> But then these optimizations went so far as fixing (in the driver) broken game code.
AMD does the exact same thing and always has. When you see shaders come down the wire you can replace them with better-optimized or more performant versions. It's almost always fixing driver "bugs" in the game rather than actual game bugs. And the distinction is important.
I do agree with you, but that element is something everyone has to do to remain competitive in games. Developers will only optimize for one platform (because they're crunching), and 9 times out of 10 that's a RTX2080Ti.
Nvidia did more than that, hooking their drivers in the same way that they would for benchmarks "oh actually ignore this API call" "oh actually issues these two calls when you see this one call with this signature" "yes this game requested synchronization here, but just ignore it" kinds of things.
While yes AMD did similar things when they could, it was way less prevalent (if only because they didn't have the staff necessary to pull it off to the same degree).
AMD does the exact same thing and always has. When you see shaders come down the wire you can replace them with better-optimized or more performant versions. It's almost always fixing driver "bugs" in the game rather than actual game bugs. And the distinction is important.
I do agree with you, but that element is something everyone has to do to remain competitive in games. Developers will only optimize for one platform (because they're crunching), and 9 times out of 10 that's a RTX2080Ti.