Pointless tesselation.

[crazyeyesreaper]

its a simple case of, Crytek didnt care enough to do DX11 , nvidia paid them so they half assed it and took the money, theres no conspiracy it was a quit $2 million or so cash fall for Crytek / EA lol and they just had to half ass DX11 support for the GTX 580 nothing more or less its pretty much standard practice depending on what publisher / game devs you look at.

 

[Benetanegia]

Sorry to say, but what an EPIC FAIL of an article.

I'm not going to discuss about if the tesselation used is too much or not or if the performance hit is worth it or not, because that's highly subjective and the debate about performance/detail is Crysis 1 all over again, but one thing is clear: tesselation is doing a lot in terms of adding detail and realism.

So the whole article is EPIC FAIL because it's based off a falacy, that tesselation is there for nothing or no benefit. If you do not see benefit in the added detail (while sometimes subtle), honestly go play on consoles, you'll find all the perf/detail and perf-per-hardware-per $$ that you want there.

Or you can -as many PC gamers do- ask for innovation and adoption of new technologies, but please when someone does use the new technologies, don't blame them if your hardware is not capable.

My mainstream card (GTX460) is capable of playing that game with all the added detail at 50 fps, so that's the benefit for me, and many other (being able to play with great details). If your card cannot do it because it lacks the tesselation power to do it, maybe you should consider that your card is lackluster in that department and change the card or ask more from your graphics vendor in the future, so that you can still benefit from the added details while using your prefered brand and we can all benefit. That's what's best for gamers. Tonning down games so that they fit all is NOT what benefits the gamers, having the choice to use the highest detail posible IS. Even if that means using a particular brand, in the end the choice is yours. Plus if it looks the same to you why don't you just disable it?

Hell I'm tired of some people's double standards, they can talk hours on end about how PC is superior and how consoles are slowing down the progress and when someone actually improves the situation for the benefit of gamers (the ones not attached to a particular brand) they do nothing but whine. Sigh.

EDIT: Oh and about the water. While not ideal, it's not there because of malice or complete incompetence. The thing is it has always been there. It was there in Crysis 1 and it was there in FarCry 1, in both cases iirc also tesselated (not completely sure abouf FarCry), on the CPU not with DX11, there's even a cvar to control it in Crysis 1. It's not ideal for whater to be there, but I think it has a lot to do with how the editor, Sandbox works and so that it's very easy to create islands. It sure was easy to create them for FarCr and Crysis, it just so happens Crysis 2 happens in the city and it's unnecessary, but the engine is the engine and I guess it was far more complicated to change it than swallow the perf hit and design the game accordingly, optimizing elsewhere.

 

[_ALB_R3D X]

you got a good point and all but a GTX460 playin CR2 @ultra???
sorry but i'm doubtful of that!!!I used a GTX460 1GB OC when CR2 was still DX9 and wasn't gettin more than 30-35fps with CPU @ 3.8 and card @ 800Mhz core
Now i have 2x6950 and i can play smoothly with 50-60FPS Vsync=on
What are your other system specs???

 

[HalfAHertz]

The article is edgy but if anyone should be blamed of an epic fail it's Crytec - there's way too many polygons on the flat surfaces of the blocks and all they need to do is make a new tessellation map to fix it...keep the edges jagged(black) and the flat sides smooth(white). Very lazy indeed >.<

 

[Benetanegia]

you got a good point and all but a GTX460 playin CR2 @ultra???
sorry but i'm doubtful of that!!!I used a GTX460 1GB OC when CR2 was still DX9 and wasn't gettin more than 30-35fps with CPU @ 3.8 and card @ 800Mhz core
Now i have 2x6950 and i can play smoothly with 50-60FPS Vsync=on
What are your other system specs???

