Report: Frostbite 3 games to be 'optimized exclusively' for AMD cards
Starting with Battlefield 4, all games using Frostbite 3 will be "optimized exclusively" for AMD cards, a new report states.
Starting with Battlefield 4, all games using Frostbite 3 will be "optimized exclusively" for AMD cards, IGN reports. Given that Frostbite 3 has become EA's engine of choice for its upcoming slate of games, this could be a significant blow to rival graphics card manufacturer Nvidia.
According to their report, "while Nvidia-based systems will be supported, the company won't be able to develop and distribute updated drivers until after each game is released."
The site postulates that AMD's complete control of tech in the new generation of consoles may have played a part in this agreement. AMD chips can be found in PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Wii U.
PC Gamer points out that these kind of exclusive agreements can be problematic for rival card owners, as evidenced by Tomb Raider's shaky launch. If IGN's report is true, that means Nvidia card owners may experience equally bumpy launches of not only Battlefield 4, but other Frostbite 3 games like Need for Speed Rivals, Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare, Dragon Age: Inquisition, the new Mirror's Edge, the new Star Wars: Battlefront, and the upcoming Mass Effect.
We've contacted AMD for more information.
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replyAndrew Yoon posted a new article, Report: Frostbite 3 games to be 'optimized exclusively' for AMD cards.
Starting with Battlefield 4, all games using Frostbite 3 will be "optimized exclusively" for AMD cards, a new report states.-
I'm okay with this, as I am a AMD card owner.
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As an AMD card owner, i am not.
Rage was 'optimized' for NVidia, for all intents and purposes, and look at what that's brought.
It's a stupidly bad business move to not involve the biggest graphics chip manufacturer out there. You're essentially telling roughly half your PC audience to "fuck off", in simple terms. Since the PC is the only platform which can really deal with Frostbite 3's possibilities, it strikes me as ridiculously odd to make such a statement.
I hope they don't think that suddenly people will start buying AMD stuff. Or that they let AMD talk them into this. In both cases you're dealing with people who are unable to make a sound business decision.-
I am okay with this because now Nvidia owners can feel what I felt the last couple of years with all these NVIDIA optimization. Now I get to see AMD logo in front of a game instead of Nvidia it's just a nice change.
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In a un realistic world yes...but that will never happen exclusives for one company or optimization for one company will never go away as long as its two markets. If we had a third or fourth option to choose from maybe these practices will go away but right now it's all about buy AMD because this game runs better or buy NVIDIA because this game runs better. Just like how some restaurants only serve Pepsi produts and some Coke products.
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Makes sense given the new console generation.
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Terrible news for the PC gaming community as a whole though. When can these companies get back to a technological battle??
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I'm sure amd graphics accelerators in all consoles made this an even easier decision.
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This article cant't be entirely correct. Nvidia owns 65% of the discrete graphics market. If it were true that FB3 games will be buggy on Nvidia hardware at release, then EA would esentially be creating a customer service nightmare.
Now if FB3 has exclusive features that will only run on AMD hardware (a la physx to Nvidia), then that is a different story. UE4 is in Nvidia's pocket, there are also rumors that Source 2.0 will be in Nvidia's pocket, so hearing that FB3 will have AMD added benefits is just competitive business as usual. -
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relax brah dudes. this will not likely mean anything in the end. if when the game comes out, NVIDIA has the best chip on the market its not like its going to be out performed by AMD's 99$ option. many games these day "endorse" one manufacturer or other. think of all the games that have the AMD or NVIDIA or INTEL logos in the intro.
i could be wrong though and they might really try to do some code level marketing shit, but if that does happen im confident the outcry will keep them from doing something like that more than once. -
No consumers gain anything from this, but some consumers will lose out. It's like when one console maker pays a developer not to release DLC on the other console (or at least to time delay it). The people with he right console gain nothing as they would have gotten the DLC anyway, while the people with the wrong console miss out on the DLC. In this case AMD users probably won't get any better performance, but nVidia users will get crappy performance until the drivers can be updated.
It would be nice if console and GPU makers could stop paying developers to sabotage their products for their competitors hardware. It results in the consumer being screwed over every time.
In this case I'm personally not bothered because Frostbite is the worst engine ever created, with it's stupid blinding lights and lens effects, so I wouldn't touch a Frostbite game with a barge pole. That said, I'd still like to see this stupidity stop because next time it might be something I actually want to buy.-
What game are you speaking of? And you are being unfairly dramatic about the worst engine ever created.
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Heh would be news to me and I work on Frostbite game...
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Exactly people are saying the nVidia has 65% market share but that's the PC market when the consoles are release that number will drop drastically.
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UPDATE: EA and AMD have issued a statement clarifying that while the two companies are collaborating on day-one support for Radeon products for Battlefield 4, the partnership is non-exclusive and gamers using other components will be supported.
http://au.ign.com/articles/2013/06/18/all-frostbite-3-titles-to-ship-optimized-exclusively-for-amd
duh-
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Only if AMD starts making better video cards. Their performance is not only significantly overshadowed, but their heat and wattage are both higher as well.
