Why 'Watch Dogs' Is Bad News For AMD Users -- And Potentially The Entire PC Gaming EcosystemCaveat Before the quote:
Update 1: I’ve posted benchmarks for Watch Dogs across a wide range of AMD and Nvidia hardware.
Update 2: I’ve just finished an illuminating call with Nvidia’s Cem Cebenoyan, Director of Engineering, Developer Technology. Suffice to say, Nvidia disputes just about every claim made by AMD in this article. In the interest of fairness, I’ll be posting a follow-up piece as soon as possible.
Basically, each company tries to get a competitive edge. But- how much of that can be at the consumer's detriment? nVidia holds 60% of the market, AMD the other 40% (not exact numbers, and there are smaller players- but for all intents and purposes, that's how the pie is sliced).
AMD is calling out nVidia on the point that their optimization licenses are restrictive to the game industry working with both card manufacturers to deliver the best game possible, no matter the video card. nVidia's framework in this regard is closed source, while AMD's is open.
There was another
investigative piece on ExtremeTech on this very issue.
There are tests in that article which are ... concerning to say the least. I suppose I'll have to wait for the updates to see what nVidia had to say on the issues. But more monopolies are definitely not better for the consumer, as much as they benefit the developers (one target) and of course the company with the market dominance.