[theverge] AMD won the next-gen console war, and PC gamers could reap the reward

[Tomasis]

Rollo, your point is taken. Btw I didnt report your last post yet *kidding*


I wont spend over 250$ for cpu or gpu IMO. I wanted to make the point that constantly critizing every "cheap" part is not good as it creates impression that everything of fastest hardwares man ought to buy as only the single option. If you did make it clear in your earlier posts, then I would read your posts differently. You mentioned that 8350 makes a lot of sense just a little slower. Keep up that way of reasoning and everybody is happy

[Rollo]

Rollo, your point is taken. Btw I didnt report your last post yet *kidding*


I wont spend over 250$ for cpu or gpu IMO. I wanted to make the point that constantly critizing every "cheap" part is not good as it creates impression that everything of fastest hardwares man ought to buy as only the single option. If you did make it clear in your earlier posts, then I would read your posts differently. You mentioned that 8350 makes a lot of sense just a little slower. Keep up that way of reasoning and everybody is happy

I buy expensive parts sometimes because I'm a middle aged guy with dual professional incomes to spend and can throw away money on my hobbies.

If I were most people buying a high end rig, I'd buy 3770 or 4770/GTX 680. If budget didn't permit I'd get a 3570 and flip a coin between 770 and 7970.

If I had an AMD board, I'd buy a 8350, period.

I ranted a lot about what a rip off Titans were, then bought one and liked it because there's something to be said for single GPU gaming.

I bought the 990X because I'm a lazy OCer (so I like unlocked) and wanted a chip that would last a few years if things got more threaded. AMD had nothing comparable at the time.

I give intel extremes a pass at $1000 because they're the best, even if not by a bang for buck percentage.

I ragged on AMD because the 9590 is $920, they're selling a part that is not the best at a price reserved for the best.

No more, no less.

[Tomasis]

I buy expensive parts sometimes because I'm a middle aged guy with dual professional incomes to spend and can throw away money on my hobbies.

If I were most people buying a high end rig, I'd buy 3770 or 4770/GTX 680. If budget didn't permit I'd get a 3570 and flip a coin between 770 and 7970.

If I had an AMD board, I'd buy a 8350, period.

I ranted a lot about what a rip off Titans were, then bought one and liked it because there's something to be said for single GPU gaming.

I bought the 990X because I'm a lazy OCer (so I like unlocked) and wanted a chip that would last a few years if things got more threaded. AMD had nothing comparable at the time.

I give intel extremes a pass at $1000 because they're the best, even if not by a bang for buck percentage.

I ragged on AMD because the 9590 is $920, they're selling a part that is not the best at a price reserved for the best.

No more, no less.

Congratulations for the two jobs you got. Enjoy of the luxuries! You've worked very hard and you deserve some best parts. Im very happy for you!!

[Tomasis]

well, honestly, you need to look at it from his perspective, hes got a 990x(cost over 1k when they came out), and a tital(over 1k), if you dont follow his lead, you are an idiot, if you are stuid enough to buy AMD you wont be able to game or do anything else because, amd are so slow that they are totally useless.

and Tomasis: he says the "nice" stuff about AMD to try and avoid getting in trouble for all the trolling he does, if he really believed that stuff, he wouldnt post doom and gloom about AMD in every amd thread, he wouldnt spend all his time slagging off AMD and exalting intel/nvidia....the ONLY times he says anything nice about AMD is when its to throw off the sent of the troll hounds.

Yeah I still have a faith for human race. They can change their mind any minute for last time and become a saint

[Aberration]

In the first graphs they only compare the 8350 to the 3770. So in this case it is easy to say that the 8350 is cheaper, without comparing it to cheaper Intel alternatives. In the second set of graphs there are cheaper Intel solutions that are scoring better than the 8350. The third set is a mixture of both.

They don't seem to work well towards supporting your opinion.

[tiro_uspsss]

Rollo, are you still a member of the Nvidia Focus Group?

