nvidia – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Forget About Platform Exclusives; Here Comes The PC GPU Exclusives!

from the please-just-stop dept

Of all the things in the gaming industry that annoy me, exclusivity deals have to rank near the very top. The idea that any title, but in particular third-party titles, could be exclusive to certain platforms, such as Xbox or PlayStation, is anathema to how art and culture distribution is meant to work. I understand why they’re a thing, I just think they shouldn’t be. And exclusivity deals tend to taint many other aspects of the industry. You need only look at the all of the convoluted fights Microsoft engaged in with regulators after gobbling up a bunch of large game studios to see the vascular reach exclusivity has in the industry.

The PC gaming community has had to put up with less of this sort of thing, generally. Sure, some titles are console exclusives and that sucks, but there hasn’t been much in the way of PC gamers having to pay attention to the base hardware and software they have to play games. And, yes, certainly there is some of this, particularly with those who want to play games on MacOS or Linux systems, but it’s generally been at a much smaller scale. One Reddit thread I uncovered from several years ago even noticed this and began wondering out loud if hardware exclusives in PC gaming would ever become a thing.

The latest squabble on r/gaming between console owners over exclusive games has got me thinking. What prevents something like this from happening with GPUs? After the GPP thing, I think it is pretty clear Nvidia is willing to do almost anything to control the market. I despise the idea of selling hardware with exclusives: I think hardware should stand on it’s own merits. The whole idea of pc gaming is to have choice, to have control over your machine. GPU exclusives would ruin this idea, in some ways. Could Nvidia pay for a popular game to run only on their hardware?

Well, it didn’t exactly happen in that way with the recently released space epic Starfield, but a specific graphical feature within the game did. See, Bethesda, parent company Zenimax who’s parent company is now Microsoft, inked a deal with AMD. The result is that one of the more popular graphics features found in Nvidia graphics cards, DLSS, is not supported in the game, but AMD’s version of it is.

As IGN noticed, the open-world RPG’s settings menu currently only supports the latest iteration of AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution feature, FSR2, meaning players with Intel or Nvidia graphics cards that use different machine learning upscaling algorithms are out of luck. AMD gaming chief Frank Azor wouldn’t confirm if that was a requirement for its partnership with Bethesda, but recently told The Verge the studio could support DLSS if it wanted. “If they want to do DLSS, they have AMD’s full support,” he said.

Frankly, I don’t believe that and I don’t think you should, either. If all of the graphical features in AMD’s rivals’ chipset were free to be used by Bethesda, then what is the point of the deal AMD signed with Bethesda? And why in the world would Bethesda want to deny Nvidia chip owners the graphical abilities of machine-learning graphics upscaling? If you’re not a PC gamer, this might all sound like gibberish to you, but DLSS is no small deal.

For now, if you’re an Nvidia owner, this has all sort of been fixed for you thanks to the modding community.

The good news is that a “Starfield Upscaler” which allows players to replace FSR2 with DLSS or XESS was one of the first mods uploaded to the NexusMods website after the game went live. It’s not bug free and some PC players are still reporting issues getting their preferred upscaling tech to work, but it’s a start and will no doubt continue to get refined in the days ahead.

Bethesda’s exclusive partnership with AMD caused a big controversy when it was announced earlier this summer precisely because of the chip company’s pattern of locking out competitors’ features. The whole point of PC gaming is that it’s supposed to give players freedom to pick and choose their preferred builds, unlike on consoles where fans are locked into the manufacturer’s ecosystem.

Exactly. And the fact that this splintering of the PC gaming ecosystem ostensibly as a result of exclusivity deals with hardware component manufacturers is beginning to rear its ugly head is not a good thing. I’m loathe to make slippery slope arguments generally, but this sure does feel like the very first shot being fired in what might be a longer, and very dumb, war among chipset manufacturers.

Filed Under: exclusives, gpu, pc gaming, video games
Companies: amd, bethesda, microsoft, nvidia, zenimax

Nvidia Embraces Modding Community For ‘Half Life 2’ Project, Valve Apparently Cool With It

from the mod-squad dept

It’s always nice when you get several stories in a row that contrast with one another in order to make a point. We were just discussing Rockstar’s decision to scoop up a roleplaying and modding community in order to build in new and interesting ways to play GTA and Red Dead Redemption games. What I had hoped out loud would be a sign that Rockstar was turning over a new leaf on modding communities was dashed almost immediately as the company then went after another group of mod-makers for the crime of being fans of its games and trying to make them more interesting and playable. Game companies don’t have to do this sort of thing.

