Discussion [WCCFTech] What’s Up With The Missing NVIDIA DLSS Support In AMD Sponsored FSR Titles?

[Rebel_L]

Let's get some of this hashed out so everyone understands each other's contentions.

There are some here that contend AMD is paying to have DLSS excluded from sponsored games.

There are others that don't buy it. This is where the contentions seem to vary. If you don't think AMD is responsible, what is your exact position? Be concise please.

My position is that AMD is paying for exclusivity. That it's been standard practice for decades to do so. Anyone upset by it needs to go outside and touch grass.

My position is that the case prepared in the article to demonstrate that AMD is paying to exclude features is lacking in any substance and that its lazy sloppy reporting and we would be better off if it handnt been published. Probably the biggest problem I have with the article is that an industry insider should at least be able to get someone from a AAA studio to anonymously tell them what is happening. Be it standard business practice or sneaky new development I simply cant believe that anyone put any effort into this story without at least some sort of word from the people who actually make the products being discussed. Its like talking about a feature in a gpu and talking to the fab instead of the people who designed it the gpu. The fab might have some insight, but certainly they would be a secondary source at best.

As far as if its actually happening or not I honestly dont know enough about the industry to have an informed opinion on the topic without putting in way more effort than I am willing to put in . I can give you some examples that I think could explain the pattern just as easily as that AMD is paying to block features. For all I know they are totally unrealistic as I dont know that much about game development, with my level of understanding they seem plausible alternatives considering the lack of information presented in the article

A decade ago I thought most of what the partner provided was in QA/QC support to the developer. I could easily see a situation where the personal provided by a partner are so integrated into the testing process that if the AMD people say they will not be directly involved in testing competitor only features that the studio simply drops those features because they are now a hassle to test. This kind of scenario could explain why its not all games that dont have the features and only some. I wouldnt call this scenario paying to exclude features rather that developers not putting in the effort to include the feature on their own. There a few variations on this scenario that I could see leading to the same kind of situation

Heartbreakers easy two stop process to add dlss libraries into some games seems to always skip straight past the accept another companies eula to click add the features. I assume that the AAA games are also the bigger studios and it would be easy to see a situation where that studios legal department is unhappy with the contract they are supposed to agree too and sends a rewording back to Nvidia who rejects the rewording and as easy as that the feature is out.

When it comes to the list of games from the article its also really sparse on details. Its simply title/sponsor/fsr/dlss. Are there other important details that would make the corroleations fit better? As notable things I see from the list is that there are AMD sponsored games with and without fsr and with and without dlss support. The only pattern that actually shows true across the the chart is that Nvidia sponsored games have dlss support. It looks like really sloppy data analysis. The AMD sponsored games demonstrate no real pattern as to what features are in and out. It makes me wonder if there are better correlations when it comes to features included in AMD sponsored titles. Perhaps something related to the game engine, is it a console port. What about the developer themselves, do they include dlss in other titles. Maybe something related to the country the development studio is in or a fight their ceo had with someone at nvidia. The asserted pattern has to many outliers for me to believe that its actually a pattern.

 

[coercitiv]

I assume this means CapFrameX will refuse to benchmark Starfield due to lack of DLSS.

 

[Tup3x]

AMD announced that it will be Starfield’s exclusive PC partner

AMD has just announced that it will be Starfield's exclusive PC partner, and shared an announcement video.

www.dsogaming.com

Great move by AMD, i am certain modders will have DLSS support within a week, while it will take forever for AMD to recover goodwill. Bye marketing idiots and morons.

If "exclusive PC partner" means that it doesn't have DLSS or XeSS support, it's pretty obvious what's going on.

 

[JoeRambo]

If "exclusive PC partner" means that it doesn't have DLSS or XeSS support, it's pretty obvious what's going on.

