The AMD Mantle Thread

[Erenhardt]

I would hate the days of glide and different patches depending on what graphics card you had.



It seems a lot of people are far to young to remember the annoying diversions of that day.



DX fixed that...if AMD's plan is to return to those days...they have lost their marbles....been there, done that...not again.



DX saved us from API hell...people wanting to go back to times before that, really need to take a look at history again...

If you can be bothered, buy a console. No more API/OS/diver/patch for you. Not even finding playable settings. Just sit and play.

Everyone here seems to want mantle to be all vendor open standard. When it comes to nv exclusive features - some count those as added value, something that amd lacks. You have to make up your mind, you are against vendor locked features and after open standards, or you want disabling features from competitor's use. Can't have both.

 

[Gloomy]

Mantle is going to go the way of Physx and end up being used in the lamest way. Just like Physx hasn't changed gameplay and is only used for sparkles and stuff, Mantle isn't going to change the game and is just going to be used for a very slight performance boost. Maybe a major performance boost in the extreme case of RTS.

Which is a shame. But that's what happens when you go the vendor-locked way.

 

[Falafil]

Mantle is going to go the way of Physx and end up being used in the lamest way. Just like Physx hasn't changed gameplay and is only used for sparkles and stuff, Mantle isn't going to change the game and is just going to be used for a very slight performance boost. Maybe a major performance boost in the extreme case of RTS.

Which is a shame. But that's what happens when you go the vendor-locked way.

Did Nostradamus wrote that? If no then wait for Mantle patch.

 

[SiliconWars]

Glide was a roaring success that helped 3dfx to dominate the industry for a number of years. It would still probably be around if 3dfx hadn't gone totally nuts.

Vendor lock-ins and proprietary tech only fails when they don't have a compelling advantage - that's why PhysX was a failure, it just didn't matter enough to make the AMD buyers switch to Nvidia. I strongly suspect that this won't be the case in the opposite direction, with Nvidia buyers really wishing they had an AMD card instead because of Mantle.

That's how it was for 3dfx, so why wouldn't it be the same for AMD?

 

[NTMBK]

Now when they talk about Mantle being low level, they probably mean "lower" level coding. How low the code goes, would determine just how hardware dependent Mantle is.

I doubt any of you know the specifics of coding with Mantle, and just how depending on GCN it is. AMD says it requires GCN. A few dev's made remarks that it could work for other venders. How true is it? Are they making assumptions? How much performance loss would there be if it did? Will it work on older hardware?

Mantle uses HLSL to write shaders, the same as DirectX- it's not like developers are going to be writing GCN assembly.

The more "low level" control is stuff like memory management, and more explicit control of queues and scheduling. EDIT: Or at least, that's my interpretation as an uninformed non-game developer.

 

[blackened23]

Glide was a roaring success that helped 3dfx to dominate the industry for a number of years. It would still probably be around if 3dfx hadn't gone totally nuts.

Vendor lock-ins and proprietary tech only fails when they don't have a compelling advantage - that's why PhysX was a failure, it just didn't matter enough to make the AMD buyers switch to Nvidia. I strongly suspect that this won't be the case in the opposite direction, with Nvidia buyers really wishing they had an AMD card instead because of Mantle.

That's how it was for 3dfx, so why wouldn't it be the same for AMD?

Really. Since you weren't around back then and make that completely obvious, let me clue you in. Glide was created back when D3D didn't exist with the Voodoo I. There was NO standard, there were 11 standards all competing with each other - every chip had their own 3d API. PowerVR had their own thing going on. So did the rendition verite. In fact, when D3D became ubiquitous there was no longer a need to get a 3dfx card. Eventually 3DFX fell so behind on the D3D performance curve, this with other factors (V3 was a disappointment and late, purchase of STB, etc) led to their demise.

Thank you, drive through. Oh yeah. Speaking of which. Most glide titles did not have a big performance advantage over D3D. It was generally 10 frames if that - which didn't matter when 3dfx fell behind the curve in terms of D3D performance. The voodoo 3 was a disappointment but they barely managed to hang on. Let's see, from what I remember, the Riva 128 was the competing product to the voodoo2. The V2 was still better in terms of D3D performance, and very few titles used glide by that time. Then the Riva TNT was released - it was just better than the V3 by a mile. The V3 was also late and disappointing, with poor D3D performance. Shortly after, 3dfx went caput.

3DFX initial success had nothing to do with glide. They were successful because...well...mostly they were one of the first and they had the highest performing overall part by a mile. Nobody could touch 3dfx performance by any metric. 3dfx was loved initially because they got in on the market early and they had the most compelling performance and hardware. Once that advantage went away, people stopped caring. It had absolutely nothing to do with glide, like I said glide was created because there was no standard in the early days. It was proprietary or nothing.

 

[NTMBK]

There's something I've been considering- why have EA backed Mantle so much?

Johan thinks that it is cool tech, sure, but a company doesn't invest developer time (i.e. money) because a tech sounds cool. And sure, it gives higher framerates for gamers on AMD platforms- but will Battlefield get more sales if it runs at 80FPS instead of 60FPS?

