AMD Partners with Firaxis on Civilization VI Development

[btarunr]

AMD today announced that it is partnering with Firaxis and 2K Games on the development of "Civilization VI," the next addition to the smash-hit turn-based strategy franchise. AMD announced that it is helping the developer take advantage of DirectX 12, including API-standardized Asynchronous Compute, and Explicit multi-adapter (MDA). This will let the game use setups that are a mixture of discrete and integrated GPUs, and mixed multi-GPU. The game is also said to feature a benchmark tool.



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[Agility]

Damn awesome of AMD, to even include and work on allowing multiple different GPU's to run together....

 

[RejZoR]

AMD always wants to be as open as possible. Unlike NVIDIA which always has to be a dick about everything and is totally obsessed by locking things down to their stuff only. And I think that will bite them in the ass big time sooner or later.

 

[ZeppMan217]

AMD always wants to be as open as possible. Unlike NVIDIA which always has to be a dick about everything and is totally obsessed by locking things down to their stuff only. And I think that will bite them in the ass big time sooner or later.

You know AMD aren't doing it out of the goodness of their heart as well, right?

Civ BE had a Mantle version. Perhaps Civ 6 is gonna be another title to come out with Vulkan support?

 

[john_]

One more DirectX 12 title.

 

[RejZoR]

You know AMD aren't doing it out of the goodness of their heart as well, right?

Civ BE had a Mantle version. Perhaps Civ 6 is gonna be another title to come out with Vulkan support?

They are doing it out of goodness, because that's how you build a community of devoted customers. And those customers bring money. NVIDIA is using approach, we must grab as many users and lock them down to our tech so they become dependent on it. People generally hate that. Except fanboys.

 

[john_]

Nvidia was throwing out drivers with 20-30% increase in game performance for free until maybe the time they got Ageia. After that they changed their direction, trying to put a price tag on everything and lock every customer in and every competitor out with their proprietary techs. But that's off topic.

 

[Steevo]

You know AMD aren't doing it out of the goodness of their heart as well, right?

Civ BE had a Mantle version. Perhaps Civ 6 is gonna be another title to come out with Vulkan support?

Bit of a difference in "open standard" and "go F yourself" which is the difference in AMD and Nvidia. AMD sure isn't doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, but at least what they are doing is open and hasn't been shown to cause massive slowdowns on competitive hardware while giving the middle finger to gamers by keeping their proprietary software closed off. AMD has actually come up with a Physx converting software that runs in the background to offload the tasks.

Tessellation overload on unrendered water and concrete barriers
Nvidia GameFX black box of "if Nvidia, precook items, else run in real time and disable GPU Physx"
Their famous drivers which cripple their older hardware. http://www.techspot.com/review/1000-project-cars-benchmarks/page6.html
Lack of Async and trying to force devs to not use it, even though it creates a 50% performance improvement. (Doom Vulkan) and in future DX12 games.

 

[HD64G]

They are doing it out of goodness, because that's how you build a community of devoted customers. And those customers bring money. NVIDIA is using approach, we must grab as many users and lock them down to our tech so they become dependent on it. People generally hate that. Except fanboys.

+1000

 

[AsRock]

As much as i love that type of game imo Civ, biggest load of bollocks, how ever if they pissed everyone else of and made it realistic so no archer taking tanks out and cheap shit like that then they might have me interested.

 

[$ReaPeR$]

AMD always wants to be as open as possible. Unlike NVIDIA which always has to be a dick about everything and is totally obsessed by locking things down to their stuff only. And I think that will bite them in the ass big time sooner or later.

LOL sometimes your comments are pure gold mate!!! imo thats the smarter choice in the long run.
as for the game.. this is a good chance for amd to bring more devs to their little party.

 

[ShurikN]

Didn't AMD also work closely with CDPR for Witcher 3. And in the last moment NV came, threw bunch of money, and made it a Gameworks title, botching performance on Radeon hardware (as usual with GW)

 

[Fluffmeister]

They keep dumbing this series down, lets hope it's a solid base game this time.

 

[PLAfiller]

I find it double standard when people are so unhappy with the fact that a tech company wants to protect it's IP a bit more aggressively. When a pharmaceutical one does so, nobody bats an eye ( apart from AIDS patients, that are trying to loosen the grip on medicine patents with "patent pools" and other tools). I also find it a mistake that NVidia didn't release PhysiX to the public, but I can understand why they want to bind their users with a closed loop : "if you want this eye candy, you have to use our stuff". That's why you pay 6-digit sums for patent registering. Not a perfect system, but that's how it works for now. ( or it doesn't work ? ) .

 

[Frick]

I find it double standard when people are so unhappy with the fact that a tech company wants to protect it's IP a bit more aggressively. When a pharmaceutical one does so, nobody bats an eye ( apart from AIDS patients, that are trying to loosen the grip on medicine patents with "patent pools" and other tools). I also find it a mistake that NVidia didn't release PhysiX to the public, but I can understand why they want to bind their users with a closed loop : "if you want this eye candy, you have to use our stuff". That's why you pay 6-digit sums for patent registering. Not a perfect system, but that's how it works for now. ( or it doesn't work ? ) .