And that is now evidenced by Nvidia’s recent announcement that it has partnered with four different modding communities to push out a new graphically updated version of Half-Life 2, with Valve’s silence on the announcement serving as its tacit endorsement.

Awkwardly titled Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project, the remaster is currently in development with no set release date. Nvidia announced it today as part of its pre-Gamescom presentations. The remaster will use RTX Remix, which is Nvidia’s toolkit for bringing ray-tracing to classic PC games. RTX Remix was previously announced using The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind as an example; it seeks to give community modders and hobbyists the ability to do ray-tracing conversions for old games, but it’s still only available to a few people.

The people, in this case, are a group of modders from multiple community projects who have banded together under the name Orbifold Studios. The team includes modders who worked on VR Half-Life 2 project Project 17, asset remastering project Half-Life 2 Remade Assets, total conversation mod Raising the Bar: Redux, and another VR mod simply called Half-Life 2 VR, among others.

There has been no public statement I’m aware of by Valve on this project, but it has been made very clear in industry publications that the company behind the original game series has nothing to do with the actual making of this remake. That being said, the company is said to be very aware of the project. Therefore, while I’d love to see a full-throated endorsement of the modding community doing this sort of thing from Valve, its silence and a company like Nvidia’s involvement sure seems to indicate that the company isn’t going to disappear this whole thing.

This thing just kicked off into development, so I suppose there would still be time for Valve to reverse course, but I doubt it will, mostly because I highly doubt Nvidia would announce this at all if there was even a chance that Valve would nix the project. So why is it that Valve can see the usefulness in fan projects like this, but Rockstar can’t?

Filed Under: half life 2, modding, video games
Companies: nvidia, rockstar, steam

American Companies Are Helping Power Russia’s Massive Facial Recognition System

from the inadvertently-aiding-in-the-war-(at-home)-effort dept

Russia’s fighting a war in Ukraine and a war at home. As residents express their displeasure with their government, the government’s cameras and facial recognition AI are going into overdrive to ensure Putin and his pals control the narrative.

Unfortunately, the Russian government is getting some help from the United States, albeit inadvertently.

Russia has been using cameras powered by facial recognition systems to crackdown on dissidents, according to reporting from Reuters. Several Russian companies are using algorithms trained and powered by chips made by U.S. firms Intel and Nvidia. Reuters said that one of the companies even received money from U.S. intelligence.

The full article from Reuters gives a more in-depth explanation of what’s going on here. For years, Russia has been expanding its domestic surveillance network. And it has always been used to track dissidents, opposition party members, and other government critics. Handling real-time facial recognition requires a lot of hardware power, and for that, the Russian government has turned to American tech companies.

The facial recognition system in Moscow is powered by algorithms produced by one Belarusian company and three Russian firms. At least three of the companies have used chips from U.S. firms Nvidia Corp or Intel Corp in conjunction with their algorithms, Reuters found. There is no suggestion that Nvidia or Intel have breached sanctions.

At this point, neither Nvidia and Intel are selling directly to Russia. Both companies ended all shipments to the country following the enactment of export restrictions last March. Whatever was purchased prior to the blacklisting was above-board, and what’s already in the Russian government’s hands is beyond the control of these companies.

More concerning is the US government’s slightly more direct participation in the development and expansion of Russia’s facial recognition programs.

Reuters also found that the Russian and Belarusian companies participated in a U.S. facial-recognition test program, aimed at evaluating emerging technologies and run by an offshoot of the Department of Commerce. One of the firms received $40,000 in prize money awarded by an arm of U.S. intelligence.

$40,000 is a drop in the surveillance budget bucket, but it’s still a bit disturbing to see the US government handing out money to companies most likely already providing surveillance tech to known human rights abusers. While it’s true that, as a spokesperson for the IARPA program stated, an award is not the same as providing direct assistance in oppressive surveillance programs, it’s still not a good look for the US Commerce Department or the National Institute of Standards and Technology — both of which are involved in awarding prizes to participants in IARPA (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity) challenges.

