DirectX vs Mantle current and long term

[bystander36]

From my perspective, and the thing that's worrying to me, is that just about any game that features hardware PhysX as a thing, there is an option that allows one to turn that feature off in the game options or ini.

The particles and cloth motion, etc.. that are rendered aren't inherent in the game play systems, and having them disabled, let's say on my 6850 machine doesn't do anything but hurt the eye candy slightly. If the PhysX is on, cool, lots of particles. If off...less particles. Easy. And in multiple titles, you can even turn on the hardware only levels with an AMD card.

I can't do that with Starswarm. Not that Starswarm is a game, but with the level of rhetoric being bandied around, it seems like there are definitely people who wish that it were. With a title like that, if those programming techniques are (allowed?, Encouraged?), there would be a clear bisection of people who could play the game, and people who effectively couldn't, all just based on which brand video card I happen to have. To make it clear, I know that the game still will run on a quad core with an NVIDIA card, but I consider 6 FPS with only one pixelated ship on screen and no actual commands being issued 'Unplayable'.

That's basically my concern. I like 4x, RPG, strategy and simulation games. I'd rather not have to either have a special machine where I can't choose hardware to just run those games, or have to at the very least exclude some of the several machines I occasionally might want to play a game on if that sort of thing becomes more common.

I'm totally fine with companies bundling in additional features and marking it as a selling point. HD3D, 3dVision, GSYNC, Eyefinity....whatever. Those are benefits that you can either enjoy or not. The difference here is that not having those benefits isn't actually typically detrimental, just ... less great.
That seems to be no longer the case. When a developer that worked on Starswarm claims that that software is optimized well for DX rendering path...I don't really know what to say. The thought that there might be games like that which I might have to either pass on or sidegrade two out of five of my current systems to be able to use is silly.

This is what I've been saying about Mantle. Games will never be built around Mantle from the ground up, as they won't work on DX. Mantle will either allow for much higher minimums and reduce CPU bottlenecks, or it will be used like PhysX in that it will allow for special effects not possible on DX, but these special effects will not be important to the game.

Unless the dev wants to only sell their game to a small minority of gamers, they can't reasonable develop a game for Mantle.

 

[el etro]

AC III also uses it. The 650 Ti Boost is a much slower card than the HD 7870, but here it's pulling even in this CPU dependent benchmark. Same thing with the 7950 boost and the GTX 660:

ACIV bench, patched, 1920x1080 4xAA, 2014 test, Win 7x64 Sp1:

Unless the dev wants to only sell their game to a small minority of gamers, they can't reasonable develop a game for Mantle.

If Nvidia accept to use Mantle, then Mantle games will come to Nvidia too. Nvidia don't accept Mantle not for competitivity reasons, but for egoism reasons.

 

[bystander36]

If Nvidia accept to use Mantle, then Mantle games will come to Nvidia too. Nvidia don't accept Mantle not for competitivity reasons, but for egoism reasons.

The last I checked, AMD has said Mantle is proprietary. Until AMD changes that message, Nvidia can't support Mantle. Just because a dev said it may be possible on a technical level, does not mean it is allowed.

That said, it would pretty cool if Mantle was supported by Intel and Nvidia and it would probably take both to make Mantle the primary API for games.

 

[Carfax83]

You say yourself that the HD 7970 is handicapped by the lack of DX11 multithreaded rendering in that benchmark, but at the same time, the HD 7970 Ghz edition manages to pull out ten additional FPS, ending up not that far from the GTX 680.

That's because being CPU bound, or GPU bound is a matter of degree, rather than kind.. It's not something as simple as an on and off switch.

The Civ 5 benchmark also uses tessellation and DirectCompute for various functions, plus there's AA. All of that makes it GPU intensive as well, plus the HD resolution..

There are a lot of factors involved in this sort of thing, which was why I think the example I showed on the first page is the best. It showed the 7970 leading at 1600p 4x MSAA and the GTX 580 leading at 1050p 4x MSAA..

