AMD signs up 40 development studios for Mantle

[adolf hamster]

good news, tbh i'm not fussed if mantle takes off per say, if it forces microsoft's hand with dx12 to beat them then we still profit and it will have done it's job of making our lives better anyway.

glad to see it taking off all the same, i'll run it until such times as anything better turns up

 

[LtMatt]

good news, tbh i'm not fussed if mantle takes off per say, if it forces microsoft's hand with dx12 to beat them then we still profit and it will have done it's job of making our lives better anyway.

glad to see it taking off all the same, i'll run it until such times as anything better turns up

That's pretty much how i look at it. If DX12 is better then ill stop using Mantle and use that. If DX is the same or worse then assuming Mantle keeps going ill use that and if not, ill fall back to DX12.

 

[Frenzy]

In this thread - maximum baiting.

This should be someones name.

 

[PhysicsMan94]

That's pretty much how i look at it. If DX12 is better then ill stop using Mantle and use that. If DX is the same or worse then assuming Mantle keeps going ill use that and if not, ill fall back to DX12.

I'm very interested to find out what solutions Microsoft have come up with (along with Nvidia and AMD) in increasing low level optimisation for DirectX, as I've said before the whole trouble with DX is coding the API to give good performance for a huge range of hardware configurations, that's why it (at the moment, at least) cannot give excellent performance on any specific hardware set up.

So, with that being said, I doubt DirectX 12 will give performance greater than or equal to Mantle for AMD users. However, one must remember that performance is never just about frames per second, there are a whole plethora of other factors at play in visual computing and the entire process of "calculating" the objects in a frame in the first place to finally displaying it to your monitor is highly non-trivial. Therefore, DX12 could be dealing with many different parts of the rendering pipeline to give great performance whilst not boosting the actual fps numbers by much. But that's just my speculation, and we should (I hope) find out more within the coming months.

 

[layte]

Digital Foundry spoke to the developers of Trials Fusion. The subject of OpenGL/DX/Mantle was raised:

Digital Foundry: Mantle, DirectX 12 - things are changing radically in the PC space. Are we essentially looking at PC finally catching up with innovations in the console space? Can PC sustain two, three (OpenGL) APIs?

Sebastian Aaltonen: Currently OpenGL is the most feature-rich graphics API on PC. OpenGL 4.4 exposes most of the new hardware features of AMD GCN and Nvidia Kepler GPUs that are not yet exposed in DirectX 11. Features such as indirect multi draw call, bindless resources and sparse textures are very important for us in the future.

DirectX 12 is expected to expose pretty much the same GPU features as OpenGL 4.4 does, while reducing the draw call overhead near to Mantle level. Add solid driver support and cross-vendor GPU support (Nvidia, AMD and Intel are all backing DirectX 12) and the other options are not looking that interesting anymore.

OpenGL 4.4 still remains a solid choice if you need to support older operating systems, and makes porting to new platforms such as Steam Machines easier. It's definitely going to be an interesting battle, but there are still too many unknowns to predict the result yet.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-trials-fusion-tech-interview

 

[tommybhoy]

So, with that being said, I doubt DirectX 12 will give performance greater than or equal to Mantle for AMD users. However, one must remember that performance is never just about frames per second, there are a whole plethora of other factors at play in visual computing and the entire process of "calculating" the objects in a frame in the first place to finally displaying it to your monitor is highly non-trivial. Therefore, DX12 could be dealing with many different parts of the rendering pipeline to give great performance whilst not boosting the actual fps numbers by much. But that's just my speculation, and we should (I hope) find out more within the coming months.

You have just described what Mantle is producing, it's not just all about the fps, frame output to screen is better than DX, hopefully MS can emulate the same for DX12, hell, better it and they are on to a win, win, win.

If DX12 is better then ill stop using Mantle and use that. If DX is the same or worse then assuming Mantle keeps going ill use that and if not, ill fall back to DX12.

That's on the money matt.

 

[drunkenmaster]

Mantle will almost certainly be ported to Linux, DX12 won't.

This is DX12's biggest problem, the locked in nature means that it would be less overall effort to support openGL or Mantle as it would work on Windows and linux, and more versions of windows as well laughably. Due to MS's DX on newer versions of windows thing it's likely Mantle/opengl could easily be made to support the latest features on millions more Windows computers than DX12.

However, feature parity graphically isn't everything. Ease to code for is important, if openGL code is harder to utilise the same features than feature parity isn't that important. Another major feature is the time it takes for openGL to support new features, it has historically lagged behind quite significantly while Mantle would most likely be the most up to date API in the industry.

Another factor is that Mantle has in it's design considered code portability from console to mantle/pc, and it has also included significant debugging, validation and other tools that DX lacks.

There is much more to an API than which graphical effects/features it supports. There there is the simple performance aspect that Mantle beats openGL in.