I have a 2500k, 8 GB. Card clocked at 860 Mhz for playing Crysis 2. And well I'm playing it at 1280x960 120 Hz because I have a CRT and that's my choice for Crysis 2 (added detail, lower res). I usually play at 1600x1200 or even 1920x1440 if the games only supports 60 Hz, but for Crysis and Crysis 2 the added detail is well worth the lower resolution.

The article is edgy but if anyone should be blamed of an epic fail it's Crytec - there's way too many polygons on the flat surfaces of the blocks and all they need to do is make a new tessellation map to fix it...keep the edges jagged(black) and the flat sides smooth(white). Very lazy indeed >.<

Except they are not flat. There's no really flat surfaces there, they have added subtle bumps all around the objects which makes them far more realistic looking. Sure it's subtle and maybe for some people it's not worth the penalty. But then again and again, isn't it supposed to be about evolution? Nvidia cards handle it easily, my card does 50 fps with the added detail and 70 fps without the added detail (same resolution) so I don't think it's unreasonable at all. We are talking about a 130 euro card bought almost a year ago, a high end card should be able to do far better (and they do). The tehnology is here if you want to use it. Epic fail was IMO that AMD didn't implement a better tesselation solution on HD6000 cards. We are in 2011 and there is DX11 hardware capable of doing this and then some, with ease. AMD failed, and IMO the rest is excuses. We are enthusiasts or not? Because if we have to excuse a vendor for it's lackluster performance I don't see the purpose.

 

[_ALB_R3D X]

I have a 2500k, 8 GB. Card clocked at 860 Mhz for playing Crysis 2. And well I'm playing it at 1280x960 120 Hz because I have a CRT and that's my choice for Crysis 2 (added detail, lower res). I usually play at 1600x1200 or even 1920x1440 if the games only supports 60 Hz, but for Crysis and Crysis 2 the added detail is well worth the lower resolution.

you scared me for a minute cause I sold my GTX460 cheap...!
Anyway i'm a big fan and always will be of Crysis in general but CR2 was a big disapointment even for me!leave aside graphic problems which I eventually solved with another card,what about AI????
Even in inhuman difficulty you can still see people running around and hitting walls....!!!but this is another long story...
as i said i'm a big fan but I don't know why when I hear about CR2 it still gets into my nerves...!
the wait was not worth it besides the story...anyway soon big tittles will be released and maybe we will ALL forget about CR2 (not CR1 though)

 

[PHaS3]

but the engine is the engine and I guess it was far more complicated to change it than swallow the perf hit and design the game accordingly, optimizing elsewhere.

That's like saying it's far more complicated to fix Windows issues with service packs, so rather just leave Windows with faults and issues... You cannot "optimize elsewhere" when there is that kind of flaw in your engine.

If these people were perfectionists and cared about their end product, they would have sorted that issue out... It's a similar story with games that are rushed to release and perform badly or are faulty due to insufficient testing.

Personally I loved the game (Crysis2). The story was good, game-play was good, and the graphics were decent even in their initial DX9 guise. The DX11 patch does make things look good, but with the kind of render issue outlined in that article, clearly some work needs to be done.

 

[Benetanegia]

That's like saying it's far more complicated to fix Windows issues with service packs, so rather just leave Windows with faults and issues... You cannot "optimize elsewhere" when there is that kind of flaw in your engine.

If these people were perfectionists and cared about their end product, they would have sorted that issue out... It's a similar story with games that are rushed to release and perform badly or are faulty due to insufficient testing.

Personally I loved the game (Crysis2). The story was good, game-play was good, and the graphics were decent even in their initial DX9 guise. The DX11 patch does make things look good, but with the kind of render issue outlined in that article, clearly some work needs to be done.