While the US tech providers are doing what they can to prevent their products from heading to Russia, all they can really do is stop sending GPUs and other hardware there themselves. The Russian government has fans all over the world and it appears people who want to put these power graphics processors in the government’s hands are buying on behalf of the blacklisted nation.

Russian customs records show that at least 129 shipments of Nvidia products reached Russia via third parties between April 1 and Oct. 31, 2022, however. Records for at least 57 of these shipments stated that they contained GPUs. In response to these findings, the spokesperson said, “We comply with all applicable laws, and insist our customers do the same. If we learn that any Nvidia customer has violated U.S. export laws and shipped our products to Russia, we will cease doing business with them.”

Intel isn’t doing any better at preventing customers from making straw purchases for a nation that earned itself additional export controls following the Ukraine invasion.

Reuters has previously reported that at least $457 million worth of Intel products arrived in Russia between April 1 and Oct. 31, 2022, according to Russian customs records. “We take reports of continued availability of our products seriously and we are looking into the matter,” an Intel spokesperson said

The end result is the events detailed in the rest of the Reuters report, which is definitely worth checking out. The system — at least the facial recognition end of it — works. Reuters reviewed over 2,000 criminal cases, finding overwhelming evidence that most of the arrests and detainments were triggered by citizens — many of the anti-government protesters — passing by cameras deployed by the Russian government.

Through no fault of their own, American companies are now accomplices in oppression. While Nvidia and Intel appear to be doing what they can to comply with US regulations, there’s not much they can do to stop third parties from bypassing these restrictions. And there’s even less they can do about the products that are already in use, except take precautions in the future to limit their tech’s contribution to world’s many, many jackboots.

Filed Under: facial recognition, russia, surveillance
Companies: intel, nvidia

Nvidia Actually Listens To Its Customers, Will Again Let Them Use The Expensive Hardware They Own As They See Fit

from the it's-not-a-bug-it's-a-feature dept

Thu, Feb 26th 2015 04:03am - Karl Bode

Graphics card powerhouse Nvidia hasn’t been having very much fun lately. First, the company took an Internet wide beating from gamers after selling a 4 GB graphics card (the GTX 970) that wasn’t really a 4 GB graphics card, resulting in the $300+ purchase choking on high-end resolutions (or when using, say, Oculus Rift). After months of complaints and a false advertising suit, the company finally took to its official blog to acknowledge that the company “failed to communicate” its graphics card’s limitations to the marketing department and “externally to reviewers at launch.” Yeah, whoops a daisy.

Perhaps a bigger deal was Nvidia’s December decision to roll out mobile graphics card drivers that prevented paying customers from overclocking the cards they own. The ability for consumers to do as they see fit with their own hardware, Nvidia claimed at the time, was a bug in the company’s driver software that needed to be removed for the safety of the consumer (read: Nvidia got tired of processing returns and calls from idiots who didn’t understand things pushed to work harder get hotter than ever when in confined spaces).

The good news is that after being absolutely pummeled in the media for weeks, Nvidia has issued a statement in its forums saying that the company has had a change of heart and will reintroduce the “bug”:

“As you know, we are constantly tuning and optimizing the performance of your GeForce PC.

We obsess over every possible optimization so that you can enjoy a perfectly stable machine that balances game, thermal, power, and acoustic performance. Still, many of you enjoy pushing the system even further with overclocking. Our recent driver update disabled overclocking on some GTX notebooks. We heard from many of you that you would like this feature enabled again. So, we will again be enabling overclocking in our upcoming driver release next month for those affected notebooks.

If you are eager to regain this capability right away, you can also revert back to 344.75.”

While it’s certainly great to see Nvidia listen to customer feedback, you’d think that after years of catering to the obsessively-anal gaming community, Nvidia would know better than to keep making the same PR mistakes. When you cater the lion’s share of your business to technical enthusiasts capable of fact-checking your performance claims and PR fluff down to the millisecond, your marketing bullshit leash is notably shorter. It’s not entirely clear why Nvidia needs to be reminded of this every few months, but you’d think this lesson would ultimately find its way to the company’s central processor and take up permanent residence in system memory.