[Rollo]

Rollo, are you still a member of the Nvidia Focus Group?

No, I quit over a year ago. I have no connection to any gaming hardware or software vendor.

[AzureSky]

ok, i was wrong, AMD totally sucks, this gen's consoles wont make things better for anybody, not even console hotdogs, because, they use ty APU's rather then far supperior Intel/nVidia combo's or power pc or cell/nvidia combos....

think im gonna go uninstall all my games and just accept my amd systems a worthless pile of crap.

EDIT: forgot to mention that nobody buys consoles or console games, so this wont even get AMD many units shipped, I dont know why they are bothering, would seem smarter for AMD to get out of the x86 market and focus on ARM or something like that where they wont have intel destroying them by such massive margins in every bench/game/exct that matters.(civ v/skyrim/f1 2012/superpi/cinebench/3dmark/exct)

[Rollo]

I don't think ANYBODY getting the console contracts has ever done much for PC gaming one way or another. (or will do much for PC gaming beyond broadening the market of games as devs try to cash in)

However; MS and Sony's decision to switch to x86 might make ports better. Dare I dream of games where I can save at will again, or will save points continue to rule gaming?

I haven't been a console gamer since my beloved Sega Genesis on a 21" Sharp "flat screen" CRT.

[AzureSky]

I don't think ANYBODY getting the console contracts has ever done much for PC gaming one way or another. (or will do much for PC gaming beyond broadening the market of games as devs try to cash in)

However; MS and Sony's decision to switch to x86 might make ports better. Dare I dream of games where I can save at will again, or will save points continue to rule gaming?

naa it may have if they went Intel/nVidia but going with amd, it wont help at all, just low quality games made for sub par hardware that in turn came from a sub par company thats makes nothing worth anybody owning.

I haven't been a console gamer since my beloved Sega Genesis on a 21" Sharp "flat screen" CRT.

last console I owned new was an snes, I have had a few others 2nd hand, and friends who left their's at my place( had a big ass CRT tv they loved to come over and use, in exchange they left xbox/ps2's here.....my father has a ps/3 hes never gamed on but its the best blueray player you can get!!!!

someplace around here I have a dreamcast I need to get a converter box for(none of our tv's have inputs for such old tech....LOL)

at first I was thinking that since they have unified under 1 company for both major consoles(and you could add the WiiU but...its not really what i would consider this gen...cpu's an even bigger pos then the apu's for xbone and pos4)

you where correct, AMD is trash, and by extention that means these new consoles and games made for them will be trash, i mean they will have to make them suck so they can run on the totally sub par AMD hardware wont they?

so yeah, prepare for a bunch of slow sub par ports.....may have been different if they went with something supperior like an i3 or quad core atom and nvidia gpu but.....alas, MS and Sony are retarded and bought into an AMD ecosystem, worst choice they could have made....

[Ace123]

comparing home pc/gaming pc hardware to what is in the consoles is nearly worthless to me. By the standards of Pc gamers, the ps3's hardware is outdated to say the least. Finishing "The last of us" last night, naughty dog delivered a hell of an experiance, one I will not soon forget, all on archaic equipment. Game developers become increasingly good at optimizing over the coarse of a consoles life span, and the optimization experience, while not directly useable on the next generation console, is a good indication of how developers will be able to utilize the ps4's drastically better hardware.

I can tell you this, there is a reason all of these next gen consoles backed AMDs apu. Neither Sony, or Microsoft would make the decision to use a specific hardware lightly. Careful consideration of all options very carefully considered, and the decision to use AMD was unanimous. AMD's willingness to create custom SOC is obvious, and 2 and 4 core options surely were available, so it begs the question, Why would Both Sony, and Microsoft (a company in opinion has historically favored intel) both choose to use a lower power 8 core system if they weren't convinced they would not be able to utilize the hardware correctly or efficiently. My best guess is, they intend to become very good at multithreaded coding, or the technology both companies are developing to drive future games lends itself to multicore processing

This forces me to imagine the reasoning for 8 slower cores, vs 4, 2, or 1 faster cores. That technology in my opinion is the topic to be discussed as many articles have been written declaring multicore processing the wrong asnwer.

