AMD MANTLE DEVELOPER VIDEO 44 mins

[GoogalyMoogaly]

I'm also wondering if the performance increase is the same across the board or if it varies based on the card model and generation.
Might 7870 cards and below get 20%, 7900 cards get 30% and R9 290X cards get 50% (with the R9 re-badges being closer to 40%)?
Or is 20% the best you'll get on a single card, 30% on 2-way crossfire, 40% on 3-way crossfire and 50% on 4-way crossfire?

 

[Orangey]

Where would you have them pull these performance video's from. It's an api for game developers to use to make games. There are no games currently finished using mantle so any performance numbers or video's would not be representative of the final dx or mantle versions (excluding bf4 dx version). I don't get why people can't just wait for it to be patched into bf4. It's a little like saying we have no performance figures for the 20nm gpu's so they must be crap. It's been said ever since they first talked about mantle that we would see what it can do in bf4 in december.

Well they must have it ready enough as the BF4 Mantle build will have been started months ago. They could have shown some small demos to illustrate the speed of the function library and draw call increase.

 

[Rroff]

All I'm saying is there is a lack of any solid information.
With all other techs the companies have brought out we have seen tech demos, graphs, proper figures etc. Even a quick real time sequence rendered in D3D and also in mantle so we can see the fps difference would be accepted. Hell, when a new graphics card comes out both AMD and Nvidia make a tech demo. Where is a tech demo for mantle showcasing the extra performance?

Mantle isn't about showcasing extra performance as such, yes there are performance gains there but its main goal is letting the designers go away and do their thing without them having to worry about performance constraints.

Not aimed at you but its wrong to look at mantle as a performance accelerator as if you could just take a random game plug in mantle and see say a 30% performance gain.

 

[melmac]

I'm not being negative because I own an Nvidia card.
I'm a gamer so anything that makes games better (mantle, physx, stress fx, g-sync) is a good thing.

All I'm saying is there is a lack of any solid information.
With all other techs the companies have brought out we have seen tech demos, graphs, proper figures etc. Even a quick real time sequence rendered in D3D and also in mantle so we can see the fps difference would be accepted. Hell, when a new graphics card comes out both AMD and Nvidia make a tech demo. Where is a tech demo for mantle showcasing the extra performance?

To me it looks like they have announced something but again are not delivering. The whole thing is behind a smoke screen. Surely if it was that good they'd be showcasing it & gaining sales off the back of it already

LOL, seriously, you have bashed mantle from the very start. Going on and on about the it been useless because it would be less than 5% performance increase because the overheads from Dx aren't that high.

Now you are bashing it again saying that mantle clearly isn't what it was hyped to be. What are you on about? Mantle isn't out yet. It's due for release this month or early next month.

And listen to what you are saying, You say about when a new graphic card is released there is a tech demo. Yes, but, see above, Mantle isn't released yet.

But, you must not have been following the AMD developers summit. Oxide did show a demo of mantle in action, they showed a huge space battle with several battleships shooting lasers at enemy fighters. This was all rendered in real time. It showed how an I7 4770K with directx was only getting 15K draw calls while an FX 8350 was able to get 100K drawcalls using mantle.

 

[melmac]

Well they must have it ready enough as the BF4 Mantle build will have been started months ago. They could have shown some small demos to illustrate the speed of the function library and draw call increase.

They did, at the developers conference. Look for mantle starswarm demo.

 

[oldestgregg]

Of course it isn't from your pov, your rocking Nvidia, there for zero hype.

The general amount of negativity from Nvidia users is astounding tbh, though it is to be expected as 'it's rubbish'(despite no evidence) because initially you can't have it without changing vendor.

That goes both ways in regards to PhysX, the amount of hate directed to the actual tech instead of its employment is quite pathetic tbph.

Never a truer word,tommy.

I prefer Nvidia but if the gains are as good as its rumoured to be I can see me making the jump no problem

 

[tommybhoy]

I'm not being negative because I own an Nvidia card.
I'm a gamer so anything that makes games better (mantle, physx, stress fx, g-sync) is a good thing.

