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AMD has console gaming in its pocket, but can it squeeze out Nvidia on the PC?

LtMatt

LtMatt

LtMatt

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Discuss.

AMD is in a very interesting position this year. Not only is it pushing the envelope with server, desktop, and mobile APUs, but it also has the console market on lock down. This week at the Computex Taipei expo, AMD doubled down on its “Unified Gaming Strategy,” and promises to work directly with game developers to make PC ports of console games easier going forward.

Last generation, IBM supplied the CPUs for all three major consoles, and Nvidia supplied the GPU for the PS3. Now, the PS4 and Xbox One are both running custom AMD APUs, and the Wii U is using an IBM CPU with an AMD GPU. Usage statistics show that Nvidia still has a significant edge in the PC gaming market, but AMD could use its console dominance to turn the tide. It wouldn’t be the first time we see a major upset in the world of GPUs.

The reality of potential sales figures forces game developers to make most AAA titles console-focused. Too often, PC ports get the short shrift because of this emphasis on the consoles, but hopefully that’s about the change. Now that the Xbox One, PS4, and PC are all using the same underlying hardware, it should take significantly less work to make a polished version for all three platforms. At least, that’s what AMD keeps telling us.

The PS3 used the oddball Cell processor, and that lead to countless problems for third-party developers making multi-platform games. It has more horsepower than the Xbox 360, but the difficult architecture meant developers were often left with a choppy frame rate or egregious texture pop-in. That’s not the case this time around, and we mostly have AMD to thank. The development environments for PC, Xbox One, and PS4 are by no means identical, but ports won’t need nearly as much retooling as they did last generation.

Everyone seems to be benefiting except Nvidia here. The real worry with AMD’s push for unified gaming is that games developers might shirk Nvidia optimizations. If it’s relatively simple to get Xbox One games up and running on PCs with AMD graphics, publishers might not see the need to spend the additional cash to optimize for Nvidia cards. This could be a huge hassle for the majority of PC gamers with existing Nvidia cards, but it would be even worse for Nvidia itself. While AMD has been lagging well behind lately, this PC-console strategy could help it leapfrog its competitors in a meaningful way.
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Source
http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/1...ocket-but-can-it-squeeze-out-nvidia-on-the-pc
 
kitch9 said:
Eh?

I have 2 rigs, one with 2x670's and another with a 680.

Nvidia potentially have a massive problem here with regards PC gaming.
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It'll force nVidia to change certain aspects of how they operate, but it'll be the sort of stuff that'll benefit the industry.
 
Can't see this having much effect on nvidia tbh, if anything it could benefit them and all pc gamers.

The key isn't the driving brand behind the chips its the architecture they use. Moving from ppc/cbe to x86-64 on the new consoles will make games a whole world easier to code for any and all platforms, even to the extent of rumours surfacing xbox one titles will share exclusivity with windows. If that happens you can't tell me it's a bad thing that the pc may see titles such as halo, gears of war, forza and many more, which imo benefits both amd and nvidia.

The one thing amd will gain over nvidia is brand recognition.
 
I'll take that as you can't then?

Porting typically doesn't exist because games have to have a build made specifically to run on the platform they're supposed to be going on to.

This is why I'm saying it typically doesn't happen. In basic terms, a game will be developed by a studio using a game engine that is compatible with the platforms of choice.

The source code for the game will then be compiled for each platform from the source code and tweaked for each specific platform and the the assets will be scaled for each platform too. Assets being things like textures, audio, geometry and so on.

This is where the typical cries of console port come in. A dev, for various reasons will do the bare minimum on the PC build, call it being lazy for the sake of simplicity, and won't put any effort into making the PC version any better than the console version.

No porting has actually happened, the developers have simply done three bare minimum for the PC version.
 
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