AMD Radeon R9 290X with Hawaii GPU pictured, has 512-bit 4GB Memory

Orangey · 19 Oct 2013 at 22:24

Almost 200 pages, will be sorry to see this thread go.

Uncle Petey · 19 Oct 2013 at 22:47

Kaapstad said:
The thing is if you are not going to go all in at 4K you may as well save your money and use a 1600p monitor.

Not maxing out a 4k monitor is a bit like doing the shopping in a Ferrari.

I don't agree with that mate

What's the point of running a massive resolution if you still need to max out AA?

Kaapstad · 19 Oct 2013 at 22:56

Uncle Petey said:
I don't agree with that mate
What's the point of running a massive resolution if you still need to max out AA?

A 1600p monitor is 30" and a 4k monitor is 32" so there is not much difference in physical size. If you are going to turn the settings down on the 4k monitor you may as well go for the 1600p monitor with the settings turned up.

Uncle Petey · 19 Oct 2013 at 23:13

So you reckon no AA @2160p is equivalent to 4xAA (or higher) @1600p on a similarly sized screen with no real perceivable difference?

Rusty0611 · 19 Oct 2013 at 23:17

humbug said:
I didn't, its not, your trying to provoke me again... its not working.

/

humbug · 20 Oct 2013 at 00:10

Orangey said:
Almost 200 pages, will be sorry to see this thread go.

I don't get that?

oldestgregg · 20 Oct 2013 at 00:59

Gregster said:
Well going from my screenies earlier, I can't tell the bloody difference and at 4K, it should be even harder. SSAO looked the same as HBAO, which looks the same as 0 MSAA

Most games I have tried ssao looks a lot worse than hbao. For me it looks a bit washed out compared to hbao. I will say that at 1400p,aa x2 does me though and high levels of aa just are not needed so I would imagine 4k needing very little as well

no_1_dave · 20 Oct 2013 at 01:30

Steampunk said:
You've missed the point of Mantle completely. Instead of burning huge amounts of a system's CPU/GPU power "pushing through" the inefficiency of DX, you can use that power to run better graphics. You also benefit low end systems. There is never enough rendering power on any system, more can always be used. Freeing up power used for DX is one way of increasing what's available for the game.

That inefficiency overhead is why a £1500 PC isn't doing much better than a £300 console.

We are not talking about draining "huge amounts of CPU power" to deal with DX overhead.
Most games only use about 20% of my CPU and that is running the game + Steam + Chrome + everything else + DX overhead.
Removing this DX overhead is going to make almost no impact to actual in game FPS performance. maybe 61fps instead of 60fps.

Time will tell but if you expect mantle to make a bigger difference then 1 or 2 fps I think you'll be wrong. It'll be about the same benefit you'd get from closing the internet or any other standard background app. DX overhead is hardly anything for any modern system to deal with.

tommybhoy · 20 Oct 2013 at 02:33

GoogalyMoogaly said:
what games did Nvidia pay to sabotage AMD performance on and how do we know about it (I'm assuming the developers of the game released some official statement or something)?

No, they got rumbled every time, lawyers have even been involved. :eek:

AC-DX10.1 patch was patched out as it handed AMD an advantage when Nvidia couldn't support 10.1.

http://www.tgdaily.com/games/37326-ubisoft-caught-in-a-little-assassin’s-creed-scandal

BAA retail- AA was blocked from running on AMD when it worked on the demo.

http://www.techpowerup.com/104868/b...nables-aa-only-on-nvidia-hardware-on-pcs.html

Crysis 2- tesselated water covering the whole map/massive concrete blocks were heavily tesselated giving Fermi a clear advantage.

http://techreport.com/review/21404/crysis-2-tessellation-too-much-of-a-good-thing/3

Rroff · 20 Oct 2013 at 02:44

tommybhoy said:
BAA retail- AA was blocked from running on AMD when it worked on the demo.

http://www.techpowerup.com/104868/b...nables-aa-only-on-nvidia-hardware-on-pcs.html

This one annoys me as everyone says "AMD cards were blocked" which isn't actually accurate.

