Tuesday, June 27th 2023
AMD Announced as Starfield's Exclusive Partner on PC
AMD and Bethesda have today revealed that Starfield will be best experienced on a Ryzen processor and Radeon graphics card-equipped PC. Team Red has been announced as the giant open world game's official graphics and GPU partner, but its Xbox Series hardware also gets a couple of friendly shout-outs. Todd Howard, director and executive producer at Bethesda Game Studios, stated in the video presentation: "We have AMD engineers in our code base working on FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) 2.0 image processing and upscaling and it looks incredible. You're going to get the benefits of that obviously on your PC but also on Xbox. We're super excited and can't wait to show everybody more."
Jack Huynh, Senior Vice President and General Manager of its Computing and Graphics Group at AMD, added: "Making this game even more special, is the close collaboration between Bethesda and AMD to unlock the full potential of Starfield. We have worked hand-in-hand with Bethesda Game Studios to optimize Starfield for both Xbox and PC with Ryzen 7000 series processors and Radeon 7000 series graphics. The optimizations both accelerate performance and enhance the quality of your gameplay using highly multi-threaded code that both Xbox and PC players will get to take advantage of."AMD is proud to announce that we are Bethesda's exclusive PC partner for the next-generation role-playing game, Starfield. Watch this special announcement video to learn how AMD and Bethesda are working together to bring the galaxy to all players this September:
About Starfield
Starfield is the first new universe in over 25 years from Bethesda Game Studios, the award-winning creators of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4. In this next generation role-playing game set amongst the stars, create any character you want and explore with unparalleled freedom as you embark on an epic journey to answer humanity's greatest mystery. In the year 2330, humanity has ventured beyond our solar system, settling new planets, and living as a spacefaring people. You will join Constellation - the last group of space explorers seeking rare artifacts throughout the galaxy - and navigate the vast expanse of space in Bethesda Game Studios' biggest and most ambitious game.
AMD is the exclusive PC partner for Starfield, promising to deliver the most complete PC gaming experience in the galaxy. We cannot wait to explore the universe with you this September. Ready to learn more?
Source:
AMD
Jack Huynh, Senior Vice President and General Manager of its Computing and Graphics Group at AMD, added: "Making this game even more special, is the close collaboration between Bethesda and AMD to unlock the full potential of Starfield. We have worked hand-in-hand with Bethesda Game Studios to optimize Starfield for both Xbox and PC with Ryzen 7000 series processors and Radeon 7000 series graphics. The optimizations both accelerate performance and enhance the quality of your gameplay using highly multi-threaded code that both Xbox and PC players will get to take advantage of."AMD is proud to announce that we are Bethesda's exclusive PC partner for the next-generation role-playing game, Starfield. Watch this special announcement video to learn how AMD and Bethesda are working together to bring the galaxy to all players this September:
About Starfield
Starfield is the first new universe in over 25 years from Bethesda Game Studios, the award-winning creators of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4. In this next generation role-playing game set amongst the stars, create any character you want and explore with unparalleled freedom as you embark on an epic journey to answer humanity's greatest mystery. In the year 2330, humanity has ventured beyond our solar system, settling new planets, and living as a spacefaring people. You will join Constellation - the last group of space explorers seeking rare artifacts throughout the galaxy - and navigate the vast expanse of space in Bethesda Game Studios' biggest and most ambitious game.
AMD is the exclusive PC partner for Starfield, promising to deliver the most complete PC gaming experience in the galaxy. We cannot wait to explore the universe with you this September. Ready to learn more?
226 Comments on AMD Announced as Starfield's Exclusive Partner on PC
If NV's DLSS is not included then every NV supporter screams about blocking competition and unfariness. When NV has an exclusive deal then immediately that's ok because it is better.
People tend to forget, that their point of view about 'something being better or worse' from a business perspective may be invalid.
I'm pretty sure, that is the case here.
Sure, the developers can "choose" to add FSR and not DLSS or XeSS, but when you implement one tech, it's not a stretch to implement others (as has been proven out by other developers speaking on the topic. It's trivial to add the other when the first is added already).
Just because NV is saying something about DLSS in a game at launch (the game is not out for Christ sake) is being blocked. Priority dictates to implement FSR first they best way possible since this is the sponsor's technology. In my eyes is a PR play done by NVidia.
