AMD GPU14 Tech Event Sept 25 - AMD Hawiian Islands

[Jaydip]

Are you saying that NVidia would actually stoop low enough to sneak in some code that would disable Mantle on games it helps develop?

Nope, I said it is already a reality.AMD does way better than NV in Dirt Showdown considering the price point, similarly NV does better in BL2.If NV is sponsoring a game you can bet there will be no mantle unless it helps them too.

 

[ams23]

I said before it may be relegated to gaming evolved status titles only at some point unless a developer wants yo port a game from ps4 or xb1 to the PC more easily.

I am just being realistic here. The idea is great but the reason low level APIs work on consoles is the locked hardware set. You simply do not have that with the PC. You have nvidia GPU with amd CPU, amd GPU with Intel CPU, nvidia GPU with Intel CPU. Then amd GPU with amd CPU. It really is more fragmented than it seems at first glance. That doesn't account for people who don't upgrade drivers and complain about missing performance, or people not on the latest windows version with all the directx updates. It becomes a nightmare for support teams.

Mantle will not make it easier to port games from PS4/XB1 to PC because the PC by definition is an open platform. Industry standard API's such as DirectX and OpenGL, on the other hand, do make it easier to port games from PS4/XB1 to PC.

I really do think that AMD is opening up a can of worms here. As John Carmack said on twitter, surely Microsoft and Sony are going to be very upset with AMD for doing this. Microsoft should be particularly upset because AMD assigned their "B-team" to work on XBox1 (while their "A-team" worked on PS4 and their "C-team" worked on Wii U).

 

[Jaydip]

So they make a statement saying they will not sell games at consoles or what?

Huh?

 

[Jaydip]

Activision, publishers of Call of Duty? Have fun with that. Even with TXAA, every COD games looks like absolute trash. Then you have Blizzard games which are designed for 8 year old PCs.

I think NV would aim for higher than Activision. One, Activision doesn't release many games. The games they do release, are not graphically compelling. So that gives nvidia Call of Duty. I would argue that PC gamers do not care because COD has never been a graphically demanding game, it has been a joke. Ghosts does not change this.

But the main thing is that EA releases a TON of games, Activision barely releases anything.

The problem is BF4 with so many extra goodies will fall short of COD ghosts as it has been the case always(in sells i.e). Regarding Blizzard you like or hate every time they come up with something it is an instant blockbuster.Also it seems that NV is focusing on the MMO landscape and with blizzard behind their back(speculation) it will be a deadly force.Finally I love that AMD has forced NV to do some serious thinking on their part.

 

[krumme]

Nah...you'll still get watch dogs, assassin's creed, witcher 3, battlefield 4, cod ghosts, batman arkham origins.

...and Team Fortress 2. Get over it. Get the card you like.
I buy the one that gives me most fps for $.

 

[blackened23]

Mantle will not make it easier to port games from PS4/XB1 to PC because the PC by definition is an open platform. Industry standard API's such as DirectX and OpenGL, on the other hand, do make it easier to port games from PS4/XB1 to PC.

I really do think that AMD is opening up a can of worms here. As John Carmack said on twitter, surely Microsoft and Sony are going to be very upset with AMD for doing this. Microsoft should be particularly upset because AMD assigned their "B-team" to work on XBox1 (while their "A-team" worked on PS4 and their "C-team" worked on Wii U).

First point - if games are created on next generation consoles using Mantle, I fail to see your point. This is what Dice has indicated will happen with future Frostbite 3 games - they will use mantle on consoles, and mantle for AMD hardware on PCs. Of course they will create DX versions as well, but the point remains.

Second, Carmack has also stated that the performance gains would be substantial in the past, he has openly lamented the API situation on the PC many times. Other industry heavy hitters such as Timothy Lottes, who oddly enough, worked at nvidia prior to resigning and going to Epic games has also lamented the DX situation on the PC. He has openly lamented the fact that DirectX leaves a lot of performance "on the table", so to speak. While Lottes was still at nvidia (this is the guy that invented FXAA, by the way), he posted this on his blog:

The real reason to get excited about a PS4 is what Sony as a company does with the OS and system libraries as a platform, and what this enables 1st party studios to do, when they make PS4-only games. If PS4 has a real-time OS, with a libGCM style low level access to the GPU, then the PS4 1st party games will be years ahead of the PC simply because it opens up what is possible on the GPU. Note this won't happen right away on launch, but once developers tool up for the platform, this will be the case. As a PC guy who knows hardware to the metal, I spend most of my days in frustration knowing damn well what I could do with the hardware, but what I cannot do because Microsoft and IHVs wont provide low-level GPU access in PC APIs. One simple example, drawcalls on PC have easily 10x to 100x the overhead of a console with a libGCM style API.