Yup, "genius" level of marketing by AMD. Consequences will follow

 

[A///]

starfield is a console port. the consoles run on amd hardware. it makes sense.

if intel and nvidia don't like it they can team up with nintendo and sega and make killer consoles.

i saw last weeks list of dlss and whaterver amd has called games. all the good and interesting games are dlss, and people online are a bit butt hurt about amd paying for some exclusive titles, most of which are low rank stuff except this starfield stuff. give me a break, im sure starfield will run better on nvidia's superior hardware one arm behind its back and jensen's jewels in a vice grip actuated by lisa.

 

[ThatBuzzkiller]

Activision Blizzard acquisition will be junked either way. FTC has made comments stating they have "substantial questions" regarding the legality of the acquisition and that "Defendants fail to rebut the FTC's market definitions", going even further to say that "Defendants Assertions about Nintendo and PCs Ignore the Evidence".

PDF

And about D3D12 Work Graphs. CUDA has something similar for compute since Turing launched. As usual, AMD is late to the party and an interview with David Wang indicates that D3D12 Work Graphs will only be integrated starting from RDNA4, which would be like 7 years since NVIDIA's implementation.

Their case against the FTC is far from over. Even if Microsoft doesn't get Activision Blizzard, AMD have other publishers like Ubisoft, Capcom and maybe even Epic Games (?!) firmly on their side. With a corporation as big as Microsoft, they're not so much interested in whatever meager pocket change AMD has on hand as they are in 'power'. And they want to use their power to punish Nvidia by killing off DLSS so that they can more easily 'control' them. Anyone who can't see that this is a "power move" from Microsoft who clearly wants to destroy any proprietary technology not under their control don't know any better ... (to Microsoft, DLSS proliferating means less power/control for themselves)

D3D12 Work Graphs could potentially have "graphics nodes" so CUDA graphs API is NOT a direct equivalent ...

 

[DrMrLordX]

Starfield, a game which is locked at 30 FPS on consoles because of CPU limitations, will likely have no DLSS 3, let alone DLSS 2, because AMD's intent is to block competitor technologies from appearing in games bearing their stamp of approval.

Can you prove that? Doesn't seem like you can, and I'll repeat that at least one AMD dev has publicly dismissed that idea as being er, cow manure.

Let's get some of this hashed out so everyone understands each other's contentions.

There are some here that contend AMD is paying to have DLSS excluded from sponsored games.

There are others that don't buy it. This is where the contentions seem to vary. If you don't think AMD is responsible, what is your exact position? Be concise please.

My position is that AMD is paying for exclusivity. That it's been standard practice for decades to do so. Anyone upset by it needs to go outside and touch grass.

Okay, I'll bite.

Removing DLSS from a title won't stop people from buying NV hardware. FSR 2.0 isn't that great. I think most AMD users either a). don't understand what it is or b). will leave it disabled due to the image quality problems. Not that I expect AMD to come out and say that FSR 2.0 has image quality problems, but let's be honest, we all know it does.

We don't even know what an AMD sponsorship entails.

 

[A///]

We don't even know what an AMD sponsorship entails.

I'd hope a prime rib dinner with papermaster and su for starters, shiatsu massage later, round of tennis. throwing hatchets at posters of jensen.

 

[Heartbreaker]

Heartbreakers easy two stop process to add dlss libraries into some games seems to always skip straight past the accept another companies eula to click add the features. I assume that the AAA games are also the bigger studios and it would be easy to see a situation where that studios legal department is unhappy with the contract they are supposed to agree too and sends a rewording back to Nvidia who rejects the rewording and as easy as that the feature is out.

That's just nonsense. There are no strings attached to to using DLSS. NVidia wants you to use it, they aren't creating roadblocks, they are creating onramps, in some cases they most likely even pay for it's inclusion.

In particular, Microsoft has already used DLSS in most of of it's current unpartnered AAA titles. They have no legal concern about it's use that suddenly sprang up.

The only reason that AMD partner games don't have DLSS is that AMD is paying to exclude it.

AMD made that crystal clear with them touting "exclusive" PC partnership with Starfield. AMD is clear that their deal is about exclusion...

