Comment by senkora
Comment by senkora 4 days ago
+1. An important non-obvious detail for AMD is that they (at least in the past, I assume for this as well) have kept the instruction timings similar from generation to generation of consoles.
Different x86 micro-architectures benefit from writing the machine code in slightly different ways. Games are highly optimized to the specific micro-architecture of the console, so keeping that stable helps game developers optimize for the console. If you suddenly changed the micro-architecture (if switching to Intel), then old games could suddenly become janky and slow even though both systems are x86.
(This would only matter if you were pushing performance to the edge, which is why it rarely matters for general software development, but console game dev pushes to the edge)
So it isn't just the graphics APIs that would change going from AMD to Intel, but the CPU performance as well.
> Different x86 micro-architectures benefit from writing the machine code in slightly different ways. Games are highly optimized to the specific micro-architecture of the console, so keeping that stable helps game developers optimize for the console.
While that can be true, very few gamedev companies these days optimize to that degree. They almost all use off-the-shelf middleware and game engines that are built to support all of the platforms. The companies that do go through that effort tend to have very notable releases.
Nobody is hand-tuning Assembler code these days to fit into tight instruction windows. At least, not outside of some very specific logic fragments. Instead they're all writing generic interrupt-based logic. Which is fine, as that's what the newer CPUs expect and optimize for internally.
In addition, the difference in the Zen generation gap is as different as switching to Intel. We're talking fairly different cache coherency, memory hierarchies, CCX methodologies, micro-op and instruction timings, iGPU configurations, etc.
That all being said, AMD was going to beat Intel regardless because of established business relationships and their current internal struggles (both business-wise and R&D) making it fairly difficult for them to provide an equivalent alternative.