You mentioned in prior posts (you've apparently changed your mind, and correctly so) that direct hardware access doesn't provide a performance benefit. That is false. The performance benefit would be substantial - but we don't really know the finer details of Mantle and whether it truly is direct hardware access yet.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Are you saying that NVidia would actually stoop low enough to sneak in some code that would disable Mantle on games it helps develop?

I think if anyone is going to try and subvert Mantle it will be it's competitor, DirectX owned by Microsoft.

Microsoft doesn't want mantle coming along and making its exclusive platforms like Xbone and PC get *gasp* alternatives, SteamOS is going to be somewhat of a threat to Microsoft and no doubt will integrate the Mantle API in order to get some compatibility middle ground with windows games.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see a surge in DirectX development, I'd say Microsoft are in a good position to subvert Mantle by creating a new DirectX revision which to be compatible with requires some fundamental architectural changes in hardware, if those changes are hard to implement side by side with GCN that could put AMD in a very uncomfortable position of having to make sacrificial choices between the 2.

Remember Mantle REQUIRES GCN, that's a big weakness on the PC, getting locked in to any architecture in a changing world is very bad. For years DirectX has driven GPU architecture design, the GPUs that stick to the specs most closely tend to get the best performance, unsurprisingly.

 

[blackened23]

The problem is BF4 with so many extra goodies will fall short of COD ghosts as it has been the case always(in sells i.e). Regarding Blizzard you like or hate every time they come up with something it is an instant blockbuster.Also it seems that NV is focusing on the MMO landscape and with blizzard behind their back(speculation) it will be a deadly force.Finally I love that AMD has forced NV to do some serious thinking on their part.

BF4 will fall short of COD ghosts? On the PC?

COD will sell more on consoles. BF4 will far outsell COD on the PC just as the PC version of BF3 FAR outsold the PC version of MW3. I highly suspect you're aware of this. Nobody on the PC side of things cares about Call of Duty - in fact, MW3 sold like 100k copies on the PC while battlefield 3 sold over a million copies in terms of PC digital sales in the USA. Looking at overall world sales, BF3 sold nearly 8 million on the PC _alone_ while MW3 sold 1.5 million (per NPD/Vgchartz sales data). While I think COD is a fun game, the truth of the matter is that for PC gamers, Battlefield is and always has been better. Battlefield has also outsold every COD iteration in terms of PC sales. Console sales? COD wins. Not so on PC.

IMO, I just think NV would have higher aspirations than that COD or activision. If they want a heavy hitter, they would have to look elsewhere because Activision just doesn't publish many games, and those they do aren't graphically compelling. Perhaps NV could look at Ubisoft to gain some leverage there, THAT would be a valid strategy. I don't feel the same can be said for Activision, as Activision has continually given PC gamers the shaft.

 

[MeldarthX]

Wow; some very interesting opinions; and a lot of mis understanding what Mantle actually is.

I've coded and having access to the metal helps; doesn't matter if its cpu; gpu.....having that access matters.

DX and OpenGL does not give that to you.

Now we know from Anand's report; Mantle looks to be THE API for X1 - again from other reports; this looks to be exactly like PS4 metal API

This gives direct access to gpu memory the cores....not as close as drivers but this is about as close as you're getting....

That's two major platforms - guess what the third is.....PC - any GCN gpu *this includes APUs with GCN* will benefit from this. Is it locked nope.

Will this also with cpu op yes as its been reported. So even if you're not running Mantle for GPU; you will still get benefits out of its for CPU side.

Guess what doesn't matter the OS with this kind of API - so guess what else can and most likely will use it....new SteamOS - because if AMD getting massive gains on 3 platforms and not steamOS - *how many gamers do you honestly switching when its slower to run steamOS than windows?* None....

this is a unified API for 3 platforms and you think for a moment developers won't use this? You are fooling yourselves.

Those say won't happen; its happening. MS has DX - Sony runs Opengl; this runs below that and hell of a lot faster. As its open; Intel and Nvidia can use it. Will they? doubtful as if they can't locked it down they will try and kill it; but because AMD controls all the consoles; its not going to happen.

