AMD Mantle!!New API improves performance??

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

http://www.techspot.com/news/54134-a...rformance.html

Supposedly 9X times the draw calls over previous methods.

[jigger]

Early days but this looks fantastic. Skip directory x and get right to the hardware.

[Agent]

Looks good and it's been a long time coming, but don't get too hooked on the 9x thing. I suspect that's very situational and a headline figure.

[DanceswithUnix]

So this allows games developers to bypass the memory controls that were put into Windows in order to stop games developers from crashing your PC.

If you want to bypass the broken APIs of Windows, perhaps what you want is a SteamBox


Serious aside, I don't see that the world needs another graphics API. Improve what we have guys.
http://xkcd.com/927/

[Bagnaj97]

I get that they may want something other than DirectX to avoid vendor lock in, but there's already OpenGL. If the new consoles both support Mantle (they are GCN after all) then it will make porting easier, but if Mantle isn't widely implemented then it's not going to get very far. If Nvidia and Intel don't have Mantle support then game ports are going to have to use OpenGL or DirectX anyway. Still, Mantle is the most interesting piece of news from the AMD stuff today, we'll just have to wait and see what happens to it!

[AETAaAS]

My understanding is that Mantle gives developers more access to GCNs capabilities. So Intel and nVidia will probably never get Mantle because it is directly linked to the hardware and not a layer in between.

I have a feeling Mantle won't affect nVidia and Intel much. Games on consoles could utilise Mantle and Radeon pc users could benefit. For nVidia and Intel users, they will still be able to play the games ported in the usual way.

@Dances, it's not about replacing a standard but allowing developers access they can't get otherwise.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Mantle is supposedly open.

Edit!!

http://www.maximumpc.com/amd_r9_290x..._battlefield_4

Suposedly when running Mantle,the R9 290X destroys the Geforce Titan in BF4.

Second Edit!!

It seems Mantle was in development for 2 years:

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.p...&postcount=210

Third Edit!!

Mantle is open:

http://www.techspot.com/news/54134-a...rformance.html

[AETAaAS]

@Cat: Ah that's interesting. Also good to see AMD in it for the common good. All I know about Mantle was what they talked about during the presentation. Watched that live then went straight to bed.

Will read up more when I get back later.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

More details about Mantle:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7371/u...cs-api-for-gcn

Anandtech thinks it is the XBox One API brought to PC.

[DanceswithUnix]

@Dances, it's not about replacing a standard but allowing developers access they can't get otherwise.

There is a slide in the Anandtech article which has the line "Used instead of DirectX 11 on compatible GPUs". Really it has to. DirectX wants full control of things like looking after display memory, so if you want to improve on what it does then you have to kick DirectX out. I expect this would stop alt-tab from working and annoy Microsoft, two things I could live with

Android and iOS use OpenGL though, and Mantle doesn't fit into that world. I think they need to fix that.

Also, whilst I suspect these cards will fit nicely into the upgrade timeframe for my wife's graphics card, that leaves my PC unsupported. Well that is Nvidia based, so I can live with that as competing vendor fall-out. That leaves the kids machines which are VLIW5 and VLIW4. One slide says "Works with all Graphics Core Next GPUs". That sucks, these are not that old and are AMD parts.

[kalniel]

This is really something I've been hoping for on PC gaming for ages. However, I expected it to be done at least in collaboration with MS. I'm worried on two fronts:
1) That Windows simply won't allow low level APIs like this.
2) That AMD have the software expertise to create something better than MS could with DirectX.

Granted, they can cut the legacy thing right out, but doing so ties them to a generation or so of graphics cards. On a console that's no problem - you have the same hardware for ages, but on a PC? I don't like the possibility that my games could be unplayable if I change/update graphics card.

[scaryjim]

Looks more like it's an either/or, so you can develop for DirectX, or for DirectX + Mantle.

If the API really is open then eventually nvidia and intel will be able to enable it for their GPUs (and presumably CPUs, as the slide deck refers to reducing CPU overhead and lots of parallelism), but it'll take a long time for them to get there, which means for a couple of years AMD will have monstrous performance leadership in Mantle games. And since the new consoles will be out during that period, that sounds like a lot of AAA games that will run infinitely better on AMD hardware due to a proprietary API. Isn't that the kind of thing we used to berate nvidia for doing?

Perhaps the most interesting thing in this (IMNSHO, anyway) is that since Kabini/Temash are GCN parts, Mantle enabled games should show dramatically improved performance on Kabini-based machines. That'll be something interesting to watch out for when the BF4 reviews start flying ...

[DanceswithUnix]

This is really something I've been hoping for on PC gaming for ages. However, I expected it to be done at least in collaboration with MS. I'm worried on two fronts:
1) That Windows simply won't allow low level APIs like this.
2) That AMD have the software expertise to create something better than MS could with DirectX.

Granted, they can cut the legacy thing right out, but doing so ties them to a generation or so of graphics cards. On a console that's no problem - you have the same hardware for ages, but on a PC? I don't like the possibility that my games could be unplayable if I change/update graphics card.

1) A video card driver is kernel mode so can do what it wants. If Microsoft don't like it, then they should have kept graphics drivers in user space.
2) It took Microsoft a *long* time to catch up with OpenGL. They really don't show much talent at this, more a keep trying until they get it right. I would have more faith in a graphics card vendor with an in depth knowledge of driver performance and stability (guess that counts Intel out) of getting this right than Microsoft. OpenGL was, after all, originally a graphics vendor API (from SGI).

But still part of me things this could be the next Physix.

[kalniel]

But still part of me things this could be the next Physix.

True. It's all well being open, but if it still needs support in hardware then competitors will have to work through their long lead times.

One saving grace *may* be if AMD are hoping that devs will consider console + AMD PC market is big enough to target, but I'm not sure of the return for devs if it costs a lot to take advantage of PC level power over consoles.

[scaryjim]

... I'm not sure of the return for devs if it costs a lot to take advantage of PC level power over consoles.

The supposition (particularly from Anand) is that Mantle is actually a pretty-much-direct port of the low-level API from XBOne. It's not a huge stretch to think that, given the hardware similarities between, and AMDs close involvement in, both consoles, the PS4 low-level API is pretty similar. So if you're a console dev, chances are you're already using a Mantle-like API.

I'd assume, therefore, if you're planning a PC port of your game anyway, it will be minimal extra work to create a DX+Mantle (or OpenGL+Mantle) port as compared to an entirely DX/OGL port, as you'll be able to reuse most of your Mantle-based code directly. And since Mantle works with any GCN-based graphics, that means Kaveri and Kabini are invited. Which might mean AAA titles being realistically playable on sub £300 notebooks, due to close-to-the-metal optimisations. And surely *that's* got to be the big benefit to AMD from all this.

[kalniel]

Right, that was what I meant by console +AMD PC market. But surely the advantage of such low level access to hardware is you squeeze the most out of the power available, which is going to be quite different between consoles and desktop GPUs, so to boost the PC version performance will still require quite a bit of extra work over the console (though not as much as creating an entirely new version of course).