It's not a flaw, it's just a minor inconvenience that has been blown waaaaaaaay out of proportion. In modern games geometry processing takes about a 10-15% of the rendering time with DX9 games usually even way below to arpound 5%. The rest is shader processing, lighting, shading, post-process... One thing that people should really understand is occlusion culling, that is, that everything that is not seen is not rendered. Besides the water there's a lot more, orders of magnitude more, polygons that are not seen either because they are occluded by other geometry or are facing the opposite way. Of all the occluded polygons only a very small fraction belong to the water (say 10% being very generous) and like I said only a small fraction of rendering time (read performance) belongs to geometry. So what's a 10% of a 10%? Oh yeah 1%, the water is hindering performance in the ballpark of 1%. Can you regain that peformance back by tweaking lighting, shading, post-process effects? Of course and you don't have to redesign your entire engine + SDK. Easy choice.

 

[TC-man]

This kind of implementation of tessellation kinda reminds me of ATI's Trueform/n-patches which makes things "rounder" and "fuller", instead of creating more details in the game that you actually see and e.g. are replacing details that were in normal maps, parallax mapping and so on in older games (pre-DirectX 11).

I guess for the time-being this kind of tessellation implementation feels pretty much like the early Ageia Physx which often didn't do much to the gameplay in games (e.g. Ghost Recon Advance Warfighter with bigger explosion with extra "2D" debris" and really some fake physics), while at the same time everything could be done in software via the cpu (with Havok for example); not to mention that a PCI Physx card at the time could not have the power to do some true high-precision physics in games which would have more impact on the gameplay (if the creators wanted). For example in N64's Wave Race the physics of the water really did influence how you drive on the jetski, but that's without a hardware accelerated physics chip/card. And just "recently" I saw this being realized with CUDA in Just Cause 2, in a much bigger scale of course.

 

[Crap Daddy]

The big problem with CR2 was that it betrayed the expectations after Cevat and the gang bragged extensively about PC gaming and DX11 and delivered a console port which, albeit looked better than any DX9 game out there was not a good follow-up to Crysis. On top of that they screwed the multiplayer by not supporting it enough and by allowing pricks to cheat extensively.

They did the DX11 and I personally think it's the only game to date that uses tesselation in a way that we can actually see the difference. It looks absolutely gorgeous and only haters can deny this. Don't want to talk about personal preferences here as some might not like the gameplay and the story but fact is fact.

Now regarding the Nvidia involvement, AMD is doing the same lately so no point in talking about it. Dragon Age 2 anybody?

 

[CJCerny]

I think you guys are being unnecessarily unfair and harsh to Crytek. Time and budget contraints aside (it is a business after all, not some altruistic benefactor that exists soley to create entertainment for you), you are underestimating that it just takes time and practice for developers to understand and incorporate new technologies into their products. If you compare the initial releases on the PS3 compare to current releases, the visual quality is generally much better now. That would be because developers now have a grip on exactly what works best and how to squeeze the maximum out of the machine. The same is true of tessllation and DX11. In time, everyone will learn how to use these thing in the best way possible. You can't expect one of the first games out of the gate to use these technologies to use them perfectly--that isn't the way humans work.

 

[_ALB_R3D X]

I agree with everything but noone ever mentioned perfect!!!we were all looking for better cause is Crysis we are talkin about...anyway money rules the "real" world so no exception here...

 

[PHaS3]

So what's a 10% of a 10%? Oh yeah 1%, the water is hindering performance in the ballpark of 1%

I do have my doubts.

but thanks for clearing that up...

 

[LordJummy]

Sorry to say, but what an EPIC FAIL of an article.

http://img.techpowerup.org/110817/Crysis2_barrier.jpg

http://img.techpowerup.org/110817/Crysis2_wood.jpg

I'm not going to discuss about if the tesselation used is too much or not or if the performance hit is worth it or not, because that's highly subjective and the debate about performance/detail is Crysis 1 all over again, but one thing is clear: tesselation is doing a lot in terms of adding detail and realism.

So the whole article is EPIC FAIL because it's based off a falacy, that tesselation is there for nothing or no benefit. If you do not see benefit in the added detail (while sometimes subtle), honestly go play on consoles, you'll find all the perf/detail and perf-per-hardware-per $$ that you want there.