 

[GaiaHunter]

How is it any different than amd and nvidia doing it with benchmark software? That is what Mantle is isn't it? A cheat to make games run better on certain hardware vs others.

I don't see game devs alienating a huge player base simply because they can get 10fps (whatever it might be). They will even the odds.

What?

Yuo play games, not benchmarks. If the benchmark isn't an accurate representation of what you have in game it is useless, that is why cutting stuff during the benchmark that couldn't be cut during game is a cheat.

Mantle will make it be faster the entire game.

So now you are telling that developers will make their game run at the same speed in all the hardware?

Like they did when the radeon 9700 was faster than the Geforce FX 5800?
Or like they did the Radeon X2900XT be as fast as the 8800GTX?
Or like certain games prefer an architecture over another?

There are several reasons why mantle can fail or can not give meaningful performance boosts, no need to come with crazy illogical reasosn.

 

[Kenmitch]

How is it any different than amd and nvidia doing it with benchmark software?

I don't understand.

Mantle let's developers harness all available power out of the weaker spec'd consoles which is a good thing. It by design doesn't make a NVidia produced GPU any slower, doesn't throw a monkey wrench in it's spokes. It just allows optimization for GCN to be ported over to the PC. Why complain about free performance?

For years this sub-forum has been plagued with threads about how consoles have been holding back PC gaming.

Many believe that next generation consoles are going to play a much larger role on the outcome of PC gaming this go around. There seemed to be a lot of members here who shrugged off AMD's clean sweep of the consoles....Kinda seems like those who shrugged are also those who are anti-Mantle.

NVidia said consoles are not profitable....I'm gonna just kick back and see if AMD can make them eat a very large dishing of CROW.

I'm sure JHH isn't happy over the Mantle announcement.

 

[ozzy702]

Mantle will not make it easier to port games from PS4/XB1 to PC because the PC by definition is an open platform. Industry standard API's such as DirectX and OpenGL, on the other hand, do make it easier to port games from PS4/XB1 to PC.

I really do think that AMD is opening up a can of worms here. As John Carmack said on twitter, surely Microsoft and Sony are going to be very upset with AMD for doing this. Microsoft should be particularly upset because AMD assigned their "B-team" to work on XBox1 (while their "A-team" worked on PS4 and their "C-team" worked on Wii U).

DirectX and OpenGL have way too much overhead for the new consoles to use long term. Look at how much devs have done with the 360 and PS3 by going "to the metal". Games today are leaps and bounds more advanced than the games that were released in the first year of those consoles.

In the long run the devs will need to go "to the metal" with the Xbox1 and PS4 and it sounds like AMD is making their path to it that much easier. Cudos to AMD. I hope things go in their favor and that the make money hand over fist and can revive their CPU division and finally have an R&D budget that allows competition with Intel.

This move may force NVIDIA to innovate and competition is always good for the consumer.

 

[Creig]

My main issue with this is it most likely will cause NV to bring out their own version of mantle.

I highly doubt Nvidia could. The only reason AMD has a chance at successfully implementing Mantle is that they hold the contracts on the XBox One, the PS4 and the WiiU. Having AMD hardware in all three consoles plus in PCs provides developers with such a broad coverage base that Mantle has the best possible chance for succeeding.

Game developers for consoles will be able to port over their games to GCN equipped PCs and retain the increased performance and graphics options that they implemented with low-level programming on the consoles. Will they totally ignore Nvidia/DirectX? Of course not. But the high performance low-level programming for AMD hardware will already be completed.

And since low-level programming (Mantle) is nearly always faster than high-level programming (DirectX), AMD will have the advantage in console ports for the next 6-10 years. Not a bad position for them to be in.

 

[Jaydip]

BF4 will fall short of COD ghosts? On the PC?

COD will sell more on consoles. BF4 will far outsell COD on the PC just as the PC version of BF3 FAR outsold the PC version of MW3. I highly suspect you're aware of this. Nobody on the PC side of things cares about Call of Duty - in fact, MW3 sold like 100k copies on the PC while battlefield 3 sold over a million copies in terms of PC digital sales in the USA. Looking at overall world sales, BF3 sold nearly 8 million on the PC _alone_ while MW3 sold 1.5 million. While I think COD is a fun game, the truth of the matter is that for PC gamers, Battlefield is and always has been better. Battlefield has also outsold every COD iteration in terms of PC sales. Console sales? COD wins. Not so on PC.

