NFS Shift and ATI gfx cards

[redi]

I also posted this in the EA forum, I wonder if I get banned because of it :mrgreen: Feel free to discuss...

I've been reading around a little and what bugs me is that apparently this game was a sell-out between EA and nVidia? The game seems to use PhysX and is solely optimized for nVidia cards. Hence, ATI users get a game that will not work properly with their cards, and nowhere such a thing is stated in the System Requirements. I'm wondering if this is even legal?

[kamikaze666]

they better release a patch or we have the right to sue...

[Holger]

I also posted this in the EA forum, I wonder if I get banned because of it :mrgreen: Feel free to discuss...

I've been reading around a little and what bugs me is that apparently this game was a sell-out between EA and nVidia? The game seems to use PhysX and is solely optimized for nVidia cards. Hence, ATI users get a game that will not work properly with their cards, and nowhere such a thing is stated in the System Requirements. I'm wondering if this is even legal?:laugh:

[f0xx]

they better release a patch or we have the right to sue...

NVidia and the developers they work with do this for a long time....

Assassins Creed- Nvidia+Ubisoft released a patch to remvoe the compatibility with dx10.1 because geforces didnt have compatiblity

Resident Evil 5- Nvidia+CAPCOM released a TWIMTBP(The Way Its Meant To Be Played) game where the ATI graphic cards have some performance issues in Area 3 and with some gameplay time the videos become invisible

Batman Arkham Asylum- NVidia+Eidos/Rocksteady released another TWIMTBP game and guess what, geforces have better performance (have physX) and a Anti-Aliasing setting in the Graphic options, while ATI users have to force it in the CCC.

And the list goes on with Electronic Arts with NFS: shift another TWIMTBP game.

SO yes NVidia should have been prosecuted for a long time ^^

[Brainbug]

... The game seems to use PhysX...[/I]
sure of that? what effects could be used it for? i thought physx is good for "cloth" effects and such things. can not thing of any type in a racing game.

exept physics by itself, but that´s not the fact i guess.

[morbias]

Maybe if ATI got off their asses and worked with more developers there would be fewer conspiracy theories.

[redi]

Maybe if ATI got off their asses and worked with more developers there would be fewer conspiracy theories.

Nope, during development of NFS:Shift they already contacted SMS/EA to tell them their code made ATI cards perform poorly.

[leahcim]

Nope, during development of NFS:Shift they already contacted SMS/EA to tell them their code made ATI cards perform poorly.

Well, to be fair, ATI/AMD claim they contacted the developers with this list.

AFAIAA, we haven't seen the actual list, nor any details of what it contained and it's clearly not an independent source. It seems unlikely that the source wrote, compiled the list or was involved either. Plus SMS haven't been given much opportunity to respond to these claims afaict.

It seems unlikely that any of us has the detailed knowledge of the game engine to decide what is actually hurting the performance to compare with any list AMD have, even if we had it.

Bottom line, this is bad PR for AMD/ATI in either case. I don't care about a peeing contest between SMS and ATI about whose fault the poor performance in NFS:Shift is. I don't care about the peeing contest between AMD and Nvidia either...although I see most companies like to encourage these silly "wars", whether it's "console wars" or "OS wars" or "graphics card wars"

I just want a graphics card that will let me play a specific set of game(s) and a few weeks ago I had one, but, right now, it's clear that AMD isn't the card to buy for the current set of games.

Which is a pity because the the card I own is an ATI one.

Now maybe they will get their acts together and patch either the driver or the game or both so I don't have to buy a new card this year.

But eventually I will buy a new card anyway, and you can imagine the chances of me upgrading that card to one of their new shiny direct x 11 cards. Because, even if what the quote says is perfectly true, it just says that Nvidia is the best card to buy, because developers support it.

Bearing in mind that I have a HD4850 and the HD5850 is released today....clearly they have a vested interest in making this problem look like someone elses (And of course, the actual poor performance is mitigated by this new faster card anyway...it's slower than nvidia and than it should be, but it's "fast enough" such that it doesn't matter)

If companies are ignoring AMD they have a big problem...note the "they" and not "I" :)

If he expected tea and sympathy for his woes against big, bad, nvidia, then he's kidding himself...

As for SMS/EA, well, if they really did screw ATI (and maybe up to half of their PC customers) to help nvidia, it probably hurt themselves as much. Albeit PC sales are such a small percentage of the whole, maybe they wouldn't care about that.

From my point of view, because they released a demo, and I got to see the game, with all its foibles, before buying, I'm not that upset about the quality of the game. I still chose to buy it, albeit partly because I thought the AMD issue was already being sorted (but that's my mistake)

I think they deserve a chance to patch given the demo release though...

[pitradio]

Rename Shift.exe to Grid.exe that solves a lot and showsit's the ATI driver.

