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Rumour - AMD to be the GPU in all 3 next gen consoles

Ezyryder

Ezyryder

Ezyryder

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From HardOCP...


The Big GPU News

What looks to be a "done deal" at this point is that AMD will be the GPU choice on all three next generation consoles. Yes, all the big guns in the console world, Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony, are looking very much to be part of Team AMD for GPU. That is correct, NVIDIA, "NO SOUP FOR YOU!" But NVIDIA already knew this, now you do too.

There are going to be game spaces that NVIDIA does succeed in beyond add in cards and that will likely be in the handheld device realm but we do not see much NVIDIA green under our TV sets. NVIDIA was planning to have very much underwritten its GPU business with Tegra and Tegra 2 revenues by now, but that is moving much slower than the upper brass at NVIDIA wishes. Tegra 2 penetration has been sluggish to say the least.

AMD has always been easier to work with than NVIDIA on the console front. Well that may not be exactly true, but Microsoft did not spend months in arbitration with NVIDIA over Xbox 1 GPU and MCP costs back in 2002 and 2003. I always felt as though that bridge was burned.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/07/07/e3_rumors_on_next_generation_console_hardware
 
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Is this likely to mean that games that are optimised for next gen consoles (nearly all of them) will likely also be fairly optimised to run on AMD GPU architectures on PC?
 
HOORAH! Finally less AMD gpu issue with drivers and stuff?! Well as Ejizz said, more optimised therefore looks better and runs better and therefore/hopefully less problems!
 
Well, don't forget that Nintendo and Xbox 360 already use AMD gpu's, it was only Sony, and Sony are apparently completely wiping their hands with Nvidia. The story is they didn't like working with Nvidia on the gpu for the PS3, but then Sony got done in bumpgate for loads of laptop replacements and getting a bad name for lots of dead laptops.

Just about everyone Nvidia work with are angry with them, hardware wise, software wise, I'm not sure.

The three consoles won't all be using a, say equivilent of a say 6870 but done at 28nm, but a heavily modified version, or at least thats how its been done in the last few gens of consoles.

With APU's, and a rumour that Sony might even use a Bulldozer CPU, we might move to the point where its easy and FAR FAR cheaper to simply use existing AMD products, an APU or a cpu/gpu separately but essentially already working ones, already designed.

If that were to happen then the consoles would become nothing more than an HTPC setup in a small box with a different and closed OS, in which case porting to a PC would almost not need to happen.

I think the next gen is less likely to be simply buying an APU off AMD/Intel(ok intel just aren't an option right now) but the gen after that we could well be into simply sticking AMD or Intel APU's into consoles.
 
could this possibly mean Nvidia push game devs into making PC exclusives (or more than just a port) so they can try and grab a huge market share that way?
 
^^^
PC gaming market isn't big enough to make it worthwhile for the Dev's, personally I think this pretty much spells the end for FizX as well, as consoles will likely just use an open standard of physics, and what is Nvidia going to do, pay Dev's to chuck out all the Open Physics code (whatever that is) and recode it for Nvidia hardware? which will still likely only have a minority DX11 market share anyway.

Maybe Nvidia can pay for a couple of titles, but even that would be pointless.
 
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but if all ports are going to be AMD optimized, then where will Nvidia get the upper hand? surely no one would buy an Nvidia card if everything was going to work as good if not better on the AMD equivilant?
 
I'm actually a little disappointed by this. Part of the fun of consoles is the weird and unique hardware they tend to have. If they're all going to be IBM CPU and AMD GPU then where's the fun in that?
 
Lightnix said:
I'm actually a little disappointed by this. Part of the fun of consoles is the weird and unique hardware they tend to have. If they're all going to be IBM CPU and AMD GPU then where's the fun in that?
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i spose if they go for generic hardware it will be easier to write the software to be multi-platform. but something has to give, else all 3 leading consoles could have such similar spec/features it will make it pointless have all 3 in the market. so from this point of view, i dont imagine that standard pc components would be used for consoles, it would just make it soo hard for anyone to offer anything unique.
 
