[pcper] Interview: AMD's Richard Huddy

[Flapdrol1337]

seems like the usual pointless discussion...amd are liars and lazy while nvidia is just doing gods work.
Could you guys try not to appear so biased?it get so boring, especially a certain posters crappy wall o' text.

lets break it down:
gameworks - great if you only plan on using nvidia products
mantle - great for industry
gsync - great if you only plan on using nvidia products
a-sync - great for industry
R.Huddy[intel employee] - interesting fellow
R.Huddy[amd employee] - liar, spin doctor, untrustworthy etc

in this interview huddy really is a spindoctor.

omg, gsync has memory, must have a frame of latency right?? Blurbusters has already measured latency in games and it's not higher than vsync off on an unmodified monitor, certainly not a whole frame. Then there's the "constant polling" stuff he keeps bringing up, who cares what it does, it works fine.

I don't know why amd gets so much credit for adaptive sync, it's completely up to monitor manufacturers, who are motivated by the interest in gsync. High refresh versions of adaptive sync monitors (hopefully they'll come) will also need memory for overdrive calculations or suffer massive motion blur.

mantle will never be used by anyone other than amd. Nvidia will not sign up to an api controlled by their only competitor, even if amd gives them a licence for free. for intel it's even less interesting, as cpu overhead isn't an issue for them. For a company pushing a proprietary api amd really isn't in a position to complain about a few optional gameworks effects that so far work fine on their gpu's.

Amd is also pushing proprietary "true audio" stuff. Guess it's "great" in some other way too.

I don't like nvidia keeping stuff proprietary either, but at least they're keeping their mouth shut when it comes to amd shenanigans.

 

[BrightCandle]

seems like the usual pointless discussion...amd are liars and lazy while nvidia is just doing gods work.
Could you guys try not to appear so biased?it get so boring, especially a certain posters crappy wall o' text.

lets break it down:
gameworks - great if you only plan on using nvidia products
mantle - great for industry
gsync - great if you only plan on using nvidia products
a-sync - great for industry
R.Huddy[intel employee] - interesting fellow
R.Huddy[amd employee] - liar, spin doctor, untrustworthy etc

Don't feed the troll, just report him.

 

[blackened23]

seems like the usual pointless discussion...amd are liars and lazy while nvidia is just doing gods work.
Could you guys try not to appear so biased?it get so boring, especially a certain posters crappy wall o' text.

lets break it down:
gameworks - great if you only plan on using nvidia products
mantle - great for industry
gsync - great if you only plan on using nvidia products
a-sync - great for industry
R.Huddy[intel employee] - interesting fellow
R.Huddy[amd employee] - liar, spin doctor, untrustworthy etc

I don't know what world you live in but don't pretend that bias has anything to do with it. There isn't a fantasy land where everyone views everything equally: you like toyota, I like Honda. You like Wendy's, I like in 'n out burgers. You like Pepsi, I prefer Mt. Dew. You like newegg, I prefer amazon. There is no fantasy land where brand preference doesn't exist. Give me a break.

Despite everyone here having a brand preference, Both AMD and NV has equally compelling technologies and visual enhancements for games. No one said NV are saints. No one to my knowledge stated that gameworks is the most amazing thing ever. However, I personally find AMD's PR spin to be ludicrous considering their stance on Mantle and how they did not provide other IHVs any information on TressFX when TR was released. And TR with TressFX had a severe performance hit on all non AMD hardware whereas gameworks' HBAO+ has equal performance on AMD and NV. Again, all of these visual enhancements are great. What I don't like is AMD whining and complaining when the REAL PROBLEM IS THAT THEY SPEND TOO MUCH ON MARKETING, and don't hire enough for software development. PERIOD.

If they spent money where it SHOULD go, software development, they would not have these issues. You don't see AMD's software dev guys whining do you? They just do the important work at AMD while keeping quiet despite being heavily underfunded and undermanned. I feel that with proper funding, they would not have to whine and lie to the press. Their technology and hardware is great. Their PR spin? Completely eyeroll worthy. NV aren't saints by any means, but I do like that they just shut the heck up and get stuff done when an AMD GE title comes out and don't whine about it - they allocate more to software development, and it generally shows. As I said before AMD's hardware has always been great.

