[Digital Foundry] Why DX12 is a gamechanger for PC (and AMD!)

[frozentundra123456]

AMD did give it away. They gave the spec to Khronos and it became Vulkan. They said they would give it away, and that they wanted it to become an industry standard, and that's what they did.

Intel is supporting Vulkan and already has a driver ready. Nvidia also supports it, and has shown a demo running on Vulkan. PowerVR also has a driver.

They definitely handled Mantle just how they said they would from the beginning.

Yea, they "gave it away" after it was obvious that DX12 was coming out and making it basically irrelevant.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Wut?
So they made an API that would only work on their own cards,and only the new ones mind you,an API that would potentially greatly benefit their own many core cpus,an API they said they would give to anyone,but you know only once it gets out of beta status but of course, coinsidence of coincidences ,as soon as it got out of beta and once they saw that dx12 was almost ready they practically killed off mantle so they wouldn't have to give out the code.
Anyone not blinded by fanboyism can see that they tried anything to monetise on mantle,I don't know if they failed or if it actually worked but the sure thing is that they made a very good effort.

But other than that, they are the good guys.

I totally agree. And all this makes it even more ironic that in seemingly every thread in this forum, AMD fans somehow manage to include posts bashing gameworks. And actually, I would have had no problem if AMD had simply said "we developed mantle, screw you, we are not giving out the code" just like I dont see why AMD fans expect nVidia to make gameworks code public. But the way they went about using "it is in beta" as an excuse is just hypocritical. If they really wanted to release the code they could have said, here it is, it is in beta, do what you want with it.

 

[Despoiler]

Given that DX12 is also based off Mantle...yah they gave up the code. How do you think DX12 went from nothing to a demo in a year? AMD had MS blessing from the start and had been sharing their work. Think DX12 was in development the entire time? Nah... Also, feel free to Google the syntax comparison. Find/replace job if I've ever seen one.

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/666419-what-are-your-opinions-on-dx12vulkanmantle/#entry5215019

The last piece to the puzzle is that we ran out of new user-facing hardware features many years ago. Ignoring raw speed, what exactly is the user-visible or dev-visible difference between a GTX 480 and a GTX 980? A few limitations have been lifted (notably in compute) but essentially they're the same thing. MS, for all practical purposes, concluded that DX was a mature, stable technology that required only minor work and mostly disbanded the teams involved. Many of the revisions to GL have been little more than API repairs. (A GTX 480 runs full featured OpenGL 4.5, by the way.) So the reason we're seeing new APIs at all stems fundamentally from Andersson hassling the IHVs until AMD woke up, smelled competitive advantage, and started paying attention. That essentially took a three year lag time from when we got hardware to the point that compute could be directly integrated into the core of a render pipeline, which is considered normal today but was bluntly revolutionary at production scale in 2012. It's a lot of small things adding up to a sea change, with key people pushing on the right people for the right things.

 

[Silverforce11]

The first thing when DX12 went public, Johan on twitter with a sly smile: that looks familiar, seen that somewhere before!

Large chunks of code is a direct copy. Large chunks of the documentation is a direct copy. Even terminology, Asynchronous Compute, DMA Engines.

It takes someone with a very special mind to cannot comprehend that all these new low-level APIs came from Mantle, which isn't AMD's at all but thanks to DICE & Johan. AMD just pitched in to help at the right time when other vendors rejected the need for a low-lvl API.

This is what developers want and its happening, that can only be a good thing for gamers.

 

[3DVagabond]

This has to be the most revealing thing I've ever seen to show DX12 = Mantle. Except for changing some of the phrasing, it's verbatim.

 

[Silverforce11]

This has to be the most revealing thing I've ever seen to show DX12 = Mantle. Except for changing some of the phrasing, it's verbatim.

That's the documentation. The code is identical in many sections. That alone is prove, unless one believe that random separate groups come up with the same code.

 

[TheELF]

How do you think DX12 went from nothing to a demo in a year?

Bill's billions,also microsoft is a company that has a insane history of quality code,they actually know what they are doing and have enough money to do it fast.
And it's not even a demo, it's a finished product,or at least will be in a couple of months.