Filed Under: graphics cards, listening to customers, modding, overclocking
Companies: nvidia

NVIDIA Calls A Feature A 'Bug,' Strips Away Overclocking Option On Its Mobile Device Cards

from the you-can-buy-it-but-you-can't-have-it dept

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Case in point #38,909: guess what NVIDIA thinks is a “bug,” not a “feature.”

Starting with the Fermi drivers, though, a software overclock was possible in the drivers, which allowed you to adjust your laptop GPU’s clockspeeds at will. Tools like AfterBurner from Micro-Star International Comp., Ltd. and Turbomaster by ASUSTek Computer Inc. allowed users to more easily and safely tweak their GPU’s clockspeeds on select gaming laptops with cooling solutions designed to cope with the higher thermal load. Companies like the Clevo Comp., Sager, ASUS, MSI, and Dell’s Alienware regularly sold models billing overclockability as a sales feature.

What OEMs apparently didn’t expect was that NVIDIA would rob customers of that feature. But that appears to be precisely what happened.

NVIDIA pushed out new drivers last December that took away customers’ ability to overclock their cards. These were targeted at cards for mobile and hybrid devices, where the chance of overheating (and causing serious damage) was more pronounced. Those who had overclocked their cards but now were unable to do so demanded answers from the manufacturer. And wouldn’t you know it, the explanation for NVIDIA’s removal of this option cites “safety” as the primary motivator.

Unfortunately GeForce notebooks were not designed to support overclocking. Overclocking is by no means a trivial feature, and depends on thoughtful design of thermal, electrical, and other considerations. By overclocking a notebook, a user risks serious damage to the system that could result in non-functional systems, reduced notebook life, or many other effects.

There was a bug introduced into our drivers which enabled some systems to overclock. This was fixed in a recent update. Our intent was not to remove features from GeForce notebooks, but rather to safeguard systems from operating outside design limits.

“Safeguard systems from operating outside design limits” sounds an awful lot like “your purchased items are only as flexible as we allow them to be.” Sure, warranty departments handling burnt up/out devices may have been making some noise about dealing with the aftereffects of careless overclocking, but if so, they’re no less blameless than NVIDIA. Overclocking is generally one of those warranty-voiding activities, and if companies didn’t want to be replacing torched devices, they should have handled it better at their end. (And, as Daily Tech points out, they should probably stop advertising overclocking as a “feature” if it’s truly that much trouble in the warranty department.)

But NVIDIA’s action takes the purchased product out of paying customers’ hands. Most people who dabble in overclocking are technically adept and know the limits of their hardware (and the terms of their warranties). There will always be those who push too far or get in over their heads, and a few overclockers who disingenuously expect the device’s manufacturer to bail them out when things go wrong, but these customers are in the minority.

When a company takes away a feature (especially one that has been advertised by the devices’ manufacturers) and calls it a “bug,” it’s basically telling customers that they won’t ever own what they purchased. In this case, NVIDIA is hurting some of its most loyal customers — people who know their devices inside and out and will pay good money to stay ahead of the tech curve.

And NVIDIA’s being a bit disingenuous itself. It calls overclocking a “bug” when explaining why it took this feature away. But if it truly was a bug, why didn’t it issue a patch rather than eliminating the option? The obvious answer is that overclocking is no bug and NVIDIA knows it. But it has apparently chosen to placate its OEMs at the expense of some of its most reliable customers.

NVIDIA hasn’t issued any further statements on its “bug fix,” so it’s safe to assume it doesn’t really care whether it’s angered a number of its customers. Its position in the graphics accelerator market is virtually unassailable, especially in the area (mobile/hybrid) where it has just guaranteed its customers will get less product than they paid for.