The big differentiation IMO is how AMD seemingly plays the PR game when their software guys are caught off guard. This should not be the case and would not be - there are many industry insiders that have commented on the HUGE disparity in terms of software development between AMD and nvidia. Josh Walrath has visited both companies and commented on this. Ryan from this very site also speculated on the very same. And then there was the OGL developer from Valve software who basically stated that AMD is a disaster in terms of software development. AMD by far allocates the least amount of money and manpower to software. And this shows. This is AMD's problem. Hardware isn't the problem, their hardware has always been sound. If AMD fixes this problem, Huddy and his sidekick Hallock would never have to whine to the press as they do.

Besides which, Huddy made many false statements already. This is a fact. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it's probably a duck (half truth filled marketing mouthpiece).

 

[Erenhardt]

^yea, its AMD's fault that nv didn't work with eidos on TR, but rather would spend their $ on marketing campaign on forums - frame pacing and "demand better products" crusade.

 

[SirPauly]

The devs don't have final say (typically). It's the people paying the devs. EA, for example.

Good question to ask developers!

 

[BrightCandle]

^yea, its AMD's fault that nv didn't work with eidos on TR, but rather would spend their $ on marketing campaign on forums - frame pacing and "demand better products" crusade.

Out of the back of that AMD finally implemented frame pacing after about 4 years of complaints from its customers. Its has to be said that Nvidia's push for frame pacing improved visibility of the issue, both when it was fixed on their cards and showed the clear difference between AMDs crossfire and Nvidia's SLI implementation. Now AMD has implemented frame pacing and when it works its great, when it doesn't everyone notices. They moved the industry on with that and it was too all of our benefits. Before they did it and FCAT was released AMD claimed there was no problem at all, after it was shown to them clear as day in the numbers they did something about it.

It does seem too much that AMD has to be dragged through the mud in the press before it will fix problems and bugs that many of its customers are having. Just look at the power saving problems with the 7000 series, still going on, still the same as they were 2.5 years ago when I first reported them to AMD. The press never held them accountable and they haven't shown any sign of responding to my or anyone elses bug reports. But if the press says "hey your card has consistent performance" they'll push hard to fix it even going to the extent of dramatically increasing the fan profile noise. Its a shame the press never did this for the 7000 series, because its got a similar impact (different cause).

I think Huddy raises some good points on Gameworks, but hasn't come to the table with clean hands either. He concerns me when he talks about gsync and Freesync because he lies about the competitors solution and his wording for how their own works isn't right and he isn't being open about the true contractual issues either. His viewpoint was very biased (expected) so you have to treat it as such. I treat what Tom Peterson of Nvidia says with a similar critical eye, and if I can find fault with it I raise it. This is the essence of critically thinking. I don't care who wins, I just want the fight to be fairer and I don't want to be forced to choose one card or another because they don't play fairly in the market. Maybe its time to throw in some regulation and fines for the bad behaviour.

 

[SirPauly]

What would you regulate? Wording for PR? Asking companies not to try to invent, innovate and protect their hard work and risk?

 

[sontin]

^yea, its AMD's fault that nv didn't work with eidos on TR, but rather would spend their $ on marketing campaign on forums - frame pacing and "demand better products" crusade.

nVidia had a "Game Ready" driver for Tomb Raider. Unfortunately for nVidia, AMD and Nixxes sabotaged them with the gold version...

 

[BrightCandle]

What would you regulate? Wording for PR? Asking companies not to try to invent, innovate and protect their hard work and risk?

Contracts, standards, benchmarking and middleware. If you introduced fines for anti competitive behaviour where one firm actively harmed the other like with tomb raider or nvidia's anti competitive gameworks contracts then you might find them playing fairer. AMD turning around and saying that Nvidia isn't implementing Mantle because of pride would be another instance where I would fine them and make them retract the statement, its not the reason at all and its seriously misleading. Claiming the competitor adds a frame of latency when it doesn't, give them a fine. Seems fairly clear that actively hurting the competitor with code, contracts or lies to the media should all result in cost to the business for hurting or attempting to hurt its competitor in an unfair way.

