Nintendo Life Weekly: Nintendo NX Processor May Be Supplied by AMD

AMD? I haven't really heard a lot about them until now (besides their name). Are they involved with any other companies besides Nintendo? Anyway, hearing anything about the NX is nice, I know it's not real information about the console but at least news of development reminds me another console is coming

Were can we get those cool posters from?

@Benjelo They made the CPU/GPU for both the PS4 and Xbone, and the GPU for Wii U (uses Power PC for CPU). They also did the GPU for the 360, as well as the Gamecube and Wii (think they were still ATI then), and possibly others. So yeah they've been doing console work for a while now.

@blackice85
Oh wow, I didn't realize that they had been around since the gamecube. I guess that it's not really surprising that they are going to be providing the processor for the NX then...

@Benjelo AMD? Oh yeah they've been in business for quite a while, they've always been the underdog to Intel's CPU business. More recently in 2006 they acquired ATI, which was Nvidia's main competitor in GPUs, so now they produce both CPUs and GPUs, as well as the more recent APUs which combine both on a single chip. But yeah I'm not surprised that they're doing the GPUs again either.

@123akis Well obviously lol, I was talking in context of gaming consoles.

I couldn't say which is more significant for them at this point, but winning the contracts to make GPUs for all three systems this generation must have been very good for them.

I got a NX running AMD already. It's a hybrid system: portable and can be connected to HDTV. It's called a laptop running Dolphin and DeSmuME with support for upcoming Nintendo mobile games through AMIDuOS.

@Nintendian: cool, that means Nintendo won't see any money from you

@blackice85 It's always been a back and forth game for the top between AMD and Intel. Right now Intel makes the best performing processors, but AMD has previously held the top spot a few times during different generations.

Their main benefit is they are always less expensive than Intel processors are.

The unfortunate thing about this news is that I had heard that they are going to use a CPU/GPU integrated chip which would be terrible since it would immediately imply "underpowered" or at the very most "competitive" with current tech on ps4 and Microsoft. This is Nintendo's chance to get ahead, and if they only play catch up with technology this will be a wasted effort.

@SupremeAllah Yeah I was an AMD user back in the day, really liked my Athlon XP and the Duron before it. Intel has them beat now on raw power and efficiency, but they're still great value for the money.

I don't know if an APU would be inherently bad, since the PS4 uses one. It does make me wonder if they'll go that route though, since that's what AMD is pushing. That would probably necessitate a switch from PowerPC, I wonder how difficult backwards compatibility would be then.

Yea I had an Athlon XP, then a Dual core, and now I still am using a Phenom II Quad core because I'm still waiting for the next gen to come out before I upgrade again. Considering it still runs everything out there today without issue, I haven't been in a hurry to move to an 8-core, or one of Intel's offerings.

It always pleased me that AMD processors generally love to be overclocked as well.

Back on the subject of NX speculation, you might find this to be an interesting read in regard to the current gen and how they did things :
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/171375-reverse-engineered-ps4-apu-reveals-the-consoles-real-cpu-and-gpu-specs

It's just my personal view (and the view of common sense) that if Nintendo is going to release another new system, it should out perform the current ones. Playing catch up to be even with the current offerings, or only slightly exceed them, isn't a good business proposal considering by only making something similar to what the competition has, there's less incentive to buy it. Especially when a lot of people feel burned on the fact that they got Wii U systems that are basically going to be abandoned once the NX arrives.