NVIDIA Announces Rise of the Tomb Raider Bundle

[btarunr]

The turnaround in developer relations for NVIDIA, propelled by its GameWorks software and a refreshed "The Way It's Meant to be Played" (TWIMTBP) program is best exemplified with the upcoming "Rise of the Tomb Raider." A sequel to the 2013 franchise reboot by Square Enix, which brandished the "AMD Game!" logo, and even bundled with certain AMD Radeon graphics cards; the new Tomb Raider not only features the NVIDIA logo, but will also be bundled with select GeForce graphics cards under the new "Discover the Legend Within" bundle.

NVIDIA is giving away "Rise of the Tomb Raider" with GeForce GTX 980 Ti, GTX 980, and GTX 970 graphics cards. This includes cards sold in the retail channel, as well as gaming desktops that come with those cards pre-installed. On the notebook front, select notebooks running the GTX 980, GTX 980M, and GTX 970M will also give you a key to the game. The bundle extends to participating retailers and OEMs only.



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[crazyeyesreaper]

so does that mean the game will have Nvidia features that mimic the AMD features in the original Tomb Raider but with sub par performance? lol

 

[HumanSmoke]

so does that mean the game will have Nvidia features that mimic the AMD features in the original Tomb Raider but with sub par performance? lol

I thought it was common knowledge that the game incorporates features from both vendors - for example, AMD's TressFX 2.0 (if you are actually interested its development is discussed >>here<<...if you are just experimenting with observational humour feel free to skip).

 

[Lionheart]

Cool but please no Gameworks BS

 

[HisDivineOrder]

Big win for nVidia. Square-Enix was one of the last remaining companies to really stay loyal to AMD through thick and thin. AMD's marketing moneys must be REALLY running low...

 

[Musaab]

I think that Rise of the Tomb Raider is Microsoft now, any way nVidia win an important ground by put their label on game of this weight>

 

[chlamchowder]

Why do people assume developers are favoring NVIDIA or AMD when something runs faster on one manufacturers' cards?

If you're developing a game or any really complex program, just getting the thing to work (and ironing out bugs) is difficult enough. I don't think any dev will go out of his/her way to make sure performance is better on one manufacturer's cards.

 

[Xzibit]

Why do people assume developers are favoring NVIDIA or AMD when something runs faster on one manufacturers' cards?

If you're developing a game or any really complex program, just getting the thing to work (and ironing out bugs) is difficult enough. I don't think any dev will go out of his/her way to make sure performance is better on one manufacturer's cards.

I think people are more suspicious of developers stripping away techniques that were shown and in place during development and in consoles release to be stripped or replace when a deal is struck via anything.

Async shaders were one of the technics highlighted for improved performance as well as a better AO developed in-house. The bundle news leaked that Nvidia VXAO is being used for the PC version. If you can switch between the original and this that be great but we have to see what becomes of the deal. If nothing was stripped or replaced and Nvidia features added as a option that would be best outcome.

 

[Outback Bronze]

So I guess I don't get a copy as I bought my GTX 980 last year..? :-(

 

[chlamchowder]

I think people are more suspicious of developers stripping away techniques that were shown and in place during development and in consoles release to be stripped or replace when a deal is struck via anything.

Async shaders were one of the technics highlighted for improved performance as well as a better AO developed in-house. The bundle news leaked that Nvidia VXAO is being used for the PC version. If you can switch between the original and this that be great but we have to see what becomes of the deal. If nothing was stripped or replaced and Nvidia features added as a option that would be best outcome.

There are plenty of good justifications for stripping out a feature though. Maybe they couldn't get it working/performing well with a lot of hardware configurations, or had bugs they couldn't iron out. Maybe something they wanted to add later didn't mix well with that feature. Or, just keeping multiple code paths that do the same thing was too much work (i.e., if another added feature requires a change, it needs to be implemented and tested across all code paths).

Take async shaders - from what I understand (and I only read about it briefly so I could be wrong), it lets commands get executed in parallel. But what if execution order of the commands ends up changing the output some of the time? Tracking that down could be a pain.

I think part of the problem might be that game developers are under a lot more time pressure than other devs, to meet things like holiday deadlines. So, just getting the thing working and released would be prioritized over non-core features, and perhaps even over stability (as we saw with some recent games).

 

[rtwjunkie]

So I guess I don't get a copy as I bought my GTX 980 last year..? :-(

Nope, me neither. But they will gladly welcome you to buy another!