PCGH asks Nvidia on Gameworks

[triss]

Difference being Direct x isn't exclusive to either brand, and secondly Microsoft dragged their heels on working on a new version because they're more console oriented these days.

As for mantle and the delay its pretty obvious that was down to dice, battlefield 4 was broken from launch and its only recently they've made larger changes to get the game working properly.

I think GM's point is when mantle is mentioned vs dx 12 its said Mantle is here now DX12 isnt so cant be compared,, Yet when gsync is mentioned Freesync is on the way and will be better,cheaper without any of us knowing this and in stark contradiction to his DX example

DX might not be exclusive but then neither is freesync and mantle/gysync both are so imo its a valid comparison

 

[Gerard]

Still pretty sure the VESA standard isn't going to be exclusive to one brand.

Didn't say it was, but considering tis something amd proposed and have worked on I can see NVidia preferring gsync.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

Didn't say it was, but considering tis something amd proposed and have worked on I can see NVidia preferring gsync.

Doesn't mean it's exclusive. Intel might use it rather than G-Sync.
Plus I can't imagine AMD will favour DX12 over Mantle either.

 

[Gerard]

Doesn't mean it's exclusive. Intel might use it rather than G-Sync.
Plus I can't imagine AMD will favour DX12 over Mantle either.

Its not exclusive obviously but I think the fact amd had a large hand in it may turn NVidia off from using it much, intel were interested in mantle so I can see them probably using it.

 

[humbug]

Some existing display already in use have the necessary technology in them, all some of those need is a BIOS update to make them fully compatible.

Its actually very straight forward, and most Laptop displays also already have the technology.

Its nothing new or high tech, its actually been around and in use for a long time, and on inexpensive units.

The only hurdle was the Display Port compatibility, that is no longer there.

one Vendor that we know of has already discovered they have the technology in existing display, there will be others.

Huddy said Displays are in the pipeline and we will start to see them at the end of this year, no reason to doubt that.

And the great thing about it is, Nvidia could use it too.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

Its not exclusive obviously but I think the fact amd had a large hand in it may turn NVidia off from using it much, intel were interested in mantle so I can see them probably using it.

but you can see why it's confusing when you said:

Difference being Direct x isn't exclusive to either brand, and secondly Microsoft dragged their heels on working on a new version because they're more console oriented these days.

As for mantle and the delay its pretty obvious that was down to dice, battlefield 4 was broken from launch and its only recently they've made larger changes to get the game working properly.

If the difference is that DX isn't exclusive then it seems like you're suggesting that adaptive sync is.

Some existing display already in use have the necessary technology in them, all some of those need is a BIOS update to make them fully compatible.

Its actually very straight forward, and most Laptop displays also already have the technology.

Its nothing new or high tech, its actually been around and in use for a long time, and on inexpensive units.

The only hurdle was the Display Port compatibility, that is no longer there.

one Vendor that we know of has already discovered they have the technology in existing display, there will be others.

Huddy said Displays are in the pipeline and we will start to see them at the end of this year, no reason to doubt that.

And the great thing about it is, Nvidia could use it too.

Except that AMD said Mantle would be ready in December and it wasn't ready until February?
I know people are blaming DICE for the delay, but was Star Swarm already out? So they could've released the driver if it was ready. Also didn't the BF4 patch get released before the Mantle driver?

 

[Gerard]

but you can see why it's confusing when you said:



If the difference is that DX isn't exclusive then it seems like you're suggesting that adaptive sync is.




Except that AMD said Mantle would be ready in December and it wasn't ready until February?
I know people are blaming DICE for the delay, but was Star Swarm already out? So they could've released the driver if it was ready. Also didn't the BF4 patch get released before the Mantle driver?

I'm not suggesting adaptive sync is mutually exclusive, I'm saying that given its unlikely nvidia would adopt mantle its unlikely that they would adopt adaptive sync given they have their own alternative.

I've no idea about star swarm as I never downloaded it, all I do remember about dice and mantle is them pushing it from December to earlier this year, and given the state of the game (which is still in the process of being fixed) its more than likely it was down to them that it wasn't ready.