My theory is this- EA wants to lower the barriers of entry. They want to make more of their games playable on the lowest end stuff available- the millions of Jaguar craptops out there, especially in the poorer regions of the world. If the improved efficiency means that another few million people are now able to play EA games on their cheap laptops, then that can translate to a lot of new sales for EA.

 

[SiliconWars]

Since you obviously weren't AROUND back then, let me clue you in. Glide was created back when D3D didn't exist. There was NO standard, there were 11 standards all competing with each other - every chip had their own 3d API. Once D3D became ubiquitous, that and other factors led to the demise of 3DFX.

Thank you, drive through.

Let me clue you in instead blackened as you seem to be missing the obvious.

1) Back then there was a need for a standard because of all the competing standards. Where are all the different vendors now? With the extreme barrier to entry there are unlikely to ever be more than the two we currently have in any meaningful existence.

2) There was even less reason for Glide to be a success then than there is for Mantle to be a success now. DX and GL simply holds back the hardware - far, far more than it has ever done. There was no compute back then to worry about either.

3) DX was used by M$ as their weapon to get Windows in to everybody's homes. It's no longer the case and hasn't been for the past few years. They simply don't care enough - do you actually believe Microsoft is wasting time on DirectX these days while they're being owned all over the shop in mobile?

So there are your three reasons for why DX became the standard around ~2000, and why it's no longer valid 14 years later. See, when I asked the question earlier "what is the difference between then and now?" it was a rhetorical question.

 

[Lonbjerg]

If you can be bothered, buy a console. *snip*

Sorry I care about gaming...as in the graphics (I.Q), the framerates, the gameplay and the control-fidelity.
I eg. game ARMA3 in 7.1 surround sound with TrackIR 5.
No crapbox can do that.

Consoles are for people not serious about gaming.

 

[SiliconWars]

Sorry I care about gaming...as in the graphics (I.Q), the framerates, the gameplay and the control-fidelity.
I eg. game ARMA3 in 7.1 surround sound with TrackIR 5.
No crapbox can do that.

Consoles are for people not serious about gaming.

And yet you hope Mantle fails even though it will clearly give better performance and visuals. How do you reconcile that with your love of gaming? It doesn't make sense.

 

[pong lenis]

Sorry I care about gaming...as in the graphics (I.Q), the framerates, the gameplay and the control-fidelity.
I eg. game ARMA3 in 7.1 surround sound with TrackIR 5.
No crapbox can do that.

Consoles are for people not serious about gaming.

There's a reason people with high end PC's buy consoles.
You can claim "I can get 1000 fps" but what's it matter if it drops to 1 fps, or suffers from periodic or intermittent stuttering? Console games have no issues because game devs have control over the hardware, and that's what AMD is trying to get on the PC.

 

[Lonbjerg]

And yet you hope Mantle fails even though it will clearly give better performance and visuals. How do you reconcile that with your love of gaming? It doesn't make sense.

You too young to remember the API's wars...so I don't blame your for your stance.

DirectX is the biggest thing to happen for gaming for for decades...sorry if I don't want to go back to the mess of API wars.

 

[Lonbjerg]

There's a reason people with high end PC's buy consoles.
You can claim "I can get 1000 fps" but what's it matter if it drops to 1 fps, or suffers from periodic or intermittent stuttering? Console games have no issues because game devs have control over the hardware, and that's what AMD is trying to get on the PC.

A console cannot run ARMA3 in any usefull way...some games (thankfully!!!) demands more performance than consoles can deliver.

And console have thier own drawbacks...autoaim, controller lag, dumbed down games...

 

[SiliconWars]

You too young to remember the API's wars...so I don't blame your for your stance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question

And believe me I wish I was too young to remember those days.

DirectX is the biggest thing to happen for gaming for for decades...sorry if I don't want to go back to the mess of API wars.

I'm interested to see this "API war" with only two valid vendors and only one who has an advanced API.

I don't see how it would affect you regardless as you clearly would stick with Nvidia to the bitter end. Surely you only have something to gain if Nvidia creates their own API?

Explain to me what you have to lose from this so-called "API war" again?

 

[pong lenis]

A console cannot run ARMA3 in any usefull way...some games (thankfully!!!) demands more performance than consoles can deliver.

And console have thier own drawbacks...autoaim, controller lag, dumbed down games...

Well with Mantle you'll be able to run Arma 3 with a very high framerate but with the better console-like quality, and without autoaim or controller lag. So what are you complaining about?

 

[Erenhardt]

A console cannot run ARMA3 in any usefull way...some games (thankfully!!!) demands more performance than consoles can deliver.

And console have thier own drawbacks...autoaim, controller lag, dumbed down games...

ARMA3 is the best example why we need mantle.
ARMA3 is the biggest turd of a game in a long time. Its anything but demanding. The only demand it have is one giant single CPU core and ton of graphics power to do god knows what. Game looks like Operation flashpoint (1) and runs like crysis 3.
If only it was easier to make a game that efficiently utilizes hardware - mantle.