Nvidia did have multithreaded drivers available before BF3 was released, and Dice did experiment with it. It also still isn't being used in BF4.
Dice, and the other studios as well, have contact with AMD's and Nvidia's driver teams. They can make specific requests for driver improvements.

Well of course Dice isn't going to use it for BF4, as their parent company EA was paid a significant amount of money to implement Mantle in their Frostbite 3 games.

That said, I don't know if the current state of NVidia's drivers have the performance and functionality required for Dice to turn on DX11 MT in BF4, assuming that capability even exists.

If this is what you're referring to from Dice, notice on page 34 that the slide actually says "Still no performant drivers available for our use case". It doesn't say no driver.

Yes, because by the time those slides were published (March 09 2011), NVidia hadn't released their DX11 MT drivers. You can speculate that Dice had early access to the beta drivers, but that's just speculation on your end and even if it's true, it doesn't mean the drivers were ready for prime time.

And what drivers are being used for that Assassins Creed 3 test? And isn't Assassins Creed 3 also part of The way it's meant to be played program? It's not unusual for either Gaming Evolved or TWIMTBP titles to need some driver work in order to catch up.

That review was using the very latest drivers from both camps, the 334.67 and the Catalyst 14.1 beta 6. AC III has also been out for quite some time now, so you can't blame driver refinement for AMD's performance..

 

[Shmee]

My understanding was that for mantle to be supported, a GPU needs to support a feature set. So far, this is only GCN, but in the future could be nvidia cards as well if nvidia chooses to go with mantle.

 

[Carfax83]

This software offers performance about what you might expect for a 4x game under hardware that is Mantle compliant, and cripples performance on rigs that can run other unit heavy strategy titles with no problem at lower detail settings. Someone that had a wholly effective gaming machine yesterday, now finds themselves with a less effective machine when trying to run this software.

QFT!

I don't know what it is about the SS benchmark, but something is definitely wrong with it.

Try turning off motion blur, and your performance will literally increase by 400 to 500%..

The motion blur is EXTREMELY taxing. With deferred context enabled, I have good performance in that benchmark as long as motion blur is disabled..

 

[Carfax83]

I'm sort of confused with this statement. It's not like artists want to be repetitive in outdoor enviroments. And it isn't even the only way to do it in a cost effective manner, in fact something like this here could be fairly simple for mapmakers to handle (think brush tool).

If a game is properly designed, then this shouldn't be an issue. The only game I can think of that I've played that had ridiculously repetitive environments was Dragon Age 2. Most games though, don't have that problem.

Anyways, is someone in here able and willing to explain the amount of work that is needed on the game developers side to implement concurrent creates and command lists? It doesn't seem to be trivial at least with its low adoption rate currently.

NVidia released this excellent PDF about deferred contexts, and in it they claimed it was easier and quicker to implement than manual threading by IC. Look at slide 32.

 

[Carfax83]

ACIV bench, patched, 1920x1080 4xAA, 2014 test, Win 7x64 Sp1:

The benchmark I posted was of AC III, not AC IV. That said, AC IV is a much more GPU intensive game than AC III, but even so, there some CPU heavy areas, like Havana. I don't know if AC IV supports DX11 MT or not, but this benchmark gives me the impression that it does. The thing about these games though, is that they aren't uniformly CPU, or GPU intensive. You can find areas in the game that are extremely GPU intensive, or vice versa..

 

[gdansk]

Direct X involves bigger costs for developers and it will be dropped naturally

It depends. If they're not targeting exclusively Windows, then it could be a bigger cost than just using OpenGL and being done with it.

 

[el etro]

The benchmark I posted was of AC III, not AC IV. That said, AC IV is a much more GPU intensive game than AC III, but even so, there some CPU heavy areas, like Havana. I don't know if AC IV supports DX11 MT or not, but this benchmark gives me the impression that it does. The thing about these games though, is that they aren't uniformly CPU, or GPU intensive. You can find areas in the game that are extremely GPU intensive, or vice versa..