Physx aren't used with nvidia cards which was shown by someone on RD.

[doggod]

the nvidia physx is cpu based not gpu which is something i cant figure out ,i bought a geforce so i could take advantage of this feature no different than any of the guys buying a new ati to take advantage of directx 11 features of dirt2 when it comes out
my belief is that both nvida and ati users got screwed in this game
nvida users because physx isnt gpu and ati users cause they have an ati in their system
am unlikely to support nvidia in next generation
and hopefully physics will move to open source model of ati

[Humpfester]

the nvidia physx is cpu based not gpu Wrong, PhysX can be accelerated by either a PhysX PPU or a CUDA-enabled GeForce GPU, thus offloading physics calculations from the CPU, allowing it to perform other tasks.

[f0xx]

Lol thats right.

[BeepBeep2]

the nvidia physx is cpu based not gpu which is something i cant figure out ,i bought a geforce so i could take advantage of this feature no different than any of the guys buying a new ati to take advantage of directx 11 features of dirt2 when it comes out
my belief is that both nvida and ati users got screwed in this game
nvida users because physx isnt gpu and ati users cause they have an ati in their system
am unlikely to support nvidia in next generation
and hopefully physics will move to open source model of ati

fail. :-(

[David Wright]

Rename Shift.exe to Grid.exe that solves a lot and showsit's the ATI driver.



I have to agree with this. If ATI can "optimise" their driver for Grid then why not Shift?

There is a good chance Shift will be used as a benchmark by the likes of Toms Hardware - hopefully this will put extra pressure on ATI.

[East]

There is a lot of misinformation about this issue. Cat 9.9 does in fact have a profile for NFS Shift. All you have to do is check the atiumdag.dll file (for vista/win7) or ati3duag.dll (on XP) and you will find the profile called Shift.exe. This proves they had some sort of communication with the developers. I don't think the issue is with AMD at this point.

[Sentri]

Physx can operate in two modes; using GPU(PPU?) acceleration or only using the CPU (last I read PPU support was striped from the lastest version of Physx, if it still works PPU acceleration would be a third mode of support). Most games running Physx for consoles and pc use the CPU only, Shift is one of them. Batman Arkham Asylum, Sacred 2 (patch 2.40), Cryostasis, Mirrors Edge and a couple of UT3 Levels are some of the few GPU accelerated games.

The newest Nvidia beta drivers can show what mode of acceleration Physx is using and it clearly shows CPU. Disabling Physx GPU acceleration on a nvidia card does not decrease the performance of Shift.

[redi]

Rename Shift.exe to Grid.exe that solves a lot and showsit's the ATI driver.

Physx aren't used with nvidia cards which was shown by someone on RD.

I have to agree with this. If ATI can "optimise" their driver for Grid then why not Shift?

There is a good chance Shift will be used as a benchmark by the likes of Toms Hardware - hopefully this will put extra pressure on ATI.
Renaming to grid.exe makes things better, but not good. FPS is still much worse than what I see from nVidia footage, and it stutters way too much.

[gazman]

is this the reason more than 1 opponent kills my fps. I have AMD 6000+ and ATI HD4850
and the game looks good but runs like shite. I'd like to see the game run on the recomended specs on the cover. recomended AMD X2 3000+ and 256 mb card would be a slide show.

seeing this thread doesn't inspire much confidence. I updated my last AMD/ATI machine last chrissy because it couldn't run Dirt. looks like a trap for young players.
I feel like I've been shafted now, by EA and nVidia.:-(

[f0xx]

is this the reason more than 1 opponent kills my fps. I have AMD 6000+ and ATI HD4850
and the game looks good but runs like shite. I'd like to see the game run on the recomended specs on the cover. recomended AMD X2 3000+ and 256 mb card would be a slide show.

seeing this thread doesn't inspire much confidence. I updated my last AMD/ATI machine last chrissy because it couldn't run Dirt. looks like a trap for young players.
I feel like I've been shafted now, by EA and nVidia.:-(

It really depends, I can run in Nordschleife or Spa, with the game completely maxed out with 15 cars on track and the game runs fluently, but if I race on TOkyo Circuit for instance even with one car it lags ^^

I have a HD4870 GS.

[leahcim]

This proves they had some sort of communication with the developers.

It does? How?

[redi]

It does? How?
They could not have guessed by themselves how the executable of NFS:Shift was going to be called ;)

[doggod]

Humpfester u are wrong ,in this game the physx is run by the cpu , ive tested it my self and if u have an nvidia card u can as well

[YodaStar]

NVidia and the developers they work with do this for a long time....

