DX12 is still proprietary (owned by Microsoft) but I guess you mean no conflict of interest with it ? 

There's another way around it like exposing these hardware features in DX11 through the driver layer ... (much like how Nvidia got HFTS to work in Watch Dogs 2 through NVAPI since the graphical feature required conservative raster.) 

Yes, DX 12 is MSoft's thing, and both AMD and Nvidia can, and will, use it. It's not like that GameWorks sh!t that only Nvidia cards can use, even if sometimes it does more harm than good (like the HairWorks fiasco).

As for the second part, my knowledge is well below that level, so I can't comment .

Actually quite a few parts of gameworks can run on any DX11 hardware ... 

It's not like Nvidia usually uses their own specific technology in it so it can run on any vendor ... 

And PhysX could run on the CPU, but Nvidia tweaked it so that if you try to do that, the performance would stall. The same goes for their GameWorks things, Nvidia hardware => ok, non-Nvidia hardware => runs very poor.

That's why propietary tech is bad for all of us, and we should push for open standards rather than ask for even more propietary software.

Who says it will have less hardware features? Smarter architecture design is easily more important than how large and how much you can pack in a chip, it's how nVidia has such a commanding adavntage right now.

There is a contradiction here. Haha
Either it is or it isn't.

Even if it's only a part of the "Multi-Engine" that is exposed in Direct X 12. - Then it's still part of the Direct X 12 spec.

It is open for everyone to use.

Also, the specs are NOT determined soley by Microsoft.
Like Khronos group, Microsoft seeks input from the entire industry.

Geometry has always been an achilles heel of AMD since the Direct X 11 era bgan.

You can't really wall off rapid packed math, asynchronous compute though.

Once nVidia has the hardware that can take advantage of such features, they can place hooks within their drivers to make use of that AMD "path".

I still would opt for AMD over nVidia regardless of performance.
AMD's Eyefinity is superior to nVidia's surround vision, hell Matrox is actually starting to use AMD GPU's for it's workstation GPU's and Multimonitor advantages. (Sad, because Parhelia was a beast back in the day.)

Or when you used to be able to pair up an nVidia GPU for PhysX alongside an AMD GPU. But then nVidia disabled that in their drivers, because. Reasons.

PhysX is dead so that's one less excuse for naysayers to use against gameworks ... (Nvidia is rolling out a GPU agnostic solution with Flex.) 

GPUOpen does the same thing as gameworks by offering proprietary driver extensions that expose hardware features only AMD hardware can use yet I don't see why the latter is so objectionable in comparison to the former when both are intended to offer a performance advantage on their sponsors hardware ... (I mean do you see opposition for Vulkan games sponsored by AMD make use of 'shader intrinsics' and 'FP16' even though their competitor doesn't offer these extensions through a driver ?) 

Hardly anything is open standards and we gotta deal with it in life since proprietary tech usually offers far more and that's why we prefer it, Vulkan is falling behind DX12 already ... (we could soon have another OpenGL clone if Vulkan goes in the wrong direction like OpenGL did) 

Do you not want to see AMD competitive if it meant them using 'proprietary' technology ? 

Well if AMD only did the bare minimum AMD would be able to obtain a perf/area advantage easily ... (architecture design also factors into these tradeoffs too so it's not like Nvidia would be able to compete with AMD in current games if Nvidia built in GPUs to have more features)

Multi-engine is defined in the D3D12 spec, not so for async compute so I don't see a contradiction there ... 

Async compute CAN be exposed with D3D12 multi-engine ... (big difference)

Not really since Microsoft can (At their own whims mind you!) determine who or who doesn't support DirectX ... (Tomorrow Microsoft could easily declare X vendor does not support their gfx API anymore. Microsoft is like an individual party who holds all the legislative powers and can't be voted out whereas AMD, Intel, and Nvidia are also individual parties who can run for executive powers and hold referendums politically speaking but they don't get the final say without Microsoft giving the OK.) 

Microsoft does seek input but I'd argue it's only for figurative purposes in comparison to the Khronos Group where the core working technical members can ACTUALLY veto out any changes to the spec ... 