And again,how are all the previous versions of dx nothing?
They had a very solid base to work on.

 

[MisterLilBig]

Bill's billions,also microsoft is a company that has a insane history of quality code,they actually know what they are doing and have enough money to do it fast.
And it's not even a demo, it's a finished product,or at least will be in a couple of months.

All true, but that didn't happen.

And again,how are all the previous versions of dx nothing?
They had a very solid base to work on.

It's nothing, the whole API changed. The base was just the Mantle API.

 

[Tapoer]

Funny that some people that never wrote a line of code on their lives think that they have a valid opinion to debunk that the core of D3D12 is based on Mantle.

From my experience, and from several information scattered from the internet, and very obvious proof as the documentation, D3D12 have Mantle at it's low level core.

From what I read (don't remember where), D3D12 wasn't
supposed to be a low level API.

Johan Andersson was the one who said that Mantle could easily be used by other GPU vendors.
It is not hard to change a code to be more flexible to allow different hardware to run, also, it was never proved that other GPU vendors could not run Mantle without changes.

 

[Headfoot]

Gaming owes Johan Andersson a debt of gratitude. I sure hope EA pays him well

 

[Azix]

Gaming owes Johan Andersson a debt of gratitude. I sure hope EA pays him well

and AMD

 

[xthetenth]

I totally agree. And all this makes it even more ironic that in seemingly every thread in this forum, AMD fans somehow manage to include posts bashing gameworks. And actually, I would have had no problem if AMD had simply said "we developed mantle, screw you, we are not giving out the code" just like I dont see why AMD fans expect nVidia to make gameworks code public. But the way they went about using "it is in beta" as an excuse is just hypocritical. If they really wanted to release the code they could have said, here it is, it is in beta, do what you want with it.

Mantle:

AMD optimizes the entire Mantle codepath, nVidia optimizes the entire DX11 codepath.

Gameworks:

AMD optimizes the codepath except for gameworks code, nVidia optimizes the entire codepath. Things end up broken that AMD cannot fix without a patch from the developers.

It's a pretty simple difference between a better alternate way of doing things that doesn't intrude on anyone else's stuff and something that is run on whatever hardware is in question and cannot be optimized for by other companies.

 

[MisterLilBig]

As a fan of mostly AMD products, I have nothing against Gameworks. It does affect anyone but NV, obviously. But, developers choose to use it. It is a developer choice and such, a developer "problem". People need to fight developers about using GW, not fight NV for creating GW. AMD and Intel have their own SDK's also. They just don't seem to invest the millions of $$$ that NV does for developers to use it.

 

[RussianSensation]

This has to be the most revealing thing I've ever seen to show DX12 = Mantle. Except for changing some of the phrasing, it's verbatim.

Intel/NV fans will never admit that AMD was absolutely instrumental in shaping much of DX12, pushing MS to accelerate DX12 development and essentially being the fundamental backbone of Vulkan as the Next OpenGL.

"The actual Vulkan API itself has yet to be finalized, however at this point in time Khronos expects it to behave very similar to Mantle and DX12, so developers capable of working on the others shouldn’t have much trouble with Vulkan. In fact Khronos has confirmed that AMD has contributed Mantle towards the development of Vulkan, and though we need to be clear that Vulkan is not Mantle, Mantle was used to bootstrap the process and speed its development, making Vulkan a derivation of sorts of Mantle (think Unix family tree). What has changed from Mantle is that Khronos has gone through a period of refinement, keeping what worked in Vulkan and throwing out portions of Mantle that didn’t work well – particularly HLSL and anything that would prevent the API from being cross-vendor – replacing it with the other necessary/better functionality." ~ AnandTech on Vulkan.

PCWorld:

"But now we know why. AMD's Robert Hallock confirmed on a blog post that Mantle had, for the most part, been turned into the Khronos Group’s Vulkan API that would supersede OpenGL. But those are historical facts and have been widely documented by professionals.

