AMD is sending Ryzen/Radeon care packages to game developers

AMD are sending Ryzen/Radeon care packages to developers

AMD is sending Ryzen/Radeon care packages to game developers

When Ryzen launched in early 2017, AMD had a problem. Their new Zen architecture was fundamentally different to everything that they had greeted before, creating a situation where both professional software and games were in need of optimisation for AMD’s Ryzen series of CPUs. 

Over the next few months, several games were patched to include Ryzen optimisations, including Total War: Warhammer, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Ashes of the Singularity. Several professional tools were also updated, with Zbrush offering a 204,772% performance improvement in specific workloads, showcasing how much can be gained when software is optimised with Ryzen in mind. 

In the April of 2017, AMD confirmed that they had released 300 systems to developers to aid their Ryzen optimisation efforts and planned to deliver over 1000 before the end of 2017. Now in 2018, AMD is focusing on gaming, releasing Ryzen/Radeon care packages to game developers to create stronger ties to the gaming market and develop games which are optimised with Ryzen/Radeon in mind. 

  

AMD are sending Ryzen/Radeon care packages to developers

(Image from Techland)

Over the past two months, we have seen three developers confirm that they have received Ryzen/Radeon care packages from AMD, which includes an assortment of Ryzen CPUs and Radeon graphics cards, giving developers a kickstart towards optimising their future games. 

One of these developers is Techland, the creators of Dying Light and Call of Juarez, who recently revealed Dying Light 2 at E3 2018. This developer has received what appears to be every processor in AMD’s Ryzen 2000-series lineup, which includes two Ryzen 3 2200G APUs, two Ryzen 5 2400G APUs, three Ryzen 5 CPUs, three Ryzen 7 CPUs and four Ryzen Threadripper processors.  

On the Radeon side, Techland has also received two XFX RX 580 graphics cards and two Sapphire Pulse RX Vega 64 GPUs. This hardware should help Techland optimise their games further for AMD CPU and graphics products and hopefully facilitate an excellent gaming experience on AMD’s Ryzen+Vega APUs.  

AMD’s Ryzen/Radeon care packages will help developers create Ryzen-optimised software for AMD CPUs that range from their lowly Ryzen 3 APUs, all the way to their gigantic 16-core Threadripper-class processors. 

  
AMD are sending Ryzen/Radeon care packages to developers

(Image from Croteam)

Croteam, the developers behind Serious Sam and The Talos Principle, has also received a care package from AMD, bringing them two Sapphire RX Vega 64 Nitro+ graphics cards and an extensive range of Ryzen-series processors. 

Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass was showcased at E3 2018, showcasing an insane number of enemies on screen. Croteam has also showcased a great deal of interest in the Vulkan API, an API that finds its origins in AMD’s, now defunct, Mantle API. 

Flying Hog Games has also received a similar assortment of hardware from AMD, though it is worth noting that this studio has gotten less than both Croteam and Techland. Even so, you can’t exact;y argue with free hardware. Flying Hog Games is responsible for Hard Reset and the Shadow Warrior series. 

  
AMD are sending Ryzen/Radeon care packages to developers

(Image from Flying Hog Games)

Moving forward, AMD wants to build stronger relationships with game developers and create an ecosystem that is more friendly towards AMD hardware, both on the CPU and GPU sides.    

Game developers also know that next-generation consoles from both Sony and Microsoft are on the horizon, both of which are likely to use Ryzen/Radeon CPU and graphics hardware, making now the perfect time to start looking deeper into Ryzen. Both future consoles are also expected to feature Radeon graphics features like Rapid Packed Math, which enables FP16 calculations to be completed 2x faster than standard 32-bit math, allowing some graphical elements to be accelerated, assuming the extra precision of FP32 isn’t required. 

Techland, Croteam and Flying Hog Games are only recent examples of AMD’s game development efforts, with it being likely that similar hardware packages will be sent to other developers in the future. 

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