News - AMD releases Mantle and TrueAudio patch for Thief

[HEXUS]

With observed performance speed-ups of nearly 50 per cent.

Read more.

[DanceswithUnix]

The reverb effect was pretty spectacular in Baldur's Gate (how long ago was that?) with the right sound card. So a bit of deja-vu, but at least good deja-vu. Hopefully we will get some articles on whether true-audio is any good.

Edited post: To early in the morning to read the table accurately.

[abychristy]

FX-8350 with that boost in performance is really great by Mantle , Wish there was an option to convert all games in Mantle

[DanceswithUnix]

FX-8350 with that boost in performance is really great by Mantle , Wish there was an option to convert all games in Mantle

But Mantle only saw a 5% boost on Intel. Valve got a boost of 14% on an i7 by switching to OpenGL on Windows.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/13...ven-on-windows

So there is an option, it is available now, very stable and cross platform.

Edit to add: Before someone flames me, I know they are not similar games, processors or graphics cards, but my point was that they got good gains with a high end cpu where Mantle doesn't seem so useful.

[Medallish]

FX-8350 with that boost in performance is really great by Mantle , Wish there was an option to convert all games in Mantle

But Mantle only saw a 5% boost on Intel. Valve got a boost of 14% on an i7 by switching to OpenGL on Windows.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/13...ven-on-windows

So there is an option, it is available now, very stable and cross platform.

Edit to add: Before someone flames me, I know they are not similar games, processors or graphics cards, but my point was that they got good gains with a high end cpu where Mantle doesn't seem so useful.

Mantle is about giving developers more control over the code, currently with things like DirectX developers don't get much control over the HW, And yeah you can't compare it at all they were very different configurations

[shaithis]

I'm still not sure if I am more impressed by the gains or how much CPU time games are suddenly starting to eat up....

[MrJim]

Mantle is about giving developers more control over the code, currently with things like DirectX developers don't get much control over the HW, And yeah you can't compare it at all they were very different configurations

As far as I can tell, it's about offsetting the deficit in performance of AMD's own CPUs. Still, if you happen to have an AMD CPU, GPU, & the right game, all power to you

[DanceswithUnix]

Mantle is about giving developers more control over the code, currently with things like DirectX developers don't get much control over the HW, And yeah you can't compare it at all they were very different configurations

Not really.

The point of OpenGL like all APIs is to actively avoid getting too close to the hardware, because in the long haul it is a stupid thing to do. It locks you into a specific generation of hardware, makes testing harder, and promotes poor optimisation practices.

The point of DirectX is to try an stop people using OpenGL because Microsoft want only Microsoft technologies on Windows regardless of what is best for the consumer.

Mantle strikes me as a product of developers who haven't been around long enough to see this sort of history repeat over and over again. If you get more control over the hardware, then you get to fix it when it breaks. You get to tune it for every single variant of graphics card out there because you get to control how things go down the pipes. All the scheduling, resource management, error checking, porting and tuning issues, you want an API to own and deal with those.

I tried to explain why I mentioned the Valve benchmark but I guess I should try again: People say this stuff only matters on AMD processors. Valve demonstrated an improvement using a monster Intel 6 core, quad memory channel i7 that can turbo to 3.8GHz. People spend a lot of money for a 14% faster cpu, but the common thread here is simply "Don't use DirectX" and you can get that sort of boost for free.

Sorry if that got a bit rambling & ranty, think I need some lunch.

[MrJim]

The point of DirectX is to try an stop people using OpenGL because Microsoft want only Microsoft technologies on Windows regardless of what is best for the consumer.

I think that's true of any commercial organisation, though. They only seem to "want what's best for consumers" when that happens to coincide with what's best for their profit-margin. Of course AMD are exactly the same: if they can persuade games developers to adopt Mantle as their preferred API, it will help shift their CPUs, APUs, & GPUs. The sad fact that most games use DirectX is just about the only thing that keeps me on the Windows platform.