“The cross-vendor Khronos Group has chosen the best and brightest parts of Mantle to serve as the foundation for 'Vulkan,' the exciting next version of the storied OpenGL API,” Hallock wrote. “Vulkan combines and extensively iterates on (Mantle’s) characteristics as one new and uniquely powerful graphics API. And as the product of an incredible collaboration between many industry hardware and software vendors, Vulkan paves the way for a renaissance in cross-platform and cross-vendor PC games with exceptional performance, image quality and features.”

Why this matters: Although AMD has had unexpected success with developers adopting Mantle, it was unlikely to become a standard without the support of its chief competitor Nvidia. When Microsoft announced DirectX 12, which adopted features of Mantle, AMD's API looked to be a technological dead end.

But with Vulkan being largely based on Mantle, it could potentially give AMD an advantage over Nvidia and Intel since it knows where the proverbial bodies are buried."
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2894...ises-from-the-ashes-as-opengls-successor.html

Good thing we have professional unbiased media that has made sure that history reflects facts.

I much applaud companies like AMD and Tesla that work towards the betterment of their industry sector, even if it means sharing IP/patents and making everything open-source. Today patent wars mostly enrich legal organizations and impede progress, rather than help it. Elon Musk agrees. It's great that AMD developed Mantle that was instrumental in shaping DX12 and Vulkan because it means the fruits of this labour benefit all PC gamers, regardless of what GPU they own.

==============================

"Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.

When I started out with my first company, Zip2, I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. And maybe they were good long ago, but too often these days they serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors. After Zip2, when I realized that receiving a patent really just meant that you bought a lottery ticket to a lawsuit, I avoided them whenever possible."
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you

Good thing there are still CEOs and management of companies like AMD and Tesla that have a long-term vision for the betterment of the entire industry in which they operate, even if it means not financially benefiting from the very work hey created. Very few firms act in the best interest of others like that.

Yea, they "gave it away" after it was obvious that DX12 was coming out and making it basically irrelevant.

If you have followed Mantle from the very beginning, AMD never intended to keep the API proprietary to itself. It was obvious years ago that AMD was working directly with MS and the Kronos group to accelerate DX12/Vulkan development. Most people just don't want to acknowledge these historical facts. Good thing AMD decided not to monetize and lock all that work as an IP to stifle progress in the world like many companies would have done.

Also, even when Mantle was included in games, never did that inclusion adversely affect Intel/NV GPU users, which means Mantle was something that benefited AMD users without the adverse side-effects for other PC gamers. In other words, it's hilarious how people try to to spin Mantle as anything negative considering all that work was used to in parts of DX12 and Vulkan and that effort wasn't just "wasted."

 

[3DVagabond]

As a fan of mostly AMD products, I have nothing against Gameworks. It does affect anyone but NV, obviously. But, developers choose to use it. It is a developer choice and such, a developer "problem". People need to fight developers about using GW, not fight NV for creating GW. AMD and Intel have their own SDK's also. They just don't seem to invest the millions of $$$ that NV does for developers to use it.

Do you think Mantle was a small investment?

What does Gameworks give us? Smoke, AO, shadows, etc... It's not anything new. It's just implementing it in a way that is optimized for nVidia hardware and can't be optimized, or easily optimized, for anyone else's. Even if other companies do get it optimized, nothing stops nVidia from changing it and when the next title is released, it happens all over again. They can just put simple "if-then" calls in there and have non nVidia hardware run a purposely slower path. There is nothing in Gameworks that we don't already have.

 

[MisterLilBig]

Do you think Mantle was a small investment?

No, but I don't think AMD invested much in the use of it.

What does Gameworks give us? Smoke, AO, shadows, etc... It's not anything new. It's just implementing it in a way that is optimized for nVidia hardware and can't be optimized, or easily optimized, for anyone else's. Even if other companies do get it optimized, nothing stops nVidia from changing it and when the next title is released, it happens all over again. They can just put simple "if-then" calls in there and have non nVidia hardware run a purposely slower path. There is nothing in Gameworks that we don't already have.

And that continues to be a developer issue, not an NV issue. NV can do whatever the heck it wants, it is a company. PC Gaming doesn't "deserve" anything, it is just a bunch of companies selling products and NV more than most have talked about being a platform and like a console, GW is a step in that direction. And it continues to be a developer issue.