I don't think many of us think this behaviour is OK from either firm and it needs to stop. It doesn't stop them innovating or inventing new things, but it does stop them using those innovations to actively hurt their competitor beyond the simple having or not of a feature. Where they both have the feature acting in bad faith to make the competitor look worse also isn't on.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Neither AMD or nVidia is a knight in shining armor here. Huddy's whining is getting tiresome though, I have to admit.

In any case, regulation sounds good, but in actual practice I am not so sure. It just might stifle innovation because of the additional time, effort and cost required to pass whatever rules might be imposed by the government.

 

[SirPauly]

Contracts, standards, benchmarking and middleware. If you introduced fines for anti competitive behaviour where one firm actively harmed the other like with tomb raider or nvidia's anti competitive gameworks contracts then you might find them playing fairer. AMD turning around and saying that Nvidia isn't implementing Mantle because of pride would be another instance where I would fine them and make them retract the statement, its not the reason at all and its seriously misleading. Claiming the competitor adds a frame of latency when it doesn't, give them a fine. Seems fairly clear that actively hurting the competitor with code, contracts or lies to the media should all result in cost to the business for hurting or attempting to hurt its competitor in an unfair way.

I don't think many of us think this behaviour is OK from either firm and it needs to stop. It doesn't stop them innovating or inventing new things, but it does stop them using those innovations to actively hurt their competitor beyond the simple having or not of a feature. Where they both have the feature acting in bad faith to make the competitor look worse also isn't on.

imho,

And who or whom is going to regulate, investigate and give fines? Isn't regulation going too far? There are enough third party sites that may offer their views or investigations to the market place -- developers that may voice for or against!

 

[BrightCandle]

imho,

And who or whom is going to regulate, investigate and give fines? Isn't regulation going too far? There are enough third party sites that may offer their views or investigations to the market place -- developers that may voice for or against!

If the third parties were doing their job they would have pointed out Huddy was lying either there and then or right after. They didn't, they still haven't and I doubt they will. I am long past believing review sites are genuinely hunting for anything other than a story that gets them hits which they weight up against hurting their "relationship" with the hand that feeds them. Many sites have found that if they are too critical the companies stop sending review parts, which cripples their business. Its the same problem games review sites have, they take their cheetos and write what they are told to write. Its only when something really juicy comes a long that is worth a bit of relationship damage that they genuinely go with it.

When a new GPU gets released they focus on the new architecture, new features and performance. What they don't tell you about is all the bugs they encountered. Heck when was the last time any review site ran down the list of outstanding problems they have seen? I think its extremely unlikely based on the testing they do that they never run into power saving issues, graphical glitches, problems with HDMI passthrough etc etc etc. They just never report it to us. I have had numerous conversations with Ryan from pcper about bugs in Nvidia's drivers, and he has been lobbying them on my behalf (because they wont listen to me directly). I have given him some pretty serious issues, but instead of doing what would help me (writing an article, publishing there is a problem and how broken the bug reporting system is) he just keeps talking to them. I don't trust that and you shouldn't either.

 

[SirPauly]

Third party sites have indeed investigated issues over time from quake, 3dmark, aggressive default filtering, over-all optimizations, latency/smooth frame-rate!

 

[Mand]

What would you regulate? Wording for PR? Asking companies not to try to invent, innovate and protect their hard work and risk?

Outright lying about both your and your competitors' products ought to be frowned upon, yes.

 

[SirPauly]

Outright lying is far too extreme to me ---- personally appreciate the input of individuals like Tom Petersen of nVidia and Richard Huddy of AMD -- just expect one-sided views!

Personally embrace competitive chaos based on the competitors are very relevant, fighting and trying!

 

[Leadbox]

Personally embrace competitive chaos based on the competitors are very relevant, fighting and trying!

