GDC (Game Developers Conference) happened last week in San Francisco at the Moscone Convention Center from February 27th through March 3rd. I went this year to GDC and AMD was one of my favorite announcements plus they had a killer after party with Mix Master Mike. In all honesty I am an AMD girl and have been waiting on their new launch of their products that will hopefully prevail over their competitors.
While at GDC, AMD had several announcements at the one-hour Capsaicin livestream event that included: AMD and Bethesda Softworks Partner to Propel PC Gaming Forward, AMD‘s “Vega” GPU to Power LiquidSky Platform for Enthusiast-Level Gameplay Anywhere, and lastly AMD and its Developer Partners Embrace Forward Rendering in Unreal Engine 4 to Improve VR Performance & Fidelity. The AMD event gave a preview of AMD‘s latest graphics and processor technologies plus unveiled new details surrounding Vega for gaming enthusiasts and developers around the world. Separate from GDC, AMD also announced the new CPU called Ryzen 7 on March 2nd.
Though I’m a smart technology geek an engineer I am not therefore below is a more detailed recap of each of the AMD announcements during GDC week provided by AMD’s staff.
AMD and Bethesda Softworks Partner to Propel PC Gaming Forward:
- AMD and Bethesda have announced a long-term, multi-title partnership to rapidly advance game technology development, fuel new PC game experiences, and reshape the gaming landscape.
- This brings together two titans of the gaming industry: Bethesda Softworks, which has sold more than 80 million copies of legendary games series like Fallout, DOOM and Dishonored, and AMD, whose CPU and GPU technologies power the experiences of 400 million gamers worldwide.
- The two companies will work together to develop and accelerate the implementation of new technologies, including:
- Harnessing the full potential of low-level APIs such as Vulkan
- Maximizing the capabilities of the computing and graphics power of AMD’s multicore AMD Ryzen CPUs, Radeon GPUs and AMD server solutions across Bethesda’s existing Bethesda franchises
AMD’s “Vega” GPU to Power LiquidSky Platform for Enthusiast-Level Gameplay Anywhere:
- AMD announced that its upcoming Vega architecture-based GPUs have been selected to power LiquidSky, enabling gamers around the world to enjoy the extraordinary power of Vega from anywhere.
- LiquidSky already lets their 1.4 million beta users play any PC video game as it was meant to be enjoyed on Android phone or tablet, low-spec Windows, Mac, and even Linux devices.
- With Vega’s powerful Radeon Virtualized Encode feature, subscribers will relish a high-quality gaming experience on par with enthusiast gaming PCs, but at a much lower cost through LiquidSky’s low-cost and free subscription models.
- Gamers across the world can benefit from the exceptional GPU performance by connecting to any of the 13 LiquidSky global data centers.
AMD and its Developer Partners Embrace Forward Rendering in Unreal Engine 4 to Improve VR Performance & Fidelity:
- VR developers today are constantly challenged to strike the right mix of technical features and computational power for the best balance of performance and visual fidelity.
- Deferred rendering, used by many of today’s big game engines, does all of the geometry work first and then shades pixels last to save work but it’s not a great fit for VR.
- AMD is working to enable a forward rendering path in Unreal Engine 4.15, giving developers more choice in how they develop VR games and helping to achieve a stunning looking game while delivering the high frame rates necessary for a good experience.
- AMD is also working with leading game developers to explore the benefits of forward rendering in VR games, including Survios, First Contact Entertainment and Limitless Studios.
- Innovation and competition return to high-performance PCs March 2nd with worldwide Ryzen™ 7 availability
- The AMD Ryzen 7 lineup includes the world’s highest performing and lowest powered 8-core PC processors
- Immediate pre-order availability from more than 180 retailers and boutique OEMs
Lastly I attended AMD’s after party while at GDC which as I said had DJ Mix Master Mike performing and it was awesome since I am a HUGE fan! Here are some great videos of the AMD after party event. The first video is just him performing and the other is me pointing out no one is dancing while Dj Mix Master Mike is on stage (priceless).
The next video is of me pointing out no one was dancing. Best quote of the video “No one is dancing…absolutely no one!” Too funny!
Now that GDC is over it is SXSW time so keep checking back as I will be on ground zero covering all SXSW events humanly possible! SXSW 2017 here I come!
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