AMD to turn the tables on Intel in CPU race?

[Orangey]

Last night AMD held a presentation of their new Mantle API, which claims to provide amazing load-balancing across many cores and GPUs, among other things. There was a test game presented by Oxide Games wherein a FX8350 downclocked to 2GHz was being bottlenecked by a 290X.

Here are the tweets from someone in attendance:

https://twitter.com/ryanshrout

Key points:

- 8350 downclocked to 2GHz being GPU-bound by a 290X
- 8350 now on par with 4770K
- 100,000 drawcalls

Should Intel be worried?

 

[Martini1991]

Doesn't matter if they're worried, they can't change it.

AMD are big on mantle not being locked, just means that the CPU you're using in mantle games is somewhat moot if the 2GHZ FX83 and R9 290X thing is as it was.
So it'll mean that even an i3 will be up there with the i7 if/when mantle's up and running with Intel (But why would you want to ruin sensationalism?)

If Mantle adoption is big, it's good news for everyone. Somewhat concerned what that'll mean about AMD and CPU progress though, as they seemingly have rested a bit there, only Vishera and Kaveri during 2014 by all accounts? Outside of gaming that is.

Although Ryan Shrout's a tool by all accounts?

 

[~>Dg<~]

or the game was made to benefit amd ?

at end of day as with anything its who takes up whatever tech . doesnt matter if amd cpus are faster if all devs work with intel stuff.

lets see how it performs with "all" other games not backed by amd

 

[teppic]

AMD are big on mantle not being locked, just means that the CPU you're using in mantle games is somewhat moot if the 2GHZ FX83 and R9 290X thing is as it was.

I'd expect that the CPU is being used in terms of very low latency response from having multiple cores, i.e. it's going to work best on an i7 or 83xx.

 

[Martini1991]

I'd expect that the CPU is being used in terms of very low latency response from having multiple cores, i.e. it's going to work best on an i7 or 83xx.

Possibly, we'll have to see.
Gets a thumbs up from me though, certainly has potential.

 

[teppic]

Possibly, we'll have to see.
Gets a thumbs up from me though, certainly has potential.

It looks to be much better than I expected. I don't think it'll work very well on a dual core CPU though, AMD's said that it is optimised for running several consecutive threads, and (for example) two cores each running four competing threads can lead to very bad timings.

 

[cheesyboy]

- 8350 downclocked to 2GHz being GPU-bound by a 290X

So, presumably, an 8-core Jaguar could be all the x86 gaming power you need under Mantle. Pretty sweet.

 

[Boomstick777]

Key points:

- 8350 downclocked to 2GHz being GPU-bound by a 290X
- 8350 now on par with 4770K
- 100,000 drawcalls

Should Intel be worried?

Not at all, if a an FX 8350 can do that, imagine what a 4770K can do with Mantle You could probably run it @ 500mhz

4770K + 290X = Beast Mantle setup.

 

[Martini1991]

Now if only they could put this into a game that needs it
YES RTW2, I'M LOOKING AT YOU.

Not at all, if a an FX 8350 can do that, imagine what a 4770K can do with Mantle You could probably run it @ 500mhz

4770K + 290X = Beast Mantle setup.

Apart from the power saving, if it's at the R9 290X limit, you're just running a lower price/performance system in BF4.

 

[teppic]

If the game's already GPU limited there's nothing more a 4770K could do

 

[Boomstick777]

If the game's already GPU limited there's nothing more a 4770K could do

It could do it at a lower clock

'500mhz 4770K' probably equates to a '2Ghz 8350' in Mantle

Mantle is looking pretty decent so far, I hope it's not a disappointment, 20% - 50% extra performance as long as visual quality isn't reduced compared to DirectX would be very nice.

Hurry up non ref 290X's !

 

[ALXAndy]

So, presumably, an 8-core Jaguar could be all the x86 gaming power you need under Mantle. Pretty sweet.

Or Kaveri

 

[teppic]

It could do it at a lower clock

'500mhz 4770K' probably equates to a '2Ghz 8350' in Mantle

Mantle is looking pretty decent so far, I hope it's not a disappointment, 20% - 50% extra performance as long as visual quality isn't reduced compared to DirectX would be very nice.

Hurry up non ref 290X's !

Have you ever used a 4770K at 500MHz? When my old board became faulty it limited it to 700MHz, it was completely unusable even on the desktop. Though also bear in mind that 8 cores and 4 cores with HT aren't the same thing. I expect it will mean an i7 can underclock, but not to that degree.

 

[mmj_uk]

GPU bottlenecks have always helped slower processors achieve similar frame-rates, for all we know this demonstration could have been running in single digit frame rates, 100,000 draw calls is presumably quite extreme.

 

[almighty15]

What about all the games that don't support Mantle? Which at the moment is 100% of all games released...

 

[Boomstick777]

Have you ever used a 4770K at 500MHz? When my old board became faulty it limited it to 700MHz, it was completely unusable even on the desktop. Though also bear in mind that 8 cores and 4 cores with HT aren't the same thing. I expect it will mean an i7 can underclock, but not to that degree.

Yeah I was only joking mate, although we can be sure if an 8350 is enough for Mantle, pretty much any Intel chip from i3 upwards will be enough as well.

Mantle has so much promise, really great vision from AMD, thing that concerns me is AMD have a habit of epic failing in execution. Hopefully Mantle will be a success, maybe even Nvidia will adopt it down the road. The PC industry would benefit from a big jump in performance now, especially with 4K coming...

 

[teppic]

Yeah I was only joking mate, although we can be sure if an 8350 is enough for Mantle, pretty much any Intel chip from i3 upwards will be enough as well.

Mantle has so much promise, really great vision from AMD, thing that concerns me is AMD have a habit of epic failing in execution. Hopefully Mantle will be a success, maybe even Nvidia will adopt it down the road. The PC industry would benefit from a big jump in performance now, especially with 4K coming...

Nah, as above, I'd be really surprised if an i3 can cope because the games will still rely on 8 concurrent threads that all need to run at precise timings. I expect it'll be fine with a quad core or better, but that it will work best on 8 cores -- more reliant on core availability than power per core.

AMD's done very well on the graphics front, and invented the 64bit instruction set we're all using now -- it's not all failure

 

[Martini1991]

The R9 290/290X execution has been awful if you actually look into it

 

[~>Dg<~]

if this does happen imagine pc components market wooops down she goes

last thing you want in pc components sales is gear lasting years

 

[dmferrett]

Not at all, if a an FX 8350 can do that, imagine what a 4770K can do with Mantle You could probably run it @ 500mhz

4770K + 290X = Beast Mantle setup.

Correct,

If the FX8**** needs 2.0Ghz, Intel will need 30-40% less due to better IPC clock per clock performance.

This is good news for me as my i5 is struggling with 2 gpus in BF4 with 2 monitors in ultra. My ambitions is a third gpu and to keep the i5 if at all possible.