Frostbite Engine – Sponsored by AMD (Updated)

With ever more titles being developed in close co-operation with Nvidia, it comes as a big surprise when not just one, but multiple triple A titles are being developed in close co-operation with AMD for a change. It has been announced by EA that they have partnered up with AMD, this partnership will already be in effect for Battlefield 4, Need for Speed Rivals, Mirror's Edge 2, Dragon Age and the new CnC title. Pretty much any game that will be released by EA that is powered by the Frostbite 3 engine will be covered within this partnership.
So what exactly does this mean? Well it means that before launch AMD already has access to developer builds of these Frostbite 3 titles, this will allow the AMD software engineers to optimise their drivers for these titles and have the software updates out in time for launch. While Nvidia will sadly have to wait till after launch to get their hands on the game and start making driver changes for these titles. This move does not come as much of a surprise though as AMD is also behind the hardware for both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Thus having AMD as a partner for a games developer making Xbox One and PlayStation 4 (as well as PC) titles will come in handy for getting your title optimised for all two to three platforms.
It seems Nvidia's decision to focus on its mobile Tegra platform is already making Nvidia suffer in the PC and console marketplace. This is not necessarily a bad thing though, as Nvidia was gaining a near monopolistic hold on the PC market, thus having stronger competition in the graphics card market should, in economics theory, push forward better and more value for money graphics cards.
Update: It seems early reports from our colleagues at IGN (where this story originated) were premature. Who knew right? Whilst AMD willl have a closer relationship with the Frostbite engine, their colleagues at Nvidia will not, in fact, be denied access until post release. They will, as always, still have time to prepare driver updates before hand.
Posted 20-06-2013, 14:45
Okay, that's a lot less worrying. It seems a lot more like this will be nothing more than the AMD logo at the beginning of Frostbite games. Gaming evolved instead of The way it's meant to be played. I don't have any problem with that. That's just advertising. And I find the AMD intro to be less irritating too. It's shorter
Posted 20-06-2013, 06:01
Yeah this is really stupid, I will stick with Nvidia regardless of what they say :D
Posted 19-06-2013, 23:08
Yeah but that's different. That's because AMD does not have the native support for PhysX. But games in general, whether they show the Nvidia logo or the AMD logo when you launch them, usually run just as well on both. I've lived for years with AMD and I've lived for years with Nvidia. They both have issues with certain games sometimes, independent of what those startup-logos show.
Posted 19-06-2013, 19:06
@Jenssen: I don't know about that. I wouldn't even have nightmares about trying to run PhysX on an AMD card. Put my performance on Mirror's Edge down to 2. I shit you not
Posted 19-06-2013, 18:49
That doesn't mean anything. Maybe Nvidia users will have to wait 2 days longer to get new optimized drivers.
Posted 19-06-2013, 18:34
It's the same shit as always, only now they're using AMD instead of Nvidia. Same crap, different brand. In the end, it won't matter one bit which card you use. Just like always.
Posted 19-06-2013, 17:25
I'm in half minds about this. On one hand it's good to see AMD getting some love again. On the other...I'm getting really sick of the video game industry constantly trying to force into an either/or paradigm