Or you can -as many PC gamers do- ask for innovation and adoption of new technologies, but please when someone does use the new technologies, don't blame them if your hardware is not capable.

My mainstream card (GTX460) is capable of playing that game with all the added detail at 50 fps, so that's the benefit for me, and many other (being able to play with great details). If your card cannot do it because it lacks the tesselation power to do it, maybe you should consider that your card is lackluster in that department and change the card or ask more from your graphics vendor in the future, so that you can still benefit from the added details while using your prefered brand and we can all benefit. That's what's best for gamers. Tonning down games so that they fit all is NOT what benefits the gamers, having the choice to use the highest detail posible IS. Even if that means using a particular brand, in the end the choice is yours. Plus if it looks the same to you why don't you just disable it?

Hell I'm tired of some people's double standards, they can talk hours on end about how PC is superior and how consoles are slowing down the progress and when someone actually improves the situation for the benefit of gamers (the ones not attached to a particular brand) they do nothing but whine. Sigh.

EDIT: Oh and about the water. While not ideal, it's not there because of malice or complete incompetence. The thing is it has always been there. It was there in Crysis 1 and it was there in FarCry 1, in both cases iirc also tesselated (not completely sure abouf FarCry), on the CPU not with DX11, there's even a cvar to control it in Crysis 1. It's not ideal for whater to be there, but I think it has a lot to do with how the editor, Sandbox works and so that it's very easy to create islands. It sure was easy to create them for FarCr and Crysis, it just so happens Crysis 2 happens in the city and it's unnecessary, but the engine is the engine and I guess it was far more complicated to change it than swallow the perf hit and design the game accordingly, optimizing elsewhere.

I think you might have missed some of the article. They mentioned how in some cases the tessellation looked great, and added needed detail. While you said that they bashed 100% and that all tessellation was wasted. I think the reviewing of the tessellation still stands strong. I recommend reading every bit of it with an open mind.

As for Crysis 1, FarCry, etc, using tessellated water that's hiding under the land: if that's true, then that's really stupid as well. There is no point in doing that, and if it's because of his editing tools, then he should probably get those fixed.

This article is also showing how the level of tessellation isn't really adding as much as it should in most cases, and in some it's adding absolutely nothing at great GPU expense. You can try and downplay that, but it's true. I'm sitting looking at the game in 5760x1080 mode this morning and I can see everything very well. They could have included a much lower level of tessellation on most objects with no loss in detail, and the water is just silly.

The problem is also that Nvidia paid them millions of dollars to not release DX11 so that they could optimize it for their hardware, and make it choke up on AMD cards. I have gtx 480's in my other machine, and they're great, but the 6970's are definitely not "lackluster". We're talking about a single game here that was not developed correctly. Nvidia simply knew that a certain level of tessellation (pointless amount) would choke it up in certain cases. I don't know how you can deny that after reading the entire article.

You think there is no problem with that?

 

[LordJummy]

The big problem with CR2 was that it betrayed the expectations after Cevat and the gang bragged extensively about PC gaming and DX11 and delivered a console port which, albeit looked better than any DX9 game out there was not a good follow-up to Crysis. On top of that they screwed the multiplayer by not supporting it enough and by allowing pricks to cheat extensively.

They did the DX11 and I personally think it's the only game to date that uses tesselation in a way that we can actually see the difference. It looks absolutely gorgeous and only haters can deny this. Don't want to talk about personal preferences here as some might not like the gameplay and the story but fact is fact.

Now regarding the Nvidia involvement, AMD is doing the same lately so no point in talking about it. Dragon Age 2 anybody?

Just because they're both doing it we shouldn't talk about it? That makes little to no sense. The more companies doing shady things like that, the more we lose. We should be talking about it more if anything.

There's a popular trend on this forum to get people to shut up, and I'm not sure why.