Of course you are, it's plain to see your negativity in all the mantle threads.

All I'm saying is there is a lack of any solid information.
With all other techs the companies have brought out we have seen tech demos, graphs, proper figures etc. Even a quick real time sequence rendered in D3D and also in mantle so we can see the fps difference would be accepted. Hell, when a new graphics card comes out both AMD and Nvidia make a tech demo. Where is a tech demo for mantle showcasing the extra performance?

The only lack of solid information is the exact performance increase in Bf4, which AMD being AMD, they never reveal anything before it's ready, add to the fact it's Dice's title, they have zero control over when it's released.

It's an API, not a piece of hardware, what have they to do, throw resources behind making a demo running at 60fps and 80fps with mantle enabled for people to moan about and pick faults instead of concentrating bringing it to market?

To me it looks like they have announced something but again are not delivering. The whole thing is behind a smoke screen. Surely if it was that good they'd be showcasing it & gaining sales off the back of it already

They anounced Mantle would be introduced in BF4 mid December, how are they not delivering?

I also think the majority here are misunderstanding what Mantle is about, sure it's going to boost the high end faster than Nvidias high end in BF4, but it's not about that, it's mostly about cutting out the need for low/mid range GPUs when running an apu, this could create massive sales for Amd while eating away at Nvidias low/mid end range.

 

[Orangey]

They did, at the developers conference. Look for mantle starswarm demo.

I don't think they released any graphs or anything, it was just "look at this video".

 

[medseven]

Battlefield 4 will make Mantle look better than it actually is in my opinion. That game is seriously under optimized in Direct X to what it should be. I guess the extra time the team would have spent optimizing the Direct X build was sacrificed for the Mantle build.

So the difference we will see from an under-optimized Direct X build to a Mantle build will look better than from an optimized Direct X build.

However when it hits if I get to slide the Resolution Scaling bar in BF4, which currently sits at 120% along even further and still float around 60fps i'll be happy!

But saying BF4 will make it look better than it is isn't completely true. It's an API... so I guess how good it is all depends on the Programmers using it. It's also new so we can expect developers to get better with it over the years... if it lasts!

 

[TheRealDeal]

Battlefield 4 will make Mantle look better than it actually is in my opinion. That game is seriously under optimized in Direct X to what it should be. I guess the extra time the team would have spent optimizing the Direct X build was sacrificed for the Mantle build.

So the difference we will see from an under-optimized Direct X build to a Mantle build will look better than from an optimized Direct X build.

However when it hits if I get to slide the Resolution Scaling bar in BF4, which currently sits at 120% along even further and still float around 60fps i'll be happy!

But saying BF4 will make it look better than it is isn't completely true. It's an API... so I guess how good it is all depends on the Programmers using it. It's also new so we can expect developers to get better with it over the years... if it lasts!

This is not true. The performance in bf4 using dx is really good from what i can see. Granted the game is buggy but badly optimized i don't think so.

 

[no_1_dave]

This was all rendered in real time. It showed how an I7 4770K with directx was only getting 15K draw calls while an FX 8350 was able to get 100K drawcalls using mantle.

And how does that effect performance..?
An honest question here... I have never made a game or dabbled in programming.

What FPS gains are to be had from increasing the drawcalls from 15k to 100k?
Or is that just a number they can use because it's a big difference so people who don't know what it means will think it is a massive breakthrough and something they'll benefit from immediately? Because to me, it looks like a big number that is important to devs, but also that people who haven't got a clue will throw around as if it is something huge.

 

[Orangey]

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4853856/why-are-draw-calls-expensive

 

[andybird123]

And how does that effect performance..?
An honest question here... I have never made a game or dabbled in programming.