[Rollo]

Why would Both Sony, and Microsoft (a company in opinion has historically favored intel) both choose to use a lower power 8 core system if they weren't convinced they would not be able to utilize the hardware correctly or efficiently. My best guess is, they intend to become very good at multithreaded coding, or the technology both companies are developing to drive future games lends itself to multicore processing

Most likely it was just the most cost effective way to go.

AMD has (had?) the best graphics on APUs while these boxes were in development, it was probably cheapest to put an AMD APU in rather than a more costly intel cpu and AMD or NVIDIA dedicated GPU.

I'll be surprised if the new consoles advance console gaming a lot, I won't be surprised if they make the hardware profitable to sell. (finally)

[AzureSky]

Ace123, i think you need to real more of rollo's posts, hes correct that amd sucks.

as to why they would go AMD...AMD is cheap, and AMD was likely willing to whore themselves out cheap(make those custom SOC's), where intel/nvidia wherent willing to go so cheap.

now in all seriousness, its clear why they both went 8 core IMHO, because they both knew if they went with 8 slower cores they could force developers to get their acts togather and start multi threading.

if they used 4-6-8 more powerful cores, its likely we would still be looking at games like today 1-3 heavy cores, then possibly a few lighter cores.....

MS's at least im quite sure knows that the only way they are going to get developers to stop coding for systems like the 360(tricore pos powerpc) is to FORCE them to use more threads.

alot of those articals (and i have read many) are by programmers who started when single core was the norm, a few when dual core was, many of them DO NOT want to have to learn to multi thread their work efficiently, it requires a different thought process and coding style from what I have been told(by more then a few developers, not just game but server and user level software as well)

there are tasks that are pretty easy to multi thread, then there are others that take more work and more thought to multi thread.

another big part of the problem is, alot of game developers start from an engine like Unreal3 or Gamebyro thats not well suited to threading, the funny part there is, unreal2.5 is better suited to multi cores then 3...(designed for consoles), Gamebyro isnt a bad engine in its latest versions but its rare anybody licences or uses it, they tend to stick to older versions that favor fewer heavy threads.

I have had developers from more then 1 game company tell me this flat out, most of the dev's they hire, are not capable of writing a game engine from scratch/the ground up, nore are they really capable of re-writing the choke points of current engines to thread more efficently.


an interesting part is, I was talking with somebody I know who works for EA, and big part of why they plan to deploy frostbyte to as many of their dev houses as they can is, the engine has been written to take advantage of multi cores more efficiently since the bfbc2 days, and apparently the tools for it are also designed to help maitain multi threaded perf even when less skilled programmers/creators are at the helm.

UnrealEngine is likely a dieing option since epic lost the main guy behind the UE some time back....(think it helps explain why ue3 sucks in so many ways compared to what i expected after seeing how far ue2.5 could be taken)

cryengine3 is another engine that makes good use of cores, and it shows, again alot of studios have been picking it up, as it will likely be alot easier to port games to/from console/pc using engines that already thread very well.

being honest rather then saterical, I still think, due to the hardware used, that we are going to see better PC gaming thanks to this generations consoles, my reasoning is as follows.


1. dx11/11.1, not only is dx11 more suited to multi threading its also the most common level of hardware today, if done correctly though, dx9/10/11 hardware can still all be supported under vista/7/8/exct.

