AMD Gaming Exec Leaves for Nvidia

[Keysplayr]

n/m

 

[Siberian]

AMD ain't dead yet. ^_^

Dead company walking. I don't know, just has that feel to it.

 

[Ventanni]

Honestly, I think all this axing and chopping is good for AMD. Time to get some fresh faces and fresh ideas in that place.

 

[3DVagabond]

How did he not have a non-compete clause?

Not to be off-topic, but unless your company is paying you for the duration of the non-compete, you are foolish to sign one. Some states (CA IIRC) prohibits them altogether or in most forms.

Texas is a "Right to work" state. Likely illegal, in most cases there, as well. I'm pretty sure I read he was based in Tx. with AMD.

 

[blackened23]

Honestly, I think all this axing and chopping is good for AMD. Time to get some fresh faces and fresh ideas in that place.

Getting rid of dead weight is good, getting rid of bright minds isn't. That said, we really don't know anything about this guy from the outside, it could be that he wasn't very good at his job. Shrug. As the gaming exec, I assume his job was to work with game developers on AMDs behalf, and if that is true he failed.

edit: just read a story at vr-zone shedding some light on this guy. Apparently he was a huge asset to AMD and secured an AMD contract for all next gen consoles, in addition to the old xbox 360 / Wii contracts from prior years. Sounds like they lost a major talent to nvidia.

 

[Siberian]

Getting rid of dead weight is good, getting rid of bright minds isn't. That said, we really don't know anything about this guy from the outside, it could be that he wasn't very good at his job. Shrug. As the gaming exec, I assume his job was to work with game developers on AMDs behalf, and if that is true he failed.

edit: just read a story at vr-zone shedding some light on this guy. Apparently he was a huge asset to AMD and secured an AMD contract for all next gen consoles, in addition to the old xbox 360 / Wii contracts from prior years. Sounds like they lost a major talent to nvidia.

It would be crazy if he got everyone to switch to NVIDIA

 

[blackened23]

It would be crazy if he got everyone to switch to NVIDIA

The contracts are done so all 3 consoles will be AMD for sure. Who knows what the future will do though....he's involved with more than consoles BTW.

 

[Majic 7]

Maybe Apple is trying to get into the console market? There were rumors for a while.

 

[ShintaiDK]

The contracts are done so all 3 consoles will be AMD for sure. Who knows what the future will do though....he's involved with more than consoles BTW.

They are? Links?

But again, console designs is outsourced. You barely earn pennies on them. If I recall right AMD got 57m$ for the Xbox360.

 

[MaxPayne63]

They are? Links?

But again, console designs is outsourced. You barely earn pennies on them. If I recall right AMD got 57m$ for the Xbox360.

That's pretty amazing. 57m barely seems worth the effort and would explain why AMD won all three this round.

 

[Keysplayr]

57m$? = 57 million US?
If so, thats not so bad. Better than 0$.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Maybe there isn't any business with consoles right now and AMD needs to cut it's budget?

 

[HurleyBird]

One would think the biggest advantage of getting console wins would be developers targeting your architecture far more aggressively. Last round both AMD and Nvidia did a pretty pitiful job in this respect, AMD's console architectures being too different from their desktop parts, Nvidia's being old tech that was no longer relevant.

If AMD gets GCN into even one of the next generation consoles and their desktop parts don't diverge too far architecturally it's basically game over for Nvidia on the PC side for at least the immediate future, TWIMTBP or no. Game developers would be stupid not to spend 99% of their time optimizing for AMD and leaving Nvidia as an afterthought.

Imagine what things would look like today if AMD had gotten a VLIW5 chip into the Xbox360, or Nvidia some kind of G80 derivative into the PS3.

Well, things might end up different this time around.

 

[Dribble]

This is correct. Who cares if Sony is losing $20 or making $10 on every console sold? They have to pay AMD the same regardless.

For xbox 360 Ati got a one off payment I think - so no money on every console sold. That's what nvidia got for original xbox and MS didn't like that.

$57 million probably barely covered the development costs - a custom gpu to MS specs won't have been cheap to make. On top of that it takes a number of your top gpu guys off whatever other useful things they are designing and onto the console. It is noteworthy that post xbox nvidia had one of their worst gpu's ever - the famous FX series, and post xbox 360 I think ati brought out the 2900XT. Was that partly because during the design of those gpu's the best guys were busy keeping MS happy.

Hence the value of making console gpu's is debatable.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Basicly console designs are a gamble. You give MS/Sony/Nintendo etc a design and they will fabricate it themselves whereever they want. And that leaves some risks as well. What you hope for is that the console ports will run abit better on your HW, plus the possible little PR it gives.

But PR wise its only a few geeks in the end. And console ports doesnt matter a year or 2 later in those terms.

 

[f1sherman]

One would think the biggest advantage of getting console wins would be developers targeting your architecture far more aggressively. Last round both AMD and Nvidia did a pretty pitiful job in this respect, AMD's console architectures being too different from their desktop parts, Nvidia's being old tech that was no longer relevant.

If AMD gets GCN into even one of the next generation consoles and their desktop parts don't diverge too far architecturally it's basically game over for Nvidia on the PC side for at least the immediate future, TWIMTBP or no. Game developers would be stupid not to spend 99% of their time optimizing for AMD and leaving Nvidia as an afterthought.

Imagine what things would look like today if AMD had gotten a VLIW5 chip into the Xbox360, or Nvidia some kind of G80 derivative into the PS3.

Well, things might end up different this time around.

