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id Software CTO talks about a Ryzen-optimised game engine

by Mark Tyson on 26 April 2017, 11:01

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD), Bethesda Softworks

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AMD has published a video interview with id Software's CTO (Chief Technical Officer), Robert Duffy. Unsurprisingly the interview talks up the capabilities and potential of AMD Ryzen tech in gaming engines, and in particular in the next generation id tech currently in development.

Duffy says that while AMD Ryzen gives good performance 'out of the box' at 1080p and 1440p the id developers are tuning software for great performance in 4K and even 8K resolutions.

There are several benefits to the arrival of Ryzen for gamers, asserts Duffy. Some of them are in evidence now, and others will come in the not-too-distant future, thanks to developers like id Software.

In the present users will have access to many more cores / threads at accessible price points. Right now that means improved multi-tasking. With the popularity of games streaming, the background video encoding and related overheads are easily lapped up by Ryzen - in addition to the game engine demands.

Further present day advantages provided by Ryzen, in id Software's case, is said to be much improved developer iteration times. The developers simply like the speed of these machines and their multi-tasking.

Looking ahead, the next generation id tech is going to be fully optimised for Ryzen, said Duffy. The new games engine in development is "far more parallel", delivering benefits to users with CPUs boasting greater core and thread counts. Listing the specific benefits, Duffy mentioned; framerate improvements, improved realism, and improved AI in games - all from the extra cores and threads available.

Addressing another important market factor, Ryzen comes to market with a "super attractive price point," said Duffy. The price should lead to widespread consumer adoption and inspire a range of developers to create games that make use of the proliferating parallel processing power.

Last but not least, Quake Champions is designed to make the best of Ryzen and the upcoming Vega GPUs teased the id Software CTO. Inevitably there was some other new stuff Duffy was itching to divulge but he couldn't talk about… That might be more details regarding RX Vega, due to launch before the end of June.



HEXUS Forums :: 35 Comments

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That's good news. I love to see leaps forward like this, although unfortunately I won't benefit from it directly given that I didn't buy AMD (and we'll all still be playing near enough the same game aside from the rendering). If it helps AMD increase its market share, that's good for everyone too.
This is great news indeed. Better competition means better prices and deals for customers.
The problem is, you need every developer to do this…..I'm still at the point where I'd prefer to buy something that everything is optimised for out-of-the-box……surely AMD could have kept certain architectural features in-line with Intel so that every engine and piece of code didn't need specific Ryzen optimisations?
Sorry but I'm not going to invest in a CPU that promises future support from developers. Publishers/developers can be extremely lazy when it comes to pc games, you really think they all are going to go out of their way to specifically optimise for Ryzen? Ryzen might be best for id software games but I want a CPU that is good on all games not certain games. That's why Intel will be my future CPU.
The way some people are talking it's almost like playing games on Ryzen should be compared with a flicker book. ;)