Why do Google, Xbox, and Playstation use AMD graphics?

I’m just curious why all the major players(excluding Nintendo) use AMD, instead of Nvidia? I get that there are deals and partnerships in place, but it just seems strange that all the consoles use AMD, when Nvidia has products that sometimes even outperform AMD at competitive prices.

Original Xbox did use Nvidia GPU and Nvidia gouged them on hardware, they couldn't reduce prices to remain competitive with PS2 so they scrapped it and rushed out the Xbox 360 instead. PS3 did have a piece of hardware they partnered with Nvidia on, their RSX Reality Synthesizer, and Sony too was paying huge chunks of money to Nvidia for years, I remember years into the PS3's life running across articles saying Sony too was still getting gouged by Nvidia. My guess is both learned their lessons. Also, because of their proprietary APIs, that would make it difficult for games designed on their hardware to work on anything else meaning future BC might be an issue Nvidia might try to aggressively leverage them on in future negotiations.

Sure, they make good hardware, but they're not a good company. I mean, they developed their Gameworks developer support simply to sabotage games from running right on AMD hardware, they're pretty shit.

It's cheap?

NVIDIA left a sour taste in Sony’s mouth after the PS3 or rather because of the PS3.

ATI developed the Xenos for the 360 so they just kept their partnership for the Xbox One.

As for Stadia well the two largest player are already using AMD so I suppose it was easier to just go with that. Also virtualization is better on AMD GPU’s.

@lamprey263: Also word is they refused to let Sony customize the RSX to their needs and are difficult to work with.

Sony wanted to go with a blue console but nvidia ceo tells them that their branding is always green.

Nvidia doesn't have an X86 license and it doesn't make CPU's. AMD can provide the APU (cpu,gpu) solution in one nice package instead of using separate dies for each. Nvidia is also to likely not cut as good of a performance deal as AND either.

AMD has always been the poor man’s gpu. But at least they’re amenable to working with both ms and Sony when it comes to customization

Not always

https://www.overclock3d.net/news/misc_hardware/samsung_and_amd_could_power_nintendo_s_switch_successor/1

It's cheap and they offer APU which further reduces the cost to the console manufacturer. Keep in mind, they don't have discrete GPUs. It's really the only logical choice for these things, actually, given that they need to be compact and cannot sell at PC prices. A lot of PC gamers shit on AMD around here but an Intel+Nvidia solution would be a non-starter these days for a few reasons.

Switch is an exception, though!

It's cheap and they offer APU which further reduces the cost to the console manufacturer. Keep in mind, they don't have discrete GPUs. It's really the only logical choice for these things, actually, given that they need to be compact and cannot sell at PC prices. A lot of PC gamers shit on AMD around here but an Intel+Nvidia solution would be a non-starter these days for a few reasons.

Lowest bidder

Nvidia is a shit company full of shits, all you need to know.

From what I've read AMD is the cheaper option, and Nvidia was difficult to work with.

In what way? Nothing against AMD as they offer decent options, but Nvidia offers the best product when it comes to GPUs. Period.

$$$$, plus an APU is much cheaper then paying for intel/amd CPU with an Nvidia GPU.

The problem with AMD is the lack of focus since Bulldozer (many threads bias, lower IPC) and Fury X/Vega 64/Vega II (higher TFLOPS bias, smaller classic GPU hardware) has focued on server workloads. Bulldozer was AMD's Pentium 4 moment.

One woud assume AMD/RTG would scale raster power on Fury X/Vega 64 in relative to memory bandwdith increase when compared to R9-290X/R9-390X.

It doesn't help AMD's direction when PS4 Pro has high TFLOPS via RPM feature.

Qualcomm mastered variable compute wave length before AMD's NAVI.

? It's a fact they are an anti-consumer company, go read about it, some points have been mentioned already. But I certainly won't deny they make the best consumer cards, sometimes I suck it up and buy them.

AMD has better SOC (systems on a chip) I think.

Switch uses Nvidia Tegra.

^ Clueless

Ryzen and Thread ripper is lack of focus? What a complete dumb ass comment for you to make...

AMD is much cheaper than Nvidia. Nintendo went with Nvidia with the Switch though but they worked out a deal where they are using the Nvidia Shield hardware and made a hybrid tablet out of it. Probably why we haven’t seen a price drop yet at least until the Shield 2 comes out and Shield 1 pricing reduces. But yeah. AMD is the cheap choice which is why Sony and Microsoft are working with them.

Yea...because having better performing APU's then Nvidia and allowing vendors to customise them has nothing to do with it..... /smh

@scatteh316: its all price man. Nvidia doesn’t cater to the mid tier consumers at all. AMD does and that’s what these consoles are. Mid tier pc’s with a custom OS. If I was building a budget pc to do 1080 I would go AMD all the way but my PC is built to conquer so I went with Intel cpu and Nvidia gpu. This is basic hardware stuff. If I was building a budget console under $500 I would work out a deal with AMD as well.

Ryzen (Zen v1) was the course correction and Thread Ripper was implemented by AMD engineers in their spare time LOL.

https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3016760/amd-threadripper-was-developed-by-engineers-in-their-spare-time

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/255155-amd-declares-ryzen-development-worst-case-scenario-looks-ahead-ryzen-2

AMD: Ryzen Development Was a ‘Worst-Case Scenario’

Zen should be after K10's evolution instead of Faileddozer.

It's time dig out AMD's coprorate internal politics between fat CPU advocates vs Bulldozer advocates that will show you're the real dumb ass.

https://techreport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=85582

Mike Butler, Chief Architect of the Bulldozer architecture, apparently doesn't work for AMD anymore.

https://m.hardocp.com/article/2011/11/29/hardocp_readers_ask_amd_bulldozer_questions

Mike Butler: It is also important to note that the "Bulldozer" architecture is configured and optimized for server throughput. The two integer execution cores present in Bulldozer are designed to deliver area- and power-efficient multi-threaded throughput.

