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Several PC gamers have taken to the internet to complain about performance issues in new PC racing game Project Cars when using an AMD graphics card.
This lengthy post on Reddit claims that Project Cars is a title built on the framework of Nvidia’s GameWorks graphics technology, and that the game doesn’t work as well as it should do on AMD hardware. The article has since been upvoted with 4,550 points (95 per cent).
The author of the post, 007sk2, states: "These kinds of business practices are a troubling trend. Is this the future we want for PC gaming? For one population of users to be entirely segregated from another, intentionally?"
The author also says that all non-Maxwell Nvidia GPUs provide ‘poor performance’ in Project Cars too.
AMD’s corporate VP of IMG, Roy Taylor, responded to the Reddit post with the following statement in a tweet: "Thank for supporting/wanting an open and fair PC gaming industry."
A week ago, Ian Bell from Project Cars developer Slightly Mad, said: "We’re reaching out to AMD with all of our efforts. We’ve provided them 20 keys. They were invited to work with us for years. Looking through company mails the last I can see AMD talked to us was October of last year.”
Other AMD gamers have expressed their disappointment online including this post on the Steam forums.
Nvidia has also come under fire for a similar issue in the PC version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt its own HairWorks tech. One of the game’s developers admitted: "Many of you have asked us if AMD Radeon GPUs would be able to run Nvidia’s HairWorks technology – the answer is yes.
"However, unsatisfactory performance may be experienced as the code of this feature cannot be optimised for AMD products. Radeon users are encouraged to disable Nvidia HairWorks if the performance is below expectations."
Nvidia’s Brian Burke told PCper.com: "We are not asking game developers do anything unethical.
"GameWorks improves the visual quality of games running on GeForce for our customers. It does not impair performance on competing hardware.
"GameWorks licenses follow standard industry practice. GameWorks source code is provided to developers that request it under license, but they can’t redistribute our source code to anyone who does not have a license.
"The bottom line is AMD’s tessellation performance is not very good and there is not a lot Nvidia can/should do about it. I think gamers want better hair, better fur, better lighting, better shadows and better effects in their games. GameWorks gives them that."