 

[Benetanegia]

I think you might have missed some of the article. They mentioned how in some cases the tessellation looked great, and added needed detail. While you said that they bashed 100% and that all tessellation was wasted. I think the reviewing of the tessellation still stands strong. I recommend reading every bit of it with an open mind.

As for Crysis 1, FarCry, etc, using tessellated water that's hiding under the land: if that's true, then that's really stupid as well. There is no point in doing that, and if it's because of his editing tools, then he should probably get those fixed.

This article is also showing how the level of tessellation isn't really adding as much as it should in most cases, and in some it's adding absolutely nothing at great GPU expense. You can try and downplay that, but it's true. I'm sitting looking at the game in 5760x1080 mode this morning and I can see everything very well. They could have included a much lower level of tessellation on most objects with no loss in detail, and the water is just silly.

The problem is also that Nvidia paid them millions of dollars to not release DX11 so that they could optimize it for their hardware, and make it choke up on AMD cards. I have gtx 480's in my other machine, and they're great, but the 6970's are definitely not "lackluster". We're talking about a single game here that was not developed correctly. Nvidia simply knew that a certain level of tessellation (pointless amount) would choke it up in certain cases. I don't know how you can deny that after reading the entire article.

You think there is no problem with that?

I specifically posted the same examples as they posted to say pointless tesselation was used with no effect on detail/quality and as I demostrated, it's not pointless at all, since it's being used to add detail. It almost looks as if they intentionally chose the worst angle to show no difference.

EDIT: ^^ So if the examples they gave to say "pointless tesselation used" are not valid and we add the ones where they did say tesselation was wonderfully used, what we get is that tesselation in Crysis 2 rocks...

For you they could use less tesselation for the same detail, for me tesselation has not been used sufficiently and is evidently too low for some of the displacement effects (as can bee seen in the ss), and I expect much much more in the future or so I hope. We obviously differ on this, like I said it is subjective.

Tesselation has not been used to make some cards choke and it's not the only game. Every single game and/or benchmark that has used tesselation to greatly improve detail with displacement maps has been criticized by AMD or AMD fanboys. Apparently DX11 has to be used, but not much please, and if someone uses it in a creative way to increase detail as opposed to AMD approved games which only smooth characters out, it's because Nvidia paid them to do so in order to hinder performance. Pff it's the same old TWIMTBP argument all over again.

Maybe games should be limited as to how many textures they could use too, and how many shadows they use and how many and how elaborate pixel shader effects they use, because clearly clearly clearly games are designed in a way to make Intel's graphics chips choke. It's a clear conspiracy.

So no, there's no conspiracy. Tesselation is an integral part of DX11 (this is not PhysX) and the most interesting one at that and it's best used with displacement maps. Crysis 2 uses it this way and looks gorgeous. Nvidia knew what DX11 would bring to the table and planned in advance, putting 16 tesselation engines on their flagship cards, while AMD, still knowing what DX11 would bring to the table, did a hackjob and put 2 on theirs, so as to being able to release the cards much sooner. Because of this when any significant (yet expected and desired) amount of tesselation is used, they choke. End of story.

By the looks of it, Crysis 2 does not even use more than the average 16 pixels per triangle "hot spot" that AMD marketing department talked about. Neither does Heaven bench, HAWX 2, LOst Planet 2 and the list goes on and on and on and on.

 

[LDNL]

Tessalated ocean under map, the game that brings all graphics cards to their knees

 

[PHaS3]

Nvidia knew what DX11 would bring to the table and planned in advance, putting 16 tesselation engines on their flagship cards, while AMD, still knowing what DX11 would bring to the table, did a hackjob and put 2 on theirs, so as to being able to release the cards much sooner.

!! I do not think that AMD did a "hackjob" with their cards to get them out sooner. They simply underestimated the emphasis that NVIDIA would place on tessellation, which in turn spurred developers on to use it more. My 5850 has no problems in games using tessellation, bar Crysis 2 with its underground ocean, and the 6xxx series is even better at it since AMD learned from their mistake. I am certain that the 7xxx when released will be even more adept at tessellation.