In this test: GTX 780: 48,6 FPS || 290x 41,4 FPS || GTX 770 40,4 || 7970 GE 32,6 FPS


Another launch game tests(click on photos to go to reviews):

AC4 20 December 2013:



AC IV Launch test Gamegpu:




Toms Hardware yesterday test R7 265:

 

[Despoiler]

The benchmark I posted was of AC III, not AC IV. That said, AC IV is a much more GPU intensive game than AC III, but even so, there some CPU heavy areas, like Havana. I don't know if AC IV supports DX11 MT or not, but this benchmark gives me the impression that it does. The thing about these games though, is that they aren't uniformly CPU, or GPU intensive. You can find areas in the game that are extremely GPU intensive, or vice versa..

Lol why are people still posting PCLab benchmarks? That site has no credibility. Polish people on this board confirmed their agenda is pure green bias because AMD wouldn't give them free cards. People have offered a ton of benchmark proof on top of that, but here is some more.

German site, same settings, same cards. Except they use a 3770k at STOCK clocks and they are using older drivers. I can tell you that AMD 13.11 9.2s were not as good as 9.5. The PClabs is running a generation newer Intel @ 4.5. Somehow the German 290X gets 1 FPS more than PCLab.... Just stop. It's sad at this point.

 

[3DVagabond]

And the amount of Mantle games for 2014 can be counted on one hand. Its no different than the PhysX part. Pay or it wont be used.

You forgot to add "in your opinion". Unless you have actual knowledge of AMD paying anyone specifically to use Mantle in specific titles, and I know you don't. So, don't state it as if it's a fact, when you don't know.

Speaking of long term. What can AMD do to make Mantle more widespread?

I only mostly know what has been linked to on this forum.
Moneyhatting is always an option but.. with what? Specific Games? Would it be more prudent for AMD to say go after Valve, whose SteamOS and SteamBoxes are perfect for this? That would mean supporting Linux. How reliant is Mantle on the Windows Platform?

Rather than games, go after Engines? Dice is onboard with Frostbite, there's still Source, Cry, Unreal, Unity, RED, Fox, Panta Rei, dozens other I can't think of.

How open and readily available is the API? Would it be completely terrible for other graphic chip makers to adopt it? I know it's still a beta but I'm really wanting to hear about future plans on Mantle. This tech is still new and the advantages are clear so I can't help but want to know more.

Anyone who understands how AMD works realizes that Mantle will be open for everyone. It's just not ready yet. They will present it as an open API and have it managed by the supporting partners, so there will be no reason not to use it. Like display port, for example.

Every single new game that they can hold to,
CPU hogs like ARMA 2/3, notoriously single threaded STALKERs, air sims, all kinds of MMORPGS..

How about World Of Warcraft?
I doubt Blizz would even consider this, but what if AMD makes them an offer that cant be refused?

It always boils down to money

I agree, but I think it will have to be the other way around. I think nVidia will have to pay devs not to use it. IMO, of course.

 

[Venomous]

You forgot to add "in your opinion". Unless you have actual knowledge of AMD paying anyone specifically to use Mantle in specific titles, and I know you don't. So, don't state it as if it's a fact, when you don't know.



Anyone who understands how AMD works realizes that Mantle will be open for everyone. It's just not ready yet. They will present it as an open API and have it managed by the supporting partners, so there will be no reason not to use it. Like display port, for example.



I agree, but I think it will have to be the other way around. I think nVidia will have to pay devs not to use it. IMO, of course.

Exactly... I think AMD knows DX is dead. This will save PC gaming going forward. AMD has a closer relationship with Microsoft than Nvidia.

 

[3DVagabond]

QFT!

I don't know what it is about the SS benchmark, but something is definitely wrong with it.

Try turning off motion blur, and your performance will literally increase by 400 to 500%..

The motion blur is EXTREMELY taxing. With deferred context enabled, I have good performance in that benchmark as long as motion blur is disabled..

They explained why their motion blur is so taxing. It's rendering the same frame multiple times to create it. It's done like they do it in cinema use. It's not some blur filter.

