AMD has announced GPUOpen; its answer to NVIDIA’s GameWorks. GPUOpen aims to give Game developers direct access to GPU hardware along with a large collection of open source effects, tools, libraries and SDKs, and will be open source when it’s published in January 2016.
According to the red team, the GPUOpen platform will feature TressFX 3.0, GeometryFX, AOFX (a new form of Ambient Occlusion), ShadowFX, LiquidVR SDK, DirectX 11 and 12 code samples, compute tools, and several other SDKs.
As said, the truly amazing thing about GPUOpen is its open source nature. AMD will use the permissive MIT license, which basically means that everything can be used without restriction. Not only that, but all code will get published on GitHub, and developers are free to alter or improve the assets without any legal issues.
Whether this will be embraced by game developers/publishers or not remains to be seen. Still, we have to admit that AMD is trying its best to appease both gamers and developers, and that’s a good thing.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
Good news, I think everyone but the most diehard Nvidia fanboys can admit Gameworks sucks (and this is coming from an owner of a 780 Ti and G-Sync monitor).
Can honestly say game works doesn’t suck.
All the effects used in games are great. The fact most people don’t have power to use them is what sucks.
It’s not like AMD going to magically produce versions of hbao+ ultra and PCSS ultra that will run on a 7870 with 60fps on AC syndicate.
Gameworks is the fall guy whenever someone can’t run game way they want. It’s pathetic
*cough* AMD CHS *cough*
https://youtu.be/Jh95VU3FY40
Here’s something to help with your cough, or maybe not.
If that best AMD can offer, we better hope that Gameworks hangs about
Oh, wow, I can’t believe I didn’t notice that, gee, I wonder why, could it be that I’m using an AMD GPU for AMD CHS and not an Nvidia Titan? Gah, guess we’ll never know…
http://otavafiles.fi/plaza/s/f/editor/images/20150415gtavamdnvidia.jpg
How about we just compare results. Ohhh look, inferior effect, hmmm wonder why it might be less demanding???
from comments section:
“I am using AMD R9 290 and got the same problem with AMD CHS?”.
besides, if it indeed only glitched on Nvidia – I can’t see how ‘GPUOpen’ is good news for anyone but AMD users.
Such generalization. HBAO+ is wonderful and from what i can remember always worked the way it was intented and brings much more depth into the game. TXAA always worked but sure if you have a 780Ti, don’t use it, it’s going to kill your fps. Paper and debris effects in Batman AK were a nice touch, same can be said for the smoke effect (which was a little too much BUT still very nice). Gameworks, can be a wonderful feature if dev would actually take the time to incorporate it in their games. Many times i’ve seen people call GW “laggy effects that kill your framerate”. A bunch of those times, the “lag and framerate drop” wasn’t specific to gameworks, it was just the game being ported like a potato. GW can be heavy on GPUs yea and when it’s not implemented the right way, yea it sucks, but hell don’t go generalizing.
“if dev would actually take the time to incorporate it in their games.”
Yep, because the devs have complete access to the code for Gameworks and can implement it however they please, not like Gameworks is completely proprietary, no sir…
It’s developers choice to licence code access or not. BTW do you know what this word “code” means? Or you just write general opinion of GW haters without knowing what are you talking about? If GW would be so bad, nobody would use it. Developers are not fools and NVIDIA doesn’t walk everywhere only with money briefcase. It’s interesting how people ,who know nothing about game programming and even programming in general, think that they know better what is good for developers and what is not.
Yes, actually I do, hell, I code for a living. But anyway, how do you explain all the complaints from actual devs that use Gameworks about it being a black box? (And no, not the plane kind.)
Everybody is a coder for a living on the internet. Nonetheless, you might have a point there Ipmafiota. Keep in mind that at the end of the day, game devs (not nv’s devs) could facilitate the implementation of GW or GPUthing from AMD.
First I never used GW and what I saw, you never use it too. So how could you be so sure that it’s something bad?
Second, which developers complained about it? I saw only some complains from dev’s from studios which are cooperating with AMD and doesn’t use GW anyway. And that looks like politics for me. This is not the first time when AMD itself start hate on something which NVIDIA developed. AMD’s fans then stick on it whole time and in most cases without any reason.
Third, nobody is pushing developers to use GW. If this library would be so bad as some of you think, nobody would use it. Or maybe minimum games would have it. But look around. GW is in almost every big game and many others.
