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.

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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.

Andrew Yoon was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    June 18, 2013 2:45 PM

    Andrew 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.

    • reply
      June 18, 2013 2:48 PM

      I'm okay with this, as I am a AMD card owner.

      • reply
        June 18, 2013 2:53 PM

        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.

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          June 18, 2013 3:35 PM

          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.

          • reply
            June 18, 2013 3:38 PM

            You should wish for an end of these practices. Not for the "other side" to suffer as you have.

            • reply
              June 18, 2013 3:42 PM

              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.

    • reply
      June 18, 2013 2:52 PM

      Makes sense given the new console generation.

    • rms legacy 10 years legacy 20 years mercury super mega
      reply
      June 18, 2013 2:54 PM

      Good. When Nvidia dumps PhysX, then I'll be mad at this AMD silliness.

    • reply
      June 18, 2013 2:58 PM

      Terrible news for the PC gaming community as a whole though. When can these companies get back to a technological battle??

      • reply
        June 18, 2013 3:18 PM

        I think the few announcements about AMD being the proc of choice (because of the consoles) I think the war already rekindled.

    • reply
      June 18, 2013 3:12 PM

      I'm sure amd graphics accelerators in all consoles made this an even easier decision.

    • reply
      June 18, 2013 3:15 PM

      I guess I just won't buy any of their games until they run smooth on my Nvidia card. Seems stupid from a sales point of view what they are doing.
      Wonder how cars would sell if some only ran well on a certain lane of the highway.

      • reply
        June 18, 2013 3:19 PM

        This makes no sense. I was expecting if big brother made sure that a certain brand of car was more gas efficient.

    • reply
      June 18, 2013 3:24 PM

      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.

    • reply
      June 18, 2013 3:27 PM

      This does not change ANYTHING."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."

      Big fucking whoop.I have to be a little patient and wait for drivers.

      • reply
        June 18, 2013 3:29 PM

        It will create a massive PR nightmare for EA though with each game they release that uses FB3, perhaps as bad as Rage was for AMD (although probably not quite as bad).

    • reply
      June 18, 2013 3:28 PM

      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.

    • reply
      June 18, 2013 3:28 PM

      Will still run better on nvidia

    • reply
      June 18, 2013 3:32 PM

      Even though I own an AMD card I am sick of gimmicks like this. I am not not happy with PhysX and I wasn't happy with 3DFX Glide. But I will say 3DFX Glide kicked ass.

    • reply
      June 18, 2013 3:39 PM

      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.

      • reply
        June 18, 2013 7:43 PM

        What game are you speaking of? And you are being unfairly dramatic about the worst engine ever created.

    • reply
      June 18, 2013 3:46 PM

      It's not like EA makes good games anymore....In all honesty about 3/4 of all my recent game purchases has been either small developer or indy titles...

    • reply
      June 18, 2013 4:35 PM

      [deleted]

    • reply
      June 18, 2013 5:15 PM

      It's all good. My spending money is "optimized exclusively" for other games that don't pull this crap. BF4 will eventually hit the $5 point like BF3 did.

    • reply
      June 18, 2013 5:26 PM

      Heh would be news to me and I work on Frostbite game...

    • reply
      June 18, 2013 5:31 PM

      There are fuckloads of games that are NVIDIA optimised and work just as well on AMD cards, and vice versa. You are getting your knickers in a twist over anything lately.

      • reply
        June 18, 2013 6:15 PM

        +1
        Overreacting people are overreacting.

      • reply
        June 18, 2013 6:21 PM

        Yeah I'm not concerned about this, nvidia is to big to be on the back burner for any dev.

      • reply
        June 18, 2013 7:51 PM

        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.

      • reply
        June 18, 2013 8:10 PM

        But I need that extra 1fps!

      • reply
        June 19, 2013 6:33 AM

        This thread has three times as many people telling everyone to "calm down" than it does anyone getting annoyed/worried by it.

    • reply
      June 18, 2013 5:46 PM

      Sup 3DFX?

    • reply
      June 18, 2013 5:54 PM

      [deleted]

    • reply
      June 18, 2013 6:23 PM

      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

    • reply
      June 18, 2013 6:59 PM

      No shit, saw this coming with PS4 and Xbone using AMD hardware.

    • reply
      June 18, 2013 7:35 PM

      My issue is why are these marketing statements they are willfully releasing?

    • reply
      June 18, 2013 10:42 PM

      Yeah, ok. Tell that to NVidia.

    • reply
      June 19, 2013 6:07 AM

      Looks like Nvidia maybe should have fought a bit harder to get their hardware into the consoles. I wonder if this could push the market toward AMD a bit more over the coming years...?

      • reply
        June 19, 2013 6:48 AM

        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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          June 19, 2013 7:57 AM

          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

          • reply
            June 19, 2013 8:43 AM

            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

            • reply
              June 19, 2013 8:44 AM

              "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.

    • reply
      June 19, 2013 6:28 AM

      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?

      *drops the mic*

    • reply
      June 19, 2013 7:30 AM

      I should hope so. They'll be developing for 2 consoles with AMD cards on it and optimizing the shit out of it for those. That's just going to trickle down onto the PC AMD cards too by default.

    • reply
      June 19, 2013 8:31 AM

      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.

      • reply
        June 19, 2013 8:45 AM

        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"

    • reply
      June 19, 2013 9:51 AM

      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).

    • reply
      June 19, 2013 6:36 PM

      How is this good for the publisher/developer when it will only cause launch issues. Unless they are being paid a lot of money by AMD

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