AMD: DirectX "getting in the way" of PC gaming graphics

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Emil

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AMD believes there is a lack of a great disparity between PC gaming graphics and console gaming graphics, despite the huge advantage the PC has over consoles in terms of hardware. Despite the hardware giant's great relationship with Microsoft, Richard Huddy, AMD's worldwide developer relations manager of the company's GPU division, blames the software giant.

"It's funny," Huddy told bit-tech. "We often have at least ten times as much horsepower as an Xbox 360 or a PS3 in a high-end graphics card, yet it's very clear that the games don't look ten times as good. To a significant extent, that's because, one way or another, for good reasons and bad - mostly good, DirectX is getting in the way.' Huddy says that one of the most common requests he gets from game developers is to "make the API go away."

This quote comes hot on the heels of a related statement from id Software co-founder John Carmack. While Huddy offers one perspective from the hardware side of things, and says that game developers agree with him, Carmack recently gave a different opinion from the game development angle. Despite being an OpenGL house, he stated that DirectX is a better API than OpenGL.

While Huddy said nothing about OpenGL, he clearly has not talked to Carmack. "I certainly hear this in my conversations with games developers, and I guess it was actually the primary appeal of Larrabee to developers – not the hardware, which was hot and slow and unimpressive, but the software – being able to have total control over the machine, which is what the very best games developers want," Huddy said. "By giving you access to the hardware at the very low level, you give games developers a chance to innovate, and that's going to put pressure on Microsoft – no doubt at all. Wrapping it up in a software layer gives you safety and security but it unfortunately tends to rob you of quite a lot of the performance, and most importantly it robs you of the opportunity to innovate."

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https://www.techspot.com/news/42902-amd-directx-getting-in-the-way-of-pc-gaming-graphics.html

 
Ignore the 2 comments above, the guy is spot on. Its the low level stuff that would really make a difference.

Amd and Nvidia are on equal ground at the moment so step out and shoot yourselves fanbois of both sides, or revel in the awesome graphics of both companies, knowing that both their hardware would excel with more access than the current API's.

Go Nvidia and go ATI
 
Nothing is stopping AMD from coming out with their own platform or OS for games.

This seems to be the era of OS divergence, might as well take a gamble.
 
I'm surprised Richard Huddy gets paid an actual salary at this point in time.

API's like DirectX are hardware abstraction layers to enable code to run on a variety of hardware. Now Mr Huddy seems to think that removing this abstraction layer is good idea.

So it you're programming "direct-to-metal (hardware)" that means you are also programming for a specific architecture - AMD or Nvidia (or VIA for that matter). The bigger problem seems to be that every new GPU architecture will automatically have to be backwards compatible with the game hardware code implemented for the previous generations of cards....unless of course everyone is happy buying a new card and having little or no access to the back catalogue of games.

@gwailo247
Oh, it get's much better than that.
How about Gaming Evolved or TWIMTBP exclusive titles?
How about HD7000/HD8000/GTX600/GTX700 exclusive titles?
As the bit-tech article mentions, the "direct-to-metal" approach is already implemented in consoles- proprietry hardware running proprietry code. Now extrapolate that to include the release of PS4, 5, 6, 7 and Xbox whatever, whatever2 etc. every year. Even then it doesn't come close to the clusterf**k that PC gaming would turn into, given that game dev's aren't exactly falling over themselves using industry standard and well understood API's.
Somehow, given the secrecy involved in developing new graphics architectures, I can't see AMD or Nvidia handing EA, THQ, Crytek et al. the keys to the kingdom so that the devs can code a game and have it ready for release for that particular hardware. Of course if they wait until the hardware is released and then start coding, it would seem that the impending games have a very limited lifespan- since the new architecture is likely to laid down at the same time.

Of course , I suppose if the graphics cards of the future become fully GPGPU capable (top to bottom) then that allows for some wiggle room with coding...but then this is talking-head of AMD talking...:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
And of course all we need is Nvidia, AMD, Intel and VIA to agree on a standard for homogeneous software coding.......bwahahahahahah
 
the reason graphics aren't as good is they optimize everything for a console and all we get is a crappy console port. All they can really do is increase texture size and AA. Graphics already look 10 times as good. With the Cryengine 3 and the new unreal engine, graphics will be a few orders of magnitude better than consoles. Photo realistic graphics are right around the corner. I give it 5 years and we will be playing games that look like Avatar.
 