The only people who will tout this is as a good thing are narrow minded fans that see it as a "win" for their side, when in the broader sense all it does is piss off NVidia owners, because AMD it paying money to make their experience worse. That isn't going to entice them to buy AMD.

Any and all of these kinds of exclusive deals suck. Whether it's Microsoft buying Bethesda, and keeping Starfield off PS5, or AMD paying them to keep DLSS off it.

 

[Panino Manino]

As if AMD had money to be paying developers to not use DLSS, its ridiculous. Had they this fabled money available they would be spending into to send more AMD personnel to assist developers optimize better to their architecture and sponsor more games to see the RADEON brand.

Also, don't remember if anyone mentioned this, about those stupid lists. But if you look closer the list that "proves" Nvidia does not "block" FSR, many of those games that have both solutions, they offer FSR1.
Going by this worst case scenario logic, can't we "conclude" that Nvidia is conspiring to make developers use the wrong FSR version to give consumers a wrong impression of the AMD tech, thinking its much worse than it is and not comparable to what DLSS does?
But no one ever thought about this possibility, always blamed the developers because doest "hurt" the majority of consumers anyway.

 

[Heartbreaker]

As if AMD had money to be paying developers to not use DLSS, its ridiculous. Had they this fabled money available they would be spending into to send more AMD personnel to assist developers optimize better to their architecture and sponsor more games to see the RADEON brand.

What is ridiculous, is thinking that "exclusive" deals are Free, and/or that they don't have strings attached.

It's pretty obvious what the "exclusion" is on the AMD Exclusive is (DLSS). Though it probably also entails making sure any Ray Tracing is kept to a negligible level.

 

[zinfamous]

I meant "Game of the decade" for its time. I don't think there has been a "Game of the decade" lately.

That would be Cyberpunk, whether or not the reality met the hype. I guess it did with HL2. ...well at least from a tech + gameplay perspective.

Cyberpunk meets that with tech and as a testbed....but the gameplay is far too mixed I think for anyone to confidently put it up there.

Maybe modded/updated Witcher 3. It still holds out really well.

 

[Spjut]

I don't get why people even think it's a no-brainer to add DLSS unless it's sponsored by Nvidia. Unless money is involved, I don't believe any business is eager to support something which they cannot fully control and fix by themselves.

As for raytracing, the last-gen consoles and pre-DX12 Ultimate GPUs are still supported. Even if doing away with last-gen, the PS5 and Series consoles are weak for raytracing. The goal for most studios will be something that works well on the consoles. It just doesn't make any sense to prioritize raytracing unless Nvidia pays for it.

 

[Panino Manino]

What is ridiculous, is thinking that "exclusive" deals are Free, and/or that they don't have strings attached.

It's pretty obvious what the "exclusion" is on the AMD Exclusive is (DLSS). Though it probably also entails making sure any Ray Tracing is kept to a negligible level.

It's not "obvious".
Look, you all know that I "hate" Nvidia, but even I don't go makes assumptions like this. Like I said it's easy to expect the worst from corporations but on all those cases of games using FSR1 instead of FSR2 I didn't assume the "obvious" that it was Nvidia's fault, I blamed on AMD "incompetence" not having enough people going around helping developers to work with FSR2.

 

[Heartbreaker]

It's not "obvious".
Look, you all know that I "hate" Nvidia, but even I don't go makes assumptions like this. Like I said it's easy to expect the worst from corporations but on all those cases of games using FSR1 instead of FSR2 I didn't assume the "obvious" that it was Nvidia's fault, I blamed on AMD "incompetence" not having enough people going around helping developers to work with FSR2.

It's is obvious to people that don't have fan colored glasses. What do you think the "Exclusive" in AMD Exclusive partnership means?

Definitions​

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.​

• adjective Excluding or tending to exclude.
• adjective Not allowing something else; incompatible.

 

[Spjut]

It's is obvious to people that don't have fan colored glasses. What do you think the "Exclusive" in AMD Exclusive partnership means?

Definitions​

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.​

• adjective Excluding or tending to exclude.
• adjective Not allowing something else; incompatible.