The developers chose to add FSR at the start and may choose to add other later just like all developers sponsored by a company would.
We will see what happens after the game is released and if DLSS will not be included. If the DLSS is not included, only then your arguments will have some weight. Now, it's just silly talk in my opinion. Also if the DLSS is not included, who will be blamed for it (if you can even say blamed) AMD or game developer? I know NV fans will say AMD which is obvious but will it be true? I sincerely doubt it.
If anything, we need to send the message to AMD that blocking and/or discouraging use of any competitor's technology through is NOT FINE. Nvidia's actions in the distant past don't justify this sort of behavior today, and while one can argue that DLSS is closed source and bound to Nvidia hardware, the latter has a technical explanation for it - DLSS makes use of matrix multiplication units (aka tensor cores), with the exception of one DLL version during the 1.x series (I believe it's 1.9). Radeon cards don't have matrix multiplication capabilities while all of their current generation competitors do (Turing, Ampere, Ada and Alchemist), this is still the case with the RDNA 3 generation. That's the only reason it got a pass while being worse was because FSR, being simple shader code, can be used on any GPU.
True, Nvidia can probably write a DP4A/INT24 version of DLSS like Intel did for XeSS and extend DLSS support as far back as Pascal and enable it on competing GPUs (Radeon VII primarily, since Vega 10/Vega 64 and Navi 10/5700 XT don't have DP4A support and as seen with XeSS, the INT24 fallback on them is quite slow), but they have little reason to do that. Being the market leader has its perks, and arguably the biggest one is letting your competitors play catch up - and that is what leads technology forward to the benefit of the consumer. Thank you, you understood it perfectly What kind of mental gymnastics do you need to do to reach the conclusion that AMD's shady business practices are a PR ploy by Nvidia? It's Olympics grade. AMD isn't worth our trust here. They're not some morally superior, ethical company, they're a Fortune 500 megacorp worth $179 billion in market cap right now and their sole objective is to make money and increase their reach by any means necessary.
The evidence is ahead of us all: AMD behaving like a corporation (non-answers, no regards for customer choice, lack of ethics) while Nvidia laid it bare, explicitly said that "we don't block competitor technologies" and went a further step beyond - pointing out they actually developed an open-source framework to further facilitate deployment of their and their competitors' technologies, while leaving a channel for the press to inquire about any further doubts regarding the subject, which basically clears them out of any wrongdoing on this one.
If this game comes out with DLSS/XeSS support, after attracting the unwanted attention of enthusiasts and the press, it will likely have been because AMD has internally negotiated a reversal of that policy, and not because we or the press are mad at them, it's because they probably consulted with legal and the answer would be "that will eventually incur the wrath of anti-trust authorities, revise".
Yes Nvidia, thank you SO much for DLSS. Now you can sell me a 1080p 60fps card for $400 and pretend it’s reasonable- because MUH TECHNOLOGY
Let's be frank and not play pretend, Nvidia isn't anyone's friend here. Ada stack is garbage, I repeatedly said this and chose to put my money where my mouth is by not upgrading this generation (and if I do, it'll be a 7900 XTX on sale), but it's tailored to match AMD's products in perfect lockstep, this is particularly noticeable with the RTX 4060:
www.techpowerup.com/review/galax-geforce-rtx-4060-ex/32.html
Literally made to be 5% faster than the 7600 and to upsell first party technologies (which they have and AMD doesn't).
