In a bit of interesting news for PC gamers, EA and AMD have announced a joint partnership in which all titles that run on the Frostbite 3 engine, which includes the upcoming Battlefield 4, Dragon Age 3, Mirror's Edge 2, and Need For Speed: Rivals, will be optimized for AMD GPUs and CPUs. This means that, while the Frostbite 3 engine will run on Nvidia-based systems, to get the maximum quality available, including company's developing and distributing new and updated drivers after a game's launch, gamers will need AMD technology. This news comes from IGN.
While Nvidia has had a dominating role in the market in the past, several titles, such as Tomb Raider and Crysis 3, used AMD-powered technology to boost the performance of those games. PC Gamers, which currently have a leg up on console gamers in terms of graphics and computing power, may start being swayed into the AMD camp, especially now that EA has partnered with the company to make sure their blockbuster titles work best with AMD.
This news also affects console gamers, even if they are not aware of the rival between hardware manufacturers. The PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Wii U all use AMD technology for their graphics cards, meaning that the Frostbite 3 will also be optimized for each major next-gen console. Perhaps this fact is what drove EA and AMD to band together. Nvidia, instead of working on new hardware for the next generation of consoles, decided instead to decline the opportunity to develop hardware for the new consoles. Instead, Nvidia is focusing on developing their own technology and regaining some of the ground they have lost to AMD.
It will be interesting to see how much of an impact this news has on EA, AMD, and Nvidia when the upcoming crop of Frostbite 3 games are released.
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