Ugh, if you are interpreting the dictionary litterally I'm surprised you haven't complained the game obviously won't work on Nvidia and Intel hardware

 

[ThatBuzzkiller]

We're talking about a trillion dollar corporation (Microsoft) here who's had a close relationship with AMD before which is easy for many others to miss when they think their "asking price" was 'high' for a sponsorship to begin with. For Microsoft, nearly no amount of cash could sway them given their enormous power of being able to pick between winners/losers so for them a game sponsorship in this case is about "making a statement against proprietary technology" ...

Getting mad at AMD won't change the fact that Microsoft wanted this to happen and they weren't interested in what Nvidia was offering if anything at all ...

 

[Heartbreaker]

We're talking about a trillion dollar corporation (Microsoft) here who's had a close relationship with AMD before which is easy for many others to miss when they think their "asking price" was 'high' for a sponsorship to begin with. For Microsoft, nearly no amount of cash could sway them given their enormous power of being able to pick between winners/losers so for them a game sponsorship in this case is about "making a statement against proprietary technology" ...

Getting mad at AMD won't change the fact that Microsoft wanted this to happen and they weren't interested in what Nvidia was offering if anything at all ...

That's nonsense.

Why would Microsoft want to exclude an easy to implement option, that provides superior results for their customers. Microsoft has no incentive to do that. Plus pretty much all Microsoft other recent, AAA titles (Flight Simulator, Forza 5, Deathloop, Doom Eternal) have DLSS. If Microsoft wants to skip DLSS, why not skip on their other recent AAA games?

But this new "AMD Exclusive" title excludes DLSS, and it's your theory is that Microsoft wants it gone. That doesn't logically stand up at all.

AMD on the other hand actually has a reason to exclude DLSS. Because it's a competing and superior upscaling that has FSR looking worse in comparison, and perhaps recently it became more important to shut down, because DLSS 3 now has frame generation which for some (not me) might be a selling point, offering a "smoother frame rate".

Bottom line: AMD has both the incentive, and the shows the pattern. Microsoft has neither the Incentive, nor shows the pattern. If someone wanted DLSS gone from the AMD Exclusive partner game, it was AMD.

 

[igor_kavinski]

The only people who will tout this is as a good thing are narrow minded fans that see it as a "win" for their side, when in the broader sense all it does is piss off NVidia owners

Definite win in my book

 

[ThatBuzzkiller]

That's nonsense.

Why would Microsoft want to exclude an easy to implement option, that provides superior results for their customers. Microsoft has no incentive to do that. Plus pretty much all Microsoft other recent, AAA titles (Flight Simulator, Forza 5, Deathloop, Doom Eternal) have DLSS. If Microsoft wants to skip DLSS, why not skip on their other recent AAA games?

But this new "AMD Exclusive" title excludes DLSS, and it's your theory is that Microsoft wants it gone. That doesn't logically stand up at all.

AMD on the other hand actually has a reason to exclude DLSS. Because it's a competing and superior upscaling that has FSR looking worse in comparison, and perhaps recently it became more important to shut down, because DLSS 3 now has frame generation which for some (not me) might be a selling point, offering a "smoother frame rate".

Bottom line: AMD has both the incentive, and the shows the pattern. Microsoft has neither the Incentive, nor shows the pattern. If someone wanted DLSS gone from the AMD Exclusive partner game, it was AMD.

Could it be that Doom Eternal and Deathloop were planned with DLSS well before Microsoft's acquisition which only leaves you left with Ghostwire and Redfall as your only real reference points as to how Microsoft does technical partnerships for Zenimax's AAA games ?

There's many other games AAA Microsoft games that didn't get DLSS such as Gears 5/Tactics, Minecraft Dungeons/Legends, Halo MCC/Infinite, Age of Empires 4, Psychonauts 2, and Grounded. When it comes to DLSS, Microsoft is just as much of a skeptic as Capcom is who is another close AMD partner that makes a point to also trash on proprietary technologies like it ...