True, Nvidia can probably write a DP4A/INT24 version of DLSS like Intel did for XeSS and extend DLSS support as far back as Pascal and enable it on competing GPUs. Yes they could but they won't. I will tell you why I will never buy an Nvidia GPU. When I got into PC Gaming (where I built my own PC) my first card was a GTS450. I was so impressed that I got another for SLI. Total War Shogun2 launched and the 2 cards could not handle it. So i sold them to friend who wanted to use them for Flight Simulator. After about 2 months he called me fuming. I asked him what was wrong. He told me that nothing he could do would enable SLI. When we investigated Nvidia had quietly released a driver that broke SLI on cards. I saw AMD 6800 for $99 and we both bought those. So now we are looking good and there is a new feature called Physx that makes explosions make more realistic. The catch was you needed an Nvidia card to do it. Then one day my PC no longer recognized the Nvidia card in my system so I got another 6800 and enjoyed the hell out of Crossfire. Now it is 2023 AMD has finally caught up (again) and in some cases passed Nvidia on raster but have set a value for that that has kind of hurt their fans that are looking for price/performance. Unfortunately Social media has pumped so many people's minds with their opinions that you are willing to fully expect that your opinion must be construed as fact. There are some Channels like Level 1 or MSI Gaming that are actually good for learning as an Example Wendell's video on DP cables confirmed what some us know. Then there are the rest of them that are addicted to getting as many clicks and subs as they can. Jay will do something special when he gets his billionth viewer and today they are all reviewing the 5600X3D, including Linus who happens to live in place that you are not supposed to get a 5600X3D. If you doubt me (I have said it before) when reviews for DLSS3 first came out everyone called out Nvidia. Now they all praise the technology. Even today Jarrod's tech did a video praising Frame Generation on the Mobile 4090.
In the real world the most disruptive thing in Gaming is unquestionably AMD's APU lineup. Minisforum, Steam Deck, ROG Ally and you can bet that Sony will give us a handheld in the near future. 1080P Gaming at high is for me only at most 2 generations away on AMD APUs. The thing for me though is this is a new standard not unlike laptops or tablets. Once you can get one that has good performance for $1-299 US they will really take off.
I've had poor experiences with both sides. I'm not going to hold a decades long grudge, i'll just buy whatever suits me best at the time I buy it, and somewhat ironically that is usually AMD.
I'm in agreement about the APUs, they are going to be great, and to a point most people would be happy with just them, it seems for the time being we are being granted a relative reprieve as games have somewhat plateau'd in fidelity (going higher increases production complexity significantly, and cost alongside it, until engine-level breakthroughs occur, UE5 techs come to mind), but RT/PT is likely an integral part of this "next step" in graphics technologies.
I am glad for you that that is your position and it has not been completely smooth sailing. The Level 1 video on DP showed the issue I was having with DP on Vega cards but HDMI worked fine. I personally prefer to buy AMD for their long term support and good will towards users. I never asked for Freesync but it is great and I actually appreciate FSR on my 3060 laptop as it gives me better frames than using DLSS. It is a 1080P laptop though so I don't need to use either of them. I would have bought a 3090 but a 6800XT was $1200 less and now the 4090 is great but at $2500 was $1000 more than the 7900XTX of which the 7900XT was $400 less than that. Before that Polaris was like $200 and supported Crossfire on the MB. The performance of the 5600 series was meh as it was no faster than a Vega 64 card but 6000 was a smash hit with AMD buyers.
It's not that Games have plateaued it is the amount of 1s and 0s you can process and 4K resolution is that hard to render. RT is a Gimmick that makes some Games look spectacular but I guess growing up on Atari allows me to tell you that Graphics are only one part of the experience. In terms of hardware the future is in the Data centre in terms of what we will be getting. The cost narrative should always be about the consumer in PC as it was Atari that inspired Commodore 64 and the rest is history from there. The plateau was actually 1440P as 4K is a very recent development with real high refresh panels as modern 4K TVs love to use Upscaling to give you 120 HZ but monitors are no more than 2-3 years old that are consumer friendly with the refresh rates we expect. I do expect that there will be a call for a general upscaler in the DX API (not Streamline).
And wtf are these prices, the 3090 was $1500 yes but the 6900 XT was $1000, no different from this generation, the 3080 and the 6800 XT had the same prices - 4090's also $1500, not 2500, that was the old Turing Titan RTX's pricing. Granted, this generation's pricing was entirely reliant on mining demand (which was high), as miners bought the entire supply of gaming cards for their own use, but 3090 was never officially $2500 and 6800 XTs were never $1200 cheaper, more like half the price at $700 or so (just like the 3080 tbh).