 

[krumme]

Mantle will hopefully remove the stupid monopoly ipc wall Intel have posed on us, as games is the only reason for most users to have all that ipc power. If Intel should be against mantle now its exactly because of that.
The ps3 lead thread programming have ended. Here comes multicore. Be it bf4 with or without mantle, or assassin creed 4. Thank you. At last we can have a huge jump in cpu utilization in games.
The 2015 future is 16 core enabled engines and 300k batches in stellar games like shown by oxide. Merry Mantle !!

 

[psoomah]

I doubt any of you know the specifics of coding with Mantle, and just how depending on GCN it is. AMD says it requires GCN. A few dev's made remarks that it could work for other venders. How true is it? Are they making assumptions? How much performance loss would there be if it did? Will it work on older hardware?

As of now, it is AMD only. That is about all we really know for now.

Yeah, why should we believe those bozos? Who is this Johan Andersson anyways and why should we believe anything he says? Hey, my shiftless brother in law has all kinds of opinions about gaming and stuff too, why shouldn't his opinions be worth as much as these 'developer' dudes?

Bottom line is AMD is parading out a bunch of second rate losers, paying them to parrot a bunch of ridiculous blue sky propaganda and people are falling for it.

Just blows my mind.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Mantle will hopefully remove the stupid monopoly ipc wall Intel have posed on us, as games is the only reason for most users to have all that ipc power. If Intel should be against mantle now its exactly because of that.
The ps3 lead thread programming have ended. Here comes multicore. Be it bf4 with or without mantle, or assassin creed 4. Thank you. At last we can have a huge jump in cpu utilization in games.
The 2015 future is 16 core enabled engines and 300k batches in stellar games like shown by oxide. Merry Mantle !!

Not gonna happen, as the Tomb Raider example shows.

Haswell 800Mhz vs 4900Mhz.
Benchmark 74 vs 104FPS.
Ingame 22 vs 105FPS.

That means atleast 2/3rds are CPU game limited rather than API.

To use your console love, Kabini scores around 55FPS in the benchmark. Meaning even with 0 API load Kabini wouldnt even be able to do 30FPS.

Consoles work by lowering the quality and features drasticly as we have already seen. And the consoles run BF4 in 720P and 900P.

 

[SiliconWars]

Btw if you're following repi you'll know that work on Mantle has been ongoing up till last week at least. Going on this tweet he appears to be using Kaveri also, which makes me wonder if this is another possible reason for a delay.

https://twitter.com/repi/status/412720074609270784

 

[NTMBK]

Yeah, why should we believe those bozos? Who is this Johan Andersson anyways and why should we believe anything he says? Hey, my shiftless brother in law has all kinds of opinions about gaming and stuff too, why shouldn't his opinions be worth as much as these 'developer' dudes?

Bottom line is AMD is parading out a bunch of second rate losers, paying them to parrot a bunch of ridiculous blue sky propaganda and people are falling for it.

Just blows my mind.

Who are you, and what have you done with psoomah?

 

[Lonbjerg]

ARMA3 is the best example why we need mantle.
ARMA3 is the biggest turd of a game in a long time. Its anything but demanding. The only demand it have is one giant single CPU core and ton of graphics power to do god knows what. Game looks like Operation flashpoint (1) and runs like crysis 3.
If only it was easier to make a game that efficiently utilizes hardware - mantle.

Funny...demanding games are alway "unoptimized" (Crysis, ARMA3)...for me that is the a tell-tell sign of uniformed posters, not grasping that engines that do MORE than other games...requires more performance.

And if you say this look like Operation flashpoint, I cannot take you serious:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkHQlId8GfI

And I would like to see you evidence that the Reality Engine in Arma is limited by draw calls...

 

[SiliconWars]

Funny...demanding games are alway "unoptimized" (Crysis, ARMA3)...for me that is the a tell-tell sign of uniformed posters, not grasping that engines that do MORE than other games...requires more performance.

And if you say this look like Operation flashpoint, I cannot take you serious:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkHQlId8GfI

And I would like to see you evidence that the Reality Engine in Arma is limited by draw calls...

Horrible stutter at 20 seconds (likely to be a DX stall) and too much low quality motion blur on the ground. Looks good in the air but it's hard to say what fps it's at, could easily be 30.

These are exactly the sort of things that Mantle will do away with.

 

[Erenhardt]

Funny...demanding games are alway "unoptimized" (Crysis, ARMA3)...for me that is the a tell-tell sign of uniformed posters, not grasping that engines that do MORE than other games...requires more performance.

And if you say this look like Operation flashpoint, I cannot take you serious:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkHQlId8GfI

And I would like to see you evidence that the Reality Engine in Arma is limited by draw calls...

This game cant even use 2 threads properly:

please, stop...
BTW, nothing breath taking in this video. Sorry but this game looks bad. It gets even worse when you are on foot. The world looks like golf course with random trees here and there.
There is not reason for you to justify such a bad game/engine design. You you really

care about gaming...

you should complain about that poor game and hope for mantle to be successful.

 

[f1sherman]

Now THAT would be a sight to behold

Implementing Mantle on ARMA 3.
Or how about on Call of Pripyat with unlimited ALIFE radius!
Or any of real man's air-sims (DCS); Ka-50 / F/A-18 / FW-190D-9
BF4... meh :ninja: