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Discussing Game Development in 2025, Blackwell, RDNA 4, and Next Gen APUs w/ Bryan Heemskerk (Patreon)

Published:
2025-02-14 22:31:48
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

The next episode of Broken Silicon will see us be joined by Bryan Heemskerk of Massive Damage Games once again! As always, Bryan can uniquely speak to anything having to do with hardware, software, and the economics of game development - he can discuss it all! As such, do not hesitate to submit a diverse set of questions.

You have ~36 hours to submit below!

Last Episode Bryan was on: https://youtu.be/5v-U_Dk5oRA?si=dpKj5RM65bclDANw

Bryan's Twitter Account: https://x.com/bryanheemskerk

Bryan’s Latest Game: https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUFFLUhqbkF2d0ozTUFWX0MzelhtWmxaLUp6WE5KLXBrZ3xBQ3Jtc0ttTVo5OEdvc3JwbFhIY1kxU1ZmX1FWdnNPNndFTEVuYjFfV2wwOThNLU1xQ2FFSTh2Y1F5SEF0ZjROVjNuVXp6NmpQdWNSb1dtYnhHQ21NbXBGcVRHazFjREZDLXRHTzVwQmpGaU1GY21vS1ZkaE9PWQ&q=https%3A%2F%2Fstore.steampowered.com%2Fapp%2F2469200%2FFera_The_Sundered_Tribes%2F&v=5v-U_Dk5oRA

Comments

David

In the old days we had SLI for basic symmetric work-sharing across GPUs. With modern game engines doing more work async and more on the GPU, will we see games able to use more than a single GPU? For example, with the extra (maybe older/smaller) GPU just doing physics or AI and feeding results to the main GPU for rendering.

Christian Visconti

Hi Tom and Guest, What are the things that you think we will do in games when all CPUs will have a NPU inside? Immagine a Zen6 X3D with 12 cores and a 50tops NPU on the side

Lucas

With 24 cores consumer cpus on the horizon, do you see a possibility of tri or quad channel memory becoming a thing for Zen 6 or at least AM6 to keep those cores fed? My understanding is, that you trade bandwidth for latency and latency is more important for most everyday tasks. Would it significantly impact performance or just barely measurable, particularly in gaming?

Ferociouskoala

Hey tom and bryan, What are your thoughts on the pricing structure of gpus currently? from nvidia "msrp" adding 200-400 on the sticker of (basically) all 5080/5070tis and so on, to amd launching gpus as expensive as they think they can price it at launch and rapidly dropping the price to what it should have launched at in the first place(7900xt) As a top tier consumer, im wondering when a class action (or something similar) will ban these anti-consumer tactics, mostly against nvidia for blatantly lieing to customers about the real msrp for multiple generations now, Im not a lawyer but I find it hard to believe that 1000 fe cards sold at msrp would skirt them from the law.

Dark Helmet

If you were starting a brand new RPG today, with a budget of $150 million what technical architecture would you choose? UE5, RT only, path tracing, frame gen, etc..?? What would you envision as the recommended system requirements?

Cleansweep

A few weeks ago, there was some consternation when Capcom revealed they were using generative AI to help brainstorm ideas for legally distinct environmental assets (https://automaton-media.com/en/game-development/capcom-is-experimenting-with-generative-ai-to-help-generate-the-hundreds-of-thousands-of-ideas-needed-for-game-development/). Do you think this is a valid and/or necessary use case for generative AI? Or does it potentially compromise the training pipeline for game artists?

Cleansweep

What did you think about Nvidia's AI game dev tool showcase at CES 2025? Which of those features would you want integrated into existing game engines?

Question Generated By JensenGPT

The Apple M4 lineup are all seriously impressive little SOCs, especially considering the power consumption. The "cheapest" base M4 tends to consistently beat even Lunar Lake and Strix in single core workloads by a pretty significant margin, while losing to Strix in multi-core workloads. The GPU isn't as good as Strix or Lunar Lake, but the higher-tier models in the M4 lineup take care of that. My question to Bryan is: Apple now has their very capable chips in hundreds of millions of devices. iOS has a thriving mobile game market, obviously, but what would it take for Apple as a whole to be taken seriously as a main player in the same gaming market as Nintendo, PlayStation, or Windows PCs? Are there certain policies and software issues Apple needs to work through in order to make things easier for game devs? Is it an issue with AAA gaming having a pretty small addressable market on Apple devices at this time? Are there any hardware quirks that need fixing? Maybe a mix of all of these? It would be really interesting to hear your take.