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At the very highest end, maybe. At price points under $350 or so, for most of the last 18 months ATI has been winning at most price points and running cooler and quieter as well.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5625/amd-radeon-hd-7870-ghz-edition-radeon-hd-7850-review-rounding-out-southern-islands/20
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6359/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-650-ti-review/22-
Out of the entire range, you pick the one case where from March 5, 2012 to October there was competition in one category, and forgot to mention the September release of the 660: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6276/nvidia-geforce-gtx-660-review-gk106-rounds-out-the-kepler-family - Take a look at the chart at the bottom of that page which shows the price lineup, where Nvidia beats them in every category.
From their summary: " The end result is that the GTX 660 is on average 4% ahead of the 7870, but once again this is an anything-but-equal scenario; even swapping out a single game could easily shift the balance, reiterating the importance of individual games when relative performance is so inconsistent.
Meanwhile when it comes to physical metrics like power consumption, temperature, and noise, NVIDIA does have a clear edge thanks to another efficient rendition of the Kepler architecture with GK106. GK106 doesn’t enjoy nearly the same advantage over Pitcairn that GK104 did over Tahiti, but it’s still enough to get the same job done with less power consumed and less noise generated. It’s also just enough to make GTX 660 the preferable card over 7870 (at least as far as reference cards go) though by no means is 7870 suddenly a poor choice."
You also ignored the 660 ti which came out in August: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6159/the-geforce-gtx-660-ti-review-
"What’s different about this launch compared to the launches before it is that AMD was finally prepared; this isn’t going to be another NVIDIA blow-out. While the GTX 680 marginalized the Radeon HD 7970 virtually overnight, and then the GTX 670 did the same thing to the Radeon HD 7950, the same will not be happening to AMD with the GTX 660 Ti. AMD has already bracketed the GTX 660 Ti by positioning the 7870 below it and the 7950 above it, putting them in a good position to fend off NVIDIA."
And yes, there's no question they're beat at the top end. The middle is a little muddy, but as Anand points out, the only positive thing they can say is that it isn't another blow out. Just good positioning.-
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$200 price range -- 660 vs 7870
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/660?vs=548
7870 is generally the same speed (each wins about the same number of times, slight lead to 7870) and runs cooler and about the same noise level (trade victories here as well)
$170ish -- 7850 vs 650 ti
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/680?vs=549
Nvidia is murdered
$300 -- 7950 boost vs 660 ti
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/647?vs=645
ATI wins in framerate battle, loses in power / noise
It's certainly not as clear cut as either of us thought, but ATI generally wins the framerate battle and trails in noise and power. Are there other price points you'd like to look at?
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The amount of industry ignorance in these comments is simply astounding.
It makes perfect sense from a business standpoint for EA to optimize FB3 for AMD's platform.
The console win for AMD was much larger than people understand. These consoles aren't just using AMD procs and GPU's, they are using a new technology that the current iteration of PC's don't have.
Welcome to HSA - Hetergenous System Architecture.
In a nutshell, HSA increases the efficiency of system on chips (SoC) by unifying the memory space of the GPU and the CPU and directing calculations to the best suited processing unit for a given task.
This improvement will be coming to the PC.... and devs will already be prepared for it having programmed countless games/apps for the consoles.
This means AMD is primed to take the PC segment by storm.
Now let's think about this logically from a business standpoint.
3 out of 3 consoles are using AMD chips... some consoles have deeper support for HSA than others.
AMD CPU's and GPU's released for the PC utilize HSA architecture.
This means that by optimizing Frostbite 3 for AMD architecture they have captured 5 out 7 hardware manufacturers.
Now you guys tell me, in what world does that not make perfect sense?
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People need to relax this is a good thing, the new consoles are one of the best thing to happen to the PC scene in a very long time.
Of course Nvidia is still going to be supported and own. If AMD start to serve up Nvidia it will only push Nvidia to make better products or drop prices etc. We can all benefit.
A storm of awesomeness is coming I am READY \m/ this is going to own on all fronts.
Upcoming events = Gamers Win
PC gaming will stay Huge and continue growing and the new consoles will finally hit the sweet spot that PC gamers have been enjoy for a long time.
Good freaking times.-
I just wanna have you around after the apocalypse.
"guys, this is great, peak oil is totally solved"
"guys, this is great, we've just bought what will be the fastest video card for decades"
"guys, this is great, mountain lions were pretty lame and radioactive bio-lions are just awesome"
"guys, this is great, the real estate market is just wide open now"
"guys, this is great, now we get to use the dual hybrid gas/solar generators. They have 50k capabilities, and enough juice to power a lan party for 10 years"
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1 - Bumpy launches reflect poorly on the game as much as the GPU vendor.
2 - I have 0 cares about any of the EA games that were listed (ok, I maybe have 1 care about Battlefront, but only if it's <$30 on Steam and got decent reviews).
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