People don't care about other patents because it isn't cool. The tech industry is where it's at, at least it's where the mind of the public population is. Sad but true. And everything is on the Internet, and that is where the tech industry is embedded, and that is where the techies and fanbois and everyone is raging.

 

[Nokiron]

They are doing it out of goodness, because that's how you build a community of devoted customers. And those customers bring money. NVIDIA is using approach, we must grab as many users and lock them down to our tech so they become dependent on it. People generally hate that. Except fanboys.

No, they are not. They are forced to do it this way, AMD does not have the option to lock in customers with proprietary technologies. They don't have the Manpower to have the direct softwaresupport like Nvidia.

Im not saying that one way is better than the other, but it's certainly not from doing it out of goodness.

Nvidia might have gotten more into it because of CUDA alone, since it's now an industry standard.

 

[ShurikN]

No, they are not. They are forced to do it this way, AMD does not have the option to lock in customers with proprietary technologies. They don't have the Manpower to have the direct softwaresupport like Nvidia.

Bull... Just say AMD doesnt have enough money to buy developers like NV does.
Proprietary tech and software my ass...

 

[TRWOV]

I also find it a mistake that NVidia didn't release PhysiX to the public, but I can understand why they want to bind their users with a closed loop : "if you want this eye candy, you have to use our stuff". That's why you pay 6-digit sums for patent registering. Not a perfect system, but that's how it works for now. ( or it doesn't work ? ) .

Nvidia locked PhysX just because. Some years ago you could own a Radeon, buy a mid tier Geforce and get Physx goodness in your games. Later Nvidia blocked that saying that it was not possible to make their cards work along with Radeons although that was perfectly fine before....and of course Nvidia was full of it, a relatively simple mod allowed people with hybrid setups to still get PhysX. So Nvidia responded with locking that further.

They didn't have to release it to the public, just keep supporting hybrid setups. There was no negative, they could sell graphic cards to Radeon users too.

 

[rtwjunkie]

They are doing it out of goodness

Just no. Companies do not do things out of goodness. Everything is profit-driven, and answerable to shareholders, and goodness does not enter into the equation. They are doing it because they have to.

 

[Nokiron]

Bull... Just say AMD doesnt have enough money to buy developers like NV does.
Proprietary tech and software my ass...

What? Isnt that the exact same thing?

Nvidia has the same amount of employees as AMD. Nvidia has way fewer products they need to focus on.

Ofcourse they have more developers, the numbers clearly suggest it.

 

[ShurikN]

What? Isnt that the exact same thing?

Nvidia has the same amount of employees as AMD. Nvidia has way fewer products they need to focus on.

Ofcourse they have more developers, the numbers clearly suggest it.

It's not the same thing when you come into the office with a suitcase full of money and say to the dev "hey take this money and intentionally gimp performance on AMD cards"

 

[RejZoR]

Just no. Companies do not do things out of goodness. Everything is profit-driven, and answerable to shareholders, and goodness does not enter into the equation. They are doing it because they have to.

That's like saying: "Companies are only honest because the see profit in that". Sounds a bit weird, doesn't it? AMD had that kind of business model long before it came under AMD. When it was still ATi, they had the exact same philosophy. So, it's not exactly something they are forced into, it's just how they operate. NVIDIA on the other hand, they've been playing dirty tactics ever since I can remember. From cheating, locking things down, blocking users from using their tech beyond strictly what they want and all the useless proprietary crap they push on us.

 

[rtwjunkie]

It's not the same thing when you come into the office with a suitcase full of money and say to the dev "hey take this money and intentionally gimp performance on AMD cards"

And...other than your own hyperbole, you know this how? Have you seen it personally? Or is this stuff you read on the internet?

 

[TRWOV]

That's like saying: "Companies are only honest because the see profit in that". Sounds a bit weird, doesn't it? AMD had that kind of business model long before it came under AMD. When it was still ATi, they had the exact same philosophy. So, it's not exactly something they are forced into, it's just how they operate. NVIDIA on the other hand, they've been playing dirty tactics ever since I can remember. From cheating, locking things down, blocking users from using their tech beyond strictly what they want and all the useless proprietary crap they push on us.

Nah, while I commend AMD/ATi for their efforts I'm pretty sure that if the tables were turned they would try to lock some stuff down. Them supporting open technologies is in their best interest too: by supporting open standards they have to use fewer resources to maintain them.

Doesn't change the fact that nVidia is pretty heavy handed with locking down stuff.

 

[PLAfiller]

Nvidia locked PhysX just because. Some years ago you could own a Radeon, buy a mid tier Geforce and get Physx goodness in your games. Later Nvidia blocked that saying that it was not possible to make their cards work along with Radeons although that was perfectly fine before....and of course Nvidia was full of it, a relatively simple mod allowed people with hybrid setups to still get PhysX. So Nvidia responded with locking that further.

They didn't have to release it to the public, just keep supporting hybrid setups. There was no negative, they could sell graphic cards to Radeon users too.

I haven't looked it from that angle, but you are totally right. I still find the idea of a separate physix card pretty awesome. I suppose there is no going back, but if they do it will be really nice.