 

[Shivansps]

I wonder why SS does not go for something that actually makes sence to use in a game. :sneaky:

SS is just BAD, i installing hoping to see a showup @1fps but for a badass space RTS showing everything that could actually be done for a future awesome game, and i just found something that does not even impress me at the units on screen thing, as they use wings with 1 AI for all members, ive been in a bigger fight on Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion about 2 hours ago, a 3v3 all Advent players fight on a planet, if i use the same method that SS uses to count units it was about 10k to 11k total fighters alone, and it was enjoyable because when all zoom out to a point i will be unable to see them, it stops rendering the units and reemplace them with 2D icons, when all zoom in, the fighter even have highter quality than SS ones... all in a working production AI enviroment, SS has fake AI.

Anyone thinking that SS is good its because it never player a good space game, much less a god space RTS game in his life.

My understanding was that for mantle to be supported, a GPU needs to support a feature set. So far, this is only GCN, but in the future could be nvidia cards as well if nvidia chooses to go with mantle.

Correct, but in order for that to work the hardware must be abstracted because is not equal and there is just no way for that to work as it is, and im sure its the nvidia hardware who gona be abstracted to match GCN functions... so yeah, i think i can guess what gona happen on that scenario. In a insight, there is a reason for all abstractions on DX, remember that DX support also needs the hardware to support a feature set.

 

[OCGuy]

Exactly... I think AMD knows DX is dead. This will save PC gaming going forward. AMD has a closer relationship with Microsoft than Nvidia.

:biggrin:

On a serious note, it is amazing how the narrative is that MS/DX needs to somehow respond, when they in fact announced a "low-level" shift in their API in June, when the first we heard of Mantle was September. Tiled Resources will make a difference in the first real 11.2 game to hit the market. There are also multi-threading improvements as well.

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2013/4-063

True 11.2 functionality on AMD/NV next-gen GPUs, on a game designed using D3D 11.2, is going to be exciting to compare to DX 11.1 and Mantle. Keep in mind, this is months before Mantle was announced.

Microsoft claims they’ve re-worked the latency in Direct X 11.2 and have dropped the total latency from 3 frames for every 60 to less than one frame for every 60. They’ve dropped latency by a factor of three, which is a big improvement.

Looking at the picture as a whole, Microsoft is porting their enhancements to DirectX 11.2 from the Xbox One to their Windows operating system. This is actually big news for the console war – the Xbox 360 won it last time round because its more advanced graphics hardware meant it was far easier to accommodate porting from the 360 to PC rather than from the PS3 to PC.

This means that even though the PC has superior hardware and a more friendly ecosystem for developers, all your PC ports are still going to come from the Xbox One because it uses the same API and carries the same improvements to the desktop PC.

http://mygaming.co.za/news/pc/55784-directx-11-2-what-it-does-for-you.html

 

[cytg111]

Well of course Dice isn't going to use it for BF4, as their parent company EA was paid a significant amount of money to implement Mantle in their Frostbite 3 games...

For the BF4 exclusive or specifically mantle support? As far as i know it was for the exclusive. As far as i know, DICE pitched the idea of a mantle API to AMD (and nvidia). As far as i know, DICE could have payed AMD to develop mantle.

But please bear the burden of proof here and supply us with proof of your statement, else it be false advert, misinforming the public, libel, slander and FUD to support your campaign.
If you cannot supply this evidence we will accept a public retraction of said statements and official apology to the hurt parties (ea, dice, amd).

Thanks.

 

[OCGuy]

For the BF4 exclusive or specifically mantle support? As far as i know it was for the exclusive. As far as i know, DICE pitched the idea of a mantle API to AMD (and nvidia). As far as i know, DICE could have payed AMD to develop mantle.

But please bear the burden of proof here and supply us with proof of your statement, else it be false advert, misinforming the public, libel, slander and FUD to support your campaign.
If you cannot supply this evidence we will accept a public retraction of said statements and official apology to the hurt parties (ea, dice, amd).

Thanks.