That was a very harsh comment

 

[Sasqui]

I'm not sure if I'm missing something here?

They first release the PC game in DX 9, because they are doing a simultaneous release ported to consoles that can't do DX 11

They then release an DX 11 update for the PC that the article gives praise to.

So what should they have done? Release the PC version only in DX 11 and then dumbed it down to work on consoles 6 months later??? :shadedshu

 

[TheMailMan78]

Oh no Crysis 2 is a port! Its not as demanding as Crysis 1. Bullshit! I demand blood from Crytek!

(2 months later after a massive patch adding DX11)

Oh no Crysis 2 is way to demanding! I can't run it maxed out just like Crysis 1! I demand blood from Crytek!........oh and Nvidia is to blame somehow also.



Nerds are never happy.

 

[Benetanegia]

!! I do not think that AMD did a "hackjob" with their cards to get them out sooner. They simply underestimated the emphasis that NVIDIA would place on tessellation, which in turn spurred developers on to use it more. My 5850 has no problems in games using tessellation, bar Crysis 2 with its underground ocean, and the 6xxx series is even better at it since AMD learned from their mistake. I am certain that the 7xxx when released will be even more adept at tessellation.

That was a very harsh comment

It is a hackjob to their existing architecture which was used and tweaked since the HD2900. My point is that it was not desgined from scratch to have the tesselation and geometry processing done in parallel. Read at the last paragraph which is about the X1900, it's mostly the same.

Also the statement "They simply underestimated the emphasis that NVIDIA would place on tessellation" is simply wrong. First of all it's not Nvidia using it, it's developer using it*. I'm not Nvidia and I was expecting tesselation to be used in the way it's being used in Crysis 2, because that's how tesselation has been used in "offline" renderers for the past 20 years. Expecting anything different is stupid, so I don't think that's what happened. I mean it's not like tesselation is new and has not been used before... if AMD failed to understand what tesselation would be used for, what it's desirable to use it for, then it's their own fault. As a gamer all I know is that I can get a 130 euros card right now and play with those nice effects albeit on low res or pay $300 and play it maxed out. And it's not alien tech selling for $5000 we are talking about, anyone can buy those things, for the same perf/price as the competition, if they feel tesselation is important and they see a benefit and don't care about brand.

* I don't remember anyone complaining or calling developers out when FEAR and Oblivion were launched and they ran much faster on the Ati X1900, because they extensively used pixel shader effects to levels and quality mostly never seen before and Ati had the good initiative of putting 4 pixel shaders per pipeline (4:1 ratio) on their design as oposed to the traditional 1:1 designs used until then. 5 years later the ratio is a lot bigger and for a good reason, and games use pixel shaders far more extensively and also for a good reason. It's not different with tesselation, except that nowadays it seems that everyone wants to believe that everything thst helps Nvidia is because of some dodgy thing and not design.

 

[digibucc]

yeah i highly doubt it's an nvidia conspiracy. we already know crytek crapped on crysis 2 and pc, it's no stretch that this was their horrible work.

bleh

i was thinking along the same lines while reading, but it really is different. draining processing power with no benefit is not the same as a properly optimized game that simply requires a lot of power. crysis 2 is the former.

 

[entropy13]

Oh no Crysis 2 is way to (sic) demanding! I can't run it maxed out just like Crysis 1! I demand blood from Crytek!........oh and Nvidia is to blame somehow also.



Nerds are never happy.

The point was that there's a performance hit with no visual difference at all. Plus the fact you're still rendering water that won't be seen...


It's not even the "way too demanding" argument, it's the "if it has to be too demanding, there should be visual differences (between DX9 and DX11), and there isn't."

 

[Benetanegia]

The point was that there's a performance hit with no visual difference at all. Plus the fact you're still rendering water that won't be seen...