 

[humbug]

Except that AMD said Mantle would be ready in December and it wasn't ready until February?
I know people are blaming DICE for the delay, but was Star Swarm already out? So they could've released the driver if it was ready. Also didn't the BF4 patch get released before the Mantle driver?

Star Swarm was out, yes.

 

[triss]

I'm not suggesting adaptive sync is mutually exclusive, I'm saying that given its unlikely nvidia would adopt mantle its unlikely that they would adopt adaptive sync given they have their own alternative.

I've no idea about star swarm as I never downloaded it, all I do remember about dice and mantle is them pushing it from December to earlier this year, and given the state of the game (which is still in the process of being fixed) its more than likely it was down to them that it wasn't ready.

Mantle is optimised for Amd and will evolve into mantle 2 and further as new features come out in the industy and new AMD hardware comes out why would Nvidia use it?
Where as freesync is a connector standard? and it makes sense for Nvidia to use it for their users benefit

 

[PhysicsMan94]

The issue is Mantle’s implementation in the Frostbite engine, which would be Johan/Dice and the team there that wrote the Mantle backend. Johan has admitted this on twitter. Or are you telling me that you know different?

There's obviously some level of confusion here, so let's try to break this down. These are the 2 options with regards to the situation we were originally talking about:

1. AMD did not assist the Frostbite Engine team at all with implanting Mantle as part of the Engine, if this is true then I find that highly concerning as that would be very bad practice. Mantle is a new API, one would expect that any engine team (no matter their experience) would require some level of assistance from the source company with integration of this new API into their systems.
2. AMD did play a role in implementing Mantle into the Frostbite Engine and therefore any issues that may occur whilst using the mantle rendering system in game may be partially the fault of AMD themselves, one could not just pin the entire blame on DICE or, more specifically, the Frostbite team in this case.

Due to the reasons given in (1), I suspect that (2) is correct. However, do not take this post as me claiming that any of the issues which we see with Frostbite powered mantle games are down to AMD, it is entirely possible that all the issues may be down to DICE/Frostbite developers, but it is also possible that some of the issues may be due to AMDs assistance with the implementation. Of course, I cannot tell you where each issue originated and who is to "blame"* for such an issue therefore I can't start laying the blame at the feet of AMD or anyone else, that would be wrong of me. But it would be equally as wrong for me to claim that the issues we are seeing in Frostbite-Mantle games are nothing to do with AMD.

* I put blame in inverted commas as, of course, all applications/software/programs have some bugs and issues in them, you can't make a perfect application. So using the word "blame" seems too strong in this regard, however I will say that the memory leak issue we have seen with Mantle-Frostbite games is a pretty serious problem.

 

[triss]

There's obviously some level of confusion here, so let's try to break this down. These are the 2 options with regards to the situation we were originally talking about:

Spoiler

1. AMD did not assist the Frostbite Engine team at all with implanting Mantle as part of the Engine, if this is true then I find that highly concerning as that would be very bad practice. Mantle is a new API, one would expect that any engine team (no matter their experience) would require some level of assistance from the source company with integration of this new API into their systems.
2. AMD did play a role in implementing Mantle into the Frostbite Engine and therefore any issues that may occur whilst using the mantle rendering system in game may be partially the fault of AMD themselves, one could not just pin the entire blame on DICE or, more specifically, the Frostbite team in this case.

Due to the reasons given in (1), I suspect that (2) is correct. However, do not take this post as me claiming that any of the issues which we see with Frostbite powered mantle games are down to AMD, it is entirely possible that all the issues may be down to DICE/Frostbite developers, but it is also possible that some of the issues may be due to AMDs assistance with the implementation. Of course, I cannot tell you where each issue originated and who is to "blame"* for such an issue therefore I can't start laying the blame at the feet of AMD or anyone else, that would be wrong of me. But it would be equally as wrong for me to claim that the issues we are seeing in Frostbite-Mantle games are nothing to do with AMD.

* I put blame in inverted commas as, of course, all applications/software/programs have some bugs and issues in them, you can't make a perfect application. So using the word "blame" seems too strong in this regard, however I will say that the memory leak issue we have seen with Mantle-Frostbite games is a pretty serious problem.

