AMD Announcements from GDC 2019
Our friends at AMD have been quite busy with two major announcements at GDC 2019. Yesterday, they announced that AMD Radeon GPUs have been tapped for the Google Stadia game streaming platform, and today they have enhanced their open software tools for game developers. Here are both press releases.
Today AMD announced that its cloud-optimized Radeon datacenter GPUs will power Google’s Stadia game streaming platform, which Google unveiled today at the Game Developers Conference.
Streaming today’s most demanding titles from the cloud requires massive processing capabilities and advanced technologies to tackle unique datacenter challenges from security to scalability. That’s why Google has chosen AMD’s optimized datacenter GPUs – featuring fast, efficient HBM2 memory and critical datacenter features – for the platform.
AMD is also supporting Google with its software development tools, including AMD Radeon GPU Profiler (RGP), and its Linux-based, open-source Vulkan driver to help game developers optimize future titles to run on the new GPU-powered platform.
RGP lets developers visualize how their application utilizes the GPU and track each rendered frame in real-time, allowing for easy and efficient debugging and optimization through the interoperable RenderDoc debug software.
For more information about the Stadia game streaming platform, you can check out Google’s blog post here.
At GDC, AMD released several updates to its powerful Radeon software developer tools to help accelerate game design and innovation.
Based on open standards and designed to help maximize gaming performance, the following AMD developer tools are now available on GPUOpen:
- Radeon GPU Profiler (RGP) 1.5 – AMD added three new features to its low-level optimization tool for DirectX 12, Vulkan and OpenCL including: Instruction Timing to allow developers to see instruction durations; Shader ISA to allow developers to see shader code in the pipeline state; and User Market Display to give developers better insights about what the GPU is working on.
- Radeon GPU Analyzer (RGA) 2.1 – Updates to AMD’s offline compiler and shader performance analysis tool include a new GUI interface for Vulkan and OpenCL analysis and the ability to use the shader compiler directly from the installed Radeon Software driver – rather than the one included.
- Microsoft PIX AMD-specific GPU Data Support – Microsoft’s premier tool for debugging and analyzing DirectX 12 game performance on Windows 10 now enables developers who primarily use PIX to debug and analyze their DX12 performance to better optimize their games for Radeon graphics, with access to AMD GPU-specific high frequency counter data.
- OCAT (Open Capture and Analytics Tool) 1.4 – Updates to AMD’s lightweight open source capture and performance analytics tool include an audible indicator that capturing is taking place, and an expanded in-game overlay featuring a rolling frame time graph and API display.
- AMD TrueAudio Next (TAN) – AMD’s SDK for GPU-accelerated audio signal processing for realistic spatial audio is now supported in the latest Steam Audio Beta 17, which was released in February.
- AMD Radeon FreeSync 2 HDR samples – To help game developers better optimize their games for Radeon FreeSync 2 HDR, AMD will make sample code available through a series of technical blogs.
You can read more about AMD’s GDC announcements and developer sessions on the AMD blog here, and on GPUOpen.
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Five days ago, The Division 2 released to great reviews and it is well-optimized for AMD video cards especially in DX12.
With AMD’s Raise the Game Fully Loaded bundle, Radeon fans get three PC versions of the year’s most anticipated games—Resident Evil 2, The Division 2 and Devil May Cry 5—free with the purchase of an AMD Radeon VII, RX Vega or RX 590 graphics card, or an eligible Radeon VII, RX Vega or RX 590 powered PC.
Gamers who purchase an AMD Radeon RX 580 or RX 570 graphics card, or an eligible Radeon RX 580 or RX 570 powered PC, can choose two of these games for free. The promotion ends April 6, 2019 (or when supply of coupon codes are exhausted), and games can be redeemed until May 6, 2019.
For more information, check out AMD’s blog post here, and click here to download the latest AMD driver.
Happy Gaming!