Again. Both manufactures have their own technology firms but BOTH agreed on not adopting a closed box approach to them and let the other side being able to optimize their drivers to work with them. AMD always did it (to the point with TressFX to even working with Nvidia itself directly to have them optimize their drivers code for it) and it is Nvidia that, suddenly, broke that agreement with no motive whatsoever (because, frankly, there's nothing gamebreaking in gameworks technology).
I wasn't talking performance of the GPUs themselves but of proprietary technologies. This thing has NOTHING to do with how cards perform themselves.
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It IS better because it doesn't bog down the other side arbitrarily, while doing the same exact thing. It doesn't matter if the technology is not more advanced, AMD is not actively blocking Nvidia to optimize their drivers for it, nor it asks devs to not collaborate with Nvidia to help them on optimizing their hardware for the technology. Actually, as I said above, AMD actively helped Nvidia directly on optmizing their drivers for the TressFX code.
So yes, it is better, because it is not tied to unfair competition and it doesn't bog down FPS as Hairworks does.
You are missing completely the point here. I care nothing how those technologies look in themselves, I was replying to what you were saying about the approach of Nvidia to this issue. Nvidia has no rights whatsoever to block AMD from optmizing their drivers code for Nvidia own technologies. They have the right to own those technologies and the full propriety of them (so that AMD cannot use those same technologies in their hardware as to take advantage of them) but it certainly cannot block the other side and devs of games to have AMD optimize their drivers so that their hardware can work with those technologies (as it is now, given the approach of Nvidia on the issue, what AMD cards do is to simply have the GPU - or even worse the CPU, depending on the effect - take all the workload to process those effects, with no optimization in the drivers for calls and such; practically the drivers simply don't work with those technologies). And this independently from previous accords on the matter that are even existent in this case (hence making the thing even worse).
It never happened before in the history of GPUs and it is a very bad introduced precedent that, if taken as the norm, would spell the complete end of user freedom on the GPU market as you would be practically forced to play a game only if you own the right GPU branch for which the game was made to work with, If this approach becomes the norm and reaches its full conclusion this is what the game industry will become. So, in the end, AMD will be practically forced to close as they cannot compete with Nvidia as far as exclusives go and this will have nothing to do with hardware performance on one part or the other.
That AMD is behind Nvidia for performance has nothing to do with this issue. Is it possible that you cannot understand this? The fact that AMD is behind in performance is by itself already a punishemnt because users are preferring Nvidia over AMD for this motive. There's no need whatsoever to artificially cripple performance of the other part with unfair approach to technologies optimizations in drivers.
Moreover, I repeat, users and tech journals are in rage on the issue because it sets a very bad precedent that, if brought to its extremes (as it will do if left unchallenged) would mean the end of the freedom of choice from users in regard to which hardware to buy.