Overall the biggest thing we need is for game devs to have control. DX's current problem really isn't the hardware abstraction, we've already been told by multiple sources that Mantle is fairly abstract, the big features are things like DX currently managing memory rather than letting the game engine do it. To try new things and bring new features to games, dev's need more control and don't want a potentially 5 year old API controlling it. Again where Mantle and DX will have the beating of openGL.

I don't think as of today linux/steamos support means an awful lot. but in 2 years, when Steamos potentially(assuming support doesn't die off in the next 6 months when no one really uses it) has a back catalogue of a couple years of newer AAA titles, then maybe it will be a much stronger alternative to windows.

We also don't know where WIndows is going in the future, there has been suggestions of a subscription model. Windows 10 could be god awful and DX13 might only support it, or it may be great but cost £10 a month to use Windows 10, where SteamOS could be free, as fast/faster and errm, free.

 

[PhysicsMan94]

Another major feature is the time it takes for openGL to support new features, it has historically lagged behind quite significantly while Mantle would most likely be the most up to date API in the industry.

That's quite an assumption to be making considering it was only launched a couple of months ago, do you have any sort of justification to back this up?

 

[shankly1985]

Source
http://semiaccurate.com/2014/05/01/amd-begins-private-mantle-sdk-beta/

Bring on the mantle recording and tweaking software

 

[mmj_uk]

Considering that OpenGL are a consortium and Mantle will be dictated by AMD it wouldn't be surprising if Mantle was updated faster. An API controlled by a consortium is much better for the industry as a whole though.

 

[LtMatt]

Bring on the mantle recording and tweaking software

Good point. I hope it will mean Afterburner OSD support. That would be mint.

 

[ICDP]

I love how people champion OpenGL even though the list of recent AAA titles that use it is shorter than the number of current Mantle games. I'm all for a decent API that is not locked down to any one vendor, but unfortunately it isn't OpenGl.

For now Mantle is at least getting support and is clearly gaining support. When DX12 comes out I will be ready for it. In the meantime I have the option of DX11 or Mantle.

 

[Boomstick777]

Sometimes old Broomstick brings it on himself. All those things Humbug mentioned he's been guilty of going on about time and time again. Two wrongs don't make a right mind you.

Lets keep this about Mantle please folks...

So Mantle 1.0 is essentially finished, if that Semi Accurate article is correct. Interesting.

Ah shutupa your face Matt , Humbug's obsession with AMD has reached new heights, no one can say anything except AMD are amazing or that guy loses it.. Plus let's be honest your head is so far up the red teams bumholio that you don't even have a sense of humor anymore

I'm guilty of one thing and that's buying whatever is best. Right now that's Intel and Nvidia.

Oh for the old days when AMD had good products..

Under powered CPU's and GPU's that run hotter than the sun just don't cut it in my book..

Some of the non ref cards are ok though.

No doubt your mate DM will be along shortly with an almighty wall of text, defending AMD while quoting stock and someone trying to convince AMD doesn't need any new products, they can keep the current 32nm FX line going forever as it's good enough.

Meh, I need a holiday from this place I think lol. To serious here these days..

 

[drunkenmaster]

Boom, literally every post you make is...

"I love AMD< I want to buy the next great AMD product.....


but AMD are ******* **** in every way possible"

Your prefacing every single post on AMD with "I'd buy AMD" really doesn't make the trolling of everything AMD any less obvious you know. I think you may be the only person fooled by it.

Add to that the 295x2 is the coolest running stock cooled card from the AMD or Nvidia line up, and it's uses by far the most power and is one of the quietest cards around also. Meaning it is the single best cooled card of this generation by a mile. It's not AMD struggling to get their dual gpu card in to stores.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Under powered CPU's and GPU's that run hotter than the sun just don't cut it in my book..

Interesting you brought up the AMD CPU...I wonder how much of the reasons behind AMD having to take matter into their own hands to create Mantle is to do with the inefficiency of dx, and with M$ laid back chilling under the sun indirectly hurting the sales of their CPU.

Granted the AMD CPU still won't be able to compete with Intel in terms of raw power, but had dx been as efficient as Mantle, AMD would probably had been able to sell more CPUs, as desipite Intel CPU would would be pushing 100-120fps instead of 50-70fps, and AMD CPU would be pushing 60-80fps instead of 30-50fps; people who only got 60Hz 1920 res monitor that don't want to have to pay the premium for Intel and is happy with just 60fps would probably happy to go with AMD instead of Intel for saving some money, as the bottleneck would be with the single GPU graphic card instead of CPU anyway.

