people claim Nvidia is being shady, but they really aren't. Nvidia isn't doing anything illegal or underhanded to get ahead of AMD. They are not purposefully sabotaging AMD cards. They are simply spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on research and middleware solutions to maximize the use and sales potential of their GPUs.

People claim Nvidia is being "shady" because it won't release the source code for those middleware solutions (that it spends close to a billion dollars on) to AMD. So that customers will buy Nvidia GPUs. That's called business.

AMD doesn't have nearly that budget to spend. And it is their choice to release their own middleware solutions as open source. So with open source available, Nvidia can optimize their GPUs for AMD middleware too. You can argue Nvidia is playing dirty ball by not reciprocating the gesture, but they spend WAY more on their middleware than AMD does. AMD is giving away millions of dollars of research for free, and people are asking Nvidia to give away HUNDREDS of millions of dollars in research to be "fair".

To top it all off, apparently Nvidia is a lot more responsive and hands on with helping developers (and, yes, this is obviously because they have more money and staff to do this) than AMD is. So naturally that fosters a better relationship with Nvidia, so developers are more likely to keep going back to them for help and support.

So because Nvidia is successful, it keeps becoming MORE successful. And people are upset it isn't stopping to let AMD catch up. I'm all for competition - I WANT AMD to be a beast of a competitor, just to keep Nvidia sharp - but I'm not for calling foul on a company for pulling ahead just because it is succeeding.

Lol, you talk like an Nvidia spokesperson. ^^ That's cool Nvidia is doing things straight. I personally don't have any preferences. So far I haven't had any significant issues with Nvidia and the best part I like about Nvidia is how quickly they update their drivers. That's a big thing for me.

Saying it so doesn't make it so, there is too much evidence out there to the contrary.

I own a 6300 and a 970, so I'll be happy if I can unload as many CPU intensive features onto the 970 as possible, but as someone who's owned a lot of AMD cards, I really hope they run well too. Only time will tell, but I really doubt there will be much of a discrepancy, other than a few Nvidia features that aren't that useful anyway. Can we really blame Nvidia anyway? Sure, AMD is a little more open, but they're both companies and they both do what they have to do get ahead. This isn't a conspiracy; it's business as usual.

I'm firmly in the Nvidia camp, if only because they have always given me excellent service and support. And yes, the driver support is a big thing for me. AMD has gotten better, but ATI had a horrible reputation for only releasing drivers once or twice a year.

I'd like to see it. The Witcher 3 Hairworks you were referencing was specifically shown not to be a case of sabotage.

Yet I have a few AMD video cards in my PC's that PC versions of video games that use Nviida's PhysX physics engine and GameWorks libraries run good on those AMD video cards with no performance loss. Including the ones I tried at my real life friends house.

Maybe I'm a unique one.

Competition is necessary for advancement, see how CPUs stagnated after AMD fell so much behind of Intel. The same is beginning to happen for GPUs, Nvidia upped 256-bit cards above 300$ and are giving out only severely gimped cards below that. And there's no third player on the horizon.

So don't get too happy about everybody leaning to the winner at the same time. It's only temporary good news, followed by long stagnation.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/206517-revisiting-gameworks-amd-nvidia-tangle-over-optimizations-to-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt

Seeing as it has been specifically documented numerous times that GWL do not run well on AMD gpu's, here in the same link i posted for white rabbit for example. http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/206517-revisiting-gameworks-amd-nvidia-tangle-over-optimizations-to-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt

I'd say you are unique, or confused.

it's not only a problem for AMD users... but also for those, who don't have one of the new 900 series Maxwell card from Nvidia

people with a 780, a 770 will suffer as well

just like they did in Witcher

Nvidia Gameworks ruined already too many games

770 / 570 user here, Witcher 3 works great on my end. Heck anything that isn't maxed out GTA 5 that I played works well.

HairWorks works on my Nvidia GTX 470 for the PC version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

What you describe there, isn't "satisfying more gamers". It's coercion, attempts to stack the deck & create an uneven playing field, or become a monopoly, etc. "Use our cards, or get a worse experience. And we'll bribe, er, 'partner' with devs to keep it that way." That's a nice game. Shame if something happened to it.

It's important to have competition in the computer & electronics industries (and all others, really)..... it keeps companies from becoming complacent, from being able to overcharge (due to being the "only game in town". see: cable/ISPs), it keeps pressure on to innovate.

It's also important to have open & cross-platform standards (in coding, in APIs, in hardware) so that things continue to work, and to foster that previously-mentioned competition. Locking up things behind proprietary interfaces & systems doesn't help anyone. Well, except the companies who own them, as they can then charge a premium as the gatekeeper.

And you seem to be confused as to the definition of "sabotage". "Sabotage": to deliberately destroy, damage, or obstruct (something). Supporting your own hardware over a competing company isn't deliberate obstruction.

From the same article you linked - which I was aware of:

Creating middleware that runs best on your own hardware is not sabotage.

AMD has ignored the trend of the entire gaming industry over the past decade to move more and more towards middleware solutions. Developers don't WANT to dig into source code level effects. They want platforms and middleware their artists can use, and that speed game development. Is open source code optimization BETTER? Heck yes it is. Is it more practical? Absolutely not.

Every game development company I've worked with has had far more artists and designers than programmers. They all wanted artists to be able to put their own assets into the game to test and modify without need for a programmer on hand. Middleware provides that solution.

AMD cries foul because Nvidia doesn't release their advances open-sourced to the world.

And finally, the very article you linked to support your "sabotage" stance, ends with this:

I don't want to see Nvidia become a monopoly, or become so successful they are unopposed. I know that would svck, and lead to a decline in quality in progress. I'm just saying, the impetus is on AMD to step-up, not Nvidia to step-down.

Unfortunately for the sake of keeping things competitive, AMD no longer has any kind of hold on the market, http://hexus.net/media/uploaded/2015/8/3baf5502-dd13-441d-8dd6-3b5afbbe0347.jpg.

I guess games companies are just working with the market leaders.

I can't get 60 FPS in Witcher with my 770, when going into the villages ^^ not even on the lowest settings

there are tons of articles and threads about the Kepler issue in Witcher 3 and Project Cars

things like the 780 being outperformed by a 960 just shouldn't happen

Yeah that's Nvidia deliberately gimping their earlier tech by writing drivers that are really good only for their latest tech cards. This is well documented on the Nvidia forums, worth a look for when you notice any issue in the games you're playing. Been pitchforks out now on Nvidia for quite some time for doing this.

Unfortunately with AMD slipping behind so much, we are now quite at the mercy of Nvidia and things will only get worse (it's a company!).

Personally I think graphics cards are overpriced as it is, without even taking into consideration they are now only good for around a year before Nvidia deliberately junks them by making new tech and trashing the drivers for "old" cards. Other computer components are so much cheaper...it's usually the graphics card that's the most expensive part of the gaming computer. We are getting ripped off

I don't even know how you or some other PC gamers are getting FPS drops, even on the lowest graphical settings.

The Nvidia GTX 470 with HairWorks works on a AMD with a 4 core processor and 8GB's of DDR3 RAM and also works on AMD with a 8 core processor and 8GB's of DDR3 RAM.