[Medallish]

Uhm no Mantle is DEFINITELY about giving developers more control, the other point is that it's a modern take on rendering where OpenGL and DirectX have roots in 19 year old software, and requires a lot of work to get working as good, Oxide mentions this about their RTS engine, how they needed to do a ton of work to get proper multithreading on DirectX, where on Mantle it was a lot more straight forward.

People really shouldn't get too worked up on the whole CPU thing because too many people seem to think that Mantle is simply DX or OGL with better threading, and it most certainly isn't. The main advantage of Mantle will likely never be obvious to the end users, as it's software that appeals more to developers.

The reason why the Valve OGL numbers doesn't at all compare is also it's an entirely differnt engine, so the advantages they gained from moving and optimizing to OpenGL doesn't compare at all to what gains AMD get with Mantle on a customized UE3 engine.

[DanceswithUnix]

The reason why the Valve OGL numbers doesn't at all compare is also it's an entirely differnt engine, so the advantages they gained from moving and optimizing to OpenGL doesn't compare at all to what gains AMD get with Mantle on a customized UE3 engine.

There I have to disagree. Did you read the Valve article? The initial port was a massive drop in performance to unplayable levels, then not only did they customize their engine but they also got help from Nvidia. So it was a customized engine. It went faster by removing some of the API overhead, exactly what Mantle claims to do.

So from what I am seeing Mantle is re-inventing the wheel and that annoys me.

If you think I have some bias here, perhaps I do. I have an embedded programming background. There are millions of devices out there where my code is hitting the metal directly, and even with the absolute control over hardware that you get in an embedded system you have to be on your toes and basically you have to create your own abstraction APIs or your next hardware version is going to bite you. Now, apologies to any game devs reading because I know there are good ones, but most of the game devs I have had to work with have simply not been up to that sort of job. They did however have a mentality where if something was complicated (usually for a reason) then they would dismiss it as not necessary rather than understand it and claim that it was historic baggage that needed re-writing. If you carefully explain the corner cases that the code is covering, you get told that it works fine on the developer's desk with all that removed and if other people are having problems it must be their fault.

So I have a low opinion of the games industry (backed up by countless crashes of games that I have purchased) plus a low opinion of the politics involved in graphics APIs.

OpenGL is an established cross platform open standard. It is available now. Hopefully the number of people exposed to OpenGL ES on mobile devices will get it some more mindshare.

[WrATHZer0]

Uhm no Mantle is DEFINITELY about giving developers more control, the other point is that it's a modern take on rendering where OpenGL and DirectX have roots in 19 year old software, and requires a lot of work to get working as good, Oxide mentions this about their RTS engine, how they needed to do a ton of work to get proper multithreading on DirectX, where on Mantle it was a lot more straight forward.

People really shouldn't get too worked up on the whole CPU thing because too many people seem to think that Mantle is simply DX or OGL with better threading, and it most certainly isn't. The main advantage of Mantle will likely never be obvious to the end users, as it's software that appeals more to developers.

The reason why the Valve OGL numbers doesn't at all compare is also it's an entirely differnt engine, so the advantages they gained from moving and optimizing to OpenGL doesn't compare at all to what gains AMD get with Mantle on a customized UE3 engine.

Except that DirectX is more than just a graphics API, it's developers that haven't used it right because they use their own code to override DirectX for console ports. Basically they want to use Mantle for graphics and hope every PC user has a Xbox controller so they don't have to use DirectX properly. The proof to that is the fact that games don't support third party controllers without some Xbox controller emulator. The whole idea of DirectX is that if you plug any thing into your computer and DirectX sees it, the game will use it, that's one reason why devs flocked to it in the 90s. AMD releasing a new graphics API and sound system is breaking that up again because they want a bigger foothold in the GPU/CPU market.

AMD are hypocrites, there is an API(OpenGL) that is a crossplatform open standard graphics API and yet their Linux drivers are poor still to this day and way behind NVIDIA on the open platforms. AMD has nothing in the workstation area, probably why their drivers are so bad with Linux and why they might end up like ATI and 3DFX being brought out because they lack serious proper commitment