Filed Under: bug, feature, overclocking, ownership, video chips
Companies: nvidia

Is Nvidia Playing Fair With Their New Development Tools?

from the dirty-tricks dept

There’s some heavy details in all of this, many of them at least somewhat technical, so let’s dispense with the typical introductions and get right to the meat of this GPU industry sandwich. It’s no secret to anyone paying attention to the video game industry that the graphics processor war has long been primarily waged between rivals Nvidia and AMD. What you may not realize is just how involved those two companies are with the developers that use their cards and tools. It makes sense, of course, that the two primary players in PC GPUs would want to get involved with game developers to make sure their code is optimized for the systems on which they’ll be played. That way, gamers end up with games that run well on the cards in their systems, buy more games, buy more GPUs, and everyone is happy. According to AMD, however, Nvidia is attempting to lock out AMD’s ability to get involved with developers who use the Nvidia GameWorks toolset, and the results can already be seen on the hottest game of the season thus far.

Some as-brief-as-possible background to get things started. First, the GameWorks platform appears to be immensely helpful to developers creating graphically impressive games.

Developers license these proprietary Nvidia technologies like TXAA and ShadowWorks to deliver a wide range of realistic graphical enhancements to things like smoke, lighting, and textures. Nvidia engineers typically work closely with the developers on the best execution of their final code. Recent examples of Nvidia GameWorks titles include Batman: Arkham Origins, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, and this week’s highly anticipated Watch Dogs.

Now, while this is and should be a licensing-revenue win for Nvidia, aspects of the agreement in using GameWorks may actually seek to extend that win into a realm that threatens the larger gaming ecosystem. As mentioned previously, both Nvidia and AMD have traditionally worked extremely closely with developers, even going so far as assisting them in optimizing the game code itself to offer the best experience on their respective cards. How? Well, I’ll let PR lead for AMD, Robert Hallock, chime in.

“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,” Hallock told me in an email conversation over the weekend. But wait, it stands to reason that AMD would be miffed over a competitor having the edge when it comes to graphical fidelity and features, right? Hallock explains that the core problem is deeper: “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.The code obfuscation makes it difficult to perform our own after-the-fact driver optimizations, as the characteristics of the game are hidden behind many layers of circuitous and non-obvious routines,” Hallock continues. “This change coincides with NVIDIA’s decision to remove all public Direct3D code samples from their site in favor of a ‘contact us for licensing’ page. AMD does not engage in, support, or condone such activities.”

In other words, the dual symbiotic relationships that have always existed between developers and both Nvidia and AMD becomes one-sided, with AMD being locked out of the process in some very important ways. It means that an essential information repository and communications lines for development and game code optimization nearly become proprietary in favor of Nvidia. And, lest you think one shouldn’t simply take the word of a rival PR flack on this kind of thing, other tech journalists appear to not only agree, but have predicted this exact outcome nearly a year ago when the GameWorks program was first rolled out.

“AMD is no longer in control of its own performance. While GameWorks doesn’t technically lock vendors into Nvidia solutions, a developer that wanted to support both companies equally would have to work with AMD and Nvidia from the beginning of the development cycle to create a vendor-specific code path. It’s impossible for AMD to provide a quick after-launch fix. This kind of maneuver ultimately hurts developers in the guise of helping them.”

Forbes’ Jason Evangelho then digs into the title du jour, Watch Dogs, an Ubisoft production developed within the GameWorks platform. When a tech journalist is this surprised by how stark the difference in performance is between two rival GPU manufacturers, it’s worth taking him seriously.

I’ve been testing it over the weekend on a variety of newer AMD and Nvidia graphics cards, and the results have been simultaneously fascinating and frustrating. It’s evident that Watch Dogs is optimized for Nvidia hardware, but it’s staggering just how un-optimized it is on AMD hardware. I guarantee that when the game gets released, a swarm of upset gamers are going to point fingers at AMD for the sub-par performance. Their anger would be misplaced.

The graphic above may not appear all that staggering at first, until you understand the cards involved and what it actually represents. The two cards in question aren’t remotely in the same category of power and cost when compared to one another. That AMD card that is barely keeping up with the Nvidia card is a 500workhorse,whiletheNvidiacardisamid−range500 workhorse, while the Nvidia card is a mid-range 500workhorse,whiletheNvidiacardisamid−range300 staple of their linecard. Both cards were updated with the latest drivers for Watch Dogs prior to testing. The problem, as suggested above, is that the level of optimization done for the Nvidia cards far outpaces what’s been done on AMD’s end and it is thanks to the way the GameWorks platform is licensed and controlled. Games outside of that platform, with the exact same cards being tested, tell a far different story.