2. 8 slower cores forces developers to start thinking wide rather then tall, meaning they will have to break heavy tasks down so they use more cores rather then less faster cores, I dont care who you are, if you have a gaming/simi-gaming pc from the last 5 years, you should have more then 2-3 cores to use.......and even if you dont, more lighter theads can actually benefit even systems with less cores, because you can load shift/balance easier.(seen this myself with a few apps i have beta tested, its crazy how a tricore athlon II can actually gain perf with more then 3 threads in use.....(up to 16 threads in one beta game i was testing) using process hacker and process lasso i could see the smaller threads bouncing core to core as they where load balanced to keep the system perf up....

3. this is likely to lead to more use of AVX and FMA, 2 features that are not used much yet because, intel hasnt had them till fairly recently(think fma was just added in haswell if im correct, and intels compiler blocks non-intel chips from getting AVX code paths, because if they did.....intel would loose some ground in cinebench.....

I really hope the end result is that we get a less bias but well optimized compiler for ALL x86-64 platforms, and that we get true dx11.x games(common, nV and AMD users been asking for this for years!!!)

[AzureSky]

Most likely it was just the most cost effective way to go.

AMD has (had?) the best graphics on APUs while these boxes were in development, it was probably cheapest to put an AMD APU in rather than a more costly intel cpu and AMD or NVIDIA dedicated GPU.

I'll be surprised if the new consoles advance console gaming a lot, I won't be surprised if they make the hardware profitable to sell. (finally)

I think it will, once developers actually start making native games for these platforms, advancement will come, if only because the hardware though possibly not that much if any faster thread for thead, is newer and more advanced itself.

the cpu likely is weaker single threaded but is also much much wider, giving developers more power to learn to play with and use.

the apu video hardware totally destroys what last gen consoles had.....dx9 level hardware that was not even close to the best of its day......not that the APU video is close to the best today, BUT it is better then intels video offerings, and better then low in media centric nvidia cards( im saying this having tested it personally )

the one cravat on the above is, you need VERY VERY FAST ram, and the more the better.(last one i setup for a friend we used some low cas 2400 rated 32gb stuff, worked great)

I will say, it may be cheaper to build these newer consoles, but then again, it may be around the same cost, big diffrance being, they are now getting the core components from 1 vendor rather then several, so that should help with support costs.

check the steam survay they did for steambox, developers wanted AMD based systems(gpu and cpu/apu), hell, Even I was shocked by that, but, it shows that not everybody hates amd and thinks they are worthless......even if some do.

One interesting thing I was reading is, there is also a possibility that they will bring out refreshes of the consoles in a year or 2 with faster APU's in them(possibly even more cores), that thought is interesting to me, as it does sound plausable since x86-64 would make that easier then cell or powerpc likely would.(since they could put a faster version of the same gpu tech into the apu as well)

What I would have liked to have seen was a modular console, not as upgradeable as a desktop but, they could have put the apu on a swapable module, so it was possible to swap the apu out for a faster one later.....(my buddy had an n64 with the gfx upgrades and such....still love that idea)

meh, either way, I still see this as a move forward for all gamers, not just console hotdogs.

since the hardware is so similar it shouldnt be hard for them to properly optimize for desktop and console during dev, AND like the xbox days, we may start seeing more games built on pc, and ported to console....I have always found games ported to console better on both platforms.....but that may just be me.....

[paulbagz]

The level of fanboyism in the News section is mentally draining.

-PB

[Ace123]

"fanboyism" as you call it, helps drive the enthusiast market. It would be unrealistic to expect non prefrence, given the competetive nature of humanity. While some may choose to support the "always" winning team, many root for an upset from the underdog. To me this kind of competetive nature is good and drives innovation as youve seen from TheStilt.
The repetitve nature of the argument can be a fair bit annoying to some, These two feel strongly enough about their opinion to drive the point home. While I sit on the sidelines I must ask, am I the true enthusiast, or them.
That being said, my advice is, no matter how strongly you feel, think of others before you engage in a personal battle in several threads. To some the flavor of the argument is sour when not kept on topic.