Assassins Creed- Nvidia+Ubisoft released a patch to remvoe the compatibility with dx10.1 because geforces didnt have compatiblity

Resident Evil 5- Nvidia+CAPCOM released a TWIMTBP(The Way Its Meant To Be Played) game where the ATI graphic cards have some performance issues in Area 3 and with some gameplay time the videos become invisible

Batman Arkham Asylum- NVidia+Eidos/Rocksteady released another TWIMTBP game and guess what, geforces have better performance (have physX) and a Anti-Aliasing setting in the Graphic options, while ATI users have to force it in the CCC.

And the list goes on with Electronic Arts with NFS: shift another TWIMTBP game.

SO yes NVidia should have been prosecuted for a long time ^^

TWIMTBP support can result in some shady stuff not suitable for rivals (ATI). They have different agreements with devs depending on support level.

[YodaStar]

AFAIK PhysX is for object collisions, sidetrack objects and the main phsyics engine is for cars.

One interesting command is located in the "physicstweaker.xml" file.

<prop name="Disable PhysX switching" data="true" />

PhysX disbled by default?

CPU/GPU mode?

PhysX as main physics engine (cars)?

Dont know but I cant test it as I only own a 4890 graphic card.

[East]

AFAIK PhysX is for object collisions, sidetrack objects and the main phsyics engine is for cars.

One interesting command is located in the "physicstweaker.xml" file.

<prop name="Disable PhysX switching" data="true" />

PhysX disbled by default?

CPU/GPU mode?

PhysX as main physics engine (cars)?

Dont know but I cant test it as I only own a 4890 graphic card.

There are 2 of them:
<prop name="Drift rear grip bias" type="F32" />
<prop name="Live HDVehicle trace enabled" type="Bool" />
<prop name="Disable PhysX switching" type="Bool" />



then towards the bottom:
<prop name="Drift rear grip bias" data="0.5" />
<prop name="Live HDVehicle trace enabled" data="false" />
<prop name="Disable PhysX switching" data="true" />

Here is the issue I see so far.
1. What is the "Live HDVehicle trace enable"?
2. What does the Boolean type addressing? It can be true/false or something else. Which maybe from somewhere else in the code. My guess is that if you change the later portion:
<prop name="Disable PhysX switching" data="true" />
it may also correspond to the earlier portion:
<prop name="Disable PhysX switching" type="Bool" />

However we need to know what it corresponds with? Is one for adverts and signs and the other airplanes/helicopters, etc or something else? In short you can change it but unless we have an understanding of it we won't know what to look for. Yes, I've tried it myself and didn't know what to look for. So any help is appreciated.

[YodaStar]

"Live HDVehicle trace enable" traces car handling or such and outputs it to a log file in the game folder.

The "<prop name="Disable PhysX switching" type="Bool" />" is just the ID for the engine to understand the command. It just defines the type of value boolean, float etc.

For the "<prop name="Disable PhysX switching" data="true" />" you could check for perfomance impact when colliding with cars or track objects. Disable vsync, set graphic settings to low aswell as resolution and check framerate with for example FRAPs (http://www.fraps.com/).

[East]

I recall an unusual amount of stuttering/pausing during any type of collision when I changed it from true to false. I will check it again in a few minutes (using ATI card though).

[pitradio]

is this the reason more than 1 opponent kills my fps. I have AMD 6000+ and ATI HD4850
and the game looks good but runs like shite. I'd like to see the game run on the recomended specs on the cover. recomended AMD X2 3000+ and 256 mb card would be a slide show.

seeing this thread doesn't inspire much confidence. I updated my last AMD/ATI machine last chrissy because it couldn't run Dirt. looks like a trap for young players.
I feel like I've been shafted now, by EA and nVidia.:-(

It is your single core processor. it cannot run several threads at the same time which have to happen at the same time.

[YodaStar]

I recall an unusual amount of stuttering/pausing during any type of collision when I changed it from true to false. I will check it again in a few minutes (using ATI card though).

Maybe they found out PhysX is just slower for collisions than their main engine. Or perhaps PhysX adds heavier collision physics and perhaps it affects spawned particles (debris etc from collisions) giving them advanced physcs.

[East]

Ok I tried and after about 6 laps I didn't notice anything different. Collision frame rates did decrease but nothing that would make the game stuttery. Because I did other mods when I tried this before something else could have caused the stuttering. All I did was changed the command from true to false:
<prop name="Disable PhysX switching" type="false" />"

Does anyone know where the cache folder for this game is?


Looks like I spoke to soon. Changing it to false I do notice a slight increase in overall frame rates. I went back and forth a few times and it's noticeable to me. I don't see any difference in IQ. Can someone else try it?

[QuadCoremax]

How much % more fps you have ? fps before & after ?

[Siggs]

I don't know what people keep complaining about, on a 512Mb HD4850, a card over a year old, and I run unpatched Shift at a constant 60fps, full settings, @1680*1050. I'm constantly bemused by all the outrage at compatibility :?:
.