Then how come Xbox360 ports never favored AMD hardware so far?
Surely at least Radeon X1800 Series should have enjoyed these huge "game over" benefits.
Or are you suggesting Xbox360 developers never bothered optimizing?

How do you imagine that porting UE4 game to Windows would retain "metal" optimizations which were done for console?

You do know that Samaritan was featured on NV hardware, that UE4 will rely on PhysX for physics sumulation, or that NVIDIA and Epic Games have pretty close relations?

Game over for Nvidia... Did you pick this up on Semmiaccurate ^_^

 

[3DVagabond]

So nVidia hired the guy who was likely most directly responsible for the console contracts because there's no money to be made from them. Makes perfect sense.

The logic exhibited by some on these forums is impeccable. /sarc.

 

[Sonikku]

Who the hell cares about AMD. Their marketing sucks. I'd rather be one of the more trendy nerds with a specially branded Nvidia part in my computer and score all the chicks. My video game boxes tell me it's the way it's meant to be played anyway. Why would a box lie to me?

 

[HurleyBird]

Then how come Xbox360 ports never favored AMD hardware so far?

That's a false statement.

Surely at least Radeon X1800 Series should have enjoyed these huge "game over" benefits.
Or are you suggesting Xbox360 developers never bothered optimizing?

No. competent Xbox360 developers did extreme optimization. My argument is that xenos was too different from any of ATI's desktop offerings to have much of an effect.

How do you imagine that porting UE4 game to Windows would retain "metal" optimizations which were done for console?

Not the metal so much as the high level stuff. Things like resource balancing, compute code, shaders that particularly target the strengths of the architecture. Think of almost every cross platform game being an AvP or DiRT Showdown if not more lopsided. No "close to metal" optimization needed.

You do know that Samaritan was featured on NV hardware, that UE4 will rely on PhysX for physics sumulation, or that NVIDIA and Epic Games have pretty close relations?

Of course I do. You'll find that what the developers do with the engine is infinitely more important though -- especially with an engine both vendors will be spending unheard of time optimizing their drivers for.

As for GPU PhysX, absolutely nobody cares anymore. If Nvidia was able to get a PhsyX enabled GPU into a next generation console things would be different, but they didn't. Consequently PhysX will be just as irrelevant in UE4 as it was in UE3.

Game over for Nvidia... Did you pick this up on Semmiaccurate ^_^

No, I picked it up from my common sense. That being said, I expect AMD to screw up this opportunity like they did last time, and every time it seems fate hands them a silver platter. AMD management isn't competent.

 

[f1sherman]

Then how come Xbox360 ports never favored AMD hardware so far?

That's a false statement.

'Favored' as in showing general preference.

Because for each title you can think of favoring AMD, I'll come up with AT LEAST one favoring Nvidia.

Come one then Show me a trend of Xbox360 favoring AMD,

My argument is that xenos was too different from any of ATI's desktop offerings to have much of an effect.

Too different? OK, so how much of identical do devs need?

Because GCN itself is not going inside new Xbox, so then why would this time optimizations on whole different arch. benefit HD7000-8000??

Also... since Xenos is generally considered similar with X1800 XL,
surely at least SOME of its optimization should have benefited AMD,

So where is that trend showing Xbox360 favoring AMD?

Oh and... Would these optimizations be done purposely, or would come on PC by pure accident?
Because if done purposely why target smaller PC gaming market(AMD), and not larger(Nvidia).

Why would devs suddenly start optimizing for PC, when this has almost never been the case so far?
Why doing system oblivious optimizations, when system specific will yield superior results?
Why risk screwing already under-powered consoles performance by above approach?

Guess that leaves us with accidental optimizations

TL;DR
Let's suppose that this theory of yours - "End of game for Nvidia on desktop" is possible.
GeForce is still their CORE business! Console business and royalties are peanuts.
Do you think that Nvidia is run by a bunch of morons, who are not capable of offering Sony or MS a better deal than AMD, to protect their core business?

Wouldn't they do just that to prevent -10% performance vs AMD?

 

[HurleyBird]

Because GCN itself is not going inside new Xbox, so then why would this time optimizations on whole different arch. benefit HD7000-8000??

We don't know what is going inside the new Xbox.

Also... since Xenos is generally considered similar with X1800 XL,
surely at least SOME of its optimization should have benefited AMD,

Similar performance maybe. Architecturally not at all. Unified vs. non-unified shader design for starters.

Oh and... Would these optimizations be done purposely, or would come on PC by pure accident?
Because if done purposely why target smaller PC gaming market(AMD), and not larger(Nvidia).

AMD has the far larger market share thanks to APUs, which do matter to game developers. That being said, marketshare on the PC side is irrelevant, devs will optimize for hardware that in the consoles every time.

Why would devs suddenly start optimizing for PC, when this has almost never been the case so far?

They wouldn't be optimizing for PCs on purpose. But if the shaders, compute code, and division of resources that favor AMD's chips in the consoles also favor AMD's desktop offering, then there will obviously be a benefit.

Guess that leaves us with accidental optimizations

More or less, yes.

TL;DR
Let's suppose that this theory of yours - "End of game for Nvidia on desktop" is possible.
GeForce is still their CORE business! Console business and royalties are peanuts.
Do you think that Nvidia is run by a bunch of morons, who are not capable of offering Sony or MS a better deal than AMD, to protect their core business?

Wouldn't they do just that to prevent -10% performance vs AMD?

Businesses do stupid things all of the time. AMD might not be smart enough to put forward looking chips into the next generation consoles either. Neither company was able to last gen.

 

[f1sherman]

They'll put in next Xbox/PS4 what ever MS/Sony chose from their offering

We'll know for sure very soon...