www.newegg.ca/asus-geforce-rtx-4090-rog-strix-rtx4090-24g-gaming/p/N82E16814126600?Description=4090&cm_re=4090-_-14-126-600-_-Product
the Cheapest 3080
www.newegg.ca/p/1FT-00EY-00026?Item=9SIBF3EJN78205&Description=3080&cm_re=3080-_-9SIBF3EJN78205-_-Product&cm_sp=SP-_-1595465-_-0-_-2-_-9SIBF3EJN78205-_-3080-_-3080-_-1
The Cheapest 6800XT
www.newegg.ca/asrock-radeon-rx-6800-xt-rx6800xt-pgd-16go/p/N82E16814930049?Description=6800XT&cm_re=6800XT-_-14-930-049-_-Product
A Refurb 3090
www.newegg.ca/msi-geforce-rtx-3090-rtx-3090-ventus-3x-24g/p/1FT-0009-009P3?Item=9SIARB1JMT3504&Description=3090&cm_re=3090-_-1FT-0009-009P3-_-Product
A new 3090
www.newegg.ca/p/1FT-000Y-00772?Item=9SIADDZHYB0202&Description=3090&cm_re=3090-_-1FT-000Y-00772-_-Product
A 7900XTX
www.newegg.ca/asrock-radeon-rx-7900-xtx-rx7900xtx-pg-24go/p/N82E16814930081?Description=7900XTX&cm_re=7900XTX-_-14-930-081-_-Product
A 7900XT
www.newegg.ca/asrock-radeon-rx-7900-xt-rx7900xt-pg-20go/p/N82E16814930083?Description=7900XT&cm_re=7900XT-_-14-930-083-_-Product
There have been price adjustments and I don't live in the US.
This is the card I have
www.newegg.ca/sapphire-radeon-rx-7900-xt-11323-02-20g/p/N82E16814202431?Description=7900XT&cm_re=7900XT-_-14-202-431-_-Product
This is the card I had
www.newegg.ca/sapphire-radeon-rx-7900-xtx-11322-01-40g/p/N82E16814202428?Description=7900XTX&cm_re=7900XTX-_-14-202-428-_-Product
Anything else?
In 2018-2019, how many games had RT at all? And how many games were actually designed from the ground up with RT in mind? Even today, in 2023, games designed around RT can be counted with one hand, and amongst these half of them are enhanced editions of existing games. The rest are just having RTGI tacked over.
It is not going to be seen well by NV fanboys who are constantly looking for problems. But if NV does something like this. Has a sponsorship and DLSS is released at launch that is great and everything is fine. Hypocrisy is driving you my friend. Nothing more. It is not mental gymnastics. Just because NV is upset not having a DLSS in the game (for F**k sake the game is not even out yet) at launch is not a crime or shady actions by AMD nor game developer. You have given no proof nor any legit thought or conclusion. Literally nothing and yet you still say DLSS is not in the game so its bad. The game is not out yet and there's been nothing said DLSS it is not going to be in the game later on and yet you NV's fans are always complaining. The goal is to make money. And developer decided to fo with AMD as a sponsor because the game is going to be on every platform and the audience is much broader then having DLSS for handful of people while FSR is also for consoles and these gobble PC market for breakfast. I've been posting over and over and you keep saying the same crap. Shady actions by AMD forbidding DLSS in a game. That is just immature and shallow.
I'd be just as upset if the game included DLSS and not FSR or XeSS, for the same reasons I stated before. It is TRIVIAL to add the other technologies once one is implemented. Like an extra couple minutes of time of a dev's part.
Although I can't give you the raw admittance by AMD, the same things you often take as solid truths from Nvidia's past misgivings were left in the same stage - lots of evidence of foul play, no true confirmation ever because everything is done by NDA-protected contractual clauses to which the signer is not at liberty to discuss.
No, I don't think so. This isn't a matter of being an AMD or Nvidia fan, I'm a fan of technology and I hate when I see companies playing dirty to hinder one another.
If anyone wants to see my take to the letter, watch that video. He's covered everything the same way I would say myself
Many things in life are concluded on a balance of reasonable evidence, even the highest standard, criminal cases are beyond reasonable doubt (ie you don't need 100% irrefutable proof), and civil cases are held to an even lower standard of probability.
To admit AMD is doing this they want a burden of proof over and above what is required to convict for murder. Seems unreasonable to me. There is plenty of evidence that adds up to this likely outcome, they just don't want to hear it because they feel personally attacked, somehow AMD is intertwined in their identity. It's so daft to me that all the evidence amounts to nothing whatsoever to them, and that they themselves don't want to hold AMD to a higher standard.