Battlefield 4 and Frostbite 3 Will Support Both AMD Mantle and NVIDIA NVAPI APIs For PC Optimization

[Rroff]

Yes but back in the day this was a tiny industry and 3d acceleration was brand new with multiple players. Here we're talking about longer term, two API's and two api's only.

Been down the 2 apis and 2 apis only root before once most of the smaller players had dissapeared and it boiled down to Open GL or DirectX.

 

[Final8y]

There is no point in trying to convince others what will happen. lets just wait and see because its interesting times none the less as things have been stale for the last 2 years.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Good find.

Good to see that Battlefield 4 will support both API's. Interesting to know that Battlefield 3 already supports Nvidia's API. Wonder if that's why Nvidia's 'out the door performance' on Battlefield 3 was above AMD's. Look how long it took for AMD to overtake or level the playing field in that title. (12.10 drivers)

It probably explains it.

Hmm I think a few more of those will come out of the woodwork now that people are stop crying over mantle.

Agreed.

 

[ashmanuk67]

This does sound better for Nvidia users but why do i get the feeling with both X1 and ps4 the NVAPI will be at the bottom of there to do list.

I would have no issue at all selecting an api path that suits my hardware as long as they are both 100%

 

[Orangey]

DX needs to die, low level API makes all the sense in the world.

Wrong and wrong. The reason why the gaming industry sees massive growth every year is because of DX. Very few developers need low-level access to the GPU to make a fun game that looks good. A low-level API only makes sense for the people pushing the boundaries.

 

[Rroff]

Wrong and wrong. The reason why the gaming industry sees massive growth every year is because of DX. Very few developers need low-level access to the GPU to make a fun game that looks good. A low-level API only makes sense for the people pushing the boundaries.

Largely people would end up creating their own libraries replicating DX anyhow... no one wants to mess about with device IO and memory blitting every time they want to load a texture from a file, etc. when you can just use D3DXCreateTextureFromFile and so on.

 

[humbug]

There is no point in trying to convince others what will happen. lets just wait and see because its interesting times none the less as things have been stale for the last 2 years.

This

 

[Phixsator]

Largely people would end up creating their own libraries replicating DX anyhow... no one wants to mess about with device IO and memory blitting every time they want to load a texture from a file, etc. when you can just use D3DXCreateTextureFromFile and so on.

I cannot see any issue with Mantle and NVAPI picking up(hopefully NVAPI goes solo as Mantle is intended to do instead of being an "utility API"). Any major game engine could be with reletive ease fitted with both pipelines and DX or OpenGL as backup. And since a lot of games today are based on major engines i cannot see the issue with this approach.

Its not "another glide disaster" the times are difference and so is the amount of major brands on the market. We only have 2 big players in the world right now when it comes to consumer graphics cards versus the 4-5 back in the day all trying to compete with their special API. Also there are much more money in the gaming market and a few very big game engines that are well established which is why i think AMD made the right call to go to DICE first because its a development house with some very talented coders and a company that understands the technology they are coding for. I mean they called microsoft and told them how to fix their ****.

Taking over and adding support for Mantle and NVAPI in all the major game engines is the right way to do it IMHO and im sure a lot of programmers are gonna tear their hair out because they dont know how to program for this but tough luck, innovation has casualties, you either evolve or you die off obsolete.

 

[David Bisset]

Ahhh, I remember the fun times of memory allocation errors being super common. Looks like they'll be back soon!

While not strictly the APIs fault it will be the likely outcome were DX to die off. There is a reason high-level won for most users. I'm happy for low-level to exist for those who really want to use it and know what they're doing, but that should very much be the exception not the rule.

 

[drunkenmaster]

DOn't forget that AMD and Nvidia are bigger and offering techical help and engineers to help. AMD sent guys in which turned, I forget precisely which version of Stalker from a crashing pieces of crap into a stable and updated to DX11 game(which I still didn't like but that is personal taste, nothing more).

DX needs to die off, that is why I said that, I didn't say high level API's need to.

openGL is there, it IS updated, if DX died off openGL would get a lot more support from AMD/Nvidia and get moved forward more.

DX does indeed need to die, it "won" the API war way back when because MS ran the table for PC's. There was no Android, there wasn't even much in the way of Apple, there was no SteamOS. DX was the defacto standard because MS pushed it, owned it and owned the market. MS is losing marketshare hand over fist, android will push up into pc's/laptops in the future, linux will be a bigger deal, Steam OS has a decent chance. The ONLY option for gaming to become universally compatible is for a completely open standard high level API to take over from DX. Thus DX needs to die.


We want low level API's so the guys with money, or the guys who want to make something new and awesome and find low level access is required HAVE THAT OPTION. Then a ultra compatible, industry standard, will run on any OS openGL API for everyone else.

I don't particularly think Mantle will kill off DX itself, it will just be one of the reasons. AMD have started Mantle now because this was the time to move against MS/DX/gaming monopoly on PC's.