A Closer Look At Mantle and EQAA In Civilization

[Rroff]

DirectX gets its SLI / CF settings from the CP, and games have practically no control over that as far as I know. With Mantle, it's up to the developer to include multi-GPU support, and the user can't force anything.

That is a far more complex subject - as per the rest of my post below that can be very useful for some of the bigger studios but most developers using off the shelf/middleware probably won't have the resources to implement something like that and still need to rely on driver level support.

The problem with forcing SFR is if the game isn't optimized to use this method you get some very bad glitches. Its highly recommend you never use SFR unless the game is made to use it.

Yeah if stuff is being referenced inta-frame or even inter-frame for post processing, etc. it can go very bad if the game doesn't know how to handle that.

 

[andybird123]

Rroff, Techreport (and AMD) had this to say on SFR. Might be worth checking out pcper too for their opinion on it.

Oh good, more hyperbole based on no actual direct or objective testing

 

[Orangey]

Oh good, more hyperbole based on no actual direct or objective testing

Nowhere near as bad as the "970/980 are teh bestest evar" thread.

 

[humbug]

A good read Matt.

Its encouraging to see developers making use of a non linear development technology now that they have it, only good things can come from an API that has fewer boundaries on what can be done with it.

But i am surprised to see so much scepticism by armchair experts when real experts do something with it that ultimately benefits those in that armchair in the long and short run.

 

[Gregster]

The thing that happens in Civ games is waiting for your turn. When you play a huge map and late in the game, you can be waiting a chunk of time for your turn. This has always been the way and the CPU is vital for limiting that time. I appreciate that AMD have jumped on board with Firaxis (or vice versa) and would be interested in how they have improved this factor over other Civ games. People are getting hung up on frame rates and frame times but truth is, the frame rates are pretty pointless and the calculation times are the most important aspect as I see it.

 

[SiDeards73]

The thing that happens in Civ games is waiting for your turn. When you play a huge map and late in the game, you can be waiting a chunk of time for your turn. This has always been the way and the CPU is vital for limiting that time. I appreciate that AMD have jumped on board with Firaxis (or vice versa) and would be interested in how they have improved this factor over other Civ games. People are getting hung up on frame rates and frame times but truth is, the frame rates are pretty pointless and the calculation times are the most important aspect as I see it.

Quoted for truth, as much as i love mantle, fps in this type of game is kinda irrelevant really, in something like Rome total War etc i can see it being useful as you can have a lot of battles with large amounts of units on screen at once. But in a CIV type game i really dont see why you need Mantle.

 

[Orangey]

TBH every huge game I play always gets corrupted before I can finish it.

 

[LtMatt]

Currently the best driver to use for Civilization Beyond Earth with Mantle is 14.9.1, that is until 14.9.2 driver hits.

 

[humbug]

Quoted for truth, as much as i love mantle, fps in this type of game is kinda irrelevant really, in something like Rome total War etc i can see it being useful as you can have a lot of battles with large amounts of units on screen at once. But in a CIV type game i really dont see why you need Mantle.

The reason you get long hangups in Civ5 is because of CPU rendering time, Mantle typically improves CPU batching greatly, so should reduce your waiting on the CPU.

Mantle in its self has nothing to do with increasing FPS. that is simply the end result in games that rely heavily on the CPU and its performance being improved through the Mantle API, its a matter of cause and effect, its not a feature.

 

[andybird123]

The reason you get long hangups in Civ5 is because of CPU rendering time, Mantle typically improves CPU batching greatly, so should reduce your waiting on the CPU.

Mantle in its self has nothing to do with increasing FPS. that is simply the end result in games that rely heavily on the CPU and its performance being improved through the Mantle API, its a matter of cause and effect, its not a feature.

erm, no, you get long hang ups when the CPU has to deal with all the AI interactions BETWEEN rounds, it has nothing to do with rendering

what were you saying about armchair experts?

 

[Martini1991]

I can't believe what I'm seeing.

 

[David Bisset]

andybird - you also get significant issues in civ 5 during your own turn when, say, scrolling around as the benchmark for the new game does once into the super-late game.

 

[Silent_Scone]

AF makes a MASSIVE difference that anyone can see, EQAA on the other hand? 99% of people wouldn't be able to see the difference between MSAA and MSAA+EQAA.