Have you seen my pics? There's clearly huge visual difference. Whether you think it's worth the performance penalty or not that's a very different thing. The article claims no difference and it's wrong. For all it matters, I could claim no difference between 2x AA and 32xAA and I might even be honest in that I could not see the difference, but I would still be wrong very wrong.

And water is NOT being rendered, just like nothing that is behind anything else is being rendered either.

 

[SkullFox]

Sorry to say, but what an EPIC FAIL of an article.


So the whole article is EPIC FAIL because it's based off a falacy, that tesselation is there for nothing or no benefit. If you do not see benefit in the added detail (while sometimes subtle), honestly go play on consoles, you'll find all the perf/detail and perf-per-hardware-per $$ that you want there.

Actually the article isn't really a FAIL.

Here is what is says:

"Crytek's decision to deploy gratuitous amounts of tessellation in places where it doesn't make sense is frustrating, because they're essentially wasting GPU power—and they're doing so in a high-profile game that we'd hoped would be a killer showcase for the benefits of DirectX 11. Now, don't get me wrong. Crysis 2 still looks great and, in some ways at least, is still something of a showcase for both DX11 and the capabilities of today's high-end PCs. Some parts of the DX11 upgrade, such as higher-res textures and those displacement-mapped brick walls, appreciably improve the game's visuals. But the strange inefficiencies create problems. Why are largely flat surfaces, such as that Jersey barrier, subdivided into so many thousands of polygons, with no apparent visual benefit? Why does tessellated water roil constantly beneath the dry streets of the city, invisible to all?

One potential answer is developer laziness or lack of time. We already know the history here, with the delay of the DX11 upgrade and the half-baked nature of the initial PC release of this game. We've heard whispers that pressure from the game's publisher, EA, forced Crytek to release this game before the PC version was truly ready. If true, we could easily see the time and budget left to add PC-exclusive DX11 features after the fact being rather limited.

There is another possible explanation. Let's connect the dots on that one. As you may know, the two major GPU vendors tend to identify the most promising upcoming PC games and partner up with the publishers and developers of those games in various ways, including offering engineering support and striking co-marketing agreements. As a very high-profile title, Crysis 2 has gotten lots of support from Nvidia in various forms. In and of itself, such support is generally a good thing for PC gaming. In fact, we doubt the DX11 patch for this game would even exist without Nvidia's urging. We know for a fact that folks at Nvidia were disappointed about how the initial Crysis 2 release played out, just as many PC gamers were. The trouble comes when, as sometimes happens, the game developer and GPU maker conspire to add a little special sauce to a game in a way that doesn't benefit the larger PC gaming community. There is precedent for this sort of thing in the DX11 era. Both the Unigine Heaven demo and Tom Clancy's HAWX 2 cranked up the polygon counts in questionable ways that seemed to inflate the geometry processing load without providing a proportionate increase in visual quality.

Unnecessary geometric detail slows down all GPUs, of course, but it just so happens to have a much larger effect on DX11-capable AMD Radeons than it does on DX11-capable Nvidia GeForces. The Fermi architecture underlying all DX11-class GeForce GPUs dedicates more attention (and transistors) to achieving high geometry processing throughput than the competing Radeon GPU architectures. We've seen the effect quite clearly in synthetic tessellation benchmarks. Few games have shown a similar effect, simply because they don't push enough polygons to strain the Radeons' geometry processing rates. However, with all of its geometric detail, the DX11 upgraded version of Crysis 2 now manages to push that envelope. The guys at Hardware.fr found that enabling tessellation dropped the frame rates on recent Radeons by 31-38%. The competing GeForces only suffered slowdowns of 17-21%.

If you don't want to ready all that:

Tesselation is good when you can see the difference, not in a flat object or invisilbe water that runs beneath the ground than you can see.

Answers to this are lack of time, incompetence or lack money.

Another explanation is nvidia is behind all this, including the update to dx11

In this case tesselation slow down Nvidias 17-21% and ATIs 31-38%