AMD Phasing Out CrossFire Brand With DX 12 Adoption, Favors mGPU

[GhostRyder]

GameWorks only exists to convince developers to get into the NVIDIA ecosystem not unlike what Microsoft did with DirectX. There's open source (some by AMD) or engine tools (by like-minded developers) available to do everything GameWorks does without being trapped in an ecosystem.

But I like upgrading my graphics card just so I can run the main characters hair on Ultra settings

That's likely because GameWorks doesn't have a good track record. I can't think of one time GameWorks made me go "wow" in a positive way. I might go "wow that really tanks FPS" though. Not only does GameWorks bork AMD cards and prevent AMD from optimizing for the game but it screws over previous gen Nvidia cards as well. GTX 900 series comes out, Nvidia way over tessellates grass in Crysis 2, what do you know the 700 series takes a huge performance hit with tessellation enabled. The 900 series can handle a massive amount of tessellation with little issue, Nvidia exploited it.

GameWorks is more a "We pay the devs so they can put in features that heavily favor our new cards to push sales".

Yea I can only think of maybe one Gameworks game that wasn't just feeling like a detriment to run on any system for graphics that (While they looked great) were not that special. PhysX was a good idea in the beginning in my opinion only because I liked the idea of having it be done by a separate piece of hardware to reduce stress on the main GPU but even that was nothing amazing.

I guess the question is whats next. If Nvidia and AMD are not going to be making profiles anymore (At least less than before) are they going to focus on new ecosystems for developers or something else?

 

[Frick]

Well, if you upgrade, you get to sell your old video card, so upgrading is already quite cheap.

And this assumes you have an old GPU to sell in the first place or that it is so new it's actually worth something, and that you have an inclination to make deals with strangers. For light gamers APU+GPU with proper Crossfire would be great. Not to mention if they'd make it work over USB Whatevernumber: buy laptop with decent-ish APU, later add a small, cheap box with a low-end GPU for nearly double the performance. I'd consider one fo sho.

 

[bug]

And this assumes you have an old GPU to sell in the first place or that it is so new it's actually worth something, and that you have an inclination to make deals with strangers. For light gamers APU+GPU with proper Crossfire would be great. Not to mention if they'd make it work over USB Whatevernumber: buy laptop with decent-ish APU, later add a small, cheap box with a low-end GPU for nearly double the performance. I'd consider one fo sho.

Idk what a "light gamer" is (never met one), but rumor has it they're already served well by the IGP.
But I hear you about selling your old GPU. I used to do just that, but my trusty old 660Ti is still lying around here somewhere

 

[FordGT90Concept]

APU+GPU is possible but again, how many developers are going to put the effort in to make it work? Not many.

 

[bug]

APU+GPU is possible but again, how many developers are going to put the effort in to make it work? Not many.

I think the expectation here is that mGPU gets built into game engines and game developers get it more or less for free. We'll see how it works out irl.
It's going to be really hard to test that this works properly and for what? 10-20% more performance in case of working together with an IGP?

At the same time, there's the real possibility engine developers have provided their input into Vulkan and DX12 and mGPU really lowers the entry barrier enough to make the feature worth it.

 

[GhostRyder]

And this assumes you have an old GPU to sell in the first place or that it is so new it's actually worth something, and that you have an inclination to make deals with strangers. For light gamers APU+GPU with proper Crossfire would be great. Not to mention if they'd make it work over USB Whatevernumber: buy laptop with decent-ish APU, later add a small, cheap box with a low-end GPU for nearly double the performance. I'd consider one fo sho.

If I could get an APU laptop that had an external hookup for a GPU (That also didn't cost a fortune and scaled well) that would be in my shopping cart.