This "competitive chaos" leaves us saddled with crappy, half ass, shody games
We are the losers here.

 

[SirPauly]

That's just extremism -- Watch Dogs -- the latest target -- is Ubisofts best selling title, breaking records!

 

[Leadbox]

That's just extremism -- Watch Dogs -- the latest target -- is Ubisofts best selling title, breaking records!

That doesn't mean it's not crappy or half-baked does it?
Watch it break records for being the most complained about title

 

[BrightCandle]

Watch dogs is a great example of how a corporation does quite a bit of lying to sell a game and then has zero responsibility afterwards. You have to remember once they have sold you their product they have everything they wanted, they don't care if you got what you wanted/expected/were sold. People ought to be able to get refunds for watchdogs because its a mess, not just graphically but stutters and everything else. Sales != happy to customers not by a long shot.

 

[f1sherman]

Outright lying is far too extreme to me ---- personally appreciate the input of individuals like Tom Petersen of nVidia and Richard Huddy of AMD -- just expect one-sided views!

Exactly! Which is to be expected and is perfectly fine.
But AMD decides to call this person a gaming scientist and video guru.
Which pretty much dictates that people should bow down to him, forget questioning his ideas.

In my mind a guru has the deepest possible knowledge about the inner workings, deals/has dealt on regular basis with lowest on the low stuff, and has forgotten more than regular peon will ever know.

Richard's jobs at ATI, AMD, Nvidia and Intel were all about devrel, and he has cried about Nvidia since 2004. But since he's a guru there is already a spin that the guy wrote DirectX

Real gurus and people with commanding knowledge are generally pleasant to listen, no matter in which camp they sit in.
Last AMD guru was... what's his name... gone to Qualcomm...
I dont care if trashes Intel/NV, I could listen him for hours.

 

[SirPauly]

Watch dogs is a great example of how a corporation does quite a bit of lying to sell a game and then has zero responsibility afterwards. You have to remember once they have sold you their product they have everything they wanted, they don't care if you got what you wanted/expected/were sold.

If they care about future revenues; to create a WatchDog franchise; to continue to have strong brands -- would possibly have a responsibility to improve upon the issues with future patches and hopefully more content to improve upon the WatchDog experience for their customers. An example:

http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.ph...-(6-18-14)?p=10052407&viewfull=1#post10052407

 

[SirPauly]

Last AMD guru was... what's his name... gone to Qualcomm...

Eric Demers --- sireric --- on forums!

 

[f1sherman]

Eric Demers --- sireric --- on forums!

That is correct. This guy should have been on every AMD's presentation with a mic in his hand.

 

[Leadbox]

Exactly! Which is to be expected and is perfectly fine.
But AMD decides to call this person a gaming scientist and video guru.
Which pretty much dictates that people should bow down to him, forget questioning his ideas.

In my mind a guru has the deepest possible knowledge about the inner workings, deals/has dealt on regular basis with lowest on the low stuff, and has forgotten more than regular peon will ever know.

Richard's jobs at ATI, AMD, Nvidia and Intel were all about devrel, and he has cried about Nvidia since 2004. But since he's a guru there is already a spin that the guy wrote DirectX

Real gurus and people with commanding knowledge are generally pleasant to listen, no matter in which camp they sit in.
Last AMD guru was... what's his name... gone to Qualcomm...
I dont care if trashes Intel/NV, I could listen him for hours.

Don't hate the player, hate the game
Huddy has challenged you to question everything, to not trust what he or nvidia says, to hold them (AMD) to account should they act dodgy or underhanded.

 

[3DVagabond]

Third party sites have indeed investigated issues over time from quake, 3dmark, aggressive default filtering, over-all optimizations, latency/smooth frame-rate!

Considering they either go on witch hunts or say nothing, I would question the motivation. IMO tech sites are nothing more than marketing arms of the IHV's. Where it should be an adversarial relationship it's a symbiotic one. It's a good ol' boy, "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" relationship.

It is the job and responsibility of the free press to tell us what is going on. What difference does it make if in a country like N. Korea the govt. controls the press or in the west big business controls the press?