Nah, I was talking about overall sales figure.You see IW will soon realize if they want to sell more on PC they gotta innovate.I mean it's not like IW enjoy when dice takes all the credit for pushing pc gaming forward.

 

[blackened23]

Nah, I was talking about overall sales figure.You see IW will soon realize if they want to sell more on PC they gotta innovate.I mean it's not like IW enjoy when dice takes all the credit for pushing pc gaming forward.

Ah, I see what you're saying. Still, I do feel that nvidia would look at other publishers first as opposed to Activision; nvidia has a great relationship with Ubisoft and they could surely leverage that position with next generation games. Ubisoft actually has some great games primed for release this fall, as well. (Watch Dogs, AC4).

 

[OCGuy]

Nah, I was talking about overall sales figure.You see IW will soon realize if they want to sell more on PC they gotta innovate.I mean it's not like IW enjoy when dice takes all the credit for pushing pc gaming forward.

DICE is pulling PC back towards console..not pushing it forward.

There are a few developers who actually are pushing PC hardware to the limits....you will not see evidence of that in either BF4 or COD...where PC is just an afterthought.

 

[ams23]

First point - if games are created on next generation consoles using Mantle, I fail to see your point. This is what Dice has indicated will happen with future Frostbite 3 games - they will use mantle on consoles, and mantle for AMD hardware on PCs. Of course they will create DX versions as well, but the point remains.

This is incorrect. "Mantle" is not the API that will be used on the upcoming consoles! PS4/XBox1 will use their own ultra-low-level API's. "Mantle" may have some similarities, but it will never be as close-to-the-metal as what can be achieved with PS4/XBox1, and there will still be some form of abstraction layer because "Mantle" will need to work with all upcoming GCN GPU's (in addition to whatever CPU is being used with that said GPU).

Second, Carmack has also stated that the performance gains would be substantial in the past, he has openly lamented the API situation on the PC many times. Other industry heavy hitters such as Timothy Lottes, who oddly enough, worked at nvidia prior to resigning and going to Epic games has also lamented the DX situation on the PC. He has openly lamented the fact that DirectX leaves a lot of performance "on the table", so to speak.

This is obvious and has been known and said for a very long time. But even though an industry-standard API can leave some performance "on the table", the benefits of being an "industry-standard" far outweigh the costs of being an IHV-specific standard. And even industry-standard API's evolve and improve over time to take advantage of newer hardware. Do you think it would make any sense for companies such as NVIDIA to pursue new technologies such as unified virtual memory for CPU/GPU if there was no possible way to use it?

You mentioned in prior posts (you've apparently changed your mind, and correctly so) that direct hardware access doesn't provide a performance benefit. That is false.

No, I never said anything of the sort. You must have me confused with someone else, because common sense would dictate that lower-level access to hardware would improve performance on that specific piece of hardware!

 

[Kenmitch]

I think if anyone is going to try and subvert Mantle it will be it's competitor, DirectX owned by Microsoft.

Microsoft doesn't want mantle coming along and making its exclusive platforms like Xbone and PC get *gasp* alternatives, SteamOS is going to be somewhat of a threat to Microsoft and no doubt will integrate the Mantle API in order to get some compatibility middle ground with windows games.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see a surge in DirectX development, I'd say Microsoft are in a good position to subvert Mantle by creating a new DirectX revision which to be compatible with requires some fundamental architectural changes in hardware, if those changes are hard to implement side by side with GCN that could put AMD in a very uncomfortable position of having to make sacrificial choices between the 2.

Remember Mantle REQUIRES GCN, that's a big weakness on the PC, getting locked in to any architecture in a changing world is very bad. For years DirectX has driven GPU architecture design, the GPUs that stick to the specs most closely tend to get the best performance, unsurprisingly.

So in a round-a-bout way your saying Microsoft doesn't want to sell Xbone's?

Mantle will allow developers to harness the power of the under spec'd consoles to it's fullest. How is that the enemy? Seems like wowing potential buyers of both consoles and games with visual quality, smoother game play would be a good thing.

I just don't understand why the hostility towards Mantle. Or is it just the undying hatred towards AMD shining thru. Possibly the love for NVidia is to strong?

Mantle won't kill NVidia performance. It's only going to give GCN a performance boost if developers choose so.