Sorry noob question ,, if you release a api either DX or mantle or for that matter anything like this dont you train the Dev's to use it and offer like a helpdesk etc(yes sorry noob and there probaly something more technical than a helpdesk but you know what i mean) or do you just give them it and say go play?

 

[bru]

Just to mention yet again as some of you still seem to be getting confused.

Free-Sync is not an open standard, Free-Sync (or whatever AMD eventually call it) is AMD's proprietary hardware/software that allow them to use Adaptive-Sync.

Adaptive-Sync is the open standard that has been integrated into the Display port 1.2a.

 

[PhysicsMan94]

Sorry noob question ,, if you release a api either DX or mantle or for that matter anything like this dont you train the Dev's to use it and offer like a helpdesk etc(yes sorry noob and there probaly something more technical than a helpdesk but you know what i mean) or do you just give them it and say go play?

I'm no expert on this I admit but with something new like Mantle I'd expect AMD to be helping the developers a lot with implementing it into their games and game engines. However, with DirectX, as it is such an established and well-documented API developers can get along with it easily without needing much, if any, assistance from Microsoft*; also many developers have years and years of DX programming experience so that know what they are doing in that regard, obviously the case is very much on the contrary with Mantle as a new API.

* But I imagine that with each iteration of DX, Microsoft are very much there to assist developers with the transition from older versions to the new version; but, as I mentioned previously, DirectX is often very well documented and the information is already out there for developers by the time new versions are released.

 

[drunkenmaster]

* I put blame in inverted commas as, of course, all applications/software/programs have some bugs and issues in them, you can't make a perfect application. So using the word "blame" seems too strong in this regard, however I will say that the memory leak issue we have seen with Mantle-Frostbite games is a pretty serious problem.

It's really very simple you have your game, then you have interacting with the API, the interacting part is usually what is played around with code wise when a game is being "ported" from platform to platform, API to API. The underlying game was designed entirely with DX11 as the target, it's that simple it was never initially written to be forwards compatible with Mantle, thus design decisions made maybe a year earlier mean it doesn't work perfectly with Mantle. Dice have themselves "taken the blame", in so many words. They need a complete rewrite of memory management to adhere to Mantle specifications and to ensure no overuse of memory. This was something written for DX11 which in their eyes is working well enough so they aren't fixing it. It's got nothing to do with AMD or Mantle.

An incredible simplified example would be, you know an API lets call it DX takes calls type A, B, C, D so you code your game to send out only types A, B, C and D. Then you port it to Mantle, Mantle only accepts calls A, B and D, but your underlying game was written to send out call C. You get issues. If the game was designed initially for Mantle as well as DX< you simply tell it not to use call C. The real situation is simply that their memory management was designed with DX11 taking a lot of control of memory management and maybe had no need to do something at the time that Mantle specifically needs. Maybe they just made a mistake 2 years ago and it doesn't show up in DX11 but does in Mantle.

Something basically very simple from one design decision can mean something isn't compatible later on. Depending on the extent of usage of whatever it is, fixing it could be anything from changing a few dozen lines of code to a few thousand.

The game was never written or designed to work with Mantle, and expecting a game to be designed and work perfectly on an API that wasn't remotely close to a finished spec is simply absurd.

Again, Frostbite, MANY months ago said they knew precisely how to fix the issue and they "may" rewrite it. The likely situation is that in the next semi major iteration of the engine they will fix it. But as always it depends what work is going on, working on 5 games, no time for it, finished all the bugs on BF4, 3 other games shipped... have time, you fix it. It's incredibly likely to be something they need fixed by the time DX12 is about anyway.

 

[Gerard]

Mantle is optimised for Amd and will evolve into mantle 2 and further as new features come out in the industy and new AMD hardware comes out why would Nvidia use it?

You'd have to ask them, Intel are asking about it so id imagine it could also be made to work on other hardware.

 

[triss]

You'd have to ask them, Intel are asking about it so id imagine it could also be made to work on other hardware.