MultiNati

Hey Tom and Bryan. What do you think of gamers (Including myself) have a souring opinion on Unreal Engine 5? It feels like whether the game is truly optimized or not, every Unreal Engine 5 games has performance issues while it doesn’t look that much better than Unreal Engine 4 or last generation games. The only UE5 game that truly impressed me was Black Myth Wukong and even still I feel like the game will retain 95% of its beauty in an older engine because it has an impressive art style.

MelodicArmor

Welcome back Bryan! This will be a long thought; I ask forgiveness in advance. The launch of Strix Point was exciting to experience as someone who works in the retail space. Strix Halo is looking even more exciting and I am seeing the hype among OEM's increase with time. These mega APU's are just checking so many boxes that OEM's and System Integrators have been missing for a long time. 1) It has effectively reset the overall market for both Laptop and MiniPC. (I am sure Medusa Ridge will change desktop in a similar manner.) The point of entry, regardless of the task, is more accessible because of the price/performance these mega APU's bring. 2) OEM's now have range of chips they can buy for almost every niche on the market. They range from low power- low end performance Hawk Point all the way up to Strix Halo. Long term this means it is easier to price the final product in a way that is profitable for both the OEM and the end user. 3) It means in a similar way to consoles this would make it easier to develop for PC as these systems have way less variables in their configurations compared to traditional desktops. That all said: how do you think most developers and software designers feel about the emergence of this new mega APU market?

CompressedAIBlocks

Hello Tom and welcome back Bryan. Why do you think people are so in love with UE5? I get it *can* look fantastic, but I'd argue it almost never does. It's an overly post processed TAA riddled mess with performance issues more often than not. I see that people are now finally calling out UE5 (and 4 somewhat) for these issues such as shader compilation or general poor performance, but this isn't new for UE. I've personally never been a fan of UE, and ever since I have personally be messing around with it (UE2) and playing games with it (UE1) it has *always* had wonky performance or issues with streaming or assets themselves. Where do you think this all encompassing love comes from? Is it because it's the de facto big third party engine at this point or just all the lovely bullshots/tech demos/trailers we get which generally do not convey how the title actually looks?

CompressedAIBlocks

Hey guys. Blackwell has been pretty underwhelming overall, and I think has had some recurring issues that Nvidia has failed to address for generations now (drivers at launch and power connector issues), but it also seems some new PCIe based issues as well. It seems these issues do get brought up and presented to tech users from Debauer and such but they never really seem to gain traction in the mainstream. Why do you guys think people give Nvidia such a pass but if AMD did this it would be the end of PC gaming as we know it?

Planet 9

Hi Bryan, Since we last heard from you the Nintendo Switch 2 has been officially shown, any thoughts?

PostRetroism

How do high GPU prices affect graphical ambition when designing games? Since many people are gaming on older cards it seems we've seen less graphicly intensive games (pixel art, non-realistic art) become more popular than ever. Do developers now target the most common cards to hit more of the gamer market? Are AAA games shooting themselves in the foot when they require higher-end gpus? (And how do console gpus compare to pc gpus, since consoles are a big target market)

CompressedAIBlocks

Do you guys think that the 60/70 class tier of cards are getting worse or better relative to high end compared to previous generations? I feel 60 class is underwhelming now personally. Are these still the targets for a majority of game developers?

Marc Thibault

Hi Tom and Bryan. Bryan, as an artist, how do you feel about frame gen, what a lot of people call fake frames? And, as a developer, what do you think about upscaling technology? Is game optimization dead?

Chris Rijk

A common complaint is that developers are skimping on performance optimization to save time or money. Would doing this save a lot in practice though? Can you give any rough estimates?

Chris Rijk

UE5 seems to be getting a lot of hate lately but do you see any realistic alternatives for AAA developers? How much of the UE5 criticism do you consider to be fair?

Chris Rijk

DirectX 12 is nearly 10 years old now. What is your overall opinion of it? Do we need next-generation APIs? If so, what needs improving the most?

Chris Rijk

For new games, how much work goes into developing new methods for generating graphics or for optimising existing methods? Have you recently seen any exciting improvements in the industry in general? How much room for improvement do you see there being in optimising existing algorithms, either at a high level or low level?