Intel Haswell shows fat CPU core with dual threads throughput (each thread has dual integer units) dedunked Mike Butler's argument!

You're the real dumb ass.

I agree with AMD's management purging who advocated failed architectures. Architecture advocates must be pay for thier advancy

HD4870 says hi.

What a great card.

HD4870 and GTX970 are probabaly the two best price/performance cards I've ever bought.

Got a link to prove it's all because of price?

Thank you for proving your original comment was retarded.

@scatteh316: nope. Just lots of experience and lots of common basic sense.

I would get more common sense then.....as good common sense clearly shows it's much more then just a finance thing.

Your argument is retard. Ryzen Zen 1.0 with multiple CCX modules still has latancy issues with 144 hz LOL.

"The problem with AMD is the lack of focus since Bulldozer"

"Ryzen (Zen v1) was the course correction

What a way to own yourself so well done on being a retard....

Money!!! Nvidia is milking hermits dry, so why bother with poor consoles peasants!!! /s

I was factoring history and progression. Ryzen v1 with double CCX did NOT fix issues with 144 hz retard.

"course correction" is just changing the direction which doesn't mean it has fix the problems with 144 hz retard.

oh good lord...

as has already been covered: AMD can deliver a complete package, lower costs, only 1 company to deal with, GPUs are well understud and industry standard and so on. Nvidia offer a better GPU but they dont have a solution to fit the requirements of a console....at least the consoles sony and MS want to make.

As for stadia: AMD also have open source drivers which are very good on linux: which stadia runs on. that probably factored into googles decision also. if they went with nvidia then they would be relying on nvidia for and GPU driver updates needed for stadia.

technically you could probably get an intel/nvidia console using an MCM (similar to the IBM/AMD MCM of the wiiu) and it could certainly offer better performance and/or more features. but itll cost and good luck trying to get intel and nvidia to work together effectively. there is an intel/AMD vega GPU MCM floating around but i forget its exact name.

historically nvidia also have a bad rep in the console space. they shafted MS and the whole ordeal between Nvidia and sony didnt go down to well (though who is to blame there is not as clear cut). there doesnt seem to be any fuss between nintendo and nvidia but the switch is basically using an off the shelf part from nvidia. very little has been tweaked by the looks of things.

Because it's cheaper. Nvidia wasn't and still isn't a dire situation like AMD was, hence they can charge a premium just like Intel. In fact Nvidia did say they were contacted for PS4 or X1 but choose to invest in other ventures than reduce their price. As others have said, Nvidia only make GPUs hence getting the CPU+GPU solution from the same vendor again reduces cost and considering AMD's situation they are more likely to listen to MS/Sony's demands compared to Intel/Nvidia.

So yeah, it all boils down to price.

I'm sure they evaluated every possible option, but in the end AMD was the

I have yet to buy AMD gpu. Nvidia the way it's meant to be played :D

@osan0: that's true, my last Nvidia card (GTX970) was a nightmare on Linux compare to AMD (Vega 64)

That would be the logical conclusion how Nvidia works when it comes to top of the line GPU these days and they got me with their RTX 2070.

But I can't complain, I got what I want and Nvidia got my money lol.

Don't know about the consumer side but never had any problems with training models on Nvidia's HPC/Data center GPUs on Linux.

They are milking you dry with their online fees already. You don't need anymore milking.

Because AMD is a more consumer-friendly company? Couldn't really say. Hardware manufacturers likely put out their hardware components for bid, and whoever comes in the cheapest, they go with.

And I haven't seen a modern (read: last 3-4 years) nVidia product that outperformed an AMD for the same or less money. If anything, nVidia products have been seemingly more expensive for only a marginal improvement in performance.

Unless of course you buy any of those games optimized for AMD products. Like Doom (2016) which had Vulkan that gave AMD cards substantial performance upgrades.

@foxhound_fox: Yeah and if you wanted to play Doom at launch... OpenGL on AMD big yikes. The true reason why AMD gains were so big on Vulkan, not because Nvidia works poorly on Vulkan

@pandadropkicks:

Price wise AMD has better tech per dollar,the RSX cost Sony almost as much as the Xenos cost MS but the Xenos was much more powerful vs the smaller different in price.

Ms already dumped Nvidia for the same reason as the first xbox used a GPU from nvidia.

@ronvalencia:

Ryzen now is kicking Intel CPU and for a cheaper price zen 1 was an evolution in that direction,stop making stupid ass comments and stop fu**ing arguing shit that no one is arguing,either take classes so you can fallow better or stop posting.

@pc_rocks:

Yeah I am sure that is what they claimed after losing sony,fact is their consoles GPU were over priced for the kind of performance they had,Sony played for the RSX almost the same MS did for the xenos yet the Xenos was not only more powerful it was also more advance.

Fact is I am sure Sony would had ended with AMD anyway because they can get an apu,which would not be the case with nvidia at least not at the performance level Sony has hoping to get.

Microsoft was able to lower Xenos's price vs time with process node improvements.

IBM's PPE replacement by yet another in-order processing PowerPC A2 was rejected. PowerPC A2's SIMD hardware is optional, hence extra cost while AMD's out-of-order processing Jaguar's SSE4/AVX-128 SIMD hardware wasn't optional since AMD64 instruction set has defined SSE2 as mandatory part of X86-64 instruction set standard.

AMD has optional position to drive 2-for-1 bundling to beat the comptition. Larger X86 market has subsidized Jaguar's R&D cost.