 

[3DVagabond]

No, but I don't think AMD invested much in the use of it.




And that continues to be a developer issue, not an NV issue. NV can do whatever the heck it wants, it is a company. PC Gaming doesn't "deserve" anything, it is just a bunch of companies selling products and NV more than most have talked about being a platform and like a console, GW is a step in that direction. And it continues to be a developer issue.

You completely missed my meaning.You said AMD needs to invest like nVidia does. I pointed out they do.

If you mean they need to start paying off Devs to cripple the competition, then I strongly disagree.

 

[MisterLilBig]

You completely missed my meaning.You said AMD needs to invest like nVidia does. I pointed out they do.

If you mean they need to start paying off Devs to cripple the competition, then I strongly disagree.

I didn't say that they need to invest. Can you quote me?

And I wouldn't recommend them doing something like that, but, I wouldn't be against them if they did. People act like they "deserve" stuff from privately owned companies. I am surprised we haven't gotten any GPU exclusive titles yet. That's the last layer of exclusives we need on this industry and it would be valid if they went for it.

NV is the only one that has done something similar to it tho.

And hey, developers decided to use GW. Paid or not. It is a developer issue, not an NV issue.

 

[3DVagabond]

I didn't say that they need to invest. Can you quote me?

And I wouldn't recommend them doing something like that, but, I wouldn't be against them if they did. People act like they "deserve" stuff from privately owned companies. I am surprised we haven't gotten any GPU exclusive titles yet. That's the last layer of exclusives we need on this industry and it would be valid if they went for it.

NV is the only one that has done something similar to it tho.

And hey, developers decided to use GW. Paid or not. It is a developer issue, not an NV issue.

They just don't seem to invest the millions of $$$ that NV does for developers to use it.

I think they are both to blame, myself. I go after the instigator though.

 

[Azix]

I didn't say that they need to invest. Can you quote me?

And I wouldn't recommend them doing something like that, but, I wouldn't be against them if they did. People act like they "deserve" stuff from privately owned companies. I am surprised we haven't gotten any GPU exclusive titles yet. That's the last layer of exclusives we need on this industry and it would be valid if they went for it.

NV is the only one that has done something similar to it tho.

And hey, developers decided to use GW. Paid or not. It is a developer issue, not an NV issue.

You want GPU exclusive titles? This only makes sense for fanboys. I don't know what your reasoning on that is but that is the only way it makes sense. For someone who has absolutely no intention of EVER switching GPUs.

Or maybe you are just a uber capitalist who would advocate car exclusive roads where only a certain car/tire combination can move efficiently. "if they can do it and it makes them more money, let them"

What happens when nvidia starts to suck? Or you think they can't? because they have in the past.

I wouldn't particularly care for nvidia exclusive titles based on current examples. Some shadows etc isn't anything. Their biggest thing remains physx and that is very passable. Some people are delusional and think AMD is holding nvidia back. Like gameworks is this oh so awesome thing that would make PC gaming so wonderful if AMD wasn't around. AMD brought us freesync, mantle/dx12. It's not a fair assessment to claim they hold anything back. Nvidia is not pushing anything forward but their profits.

I don't think we are entitled to anything, but it would be nice if nvidias actions only affected nvidia customers at most. The whole deal of their older cards performing worse is the problem of a person who chooses to buy nvidia knowing how they operate.

GPu exclusive titles, CPU exclusive titles, Chipset exclusive titles, Games that can only be installed on a brand of SSD, Mono audio if you don't have a certain sound card. yay

 

[cmdrdredd]

You want GPU exclusive titles? This only makes sense for fanboys. I don't know what your reasoning on that is but that is the only way it makes sense. For someone who has absolutely no intention of EVER switching GPUs.

Or maybe you are just a uber capitalist who would advocate car exclusive roads where only a certain car/tire combination can move efficiently. "if they can do it and it makes them more money, let them"

What happens when nvidia starts to suck? Or you think they can't? because they have in the past.