If there was any money involved, it obviously didn't take much for AMD to be able to consistently sabotage DLSS integration among 3 publishers (Capcom/Microsoft/Ubisoft) or more likely they flat out just don't 'believe' in the future of DLSS ...

 

[igor_kavinski]

Any and all of these kinds of exclusive deals suck. Whether it's Microsoft buying Bethesda, and keeping Starfield off PS5, or AMD paying them to keep DLSS off it.

If nGreedia had been able to buy ARM, their long term strategy would have been to ignore the x86 market as much as possible till finally their GPUs no longer worked with Wintel or even Linux x86 machines. Their grand plan was to create their own Apple like ecosystem.

The only one saving PC gamers then would have been AMD and Intel.

 

[igor_kavinski]

That's nonsense.

Sorry but your notion that Microsoft is somehow fearful of AMD or has no say in what AMD decides to do in a "partnership" is just plain "sniffing glue" level of thinking.

Microsoft has DESTROYED companies before. Remember Nokia? They wiped it out of existence with their Microsoft Phone crap by installing their own executive as Nokia's CEO.

They CHOSE AMD over Intel when they went with AMD's x64 instruction set for 64 bit OS and applications.

Then they CHOSE ARM over AMD and Intel for their Windows ARM OS.

They don't need ANYONE. Bill Gates wasn't a fool when he duped IBM into believing that hardware was the future. We know now that software RULES. Big time. Guess whose software runs on the highest number of personal computers in the world?

 

[Saylick]

If Nvidia really cared for implementing DLSS in all AAA titles, given their financial prowess relative to AMD (revenue, net profits, market cap), you'd think that they'd have ALL developers on lock.

Even if MS wasn't the one to allow AMD to lock in the sponsorship, why didn't Nvidia come in and ensure Starfield had DLSS? Did Nvidia let AMD get exclusive sponsorship? If so, why not blame Nvidia? Nvidia GPU owners have this belief that they deserve DLSS because they paid a premium for their Nvidia GPU, yet the company that makes their GPU doesn't guarantee that DLSS is present on every game.

Seems interesting that some people think that AMD is some puny, wimpy company with sub-15% market cap that can't stop Nvidia, yet they also have the belief that AMD is simultaneously strong enough to impede Nvidia by "punishing" the vast majority of gamers by "forcing" developers to omit DLSS. Which way is it? Is AMD a company on the decline that Nvidia will crush in 5 years time or are they some omnipotent entity that is "blocking gaming "progress? I've seen so many times how people are willing to use both sides of that statement depending on convenience in proving a point.

 

[gdansk]

Some consumers feel entitled to DLSS now. If the RTX 3060 they bought for $400 can't handle the game they blame AMD for blocking Nvidia's software workarounds. But maybe you should have bought a GPU that didn't suck. Almost like Nvidia's marketing got you to pay more for a crappier GPU on the premise they'd fix it with upscaling software.

On the other hand AMD's marketing shouldn't block DLSS but still at this point they have some plausible deniability.

 

[Heartbreaker]

If Nvidia really cared for implementing DLSS in all AAA titles, given their financial prowess relative to AMD (revenue, net profits, market cap), you'd think that they'd have ALL developers on lock.

Even if MS wasn't the one to allow AMD to lock in the sponsorship, why didn't Nvidia come in and ensure Starfield had DLSS? Did Nvidia let AMD get exclusive sponsorship? If so, why not blame Nvidia? Nvidia GPU owners have this belief that they deserve DLSS because they paid a premium for their Nvidia GPU, yet the company that makes their GPU doesn't guarantee that DLSS is present on every game.

Blame NVidia for AMDs actions? Yeah that's the usual hard core AMD fan, refrain on this forum.

If AMDs has poor pricing: It's NVidias fault.
If AMDs has exclusionary tactics: It's NVidias fault.

Even it made financial sense (it doesn't), NVidia couldn't lock every developer into partnership deals without inviting some kind of regulatory intervention.