Ejizz said:
^^^
PC gaming market isn't big enough to make it worthwhile for the Dev's, personally I think this pretty much spells the end for FizX as well, as consoles will likely just use an open standard of physics, and what is Nvidia going to do, pay Dev's to chuck out all the Open Physics code (whatever that is) and recode it for Nvidia hardware? which will still likely only have a minority DX11 market share anyway.

Maybe Nvidia can pay for a couple of titles, but even that would be pointless.
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Thats exactly what they already do, pay dev's to chuck out free, easy, cheap physics code and add useless physx code.

Infact its more likely Nvidia will ramp up thei campaign to ruin pc gaming with them desparate for sales they'll be paying guys to remove AA, use physx. If dev's will give up on Nvidia and refuse their offers is another question.

One of the real problems is how PC "extra's" are tacked on to a game engine as opposed to designed in from the ground up. I think consoles going dx11(anything after dx10 at the VERY least) would be essentially groundbreaking.

Being designed for dx11 from the ground up, especially as Nvidia/AMD's focus is dx11 optimisation, will be a huge boost for PC gaming.
 
Lightnix said:
I'm actually a little disappointed by this. Part of the fun of consoles is the weird and unique hardware they tend to have. If they're all going to be IBM CPU and AMD GPU then where's the fun in that?
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In the better quality games, which after all is the whole purpose of the hardware, so imo it's a pretty good thing to happen.
 
paradisiac said:
i spose if they go for generic hardware it will be easier to write the software to be multi-platform. but something has to give, else all 3 leading consoles could have such similar spec/features it will make it pointless have all 3 in the market. so from this point of view, i dont imagine that standard pc components would be used for consoles, it would just make it soo hard for anyone to offer anything unique.
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I think the days of sheer power offering a unique gaming experience or a 'unique' selling point are gone, interactive devices like Kinect etc. seems to be where it's at these days.
In fact there isn't really much difference in today's 360 or PS3 in terms of graphics, just that that game development takes longer and cost's more than it could.
 
drunkenmaster said:
Thats exactly what they already do, pay dev's to chuck out free, easy, cheap physics code and add useless physx code.

Infact its more likely Nvidia will ramp up thei campaign to ruin pc gaming with them desparate for sales they'll be paying guys to remove AA, use physx. If dev's will give up on Nvidia and refuse their offers is another question.

One of the real problems is how PC "extra's" are tacked on to a game engine as opposed to designed in from the ground up. I think consoles going dx11(anything after dx10 at the VERY least) would be essentially groundbreaking.

Being designed for dx11 from the ground up, especially as Nvidia/AMD's focus is dx11 optimisation, will be a huge boost for PC gaming.
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If a game has been developed from the ground up to use an open form of physics, I don't really see how Nvidia can push FizX on developers any longer, maybe they could still try the AA lockout tricks, but more likely/cost effective for Nvidia would be to pay the Devs to De-Optimise tessellation.
 
So what are we saying then? That pc gaming is going to the dumps soon as predicted by a few enthusiasts and critics a few years ago??

I don't believe that pc gaming is losing it's edge at all, especially in the way of graphical performance. I have to admit though with some recent titles of pc games, have been really disappointing with the lack of structure and "excitement" being delivered. Especially when they release 2nd and 3rd titles of the same game... It never gets better just worse in some cases.

Looking forward to the new Deus Ex and BF3 though.
 
Jay85 said:
HOORAH! Finally less AMD gpu issue with drivers and stuff?! Well as Ejizz said, more optimised therefore looks better and runs better and therefore/hopefully less problems!
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If most of your problem are Multi GPU related then very little will change in that regard of the consoles using AMD.
 
Final8y said:
If most of your problem are Multi GPU related then very little will change in that regard.
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That's true, although a few fixes that i have found lately seem to have worked most notably the 11.5b hotfix and app profiles by changing the .exe files.
 
I think nVidia were also dropped because AMD seem to be slightly more reliable with their GPU launches.

The 5850 generation is also very good when it comes to power consumption.
 
Wouldn't be a huge surprise as AMD have had the upper hand since the release of the 4000 series.
 
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