D:

 

[parvadomus]

In this test: GTX 780: 48,6 FPS || 290x 41,4 FPS || GTX 770 40,4 || 7970 GE 32,6 FPS


Another launch game tests(click on photos to go to reviews):

x


AC IV Launch test Gamegpu:

x


Toms Hardware yesterday test R7 265:

x

Stop destroying his logic please! :awe:

 

[PrincessFrosty]

One of the real issues I have with Mantle is that its tied to GCN architecture, so a good question is how long can AMD stick to that architecture, what happens if in a few generations they need to fundamentally change their hardware to keep up with Nvidia, they're going to be faced with abandoning Mantle, or overhauling it which means then starting to develop hardware and the API in revisions...to me that's a real mess, it's going to be more offputting to developers.

The other long term issue is that if mantle survives and becomes popular, to keep competitive we're going to see Nvidia respond with something similar, now developers have 3 APIs to develop for, increase work so less time and money spent on other things and decrease quality for everyone.

There's a reason DirectX has been popular for everyone, its developed to be hardware agnostic, everyone develops for one API and it just works on everything. That's win win for everyone at the relatively small performance penalty of having a few extra layers of abstraction.

 

[RampantAndroid]

My understanding was that for mantle to be supported, a GPU needs to support a feature set. So far, this is only GCN, but in the future could be nvidia cards as well if nvidia chooses to go with mantle.

And AMD owns rights to the GCN design. You REALLY think Nvidia and Intel will pay AMD fees to use the design?

 

[Carfax83]

They explained why their motion blur is so taxing. It's rendering the same frame multiple times to create it. It's done like they do it in cinema use. It's not some blur filter.

Well it just goes to show that Mantle isn't only about reducing CPU overhead..

That's an extremely expensive form of motion blur, and given the performance hit, no developer worth their salt would ever implement it in their game..

Games aren't movies, they're just games..

 

[Carfax83]

But please bear the burden of proof here and supply us with proof of your statement, else it be false advert, misinforming the public, libel, slander and FUD to support your campaign.
If you cannot supply this evidence we will accept a public retraction of said statements and official apology to the hurt parties (ea, dice, amd).Thanks.

That's a silly assertion, because we all know the kind of "proof" you're looking for is for some AMD exec to come out and make a public statement such as, "Yeah, we paid EA/Dice a ton of money for exclusive rights to BF4!"

Like they would ever give the public such information. Deals like that happen behind closed doors, but everyone knows it's a regular occurrence in the industry.

According to BF4 central, AMD paid EA up to 8 million for Battlefield 4 deal.

BF4 was a major PC game, that would drive hardware sales and adoption. AMD has exclusive bundling rights, and the BF4 17 minute trailer was done on AMD hardware. Also, the Frostbite 3 engine and nearly all of it's titles will get Mantle.

AMD knew exactly what it was doing when it ponied up that kind of cash for BF4 and Frostbite 3..

 

[Carfax83]

:biggrin:

On a serious note, it is amazing how the narrative is that MS/DX needs to somehow respond, when they in fact announced a "low-level" shift in their API in June, when the first we heard of Mantle was September. Tiled Resources will make a difference in the first real 11.2 game to hit the market. There are also multi-threading improvements as well.

Yes, Microsoft is on record saying that they are going to port the low runtime and tooling capabilities of the Xbox One API to Windows:

We’re also working with our ISV and IHV partners on future efforts, including bringing the lightweight runtime and tooling capabilities of the Xbox One Direct3D implementation to Windows, and identifying the next generation of advanced 3D graphics technologies.

Source

I also find it very ironic that all of these Mantle die hards are bashing Direct3D, when Mantle burrows so much tech from Direct3D in the first place..

Built from the ground up my foot

 

[OCGuy]

Built from the ground up my foot

There were accusations that were even more cynnical than imitation. And AT is listed as the source:

... Anandtech speculates that AMD's new Mantle API might be a direct copy of Xbox One's low level

http://gearnuke.com/rumor-amds-mantle-api-direct-copy-xbox-ones-low-level-api/