 

[chimaxi83]

I'm hardly surprised at the specific posters who are nothing but negative about what can possibly be a huge jump in PC performance, and a transformation in what developers can give us. You guys shouldn't even go back and forth with them. Anything AMD does is desperate, or they must be paying quadrillions for it, or nobody will dev for it, or blah blah blah. You guys are funny

If this came from Nvidia, boy oh boy would this be the second coming of Jeezus. Hilarious.

Meanwhile, the non biased, agenda-less rest of us will look forward to see what this brings

Edit: lmao @ CoD over BF on PC. Get real.

 

[monstercameron]

DICE is pulling PC back towards console..not pushing it forward.

There are a few developers who actually are pushing PC hardware to the limits....you will not see evidence of that in either BF4 or COD...where PC is just an afterthought.

what about star citizen?

 

[5150Joker]

So in a round-a-bout way your saying Microsoft doesn't want to sell Xbone's?

Mantle will allow developers to harness the power of the under spec'd consoles to it's fullest. How is that the enemy? Seems like wowing potential buyers of both consoles and games with visual quality, smoother game play would be a good thing.

I just don't understand why the hostility towards Mantle. Or is it just the undying hatred towards AMD shining thru. Possibly the love for NVidia is to strong?

Mantle won't kill NVidia performance. It's only going to give GCN a performance boost if developers choose so.

He already said why and John Carmack agrees. MS will be hostile because Mantle could potentially be used by Steam OS and others to compete against DX and Xbone and that isn't something MS would ever want. Imagine if Google gets really serious about pushing an Android variant on the desktop and they include Mantle support with it? That would seriously jeopardize direct X and in turn Windows + Xbone sales. Although in reality all of this is overblown, we already have OpenGL and that never got anywhere either. AMD is too small a player in the industry to push a new API to be widely used. Only a few select companies (e.g. Microsoft) can pull that off.

John Carmack
‏@ID_AA_Carmack
Considering the boost Mantle could give to a steambox, MS and Sony may wind up being downright hostile to it.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Before you all go nuts on mantle. It still only work on CGN and it wont work on anything else. Thats the drawback. Some future new AMD GPU uarch might not work with it either.

And in terms of SteamOS, if you look on the steam hardware survey about CGN able users. Its not pretty.

 

[ams23]

DirectX and OpenGL have way too much overhead for the new consoles to use long term.

Obviously a console (which is by definition a closed platform with very specific CPU/GPU hardware) can and should make use of very low-level API's to extract maximum performance. But when porting a console game to PC (which is by definition an open platform with non-specific CPU/GPU hardware), it is important that the game runs smoothly on a variety of different hardware, and DirectX and OpenGL facilitate that. Mantle, on the other hand, is an opportunistic play from AMD that provides benefits only for GCN-equipped GPU's, and that is one reason why it is destined to fail in the marketplace. If you look at the full breadth of PC gamers in the world, only a very small percentage of people are actually using GCN-equipped GPU's, and an even smaller percentage of people are using 8-core AMD CPU's.

 

[atticus14]

feathers have been ruffled.

AMD has done something great (if it works well) for their hardware that doesn't subtract anything from a competitor. Your not losing any effects if you go with nvidia (unlike physX), AMD isn't going to tank Nvidia FPS with this new API (unlike physx). This is just a pure FPS boost thats probably going to work across consoles too so most of the work will probably carry over and benefit several platforms and thus it no longer becomes a "gimmick" because developers are going to want to push their games vs other devs (on consoles in particular) and anyone not using this extra power will be at a disadvantage.

If anyone is to blame its Nvidia for deciding profit margins are too small to bother with in the console hardware business (http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/14/nvidia-playstation-4/) which profit margins are razor thin, but opting out of a market comes with repercussions too, thus why intel is no longer sitting on the sidelines in the mobile CPU race.

 

[Z15CAM]

After watching that AMD presentation it throws more then GPU Power into the future of PC Gaming with the introduction of Mantle, True Sound...etc.

I was hoping it would be a simple decision based on Performance/Price where the AMD R9 290X would equate the Power of Titan and sell for $600 - But not so as there is now other considerations.

I'm just going to refrain from buying for the time being and plug along with my old GeForce GTX 280 on this 4K PPS QX2710 2650x1440p PLS 120Hz Display and reside myself to surfing and watching movies until mid winter when 3rd Party's review the R9 and Mantle. Hopefully nVidia will release Maxwell and their Gaming solution by then.

I'm still on hold ;o(