I know but AMD's solution recommends using async compute but look at how that's turning out on PC where the vast majority of AAA games currently in development aren't using DX12 or Vulkan so AMD ends up getting crushed in benchmarks anyway ... (we're waiting any day now for Activision and Ubisoft to making the transition but main engine developers like Epic, Unity and japanese developers are the more guilty parties) 

Depends if there's a vendor agnostic solution that's offered ... (maybe not for async compute but I don't think there's a vendor agnostic solution for rapid packed math in Vulkan since that requires an AMD hardware extension so far) 

The only way AMD can't have a walled garden is if Microsoft and Khronos Group chooses to expose EVERY important hardware features (since it gives AMD no reason to roll out their own driver extensions) but I doubt their doing that soon since that would kill the portability of gfx APIs so AMD is usually stuck waiting for the industry to catch up or the industry goes in a different direction altogether and thus writing in stone of AMD's failed bid for the future forever ...

Even if their competitor does catch up in official hardware feature extensions AMD can still offer their own other unique hardware extensions to compliment the official extensions through their own drivers ... 

Wouldn't you prefer it if AMD rolled out their own walled gardens to be able to compete with Nvidia ? (no use in shunning propietary technology if they can a competitive advantage in current games and the fact that it's everywhere) 

The problem with that is AMD's position in the market.

Right now, AMD sells because of its lower prices (when miners don't ruin everything), and the goodwill of its customers to support them because a series of circumstances. Supporting and promoting open standards is one of those circumstances, and in my opinion a big one.

Remove that part of AMD and all you have is an Nvidia wannabe that can't properly compete with them, resulting in less support from the community.

No, if AMD wants to compete with Nvidia using propietary software like GameWorks, they first need to catch up with them in terms of performance but also in terms of marketshare, because if devs have to develop two versions of their games for consoles and then make another two versions because of GameWorks and "insert AMD's sh!tware name here", the end result will be that they'll focus only on the one with the bigger marketshare, so Nvidia.

Obviosuly, that only counts for devs that care about PC gaming, because what I fear that most of them would do is don't care about neither of them, making shitty ports (as they do now). And that would make AMD's turn into propietary software useless.

Actually I'd argue their position is fine on the market, AAA games don't just sell to PC but they also sell on consoles ... (Supporting open standards doesn't seem to be getting them market share on the PC space so it's a moot point ?) 

Actually being an Nvidia wannabe is what I imagine AMD wants when taking a look at each of their bottomlines. (AMD already can't compete with Nvidia so I imagine AMD can't lose anything else from a different endeavor.) 

Well sure AMD has to catch up in terms of performance, that much is obvious but it's a 'chicken and egg' problem so they have to develop software to take advantage of propietary hardware features either way because both are arguably interdependent of each other ... (There's also no reason why devs couldn't share console optimizations with AMD GPUs on the PC side but the tools available are mediocre to do that so AMD has to backtrack a lot on the software side to be able to translate that advantage. AMD should make it their job to offer every console functionality as much as possible available through easier gfx APIs like DX11 then devs would have an easier time doing console ports through DX11 + AMD driver extensions rather than just stock DX11 API while getting performance benefits too in the end. Devs still have to make a stock DX11 port cause of other vendors but at least there's an option for perfromance improvements with this 'proprietary software' for AMD.) 

I'd say that supporting open standards isn't something that makes you gain marketshare, but prevents you from losing it. But that's up to anyone's opinion. The only move to open standards that can cause them to increase their marketshare is, imho, FreeSync. Being noticeably cheaper than its G-Sync counterparts make them an attractive purchase, that encourages the use of AMD cards.

Of course, the industry will have an open standard with HDMI 2.1 (or something like that), so we'll see how things go for AMD and Nvidia when that gets rolled into consumer products.

The console optimizations were always a thing I had doubts with when people started claiming that AMD would benefit from consoles having AMD GPUs. Consoles use their own tweaked APIs (OpenGL for PS4, DX 12 for XOne) that are optimized for the specific characteristics of the tech inside them. Hoping that devs would use that knowledge on PC, where most of them use yet another API (DX 11) and there are hundreds of different configurations, always looked a bit optimistic.

But in the end, all this discussion about asking AMD to make their own software is a bit mood, because AMD already made that with Mantle. Yet, the industry wasn't interested in it, only DICE and a handful more devs decided to use it properly, so AMD decided to give up and gifted it to Kronos to turn it into Vulkan.