A lot of fuss kicked up about

1. Something that's old
2. Something people see
3. Something that 99% of people don't care about
4. Something that's still not better then Edge Detect.

Said like a true cynic. But it's completely the truth. A lot of look at me look at me and then basically just lighting your own farts. I suggest people do some background reading on split frame rendering before reading any of this garbage

 

[andybird123]

andybird - you also get significant issues in civ 5 during your own turn when, say, scrolling around as the benchmark for the new game does once into the super-late game.

humbug quotes from a chain starting with Gregster talking about round change over hanging, I was referring humbug back to that as that was the topic being discussed

I only ever had frame rate / hanging issues with Civ5 on my laptop if zoomed out really far, can't think I ever had it on my desktop though admittedly I played it mostly on my laptop

 

[Rroff]

Rroff, Techreport (and AMD) had this to say on SFR. Might be worth checking out pcper too for their opinion on it.

Letting developers feed the multi GPU queue with their own best optimised data is a nice option to have especially for developers who are producing their game from the ground up. AMD should really have distanced what they are doing there from SFR though as it sounds like they are trying to talk up a very old technique as if its a new discovery when the important bit is the evolution of how the pipeline between the game data and the (multi) GPUs works.

Some of the examples though in that quote are badly best case scenarios that rarely work out that way ingame due to the varied nature of what is on screen.

 

[humbug]

erm, no, you get long hang ups when the CPU has to deal with all the AI interactions BETWEEN rounds, it has nothing to do with rendering

what were you saying about armchair experts?

It depends if rendering and calculation demands are made on the CPU through the API, be that as it may Mantle may help to free up the CPU for AI calculations, which may increase the speed.

We wont know until that is put to the test, that should be fairly simple to so.

humbug quotes from a chain starting with Gregster talking about round change over hanging, I was referring humbug back to that as that was the topic being discussed

I only ever had frame rate / hanging issues with Civ5 on my laptop if zoomed out really far, can't think I ever had it on my desktop though admittedly I played it mostly on my laptop

I think there is s a video somewhere from the Civ Developers talking about this and how Mantle improves it.

Edit, yes, i remember now. i think its in the AMD GPU 30 event

 

[David Bisset]

humbug quotes from a chain starting with Gregster talking about round change over hanging, I was referring humbug back to that as that was the topic being discussed

I only ever had frame rate / hanging issues with Civ5 on my laptop if zoomed out really far, can't think I ever had it on my desktop though admittedly I played it mostly on my laptop

Aye, being zoomed out is the only time I've had issues, but then I actually got kinda bored (shh, I might get lynched in here) so didn't spend much time in the super late game.

I hadn't read humbugs post so if it was talking about AI turns only then my apologies.

 

[LtMatt]

Letting developers feed the multi GPU queue with their own best optimised data is a nice option to have especially for developers who are producing their game from the ground up. AMD should really have distanced what they are doing there from SFR though as it sounds like they are trying to talk up a very old technique as if its a new discovery when the important bit is the evolution of how the pipeline between the game data and the (multi) GPUs works.

Some of the examples though in that quote are badly best case scenarios that rarely work out that way ingame due to the varied nature of what is on screen.

Pcper conducted some frame variance testing of Mantle SFR vs the competition. In terms of variance and smoothness it was completely one sided in the favour of Mantle. However Mantle produced lower average fps as the focus was on providing the ultimate, smooth gaming experience.

 

[shankly1985]

Pcper conducted some frame variance testing of Mantle SFR vs the competition. In terms of variance and smoothness it was completely one sided in the favour of Mantle. However Mantle produced lower average fps as the focus was on providing the ultimate, smooth gaming experience.

This..
And this is why in the past I have said frame rate isn't everything when comparing Mantle vs DX

Like I have seen people say DX11 70fps avg and Mantle 67fps avg
DX is better etc, etc

There not taking into account what Mantle brings to games in terms of Frame latency and smoothness.

Mantle just offers the gamer much better experience and the sooner people understand that the better.

 

[Rroff]

This..
And this is why in the past I have said frame rate isn't everything when comparing Mantle vs DX

Like I have seen people say DX11 70fps avg and Mantle 67fps avg
DX is better etc, etc

There not taking into account what Mantle brings to games in terms of Frame latency and smoothness.

Mantle just offers the gamer much better experience and the sooner people understand that the better.

Oh but now we have gsync *runs*