Is it a coincidence that now AMD cards are having a problem with Batman Arkham Knight

[Artorius]

They are not the only ones.
I've heard plenty of rumours about other speculators as well, but can't find them.

This Samsung rumor is older but also interesting. Both of them have money to R&D and both of them could help AMD by a lot.

Microsoft with it's recent tendency to turn themselves into hardware vendors, buying Nokia and then the Surfaces, I wouldn't be surprised to see them selling macbook like laptops soon.

And Samsung with it's domination over the ARM market competition. But they would probably focus on ARM and say "fuck it" to x86, which is a no no.
But well, Samsung is extremely competitive when it comes to showing off their new toys. There is the possibility of them wanting to fight Intel with an AMD acquisition, it's unlikely and an almost impossible fight but they're literally the only company in the world that could pull it off.

[BicycleMafioso]

Well, I would doubt that the US anti-competition laws would even allow Intel to be the sole actor on x86.
What's important from the article I linked is that during one of the previous rumours, it was mentioned that it is possible to construct a deal that doesn't violate the cross licensing deals between AMD and Intel.

[Artorius]

Well, I would doubt that the US anti-competition laws would even allow Intel to be the sole actor on x86.
What's important from the article I linked is that during one of the previous rumours, it was mentioned that it is possible to construct a deal that doesn't violate the cross licensing deals between AMD and Intel.

Trying to read it now but the link is returning me maintenance.

About the licensing, you're probably right. Considering that the US accused MS of monopoly in the past and had them in court for a while, they'd probably do the same thing to Intel.
Funny part about this episode is that MS saved Apple from going bankrupt to be able to prove that they weren't a monopoly. Lol.

[Rennadrel]

MS is still one of the biggest companies in the world and they have the money to throw for real R&D. Which would help AMD, a lot...

AMD doesn't have an issue with R&D, they have an issue with being able to support developers and properly optimize games. They also lack the ability to create an API that is easy to use and offers a greater experience from their cards like Nvidia did with Gameworks. While M$ has money, it has been blatantly obvious that they have little interest in the PC market, so why would they invest money in making computers better when they would get more yield out of console sales than they would GPU development and production? They have no interest in making our experience better, only that of their consoles and in acquiring AMD, they would have ease of developing cheap consoles without having to pay to licence hardware from another company.

[Artorius]

AMD doesn't have an issue with R&D, they have an issue with being able to support developers and properly optimize games. They also lack the ability to create an API that is easy to use and offers a greater experience from their cards like Nvidia did with Gameworks. While M$ has money, it has been blatantly obvious that they have little interest in the PC market, so why would they invest money in making computers better when they would get more yield out of console sales than they would GPU development and production? They have no interest in making our experience better, only that of their consoles and in acquiring AMD, they would have ease of developing cheap consoles without having to pay to licence hardware from another company.

When comparing to Nvidia? Sure. AMD is great in the GPU market.

But start talking about the other subject and things get bad:

This is probably way too off-topic by now, I should've made a new thread.

[Rennadrel]

It has been a given that AMD has been terrible in the CPU market, but they should have higher expenses than Nvidia since they are in desktop and mobile processors while Nvidia has GeForce and the ever failing Tegra program.

[Vash The Stampede]

AMD doesn't have an issue with R&D, they have an issue with being able to support developers and properly optimize games.

Developers yes, but optimize for games is sorta cheating. Granted that both Nvidia and AMD do it but this is one of the reasons why DX12/Vulkan was created, so we aren't so reliant on AMD/Nvidia to optimize their drivers.

They also lack the ability to create an API that is easy to use and offers a greater experience from their cards like Nvidia did with Gameworks.

You do realize that Mantle lives on as Vulkan and DX12? Nvidia isn't offering even their own customers a greater experience, just look at how they optimized the latest Batman game. And yes, they optimized it.

While M$ has money, it has been blatantly obvious that they have little interest in the PC market, so why would they invest money in making computers better when they would get more yield out of console sales than they would GPU development and production? They have no interest in making our experience better, only that of their consoles and in acquiring AMD, they would have ease of developing cheap consoles without having to pay to licence hardware from another company.

AMD right now is a sleeping giant that is just waiting to be woken up. If Microsoft acquired AMD they have the means to make their own software and hardware. Which means they're basically turning into Apple, though Apple doesn't really make their own hardware. Don't forget that Microsoft deals with other things besides gaming. Plus AMD does plan to make ARM chips, which in this modern times would be a great benefit to them. Microsoft could do without x86 given that Windows ARM would ever take off.

Though Microsoft buying AMD won't happen. So much wrong with that idea. Microsoft is already too big. AMD doesn't need to be bought, they need to step up their CPUs. Where the hell is AMD's Carrizo?

[Blackmist]

AMD's (PC gaming) future lies almost entirely in Windows 10, and with it, DirectX 12.

It's far less demanding on the CPU single thread performance, the GPU will pretty much always be the bottleneck.

It can be multi-threaded, and what AMD do well are lots of cores, only weaker, but cheaper.

It is far less reliant on driver tweaks to get the most out of the hardware. Sure, devs can still do a slapdash job, but the tools to fix it will actually be in their hands, rather than spread across themselves and two GPU manufacturers.

If MS wanted to buy them out, they could tank the share price by announcing a big delay to DX12. As far as I can tell, all of MS's recent decisions have made AMD stronger, not weaker.

[Wries]

AMD's (PC gaming) future lies almost entirely in Windows 10, and with it, DirectX 12.

It's far less demanding on the CPU single thread performance, the GPU will pretty much always be the bottleneck.

It can be multi-threaded, and what AMD do well are lots of cores, only weaker, but cheaper.

It is far less reliant on driver tweaks to get the most out of the hardware. Sure, devs can still do a slapdash job, but the tools to fix it will actually be in their hands, rather than spread across themselves and two GPU manufacturers.

If MS wanted to buy them out, they could tank the share price by announcing a big delay to DX12. As far as I can tell, all of MS's recent decisions have made AMD stronger, not weaker.

What AMD should try to rely upon is making the upcoming Zen architecture not at all resemble bulldozer. DX12 will likely be good, but you don't want to build a system that performs badly as soon as a title is using DX 11.3, which seems far more likely to be the norm as DX12 seem to require way more development time and money.

[Deleted]

I'm using AMD and I've had no problems with Witcher whatsoever on Ultra after 200 hours of play. Not even one crash.

[mrgreenthump]

What AMD should try to rely upon is making the upcoming Zen architecture not at all resemble bulldozer. DX12 will likely be good, but you don't want to build a system that performs badly as soon as a title is using DX 11.3, which seems far more likely to be the norm as DX12 seem to require way more development time and money.

Going down to 14 nm manufacturing is already a big step, but they also seem to be copying Intel according to rumors and try to focus on single core performance more in the future, which should also help with DX11 based games.

Also shouldn't DX12 be sort of easier for developers(that go for multiplatform) as Xbox One uses DX12 as well.

[Vash The Stampede]

What AMD should try to rely upon is making the upcoming Zen architecture not at all resemble bulldozer.

Zen will be based off Phenom architecture and not Bulldozer.

I'm using AMD and I've had no problems with Witcher whatsoever on Ultra after 200 hours of play. Not even one crash.

For a Gameworks game, Witcher 3 gave me the least amount of problems and I have a 8350+7850. I still needed patches to fix game bugs like the game crashing in the menu but otherwise a well made game in terms of it being a Gameworks game. Though I never touch the Gameworks features cause I know that anything made by Nvidia will not like my AMD machine.