I repeat. Developers are not fools as somebody of you think. Because you think that something is bad or wrong only based on general hate, it doesn’t mean that’s true.
Posts “everyone but the most diehard Nvidia fanboys can admit Gameworks sucks”
Only gets responses from diehard Nvidia fanboys
Why you are ugly like Lisa Su?
Why are you a manchild like Donald Trump?
Question who is rating the person?
Smart move. AMD will keep showing the stark difference in ideologies and approach between themselves and Nvidia.
Hopefully this becomes an industry standard someday and replaces GameWorks completely.
So you want monopoly.
It’s open source, how can you monopolize something everyone has access to?
He said “replaces GameWorks completely”. So if someone using soft from only one company it’s monopoly open source or proprietary.
Also this describes casual AMD fanboy thoughts. AMD releases some powerpoint slides, putting “open source”… and watching how fanboys advertises it for free. Because AMD doesn’t have money for advertisement, AMD using slavery.
TressFX already gimping performance, AOFX, ShadowFX probably too. For GeometryFX already clear. Tess factor for Nvidia x64, AMD x8.
AMD already gimped Kepler performance when they realized that Kepler is weak at compute: Hitman Absolution, Dirt Showdown, Tomb Raider. And continue doing it: Dirt Rally, Dragon Age…
AMD already tried to kill gaming with open source Mantle API (How’s Mantle is open source now? lol). You can turn off all Gameworks features. In GPUOpen it’s probably hidden like Forward+ or global illumination.
Normally, under these situations, I try to be snarky or make a silly reply, but this time around I got absolutely nothing.
Why is everything you say retarded?
Because your retarded statements requires equal explanation.
Excellent retort. I am no match for your intellect.
We are already approaching a monopoly bro. AMD GPU sales have vastly decreased over these past few years.
Noo, that would be bad. Or would it ? In 5 years everybody will say god damn GPUopen making my computer lag and make me framedip like crazy. Now the knife would be turned towards AMD. I would find that rather amusing. But i want them to succeed. Dat competition needs to happen.
It looks to me as if AMD has money cashflow problems and can’t RnD proprietary stuff so they open source it in the hopes someone else might come in and do their jobs. It’s probably not THAT but still cmon, do you see Asus open sourcing their “magic mojo bios optimizations” to everybody ? No. That’s because they sell their products and have money.
My 2 cents.
These was already open. AMD just put them in one package and call them as something new.
Did they ? didn’t know. Nevertheless, it’s probably their best move. They want people to adopt their technologies and i think it’s working right now. The FreeSync PR job is A1. Maybe they’ll get out of their financial hell one day. Who knows.
Oh yeah glorious free FreeSync. Free for business partners, cost for customers.
Why is it so much cheaper than Gsync?
“so much cheaper”
lol
That question was rhetorical.
Yeah well same for GSync. I have a Gsync monitor and i paid it quite high since canadian currency has been bad for what FOREVER ?. My point is, not everybody want to invest in adaptive sync monitors. If freesync can open the market and drop the costs a little why not ? As it stands out now, AMD can benefit drasticly from that since Gsync monitors costs much more in general and are less “available” than the freesync ones. I don’t care about prices, i just buy what i feel like buying, not everybody has that priority though. So yea i’m a HUGE green fan for the last decade but if AMD can bring the fight on one front (cpu forget it and gpus, i find them “meh”) then the monitor market shall be a little bit more customer friendly.
It’s philosophical differences based upon how the companies operate. AMD is hurting from decisions made a decade ago from terrible mismanagement. Things are looking up with Zen CPU’s and Arctic Island GPU’s on the horizon.
Genuinely great new; but unless Nvidia adopts its use (which we know is unlikely) I wouldn’t bet on a wide adoption.
Its up to the developers and not up to Nvidia.
AMD is trying hard i hope nothing happens to them. But they should announce their new cpus already so i can buy one.
I can stand it when PC gamers support gameworks. Its like you want to consolize PC gaming. It would have been fantastic if gameworks was open.
It’s about time instead of crying or complaining do something about it
Sweet baby Cheesus! What’s wrong with some people!
Nvidia Gameworks isn’t the cancer that people say it is, and GPUOpen is a great win for developers and consumers alike. Less money spent buy developers and more competition for Gameworks.
Why so many people jump to the aid of there favourite product is beyond me.
Because most of them doesn’t know what are they talking about. That’s all.
This is great news for everybody
clap clap clap clap clap
For what I’ve tested, CHS and PCSS has the same performance hit with a 290X.