Diminishing returns.
If one HD 6970 (for example) can run 7680x3200 (24.6 megapixels) in Eyefinity @ say 4xAA, then wouldn't-using Mr Huddy's analogy- Crossfired HD6990's be able to run 15360x6400 (98.3 megapixels) at 16xAA ?
 
If you please read, Carmack said "one is better than the other" and not "they are the best out there and are problem free" which does not differ from the opinion of Huddy.

And of course YRaz you may give one or two titles that differ... how about you give 10 examples of how better it looks on a PC over consoles?
 
dividebyzero said:
... So it you're programming "direct-to-metal (hardware)" that means you are also programming for a specific architecture - AMD or Nvidia (or VIA for that matter). The bigger problem seems to be that every new GPU architecture will automatically have to be backwards compatible
...
Of course , I suppose if the graphics cards of the future become fully GPGPU capable (top to bottom) then that allows for some wiggle room with coding... And of course all we need is Nvidia, AMD, Intel and VIA to agree on a standard for homogeneous software coding.......bwahahahahahah
Click to expand...

Exactly, a programmer has to program for a specific architecture.
Maybe in tomorrows utopia of social peace and good will with nanotechnology and the ability to create everything we want with a 3D printer, we could have the major GPU makers get together and decide on a universal architecture or software coding, but until then, good luck abandoning an Application Programming Interface like DirectX.
 
Well, when an entire game can be made in CUDA or DirectCompute there won't be as much of an issue. With gpu computing things are rapidly speeding up. The only problem is that these technologies are hardware specific, meaning games would have to be made for nvidia or ati/amd systems. There would be no middle ground and there would be little room for new technologies because the new ones would kill support for all past games.
 
The first thing I thought was how the game makers were going to tailor make each of their games for each and every computer combination possible. Secondly I thought, who would want the game makers that regularly sneak security software that screws up computers that much access to their computer?
 
Back in the day we did all our coding in assembly language & ran our demo's/loaders from dos.
Coders then had direct access to the hardware & were able to unlock many hidden features.
I remember setting 320x240 and tweaking that to 640x400/480. Smooth scrolling of large fonts.
Even now you can't do that!
Check out Futurecrew demos. I think they were early 90's...
Anyway, as soon as you moved to some other language & started using their libraries you pretty much had your hands tied..
 
Ok this is all smoke an mirrors... you really can not blame microsoft. Direct X is an option.

The Graphics card manufacturers in the end can give lower level access. The fact that they do not just shows that they should be supporting OpenGL better. Also... lower level will mean a lot of branching because you can never count on the same config. which is why we need software layers. They are very performent and pretty powerful. MS could provide a lighter OS mode for gaming. That would be nice.
 
writing games to the hardware layer may help gaming be less OS specific and more Hardware specific. Making more game easily compatible to alternative operating systems....
 
I think the problem is that we have reached the limit of the human’s brain hardware.
 
If you sell hardware you prefer have as many as possible of the programmers write on your hardware.
But all the programmers haven’t the same skills so we need a very skilled programmer like Microsoft writes an api like directx so the rest can exist as programmers and have an opportunity for success.
That’s the reason which the evolution of the industry has chosen this path in time.
If you remove the engines from a plane for little time you will fly better but the crash waiting you at the end.
 
We can’t every time rediscover the wheel. If the apis doesn’t ever exists the industry would had few big and fat companies with good dlls which they sit on their money and then the people will start go away because the luck of innovate.
Then these companies will start sell the dlls for rescue the market and after few years the champion dll will be the new directx :)
 
A Bugatti Veyron has 10 x horsepower than a Ford but it doesn’t have 10 x speeds. Not even 10 x speed from a single horse :)
 
I want AMD right now make a cheap gpu at 1nm which can handle fast the ray tracing algorithm. I don’t care about physics laws I just want play my games with ray tracing on.
 
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