DirectX is a generic APi. It covers Intel hardware, it covers Nvidia hardware and it covers ours. Being generic means that it will never be perfectly optimized for a particular piece of hardware, where with Mantle we think we can do a better job

http://www.techradar.com/news/compu...cs-mantle-2-and-apus-1255575/2#articleContent




Made to work yes possibly, optimised for other hardware nope,thats the whole thing you write a API for one set of hardware you can make it more efficient and have less bloatware more you include it becomes less so.And all good for AMD tbh making something that makes their gpu's run better

Or do you think Huddy is wrong and making changes to mantle to make it generic for all vendors will still mean it runs aswell?

 

[LtMatt]

There's obviously some level of confusion here, so let's try to break this down. These are the 2 options with regards to the situation we were originally talking about:

1. AMD did not assist the Frostbite Engine team at all with implanting Mantle as part of the Engine, if this is true then I find that highly concerning as that would be very bad practice. Mantle is a new API, one would expect that any engine team (no matter their experience) would require some level of assistance from the source company with integration of this new API into their systems.
2. AMD did play a role in implementing Mantle into the Frostbite Engine and therefore any issues that may occur whilst using the mantle rendering system in game may be partially the fault of AMD themselves, one could not just pin the entire blame on DICE or, more specifically, the Frostbite team in this case.

Due to the reasons given in (1), I suspect that (2) is correct. However, do not take this post as me claiming that any of the issues which we see with Frostbite powered mantle games are down to AMD, it is entirely possible that all the issues may be down to DICE/Frostbite developers, but it is also possible that some of the issues may be due to AMDs assistance with the implementation. Of course, I cannot tell you where each issue originated and who is to "blame"* for such an issue therefore I can't start laying the blame at the feet of AMD or anyone else, that would be wrong of me. But it would be equally as wrong for me to claim that the issues we are seeing in Frostbite-Mantle games are nothing to do with AMD.

* I put blame in inverted commas as, of course, all applications/software/programs have some bugs and issues in them, you can't make a perfect application. So using the word "blame" seems too strong in this regard, however I will say that the memory leak issue we have seen with Mantle-Frostbite games is a pretty serious problem.

It is quite simply this. If Johan/Dice were to redesign their memory management implementation it could easily be fixed, which AMD have told them. They (Johan/Dice) publically admitted to this twice now, however it appears Johan/Dice are only going to do this for any future titles and are now saying Mantle is ideally aimed at 3gb or higher users in this first Frostbite implementation. I find that last part a bit surprising myself as that is not how AMD look at it. Nonetheless they are not responsible for how Mantle is implemented into an engine, they can only offer help and suggestions where needed on how to use the API. They can't make the changes to the work a dev has done on a Mantle backend in a game. They can suggest changes, they can ask them to improve it or rewrite it and they have. They cannot do it themselves, that's not how it works im afraid.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

I seem to recall at the time being told how it only took a few weeks or a month for one person to write the Mantle path for BF4.
Why didn't he take a week or 2 longer and do it properly?

It seems like a bit of a misleading figure to say that it only took 4 week to write the Mantle path and then find that there actually needs to be more of a re-write.

Well I guess now we know where Huddy got the idea to say one thing while you know all along that it's not actually accurate...

 

[LtMatt]

I seem to recall at the time being told how it only took a few weeks or a month for one person to write the Mantle path for BF4.
Why didn't he take a week or 2 longer and do it properly?

It seems like a bit of a misleading figure to say that it only took 4 week to write the Mantle path and then find that there actually needs to be more of a re-write.

I don't think it was done on purpose, more like it was their first time using the API and they over committed a bit on the memory side of things. I expect when they come to rewrite it a second time they can fix the things that went wrong the first time.

 

[Gregster]

So whilst mantle is a great feature, Johan/Dice/Frostbite/AMD (pick one or more choices) are not going to sort out the memory issues and therefore, anyone with 1080P or higher and 2GB is screwed if they want to go full details or anyone above 1440P and 3GB is also potentially screwed if they want to go full details.

Seems a bit lazy to me and donning my tin foil hat, is this AMD forcing/wanting their users to have to upgrade to a newer card to benefit from Mantle?

Edit:

Just to add, I can see that as a good business move in honesty and wouldn't blame AMD for doing that if that is even close to the truth.