News - AMD exec says NVIDIA neglecting gamers

[HEXUS]

AMD's head of developer relations has told HEXUS he feels NVIDIA is forgetting its gaming roots and turning away from the gaming community.

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[aidanjt]

I agree with his sentiments, however, the game industry itself is sadly neglecting PC gamers. It may be that GPUs will end up only performing media and compute tasks before too long.

[jim]

I agree with his sentiments, however, the game industry itself is sadly neglecting PC gamers. It may be that GPUs will end up only performing media and compute tasks before too long.

Consoles use GPUs too though, so I'd say it's not quite that clear cut.

[aidanjt]

Consoles use GPUs too though, so I'd say it's not quite that clear cut.

True, but I (and the AMD fellow) was referring to PC GPU use.

[badass]

I wish there wasn't as much piracy on the PC and there would be a lot less neglect of PC gamers.
Still, I love steam. I got bored last weekend so got prey an hour after deciding to buy it. Less than a tenner too

[Perfectionist]

I was thinking the same thing about nvidia already they seem to be very slow on releases orstopped entirely, pointless waiting for GTX 300 series, I doubt it will be on par with ATI 5800 now... It's kind of annoying because older games (and I still like to play a couple) tend to have better support for nvidia drivers (because of all the monopolistic bribing of developers with "the way it's meant to be played" logos etc).

[aidanjt]

I wish there wasn't as much piracy on the PC and there would be a lot less neglect of PC gamers.
Still, I love steam. I got bored last weekend so got prey an hour after deciding to buy it. Less than a tenner too

It's easy to blame piracy, but piracy was there long before, during, and after the rise of the console. It's a poor excuse for shoddy development work. And as you say, it's dead easy to buy some really neat games on steam.

[jim]

True, but I (and the AMD fellow) was referring to PC GPU use.

Fair enough, assumed you were covering all GPUs.

I don't think it's going anywhere any time soon anyway, not given the 150,000 signatures on that MW2 poll recently, which only affected PC gamers. There will always be a market for PC graphics I reckon, although whether that will always be provided by GPUs as we know them today is another matter.

[Noli]

ROFL! You have me rolling on the floor dude. You sound like AMD is paying you in blowjobs to post this stuff LOL.

Not only do I imagine he already knows what ROFL stands for, but I certainly did not get anywhere near that impression from his post, which seemed basically unbiased and well judged in nature... (unlike yours)

[Percy1983]

Not only do I imagine he already knows what ROFL stands for, but I certainly did not get anywhere near that impression from his post, which seemed basically unbiased and well judged in nature... (unlike yours)

Agreed

[Biscuit]

Not only do I imagine he already knows what ROFL stands for, but I certainly did not get anywhere near that impression from his post, which seemed basically unbiased and well judged in nature... (unlike yours)

+1

NVidia have made the slip up that ATI made a few years ago, at least ATI had an excuse back then (the whole AMD purchase) Not to say they cant pull it back but it will take effort. As for piracy, it is impossible to avoid completely and iv seen it been done on consoles through the ages just as much as PCs.

[kalniel]

I think the AMD exec's comments come too late - it was a valid marketing tactic to exploit the delay in nVidia's dx11 part, but it's going to come back to bite them if nVidia do get cards out that perform well. It's just a delay on nVidia's part, and they obviously have to cover that by focusing on the non-gaming aspect (which is far from a complete waste of time - nVidia have gained quite impressive traction in that area). That left them open to a valid response like this immediately after the fermi presentation, but now the markets are looking forward to a GPU release.

[=TcQi=]

+1

ATi have been recovering well since the 2900, but I wouldn't write off Nvidia for a second. The non-gaming avenues seem necessary business choices for the long term. If Intel's Labaree turns out to be a serious contender, and does indeed bring about the unification of GPU/CPU's I'd be interested to know how Nvidia can compete, given that they don't have the R+D/CPU arm's of AMD/Intel?

The laptop thermal issues and 8800 re-branding saga's have been damaging, imo, but I'm still hoping for a decent dx11 part, for the sake of healthy competition and continued investment in PC gaming.

[GheeTsar]

Fair enough, assumed you were covering all GPUs.

I don't think it's going anywhere any time soon anyway, not given the 150,000 signatures on that MW2 poll recently, which only affected PC gamers. There will always be a market for PC graphics I reckon, although whether that will always be provided by GPUs as we know them today is another matter.

Further to this, historically the PC GPU market leads the way and the consoles get the benefit from the R&D/progress for their chips. If the PC GPU market stagnates then the consoles will benefit less.

That said, I think ATI's 5 series and nVidia's fermi boards will probably provide sufficient power for games for quite some while. My decrepid 8800GTS still handles most current games adequately, so IMHO this new generation should last a while before there is a need for even more power.

[Flash477]

I agree with his sentiments, however, the game industry itself is sadly neglecting PC gamers. It may be that GPUs will end up only performing media and compute tasks before too long.

One problem with the PC gaming market is that the developer then has to support thousands of different hardware combinations - whereas with consoles it is always a standard setup. Such diversity is not always a good thing.

[kalniel]

One problem with the PC gaming market is that the developer then has to support thousands of different hardware combinations - whereas with consoles it is always a standard setup. Such diversity is not always a good thing.

True, but the situation is actually better now than it used to be - a lot of the diversity is abstracted, or at least presented to developers in a scalable fashion via the use of APIs etc. - despite nVidia's attempts to undermine that with their TWIMTBP program. No the main problem with the PC gaming market is the relatively small amount of market that are actually willing to pay for games first hand.