Mantle - new open API by AMD and DICE

[eskiMoe]

Today, during CES, AMD showed BF4 running on Mantle. It had 45% better performance than on DirectX.

Well, that is promising.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Let's hope Mantle will be adopted by all GPU makers and will be an open and free API (so far it's not even clear). Otherwise - there is no point in it.

 

[sidspyker]

Let's hope Mantle will be adopted by all GPU makers and will be truly open API (so far it's not even clear). Otherwise - there is no point in it.

This.

Unrelated: They also unveiled Freesync, a sort of competition to G-Sync, but it's still unclear how much of a competition.

 

[octavian123]

the only bad news about mantle, is "star wars battlefront, dragon age 3, mass effect 4" will support mantle.

But it turns in a point of support. AMD proved to be very bad in their drivers and resolving problems. If mantle fails to perform as it should be the I think is going to be doomed.

But mantle helps amd gpus to perform better in crossfire as well, so in the end, they may implement it just for that. Because amd has bad crossfire.

How is that bad news really? EA helped AMD develop this tech so it makes sense that their games get support first. As for drivers, Nvidia is no stranger to fuck-ups. One driver stopped the GPU fan while Starcraft 2 was running. OH SNAP. On the other hand, AMD is getting better and better at what they are doing and competition is always a good thing.

EDIT: I am curious whether my unlocked 6950 will support Mantle. I will only get a new GPU once The Witcher 3 and Dragon Age: Inquisition come out.

 

[GuyNwah]

How is that bad news really? EA helped AMD develop this tech so it makes sense that their games get support first. As for drivers, Nvidia is no stranger to fuck-ups. One driver stopped the GPU fan while Starcraft 2 was running. OH SNAP. On the other hand, AMD is getting better and better at what they are doing and competition is always a good thing.

EDIT: I am curious whether my unlocked 6950 will support Mantle. I will only get a new GPU once The Witcher 3 and Dragon Age: Inquisition come out.

AMD has been stating compatibility only with GCN GPUs: 77xx and up, 8xxx, R7, R9, Kaveri APUs. Specifically excluding 6xxx cards (and 76xx and down) and Richland and older APUs, which are of the older VLIW architecture.

AMD's been talking out of both sides of their mouth on Mantle for other than GCN designs. I think they are placing the burden on nVidia to refuse to adopt it.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/technologies/mantle/Pages/mantle.aspx

Mantle is the harmony of three essential ingredients

A driver within the AMD Catalyst™ software suite that allows applications to speak directly to the Graphics Core Next architecture
A Graphics Core Next GPU, like the AMD Radeon™ R9 Series, R7 Series or HD 7000 Series GPUs
An application or game engine written to use the Mantle SDK

But it is good to see positive developer experiences and good product results with Mantle.

 

[adridu59]

I think they are placing the burden on nVidia to refuse to adopt it.

I don't think Nvidia will adopt a tech developed by its competitor. They will come up with their own solution.

 

[Sirnaq]

Today, during CES, AMD showed BF4 running on Mantle. It had 45% better performance than on DirectX.

Is it average value taken from different combinations of hardware from different vendors or cherypicked amd cards performance?
Because 45% more performance would be groundbreaking for gaming market but i have hard time believing that everything is so fine and dandy.

 

[Aver]

Is it average value taken from different combinations of hardware from different vendors or cherypicked amd cards performance?
Because 45% more performance would be groundbreaking for gaming market but i have hard time believing that everything is so fine and dandy.

I can't tell you that, but I doubt it will be from cherrypicked vendors, because when I was buying the last Radeon card I was checking performance difference between various vendors and there wasn't any.

 

[ballowers100]

Looks like Nvidia really won't be supporting AMD's Mantle API on their video cards.

Nvidia's solution to AMD's Mantle API? Support for DirectX and OpenGL and further optimize DirectX and OpenGL to match AMD's Mantle API in similarity.

You can read about it here.

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/nvidia-talks-opengl-offering-massive-cpu-performance-boost-via-modern-opengl/

So it looks like AMD's Mantle API will be the new Glide.

 

[GuyNwah]

Looks like Nvidia really won't be supporting AMD's Mantle API on their video cards.

Nvidia's solution to AMD's Mantle API? Support for DirectX and OpenGL and further optimize DirectX and OpenGL to match AMD's Mantle API in similarity.

You can read about it here.

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/nvidia-talks-opengl-offering-massive-cpu-performance-boost-via-modern-opengl/

So it looks like AMD's Mantle API will be the new Glide.

I think it's premature to dismiss it as another Glide, though I admit to being guilty of that too.

But why expect nVidia to adopt a product tightly bound to AMD's proprietary architecture (GCN)? The only way that baloney slices is AMD trying to embarrass nVidia by making them refuse to adopt it.

Even though nVidia has many faults, current and comprehensive support for OpenGL is the only valid forward-looking graphics strategy.

 

[ballowers100]

I think it's premature to dismiss it as another Glide, though I admit to being guilty of that too.

But why expect nVidia to adopt a product tightly bound to AMD's proprietary architecture (GCN)? The only way that baloney slices is AMD trying to embarrass nVidia by making them refuse to adopt it.

Didn't AMD say that Nvidia can add support for Mantle on their video cards? I thought I read that on some website and Nvidia clearly told AMD even though AMD said to Intel and Nvidia to support Mantle both Intel and Nvidia said they don't care.

 

[GuyNwah]

Didn't AMD say that Nvidia can add support for Mantle on their video cards? I thought I read that on some website and Nvidia clearly told AMD even though AMD said to Intel and Nvidia to support Mantle both Intel and Nvidia said they don't care.

