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Disguised “AMD PCI Driver” enables executable-specific hacks

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Re: Disguised “AMD PCI Driver” enables executable-specific hacks

#21

Post by uxp100 »

danielheath wrote: post #14
captainmuon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why they don't just call the game developers on the phone and say "here is AMD, you must fix your shaders, here is the code". Certainly I would jump if I got contacted by AMD or NVIDIA. Now someone is going to say, if a game breaks people are going to blame AMD, so it is their problem. But AMD would just have to play hardball once, pick a smallish publisher and say "XY refuses to fix their broken code, we ev…

People buy AMD to play games; they don’t buy games in order to use their AMD card. AMD have one job in this situation and they are doing it.

Right, the above suggestion might work with coordination, where AMD and NVIDIA both bullied a publisher. But if people want to play a game and NVIDIA makes it work great, despite software bugs, and AMD writes a blog post, I think it's pretty reasonable to say "maybe next time I'll buy NVIDIA."

Also I don't think developers would be quite so receptive. It works on every card that exists in the market today, that's kinda your problem if your unreleased chip breaks this is a fairly good argument.

Re: Disguised “AMD PCI Driver” enables executable-specific hacks

#23

Post by rasz »

How ATI’s drivers ‘optimize’ Quake III

https://techreport.com/review/3089/how-atis-drivers-optimize...

>Kyle Bennett at the HardOCP found that replacing every instance of “quake” with “quack” in the Quake III executable changed the Radeon 8500’s performance in the game substantially.

Re: Disguised “AMD PCI Driver” enables executable-specific hacks

#24

Post by rasz »

flohofwoe wrote: post #12

At least for graphics drivers it's common that the driver applies tons of game-specific workarounds and optimizations, I guess this is also the main reason why there are monthly driver updates (fixes for new games), and why graphics drivers have become so massively big. Assuming that the same game-specific tweaking happens for CPU performance and compatibility doesn't seem like a far stretch.

previous ATI attempt at "game-specific workarounds and optimizations"

before applying: https://techreport.com/r.x/radeon-q3/dm6-quaff-nocolormip-sh...

applied: https://techreport.com/r.x/radeon-q3/dm6-quake-nocolormip-sh...

Re: Disguised “AMD PCI Driver” enables executable-specific hacks

#25

Post by MatmaRex »

rasz wrote: post #23

How ATI’s drivers ‘optimize’ Quake III https://techreport.com/review/3089/how-atis-drivers-optimize... >Kyle Bennett at the HardOCP found that replacing every instance of “quake” with “quack” in the Quake III executable changed the Radeon 8500’s performance in the game substantially.

(2001)

Re: Disguised “AMD PCI Driver” enables executable-specific hacks

#26

Post by dathinab »

j4yav wrote: post #18
DominikD wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. But it's more likely they're replacing shaders with game- or engine-specific workarounds for hardware bugs. Used to do exactly that in my first GPU driver job. The goal wasn't to cheat, but to fix issues in popular games that for one reason or another wouldn't be patched for your GPU on its release.

Having been in the space, is there a reason you’d normally hide that in something made to look like a PCI driver?

because the program might have been a pci driver which also does executable detection in the past, or ecause it still does some pci driver related stuff, or because on windows there are some people which delete everything where deleting it doesn't seem to directly show some visible functional degradation... ( I'm not kidding, even if it sounds like that).

Re: Disguised “AMD PCI Driver” enables executable-specific hacks

#27

Post by Narishma »

flohofwoe wrote: post #12

At least for graphics drivers it's common that the driver applies tons of game-specific workarounds and optimizations, I guess this is also the main reason why there are monthly driver updates (fixes for new games), and why graphics drivers have become so massively big. Assuming that the same game-specific tweaking happens for CPU performance and compatibility doesn't seem like a far stretch.

> I guess this is also the main reason why there are monthly driver updates (fixes for new games), and why graphics drivers have become so massively big.

I don't think so, otherwise it would be limited to graphics drivers. Since other kinds of Windows "gamer"-type drivers (keyboards, mice, motherboards, etc...) have also bloated over time, I think it's more about including useless things in them, as well as the use of inefficient frameworks like Electron.

Re: Disguised “AMD PCI Driver” enables executable-specific hacks

#28

Post by dleslie »

hatsunearu wrote: post #15
captainmuon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why they don't just call the game developers on the phone and say "here is AMD, you must fix your shaders, here is the code". Certainly I would jump if I got contacted by AMD or NVIDIA. Now someone is going to say, if a game breaks people are going to blame AMD, so it is their problem. But AMD would just have to play hardball once, pick a smallish publisher and say "XY refuses to fix their broken code, we ev…

From what I hear a lot of game engines have horrendous bugs that is terrible for performance (like people straight up using DirectX incorrectly, not being aware of the quadrillion performance hacks that AMD/Nvidia are keenly aware of)--so what AMD and Nvidia does is they "fix" the game engine by making it more performant. Potentially it might be better for them to contact the game dev for a collaboration or just to t…

Ha, having been on the game dev side of this, it's _also_ often c) the teams of lawyers between the developers and the outside world won't allow collaboration.

The situation is _much_ better nowadays, but in the oughts and early tens it was basically a given that the game source code was considered too valuable to risk sharing.

Re: Disguised “AMD PCI Driver” enables executable-specific hacks

#29

Post by Wowfunhappy »

flohofwoe wrote: post #12

At least for graphics drivers it's common that the driver applies tons of game-specific workarounds and optimizations, I guess this is also the main reason why there are monthly driver updates (fixes for new games), and why graphics drivers have become so massively big. Assuming that the same game-specific tweaking happens for CPU performance and compatibility doesn't seem like a far stretch.

And of course, the games do the same thing, adding driver-specific workarounds and optimizations.

Re: Disguised “AMD PCI Driver” enables executable-specific hacks

#30

Post by vimax »

rasz wrote: post #23

How ATI’s drivers ‘optimize’ Quake III https://techreport.com/review/3089/how-atis-drivers-optimize... >Kyle Bennett at the HardOCP found that replacing every instance of “quake” with “quack” in the Quake III executable changed the Radeon 8500’s performance in the game substantially.

Good article. Makes me think of Volkswagen.
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