As I've said before the code didn't do

if renderer=AMD don't do AA

but if renderer != nvidia don't do NVAA

Its a subtle difference but it totally shifts the story to those who actually understand it. There are further complications to the story but mostly only complications due to most people not understanding the technical nature of it.

As AMD never actually even bothered to try and implement their own path when (apparently) given the opportunity to do so and hence we will never know for sure if nVidia would have actually blocked their code being implemented at best this is a poor show by both not something you can pin solely on nVidia.

melmac · 20 Oct 2013 at 02:46

no_1_dave said:
We are not talking about draining "huge amounts of CPU power" to deal with DX overhead.
Most games only use about 20% of my CPU and that is running the game + Steam + Chrome + everything else + DX overhead.
Removing this DX overhead is going to make almost no impact to actual in game FPS performance. maybe 61fps instead of 60fps.

Time will tell but if you expect mantle to make a bigger difference then 1 or 2 fps I think you'll be wrong. It'll be about the same benefit you'd get from closing the internet or any other standard background app. DX overhead is hardly anything for any modern system to deal with.

So wrong!! You have missed the whole point of mantle. If it works the way its supposed to it should make a substantial difference to frame rates.

It is nothing like turning off a standard background app. If you think that, then you really haven't read anything about mantle. For a start mantle is a low level Api that's going to allow games much more direct access to hardware.

You are also wrong about the DX overhead. Its to do with draw calls, a high gpu can process way more draw calls than a high end CPU can send using directx. This causes problems. There are stop gap solutions for this but they cause errors. Because mantle is a low level api, it allows the cpu to send way more draw calls, i think the figure quoted was 9 times the amount directx can send.

And if its true, that mantle for pc is really a version of the low level api in the xbone, think about what will mean for game developers!! We will find out more in november when they go into more detail.

Rroff · 20 Oct 2013 at 02:52

melmac said:
So wrong!! You have missed the whole point of mantle. If it works the way its supposed to it should make a substantial difference to frame rates.

It is nothing like turning off a standard background app. If you think that, then you really haven't read anything about mantle. For a start mantle is a low level Api that's going to allow games much more direct access to hardware.

You are also wrong about the DX overhead. Its to do with draw calls, a high gpu can process way more draw calls than a high end CPU can send using directx. This causes problems. There are stop gap solutions for this but they cause errors. Because mantle is a low level api, it allows the cpu to send way more draw calls, i think the figure quoted was 9 times the amount directx can send.

And if its true, that mantle for pc is really a version of the low level api in the xbone, think about what will mean for game developers!! We will find out more in november when they go into more detail.

Indeed - due to the nature of the overheads with draw calls ostensibly even brute force CPU power doesn't push through that limit I won't deny that Mantle is a potential answer to a very real problem but I'm not convinced its the right solution - I'm also not a big fan of magically removing the draw call issue as its one of the first issues to really test the ingenuity of a game developer and quickly seperates the wheat from the chaff so to speak.

bru · 20 Oct 2013 at 03:36

melmac said:
And if its true, that mantle for pc is really a version of the low level api in the xbone, think about what will mean for game developers!! We will find out more in november when they go into more detail.

Microsoft have said that mantle is not in the Xbox one

Finally, in an unexpected move, Microsoft also used the blog to quickly address the subject of AMD’s Mantle API, specifically saying that the Xbox One doesn’t support it nor OpenGL. The fact that Mantle isn’t supported comes as no surprise – Xbox One already has its own low level constructs versus the still in development Mantle – but we weren’t expecting Microsoft to comment on the matter since they aren’t involved in the development of Mantle.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7420/microsoft-comments-on-state-of-direct3d-mantle-support-names-xbox-one-api-direct3d-11x

melmac · 20 Oct 2013 at 04:49

bru said:
Microsoft have said that mantle is not in the Xbox one

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7420/microsoft-comments-on-state-of-direct3d-mantle-support-names-xbox-one-api-direct3d-11x

I never said mantle was in the xbox one? Mantle is PC only. What i did say was that mantle is rumoured to be a version of the xbox api. And is that so hard to believe? I mean AMD would have to have been heavily involved in the development of the xbox one.