I wouldn't particularly care for nvidia exclusive titles based on current examples. Some shadows etc isn't anything. Their biggest thing remains physx and that is very passable. Some people are delusional and think AMD is holding nvidia back. Like gameworks is this oh so awesome thing that would make PC gaming so wonderful if AMD wasn't around. AMD brought us freesync, mantle/dx12. It's not a fair assessment to claim they hold anything back. Nvidia is not pushing anything forward but their profits.

I don't think we are entitled to anything, but it would be nice if nvidias actions only affected nvidia customers at most. The whole deal of their older cards performing worse is the problem of a person who chooses to buy nvidia knowing how they operate.

GPu exclusive titles, CPU exclusive titles, Chipset exclusive titles, Games that can only be installed on a brand of SSD, Mono audio if you don't have a certain sound card. yay

Misrepresenting what someone says is lame. He said it's the last thing that hasn't happened yet and if it does it would be valid from a business standpoint.

 

[soccerballtux]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-why-directx-12-is-a-gamechanger

DX12 is enabled in Windows 10 Preview and its looking promising.



Of course, just a reminder, the 2000% increase is for a synthetic test. Real world test will be different.


This CPU tidbit is interesting.

ha-ha, suck it Intel.

I bet nVidia will sort this out right quick. Can't have AMD being faster than Intel

Warning issued for trolling.
-- stahlhart

 

[TheELF]

ha-ha, suck it Intel.

I bet nVidia will sort this out right quick. Can't have AMD being faster than Intel

People don't realize that this api overhead test is like cinebench,it uses all cores so amds seem to be faster,actual games will still rely heavily on single thread.

 

[soccerballtux]

In the upcoming years, DX12 should have two effects: better use of multithreading on the CPU side, and less need for game-specific driver optimizations on the GPU side. Both trends should benefit AMD. Of course, this won't save them if they continue to pump out rebranded CPUs and GPUs from 2012. They need to execute in other areas, too.

my 2012 cpu executes just fine thx

 

[Red Hawk]

Yea, they "gave it away" after it was obvious that DX12 was coming out and making it basically irrelevant.

And who exactly do you think pushes and contributes to DirectX 12? Microsoft doesn't make DirectX on their own any more. Back when DirectX 11 came out, Microsoft promoted it as something that Nvidia, AMD, and various game developers had contributed to. DirectX 12 is the same, and there's significant evidence that components of Mantle have made their way into DirectX 12. I'm not sure I would go as far as to say DirectX 12 is based on Mantle, but it's definitely influenced by it.

Mantle has effectively been given away, in the form of Vulkan and DirectX 12. Neither would likely be happening in the way they are now without AMD and Johan Andersson of DICE innovating first with Mantle. Sure, you can argue that it would have happened eventually, the same way you could argue that the theory of relativity would have been discovered eventually without Einstein. But the reason it's happening now is because of Mantle.

I totally agree. And all this makes it even more ironic that in seemingly every thread in this forum, AMD fans somehow manage to include posts bashing gameworks. And actually, I would have had no problem if AMD had simply said "we developed mantle, screw you, we are not giving out the code" just like I dont see why AMD fans expect nVidia to make gameworks code public. But the way they went about using "it is in beta" as an excuse is just hypocritical. If they really wanted to release the code they could have said, here it is, it is in beta, do what you want with it.

Like xthetenth said. Mantle does not hurt Nvidia performance. There are no Mantle-exclusive graphics features that Nvidia is not allowed to optimize before; every game with a Mantle renderer also has a DirectX 11 renderer that Nvidia can optimize to their heart's content. GameWorks gates off specific graphics features, in a normal DirectX 11 renderer, from being optimized for AMD hardware. That's anticompetitive.

As a fan of mostly AMD products, I have nothing against Gameworks. It does affect anyone but NV, obviously. But, developers choose to use it. It is a developer choice and such, a developer "problem". People need to fight developers about using GW, not fight NV for creating GW. AMD and Intel have their own SDK's also. They just don't seem to invest the millions of $$$ that NV does for developers to use it.

OK, sure, developers use it, that doesn't make it ok for Nvidia to enable that by offering an anticompetitive SDK to begin with. AMD and Intel have their own SDKs, sure, but as far as I know that don't use the licensing agreement to restrict other IHVs from optimizing for it like Nvidia does.