 

[AshenEdge]

They need to get as many on board as possible, spread the word. DX12 is a long way off so there is no competition for a while yet. I think the key thing will be the shared optimizations that can be shared between the consoles and the pc systems easily on Mantle. I guess that simplifies development and saves time so would encourage its usage. Also its gives them a chance to use something that will be similar to DX12 early, get some practice in.



They've already got some very big players.

EA/Dice/Frostbite
Square Enix
Crytek/Cryengine
Rebellion
Star Citizen
Xaviant Studios

I think we all have a lot to thank AMD for whatever card we upgrade to next they've certainly pushed the industry forward. A lot of the titles I'm looking forward to will have mantle support it seems, so I'll be very keen to see how this plays out

I think we're all on the same page, right??

 

[Phixsator]

Even though i switched to an i7 hotwell i did find my old fx-8350 more fun to play with in terms of overclocking, not hindered by horrible TIM and even though it swallowed a bit more power and was on 32 nm process i still got 1.1ghz OC out of it on a h100i(with horrible stock fans i might add). That puppy had more in it, maybe not much but still. My current i7 4770k seems to be stuck at 4,5 which is still 1ghz OC but i cannot go further due to the thing hitting 93 degrees and thats on on the same h100i with much better fans on it.

Just shows what difference TIM does or incase of the FX, soldering. So tempted to delid the ******* and set it free from its thermal bonds.

Btw i sold that old setup(Motherboard, cpu, cheap cpu cooler, old 1333mhz ram and an ancient 5850) for a collective price of 275 punds and bought my hotwell setup(Board,CPU, already had the ram) for 440 punds, so i only paid 165 punds for it.

 

[MrMarvelous]

Excellent news. Looks like Mantle won't be a fad after all.

 

[humbug]

Interesting you brought up the AMD CPU...I wonder how much of the reasons behind AMD having to take matter into their own hands to create Mantle is to do with the inefficiency of dx, and with M$ laid back chilling under the sun indirectly hurting the sales of their CPU.

Granted the AMD CPU still won't be able to compete with Intel in terms of raw power, but had dx been as efficient as Mantle, AMD would probably had been able to sell more CPUs, as desipite Intel CPU would would be pushing 100-120fps instead of 50-70fps, and AMD CPU would be pushing 60-80fps instead of 30-50fps; people who only got 60Hz 1920 res monitor that don't want to have to pay the premium for Intel and is happy with just 60fps would probably happy to go with AMD instead of Intel for saving some money, as the bottleneck would be with the single GPU graphic card instead of CPU anyway.

Here is the thing, with a 4 year old P-II x6 i get huge CPU bottlenecking in BF4, Thief and Star Swarm, i don't get any in Crysis 3 but that seems to be the odd one out in AAA games, I'm pretty sure Titan Fall would also choke off performance because of the CPU that i use in DirectX.

So whats the solution, spend £400 on an i7 setup and probably still end up with some bottlenecking even if its minimal.

Now Mantle removes all CPU Bottlenecking completely, my performance is no longer constrained by the CPU, but by the GPU.
If DX12 can deliver that then i'm with Matt, it would be fantastic.

This is my take on it, It is not the CPU thats the problem, it is DX11/DX9 ecte... DirectX only makes use of a fraction of the power the CPU has, the rest is simply waisted.

Even if my CPU is not as powerful as an Intel i7, and its not. it is none the less still a very powerful CPU in real terms.

For me there is no reason why in 2014 a very powerful 6 core CPU should be treated by Microsofts useless API like a 2001 Socket 478 Pentium 4 HT.
A huge chunk of the CPU's power, probably 80% is being ignored by Microsofts API.

Mantle has put a very big spot light on to DirectX and how crap it actually is, it has forced Microsoft to acknowledge the issue, if the result of that is a £100 CPU from AMD powering my R9 290 just as well as a £250 CPU from Intel then my congratulations to them for it. i know what i will do with the £150 i saved. Exactly what i did this time round, get the best GPU i can without having to worry about the CPU so much, hurray.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

Excellent news. Looks like Mantle won't be a fad after all.

Hopefully not, competition is a good thing. That said, let's wait 15-20 years before concluding it's not a fad!

Are these studios signed up exclusively for Mantle or will they use DX11/DX12 too?
I think that's what will decide which has been most successful, which one is supported by the most games.

Still I think that DX12 doing what Microsoft claim is actually better for Mantle in the long run than if DX12 fails. Partly because while games have to run on DX11 for the majority of users, they will overall still be constrained by the same things. Yes Mantle will probably give better FPS for most people (assuming developers get the VRAM usage under control and figure out how to implement crossfire) and may be able to offer a few extra shiny bits here and there. However I think if DX12 comes along and removes the CPU bottleneck it will allow developers to really push things and I think that's what we really need.

Still, even if DX12 removes the CPU bottleneck like Mantle does, that's not gonna stop me buying powerful CPUs or GPUs.