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Bethesda and AMD announce major partnership.


Meanwhile, the company has also announced that they have inked a major technology and marketing partnership deal with publisher Bethesda. Publisher deals in one form or another are rather common in this industry – with both good and bad outcomes for all involved – however what makes the AMD deal notable is the scale. In what AMD is calling a “first of its kind” deal, the companies aren’t inking a partnership over just one or two games, but rather they have formed what AMD is presenting as a long term, deep technology partnership, making this partnership much larger than the usual deals.

The biggest focus here for the two companies is on Vulkan, Khronos’s low-level graphics API. Vulkan has been out for just over a year now and due to the long development cycle for games is still finding its footing. The most well-known use right now is as an alternative rendering path for Bethesda/id’s Doom. AMD and Bethesda want to get Vulkan in all of Bethesda’s games in order to leverage the many benefits of low-level graphics APIs we’ve been talking about over the past few years. For AMD this not only stands to improve the performance of games on their graphics cards (though it should be noted, not exclusively), but it also helps to spur the adoption of better multi-threaded rendering code. And AMD has an 8-core processor they’re chomping at the bit to start selling in a few days…

From a deal making perspective, the way most of these deals work is that this means AMD will be providing Bethesda’s studios with engineers and other resources to help integrate Vulkan support and whatever other features the two entities want to add to the resulting games. Not talked about in much detail at the Capsaicin event was the marketing side of the equation. I’d expect that AMD has a lock on including Bethesda games as part of promotional game bundles, but I’m curious whether there will be anything else to it or not.


Hmmm...

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The good
  • Eight cores and 16 threads at half the price of Intel
  • Excellent performance in workstation applications
  • AM4 is a modern, full-featured platform
  • While only a small performance boost, XFR is zero-effort and works well
The bad
  • Gaming performance is weak compared to Intel, particularly in modern titles
  • Specialised AVX applications will perform better under Intel
The ugly
  • A higher-clocked quad-core chip like the Intel i7-7700K or 7600K is still the best choice of processor for most

 

PROS
  • Low cost
  • Low TDP
  • Office and workstation applications
CONS
  • Sub-par gaming performance in some titles
  • Poorly optimized software ecosystem
In the end, AMD’s Ryzen is arguably the most disruptive CPU we’ve seen in a long time for those who need more cores. The CPU basically sells itself when you consider that for the same price as an Intel 8-core Core i7-6900K, you can have an 8-core Ryzen 7 1800X and a GeForce GTX 1080. Hell, you can go a step further and give up a little performance with the Ryzen 7 1700 but step up to a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti—for the same price as that Intel chip. Damn. But that’s the world Intel has wrought by keeping 8-core CPUs at what many would say are artificially high prices for so long.
Ryzen, however, isn’t a knockout. The gaming disparities at 1080p are sure to spook some buyers. In fact, if you read our Ryzen 7 1700 build against a 5-year-old Core i5 Intel box, you’ll likely be filled with fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Is this really just a game optimization problem as AMD says, or is it some deeper flaw that can’t be corrected?
Still, let’s give AMD credit for what it has pulled off today in essentially democratizing CPU core counts.
It’s been a long time coming, but AMD Ryzen is here and it looks impressive. Though we only have the Ryzen 7 1800X in our results today I am eager to get back home and get to testing the 1700X and 1700 models and see if they offer as compelling of an alternative to Intel’s dominance as the 1800X does. For $499 I foresee quite a few enthusiasts plopping down the dough to get an 8-core/16-thread beast of a processor in their rig.
Even better, with the new chipsets and motherboards from ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte and others, going with an AMD platform doesn’t automatically put you behind the 8-ball when it comes to storage and connectivity! Platforms with NVMe slots, USB 3.1, Type-C and more are widely available and starting at $100 going to $300 depending on the number of goodies you desire.
We still have questions and not everything is perfect. The single threaded performance between the Ryzen 7 1800X and the Core i7-7700K leans in Intel’s favor across the board, with that advantage moving from mid-single digits to 25%+ depending on the application. Gaming results are particularly concerning as AMD has been pushing Ryzen as a gamers and enthusiasts dream solution, combining “good enough” gaming ability with amazing multi-threaded capability.
It’s hard to argue with what we see today though and I’ll be awarding the Ryzen 7 1800X with our Gold Award, offering the performance of a Core i7-6900K for half the price!
TechReport (all 3 CPU's review)
Small wrinkles and our differences in performance priorities aside, it bears repeating that AMD is well and truly back in the high-performance x86 CPU game. If the company can further refine the Zen architecture over time, take advantage of future process improvements, and push clocks higher, we expect that future Ryzen chips will be competitive for many years to come. For now, we say bravo, AMD, and welcome back.

[H]ardOCP

 

 

If you are building a PC today that is going to be used for nothing but desktop gaming, I would suggest you buy a 7600K or 7700K and overclock those and enjoy the performance you will be getting with those. As soon as you look beyond only desktop gaming, Ryzen suddenly looks much better. If you are using your system for any type of encoding or decoding, or content creation, the Ryzen is simply the best value. If you are building a system that will be leveraging a VR gaming headset, it is easy to suggest you go with the Ryzen CPU as well. It does not perform the best in VR, but it performs extremely well, and I think we are going to see VR gaming engines become increasingly more thread aware as the technology advances.
Intel is scrambling in what seems like a feverish emergency over AMD's new Ryzen processors, with Microcenter dropping Core CPU prices like crazy - and now, Intel is sending tech media emails saying "call us before you write" your Ryzen review. This is what happens when AMD launches their new Ryzen 7 1800X processor priced at $499, offering performance that rivals Intel's current $1000+ processor. Charlie Demerjian, Semi Accurate founder and super-awesome comic book collector said: "Intel PR sent out a last-minute "call us before you write" email to most of the press, but not SemiAccurate, after hours last night. You could infer that they are suddenly really worried about something".
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
Man when you just have to be a desperate, sad and salty Luddite rather than actually improving your products.
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^ Even physical?

Only digital version from now on. Ubisoft going EA route for India. All digital with no physical release.

 

 

Here no PC version

 

http://www.amazon.in/Tom-Clancys-Ghost-Recon-Wildlands/dp/B010UR9SLO

 

No physical release. And Digital version is now 3499. i expect 2k and Bethesda to do the same. No physical release with 3499 or higher price for digital version.

Edited by WhiteWolf
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Only digital version from now on. Ubisoft going EA route for India. All digital with no physical release.

 

 

Here no PC version

 

http://www.amazon.in/Tom-Clancys-Ghost-Recon-Wildlands/dp/B010UR9SLO

 

No physical release. And Digital version is now 3499. i expect 2k and Bethesda to do the same. No physical release with 3499 or higher price for digital version.

 

Great, means I do not have to explain to people why they do not need to buy the crap on Day One.

 

Sucks for titles like For Honor and Siege but hey, you win some, you lose some.

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Ubisoft still has regional pricing in EA Origin (Ghost Recon: Wildlands for INR 1999 (Base and Deluxe editions same price for some reason) and 2999 for Gold Edition; only season pass for 999); South Park: Fractured But Whole for 1999 (Base and Gold Editions; it seems Gold Edition is on sale in origin for 20% off from base price of 2499). Steam has increased price of Wildlands, but not South Park yet (Maybe because of how far away it is).

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