[phantomferrari]

sounds to me like someone needs a seat in the timeout chair (ban hammer)

[Chickenfeed]

Please, please, please issue some free travel vouchers... some vacations seem to be required here Honestly its getting old gentlemen, be the bigger man and bow out already or at least contain your issues with each other to PMs instead of cluttering up the threads with all those unnecessary personal attacks. You know who you are...

[Buckeye]

sounds to me like someone needs a seat in the timeout chair (ban hammer)

They have been issued

[MaddMuppet]

They have been issued

So there is more than one.

[Motiv]

Totally agree that PC will benefit from this, and trying not to inflame the current flame war, AMD especially. Game developers will develop and optimise on AMD hardware, it will be an afterthought to them go back and optimise for Intel/Nvidia afterwards.

This will reap benefits for AMD, but for the PC community as a whole.

[Final8ty]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=eH6XayaLTw8

[Piledriver]

They have been issued

Sorry to say but if instead of deleting my post, that only pointed out that the second post on this thread makes absolutely no sense, and have nothing to do with the thread topic, it's pure propaganda, instead deleted said second post, all the idiotic back and forth that followed could have been avoided.

[Greg83]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=eH6XayaLTw8

lasting memory - check
entertaining the facts - check
deceptive marketing gimmicts - nein
great value - check
recognizing the culture - to smash new things, like smash an xbox etc, yup

if amd is given 5 games, at a 50 dollar each value plus working with gaming studios for a $330 dollar card , that is like a $350 value now for $30. sure its not the actual costs. but doesn't change the value as being had i bought all those games separate and paid the gaming studios to optimize my games to best use the hardware out of my pocket

[tajoh111]

lasting memory - check
entertaining the facts - check
deceptive marketing gimmicts - nein
great value - check
recognizing the culture - to smash new things, like smash an xbox etc, yup

if amd is given 5 games, at a 50 dollar each value plus working with gaming studios for a $330 dollar card , that is like a $350 value now for $30. sure its not the actual costs. but doesn't change the value as being had i bought all those games separate and paid the gaming studios to optimize my games to best use the hardware out of my pocket

You don't think this ad is using deceptive marketing tactics? AMD is definitely not ahead when it comes to performance right now. There lineup needs a refresh soon and there price falling recently is a reflection of this.

This commercial implies that they have more reliable drivers performance is stretch right now particularly for performance. If AMDS fixers was truly all that, it wouldn't have taken this long to get fixes for crossfire which has had issues for years. Not only this runt frame issues, but getting scaling to occur in games has been spotty with AMD. Look at any techpowerup review and CF scaling has been always unreliable. At best with single cards, they are even with Nvidia when it comes to getting performance. But I think they are still behind, definitely not enough to brag about driver reliability and performance. Also, whenever AMD releases a new architecture, how often does it take AMD to get good performance? From what I have seen with new architectures, Nvidia has been better at getting day one performance from the cards release. Similarly if they have a game that has performance issues, its fixed much quicker than AMD.

Same with Enduro. Most computers nowadays being sold are laptops and this is particularly where AMD doesn't cut it.

This is from Anandtech.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7096/p...eon-hd-7970m/5

One last point on the drivers and then I'll move on. There was a time (last year) when AMD stated that their goal was to get the Enduro drivers working for all Dynamic Switchable Graphics and Enduro platforms. DSG is what AMD called Enduro before it was Enduro, more or less, so mostly that applies to pre-Ivy Bridge and pre-Trinity laptops. Their current drivers page states, "Please note, that the AMD Catalyst Mobility driver package can only be installed on specific AMD Enduro platforms, that are second generation AMD A-series APU, or third generation Intel Core family based." At some point you have to cut your losses and move on; unfortunately, any owners of Llano or Sandy Bridge laptops with AMD switchable graphics are basically stuck with old drivers or trying to get hacked/modded drivers like those from LeshCatLabs to work.

Sandybridge owners and llano owners are out of luck for getting new drivers on the mobile platform.

Playing the driver angle is a pretty audacious move on AMD's part.