AMD is talking out of both sides of their mouth. Yeah, they invited anybody to adopt Mantle, including nVidia. But they have also made it plain that Mantle is tightly bound to GCN, which means the only GPUs that can run it are ones that only AMD produces.

Maybe if the consoles and Kaveri are howling successes for AMD, other manufacturers will take a serious look at licensing GCN. But so far, none of that has happened. AMD failed to meet their financial targets even with the demand for console chips.

When an executive says two things, and one sucks all the meaning out of the other, we call that weasel words.

 

[ballowers100]

AMD is talking out of both sides of their mouth. Yeah, they invited anybody to adopt Mantle, including nVidia. But they have also made it plain that Mantle is tightly bound to GCN, which means the only GPUs that can run it are ones that only AMD produces.

When an executive says two things, and one sucks all the meaning out of the other, we call that weasel words.

Yeah you are right about that part of what you said.

Maybe that's why Intel and Nvidia said they don't care about AMD's Mantle API?

Funny thing is Intel and Nvidia is working on having both DirectX and OpenGL work on all of their hardware and optimize them both even further.

Did I mention Microsoft is ok with OpenGL on Windows and lets their video game development companies develop video games for Linux and MAC and use OpenGl as well? If they want to that is.

I personally don't think we need Mantle supporting to many API's is to costly and we only need 2 a closed one and a open source one.

 

[HomemComH]

Today, during CES, AMD showed BF4 running on Mantle. It had 45% better performance than on DirectX.

On a low end CPU, the kind that AMD excels at producing.

 

[soldiergeralt]

recently nvidia sent their market and sales rep to dismiss mantle in an interview. it stunk of sour grapes. i think maybe nvidia cares more about stocks and keeping up image of superiority.

i think if mantel was truly open, nvidia would be racing to incorporate it. just imho.

 

[GuyNwah]

recently nvidia sent their market and sales rep to dismiss mantle in an interview. it stunk of sour grapes. i think maybe nvidia cares more about stocks and keeping up image of superiority.

i think if mantel was truly open, nvidia would be racing to incorporate it. just imho.

That's just the message AMD wanted you to get. They want to make it out to be that they are the good guys for offering this wonderful new open technology, and everybody who doesn't adopt it is nearsighted or selfish. They made nVidia look bad to anybody who didn't think closely about what AMD is really doing.

They can call it open all they want, but when it comes down to making actual use of it, it's just as closed as PhysX or CUDA, because it cannot run on an nVidia or Intel GPU.

 

[mxYELLOW]

It's 'open' only in name only if it's based on GCN architecture and nvidia can't get it to work. I'm not sure what to think of it and again....I'm conflicted if I should get Nvidia or stick to AMD next....will wait and see what NV's 8 series brings I guess, assuming TW3 doesn't come out by then.

They can't get it to work because it's not optimized for them just how TressFX is open.

On a low end CPU, the kind that AMD excels at producing.

You got it.

recently nvidia sent their market and sales rep to dismiss mantle in an interview. it stunk of sour grapes. i think maybe nvidia cares more about stocks and keeping up image of superiority.

i think if mantel was truly open, nvidia would be racing to incorporate it. just imho.

Not gonna happen. They have different roadmaps.

That's just the message AMD wanted you to get. They want to make it out to be that they are the good guys for offering this wonderful new open technology, and everybody who doesn't adopt it is nearsighted or selfish. They made nVidia look bad to anybody who didn't think closely about what AMD is really doing.

They can call it open all they want, but when it comes down to making actual use of it, it's just as closed as PhysX or CUDA, because it cannot run on an nVidia or Intel GPU.

It is open because nVidia can use it, they just have to build cards around it. Even on AMD's side Mantle is only capable on HD 7000 and R9 series, it's all about architecture. Being open doesn't mean creating a technology that is optimized for everything. As @HomemComH said Mantle excels at mid-entry CPU and with AMD's roadmad it makes sense because they are turning to APU bigtime. Mantle is not really for the graphics card but for the CPU to support their future CPU lineups.

 

[Username.]

BF 4's Mantle update was released today, here are AMD's benchmarks:

CPU-limited scenario: 40.9% (1080p) and 40.1% (1600p) performance improvement under Ultra settings and 4xAA on the AMD A10-7700K with an AMD Radeon™ R9 290X.
GPU-limited scenario: 2.7% (1080p) and 1.4% (1600p) performance improvement under Ultra settings and FXAA on the Core i7-4960X with an AMD Radeon™ R7 260X

As expected, it helps low ends CPUs, but doesn't do much in GPU-limited scenarios.

Edit: It also helps if you're building a crossfire setup, since you'll be CPU-limited:

I like how Dice uses frame time instead of FPS

 

[GuyNwah]

It is open because nVidia can use it, they just have to build cards around it.

Well, yeah. You have to build a GCN card to use it. Guess who makes all the GCN chips. That makes the claim that Mantle is "open" as empty as Letho's vodka bottle. Mantle is for any real purpose somewhat less open than PhysX, which will run without an nVidia GPU.

 

[mxYELLOW]

Well, yeah. You have to build a GCN card to use it. Guess who makes all the GCN chips. That makes the claim that Mantle is "open" as empty as Letho's vodka bottle. Mantle is for any real purpose somewhat less open than PhysX, which will run without an nVidia GPU.

I completely understand your point that AMD is the only one that benefits to the tech and that nVidia will never use it, I totally agree. I'm just trying to be technical with the term. In PhysX tho, even if AMD wants to incorporate it in their cards they just can't because it's proprietary.

Well bottom line is it's open yes, but doesn't really matter.