Hate leads to the dark side, but AMD's Fury leads to a free game

By Jon Martindale Published November 17, 2015

Star Wars Battlefront — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Giving games away with graphics cards is far from a new promotional idea, but it is a smart one. Giving new GPU buyers a brand new game to play right off of the bat that showcases the power of the graphics card is a great way to make a person feel like their multi-hundred-dollar purchase was worth it.

So, guess what AMD and EA have done this holiday season?

Recommended Videos

Yes, if you buy yourself one of the new R9 Fury graphics cards from AMD – not the Nano or Fury X – or a system from one of its partner companies with the corresponding GPU inside, you are eligible to receive a free copy of the newly released Star Wars: Battlefront.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming

The promotion, which doesn’t have a specific name, begins today, and is available to all fans of the game based in the U.S. and E.U., though it doesn’t appear to be supported by territories outside of those regions.

It will run from November 17 through January 31 2016, so there is plenty of time to take part. Indeed it may be worth waiting till after Christmas, as AMD may introduce price drops as more news of Nvidia’s next-generation Pascal GPUs begins to surface.

This promotion is just the latest in a long line of bundles from AMD. Currently, it offers a “Radeon Rewards” system that lets players choose between one and three free games out of a selection of over thirty titles offered on the company’s website.

While our Battlefront review didn’t praise it as the best shooter ever, it has a lot of nostalgia value for those that were fans of the original mid-00s Battlefront, and it goes a long way to capturing the epic scale of the movies’ battle scenes.

Topics

Evergreen writer

Jon Martindale is a freelance evergreen writer and occasional section coordinator, covering how to guides, best-of lists, and…

Computing

AMD AI rises as its gaming plummets

A hand holding AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X.

AMD has reported its Q2 2024 financial results, and they present an interesting narrative of successes and challenges. The company’s gaming hardware, however, is continuing to experience a substantial decline.

Despite an overall 9% year-over-year revenue increase for AMD, the gaming graphics division plummeted by a staggering 59% in the second quarter of 2024, a clear indicator of the difficulties the company is encountering in this highly competitive market.

Computing

AMD might miss the big upgrade for next-gen gaming laptops

The AMD Ryzen CPU and Radeon GPU stickers on the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 2022 laptop.

AMD's upcoming Zen 5-based Fire Range CPUs have finally broken cover, and we learned an interesting detail about the upcoming CPUs designed for gaming laptops. The CPUs are said to use the same FL1 packaging as Ryzen 7040HX CPUs, known as Dragon Range, according to a reputable leaker on the Weibo forums.

Pin-to-pin compatibility has been a big deal for AMD, not only for wider adoption in desktops, but also for easier upgrades in laptops. Although this is just a rumor, it certainly fits within AMD's strategy for gaming laptops. The problem is that AMD can ship these CPUs too quickly, and potentially miss out on the big GPU upgrade we expect to see in gaming laptops next year with RTX 50-series GPUs.

Computing

AMD just launched a free tool all serious PC gamers should have

A screenshot of Frame Latency Meter running on top of a game render.

AMD has just unveiled Frame Latency Meter (FLM), an open-source Windows utility designed to measure the response time of games based on mouse movements. FLM measures the time it takes for a mouse movement to translate into a new frame on the screen, providing insights into system performance.

This tool is particularly aimed at advanced gamers, power users, and game developers who are keen on optimizing whole-system latency or reducing input lag. If you're new to frame latency measurements, they are commonly used online to approximate input lag by measuring button-to-pixel latency.