What FPS gains are to be had from increasing the drawcalls from 15k to 100k?
Or is that just a number they can use because it's a big difference so people who don't know what it means will think it is a massive breakthrough and something they'll benefit from immediately? Because to me, it looks like a big number that is important to devs, but also that people who haven't got a clue will throw around as if it is something huge.

this ^

it is basically just a big number, without the detail behind it it is meaningless

if I've understood this correctly;

that PS4 demo where they showed lots of cubes dropping was "30k draw calls"... the only reason it was 30k was because they deliberately did no optimisation and made each cube 1 draw call

with DX11 you can instance each object and just set the location and positioning (and scaling and colour and...), so effectively you could have all 30k cubes handled by a single draw call (this is how stuff like physx particles work and why you can have thousands or millions of particles on screen swirling about without massive performance hits)

now, if you actually did want to have 30k DIFFERENT cubes, then ps4 would win, however if you want 30k very similar cubes then doing each one as a single draw call is just poor optimisation

and there's things like directx command lists which allow you to batch draw calls together

without direct side by side comparisons of properly optimised DX code against mantle code, we have no idea what improvement it is going to give

the worry is that it becomes a band aid for devs who can't be bothered to do any proper DX optimisation

 

[melmac]

I don't think they released any graphs or anything, it was just "look at this video".

I thought they down clocked an Fx-8350 to 2Ghz to show that there was no bottleneck. I also thought they compared it to I7 4770k and the demo ran 3-4 times faster on mantle system.

 

[Rroff]

the worry is that it becomes a band aid for devs who can't be bothered to do any proper DX optimisation

Its one of the things I dislike about it (Mantle) as drawcall limitations is one of the first major hurdles an inexperienced developer runs into and it quickly seperates the wheat from the chaff - those devs who do sloppy coding and lack the ability to innovate or come up with creative solutions, etc. from those for who its actually a passion and can push tech to the limits.

 

[FrenchTart]

Its one of the things I dislike about it (Mantle) as drawcall limitations is one of the first major hurdles an inexperienced developer runs into and it quickly seperates the wheat from the chaff - those devs who do sloppy coding and lack the ability to innovate or come up with creative solutions, etc. from those for who its actually a passion and can push tech to the limits.

I don't think that's a great attitude to have. Sure, you don't want to end up with devs without an understanding of what they're doing but you also shouldn't hold back tools to make their lives easier.

Wherever the line is drawn in the sand you will always have those that have the desire and ability to become good at what they do and those that don't. Don't make everyone's lives harder just because you'll have to learn where the new line is.

 

[Orangey]

Its one of the things I dislike about it (Mantle) as drawcall limitations is one of the first major hurdles an inexperienced developer runs into and it quickly seperates the wheat from the chaff - those devs who do sloppy coding and lack the ability to innovate or come up with creative solutions, etc. from those for who its actually a passion and can push tech to the limits.

That's actually the opposite of what you would expect to happen... the Mantle driver forces devs to do a lot of fine-tuning that for 10 years or so hasn't been strictly necessary. Focusing on drawcalls is a distraction from what Mantle provides as a whole.

 

[murah]

CAPITALS ARE NEEDED TO STRESS THE IMPORTANCE OF MANTLE , Thread capitals are not.

 

[SiDeards73]

From what i understand, Mantle basically puts the majority of Gfx related code directly to the GPU to compute, and leaves the CPU to do other bits.

With DX you are limited by CPU first, CPU processor can do say 1000 tasks in a second (making these numbers up) GPU can process 800 in a second, GPU is the bottleneck.

CPU can do 1000 tasks, GPU can do 2000 tasks, CPU is the bottleneck.

Mantle removes this by placing all of those tasks purely onto the GPU, leaving the CPU minimal amounts of tasks to do, say 100 tasks and 900 for the GPU to do. So you are left with a ton of processor power while the GPU does its thing. So if you have 8 cores, you can effectively code to have all 8 in use, if 4 then 4 in use etc.

This is only the case if the Game is coded to use Mantle... if its not then its business as usual

The worrying thing about it all is this, will Devs become lazy and just push out stuff like we have now knowing Mantle is making their job of hitting fps targets etc a lot easier, and leaving CPUs undertaxed? i hope not, i hope the Devs suddenly realise how much power they now have extra to play with and we start seeing really innovative and new things in our games.

 

[EdgeDs]

Amd do like to keep people waiting If its not for 3rd party coolers its mantle lol