To further put this in perspective, AMD’s 290x graphics card performs 51% better than Nvidia’s 770 on one of the most demanding PC titles around, Metro: Last Light — which also happens to be an Nvidia optimized title. As you would expect given their respective prices, AMD’s flagship 290x can and should blow past Nvidia’s 770 and compete with Nvidia’s 780Ti on most titles. To really drive the point home, my Radeon 290x can hit 60fps on Metro: Last Light with High quality settings and 4x anti-aliasing, at a higher resolution of 1440p.

There’s some history here, with Nvidia having a reputation for being more proprietary than AMD, which has always been seen as more of an open-source, open-dialogue, open-competition company. Indeed, Nvidia even has some history with trying to hide colluding with competitors behind trade secret law. But if it’s allowed to simply lock up the open dialogue that everyone agrees makes for the best gaming ecosystem all around, the results could be quite poor for the PC gaming community as a whole. Particularly if upset AMD GPU owners who aren’t aware of the background end up pointing the fingers at their co-victims of Nvidia rather than the villain itself.

Filed Under: development, gameworks, gpus, optimization, video games
Companies: amd, nvidia

Over 120,000 People Sign Petition Asking EA To Officially Come Out Against SOPA

from the well,-they-should dept

Recently, despite some internet reports to the contrary, we noted that EA had not taken a stance on SOPA — and it seemed clear the company had no intention to do so. It seems that many EA and video gaming fans don’t find that acceptable. They’ve created an online petition asking EA to actually take a stand on the bills:

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a tool that protects monopolists and targets sites relied on by small-time businesses, like indie game developers and artists, condoning disproportionate action against these sites for any evidence of copyright infringement from any of their users. If EA wants to protect their monopoly so badly, we need to let them know that they will lose far more business by supporting this bill than by allowing indie developers to operate unimpeded. It is obvious that this bill’s primary use is to paint a big red bullseye on the main distributors of indie content, protecting the market shares of big-time businesses like Electronic Arts.

EA is a member of the Entertainment Software Association which supports SOPA. It’s time for EA to stand up and publicly oppose SOPA. Don’t mess with the internet, EA. You will regret it.

It’s too bad they don’t mention PIPA too, but… As I write this, there are already about 120,000 signatures, which is pretty impressive. Will EA listen?

It seems likely that the company doesn’t want to take a stance either way, but as the petition notes, not saying something about this could be just as bad. And it doesn’t even have to be anything big. Take, for example, how NVIDIA just came out against the bill. Despite also being a member of the ESA, NVIDIA notes that it disagrees with ESA and doesn’t think this bill is the right approach:

NVIDIA wasn’t consulted by ESA in formulating their position on SOPA. Our position is this: we oppose piracy, as it hurts our game-developer partners. However, we do not support SOPA. We don’t believe it is the right solution to the problem. We remain committed to working to address this problem in a constructive and fair manner.

It seems like EA could do the same thing… assuming that it, too, did not work with ESA on its position. Of course, if it did… well… then things are complicated.

Filed Under: petition, pipa, protect ip, sopa, video games
Companies: ea, esa, nvidia

When Colluding With A Competitor, Perhaps Don't Send A Direct Email Suggesting You Keep Prices High

from the might-come-back-to-bite-you dept

It’s rather rare these days to see collusion lawsuits where there’s overt evidence of collusion. Instead, it’s usually implicit collusion where a case needs to be made that this is a problem. However, every once in a while you still get those good old fashioned situations where there’s evidence of direct price fixing. For example, the Inquirer points us to a case involving questions of collusion in the graphics card market between ATI and NVIDIA, where it appears NVIDIA’s VP of marketing sent an email to ATI’s president and chief operating officer suggesting that, while the two companies were competitors, they should work more closely to make sure their stock prices each remained high. Apparently, the lawyers in the case tried to hide that document as a “trade secret.” If you consider it to be a “trade secret” that the two companies may have been collaborating, then perhaps they have a point. But the judge didn’t buy it: “This court is not a wholly-owned subsidiary of your companies. I am against you hiding information from the public.”

Filed Under: collusion, email, video cards
Companies: ati, nvidia