And microsoft's statement isn't really a surprise either. Mantle is designed for PC use. But will it be any if surprise if mantle and xbone's api turns out to very similar?

Don't you think its a remarkable coincidence that AMD get roughly the same hardware into both consoles and is now releasing a new low level api? Personally i will be amazed if the Api's aren't alike. Cant wait until November to find out!!

Huggie86 · 20 Oct 2013 at 07:53

It seems a double edged sword though all this mantle talk, the last thing the market needs is more segregation. If mantle ends up being as good as AMD talk up then what are the options for Nvidia? Will they then go on a spree to make their own api to compete while making it even more confusing or just use the brute force method with better / faster cards from the offset.

Phixsator · 20 Oct 2013 at 09:02

Huggie86 said:
It seems a double edged sword though all this mantle talk, the last thing the market needs is more segregation. If mantle ends up being as good as AMD talk up then what are the options for Nvidia? Will they then go on a spree to make their own api to compete while making it even more confusing or just use the brute force method with better / faster cards from the offset.

nvidia already have their own API and while it is not the same low level api as Mantle is it shouldnt be to hard to expand on it if they decided to. So no there wont be any more APIs than what we have now.

At the nVidia event the EpicGames guy on stage didnt want Mantle and said that he wasnt interested in 5 APIs(just a random number he threw out) yet back in the day with unreal 1 engine he supported Glide, OpenGL, DirectX, Software, 2 types of MeTAL and if i recall correctly one more.

If NVAPI helps developers get more out of a geforce card doesnt it make sense that AMD want a bite of the same cake? In this scenario it makes perfect sense for something like Mantle to be created.

Steampunk · 20 Oct 2013 at 09:28

no_1_dave said:
We are not talking about draining "huge amounts of CPU power" to deal with DX overhead.
Most games only use about 20% of my CPU and that is running the game + Steam + Chrome + everything else + DX overhead.
Removing this DX overhead is going to make almost no impact to actual in game FPS performance. maybe 61fps instead of 60fps.

Time will tell but if you expect mantle to make a bigger difference then 1 or 2 fps I think you'll be wrong. It'll be about the same benefit you'd get from closing the internet or any other standard background app. DX overhead is hardly anything for any modern system to deal with.

You just haven't understood Mantle at all. Do you think AMD and the likes of DICE spent two years implementing Mantle just to get one extra FPS?

You should go back and look at the tech day presentation. They are talking about nine times more performance on something that is taking a huge portion of a game's runtime.

If a game spends 80 percent of it's runtime in the DX driver, and you reduce that to 10 percent, you've made a massive increase in performance which not only benefits all PCs from low to high end, but it allows devs to be far less constrained with what they put on screen.

Randomface74 · 20 Oct 2013 at 09:31

that's completely wrong

Steampunk · 20 Oct 2013 at 09:36

billysielu said:
that's completely wrong

You think AMD and DICE spent millions and years on Mantle, and they are going to get 1 FPS benefit? :rolleyes:

flopper · 20 Oct 2013 at 10:07

Steampunk said:
You just haven't understood Mantle at all. Do you think AMD and the likes of DICE spent two years implementing Mantle just to get one extra FPS?

You should go back and look at the tech day presentation. They are talking about nine times more performance on something that is taking a huge portion of a game's runtime.

If a game spends 80 percent of it's runtime in the DX driver, and you reduce that to 10 percent, you've made a massive increase in performance which not only benefits all PCs from low to high end, but it allows devs to be far less constrained with what they put on screen.

for an example people can look at win 7 vs win 8 in beta BF4.
the difference was 50fps for some with those 2 OS´s due to win 7 lacked some fixes which was made during beta but still, win 8 is faster due to less overhead than win 7 even after fixes.

Nvidia fears Mantle big time.
If they didnt, they wouldnt pay Cormack to downplay it.