New API Gives Developers Direct Hardware Control
Traditionally PCs have been held back by the lack of low level hardware access. Consoles with substantially less powerful hardware have been able to remain competitive with PC games, in terms of graphics and performance. Even today, with almost a decade old hardware consoles still remain competitive, and though PC games generally look much better than their console counterparts the difference is not that much noticeable. Specially considering the enormous difference in hardware processing power between the two.
The reason for this is that developers have had direct access to the console hardware. They are able to fully and minutiously optimize their game to levels that aren't even remotely possible on a PC. Until now...
AMD has released what could very much change the future of gaming. An open source API that gives developers direct access to their graphics hardware, similar to the one found on consoles, where developers can aspire for optimal performance.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-mantle-api-gcn-battlefield-4,24418.html
The API is called "Mantle" and the immediate benefits include reducing the CPU overhead to enable more than 9X more draw calls per second. That is a huge improvement, huge. There is still the issue with Windows itself, that remains the middle man, bloated and interfering. But with the recent announcement of SteamOS, the first OS dedicated to gaming, things begin to look bright for the gaming industry. Extremely exciting times await ahead.
I for one vote for CDProjekt to postpone The Witcher 3 release date to 2015 and rewrite their renderer using this new API. It will be worth it.
Traditionally PCs have been held back by the lack of low level hardware access. Consoles with substantially less powerful hardware have been able to remain competitive with PC games, in terms of graphics and performance. Even today, with almost a decade old hardware consoles still remain competitive, and though PC games generally look much better than their console counterparts the difference is not that much noticeable. Specially considering the enormous difference in hardware processing power between the two.
The reason for this is that developers have had direct access to the console hardware. They are able to fully and minutiously optimize their game to levels that aren't even remotely possible on a PC. Until now...
AMD has released what could very much change the future of gaming. An open source API that gives developers direct access to their graphics hardware, similar to the one found on consoles, where developers can aspire for optimal performance.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-mantle-api-gcn-battlefield-4,24418.html
The API is called "Mantle" and the immediate benefits include reducing the CPU overhead to enable more than 9X more draw calls per second. That is a huge improvement, huge. There is still the issue with Windows itself, that remains the middle man, bloated and interfering. But with the recent announcement of SteamOS, the first OS dedicated to gaming, things begin to look bright for the gaming industry. Extremely exciting times await ahead.
I for one vote for CDProjekt to postpone The Witcher 3 release date to 2015 and rewrite their renderer using this new API. It will be worth it.