Microsoft and Sony could be ‘hostile’ to AMD’s Mantle API, Carmack says

[SiliconWars]

When exactly did AMD beat Intel fair and square? Last time I checked, Intel 'conroe'd' AMD and AMD hasn't had a solution that has beaten Intel in forever.

And obviously there was no CPU history before Conroe.

It is rather funny you are so angry though. Continue to believe AMD is the company for that love their fanboys though.

Angry? I do apologise if that's the impression I'm giving off. Believe me, I'm not angry. Not in the least. In fact I have been even more happy than I usually am over the past few days.

Oh, please post the AMD propaganda... I mean marketing slides again abotu Mantle. I'd love to read how Mantle does 9x the draw calls in some unspecified benchmark without any performance stats about it.

I'm moving beyond Mantle. This past week has been a seismic event for sure, and not because of Hawaii. At long last it has finally dawned on the remaining Nvidia fanboys that AMD is the innovative tech company. How can there be any doubt after this weeks assault?

Nvidia is a broken and beaten company, devoid of ideas or hope. Tegra is failing, Geforce just got...conroe'd?

 

[sontin]

Mantle uses a shader language similar to the DX HLSL. This should help to convince some devs. A key is to get the most often used engines to support Mantle.

They still need to develop at least two different renderer and need to optimize the DX path at least two times.

In the end it makes no sense to use Mantle when you still need DX/OpenGL.

The UE3 supports DX, OpenGL and OpenGL ES but only very few games came with DX and OpenGL support.

Nvidia is a broken and beaten company, devoid of ideas or hope. Tegra is failing, Geforce just got...conroe'd?

Lol. Call of Duty comes with GPU-PhysX support. I hope AMD user get more than 10 fps with GPU-PhysX. :lol:

 

[smackababy]

And obviously there was no CPU history before Conroe.

Angry? I do apologise if that's the impression I'm giving off. Believe me, I'm not angry. Not in the least. In fact I have been even more happy than I usually am over the past few days.

I'm moving beyond Mantle. This past week has been a seismic event for sure, and not because of Hawaii. At long last it has finally dawned on the remaining Nvidia fanboys that AMD is the innovative tech company. How can there be any doubt after this weeks assault?

Nvidia is a broken and beaten company, devoid of ideas or hope. Tegra is failing, Geforce just got...conroe'd?

What exactly is AMD "innovating" here? Moving back to the model of developing games in DOS? Yeah, we had the "omg a high level API will ruin gaming" a LONG LONG time ago.

Nvidia a broken company, still selling more GPUs than AMD. Still not in the red like AMD.

 

[TempAccount007]

Mantle is why R* has been mum about GTA V for next gen.

True story.

 

[GaiaHunter]

They still need to develop at least two different renderer and need to optimize the DX path at least two times.

In the end it makes no sense to use Mantle when you still need DX/OpenGL.

The UE3 supports DX, OpenGL and OpenGL ES but only very few games came with DX and OpenGL support.

But if a game releases in PC, XBone and PS4 that is 3 render paths already.

The Xbone and PS4 are already optimized for AMD architecture.

Then you don't need to optimize for mantle path since you will just use most of the consoles optimization and AMD cards can run DX as well for the part of the code that won't be optimized or is only optimized for DX11 - you just need a wrapper.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

They still need to develop at least two different renderer and need to optimize the DX path at least two times.

In the end it makes no sense to use Mantle when you still need DX/OpenGL.

The UE3 supports DX, OpenGL and OpenGL ES but only very few games came with DX and OpenGL support.



Lol. Call of Duty comes with GPU-PhysX support. I hope AMD user get more than 10 fps with GPU-PhysX. :lol:

Why is it so hard to understand that mantle in all likelihood works on both consoles. Now let's do some math. Mantle (for consoles and gcn PCs) + DX or open gl = 2. Two sets of code for next gen development. Let's now look at last gen. Ps3 low level api + Xbox low level api + plus DX or open gl for pc = 3.

I fail to see how mantle creates more work. If the theories about it are to be believed it works on both consoles by default allowing you game code to easily port across. That console game code pre-optimized for gcn now works on PC with no additional work.

 

[Nintendesert]

Keep thinking that but EA will continue to ride the suck wagon

The only vote that ultimately matters is $$$.

 

[PPB]

There wasnt a better time to pull this kind of thing. Even tho we have 3 big GPU vendors right now (NV, Intel, AMD), there can be potentially only 2 big uArchs around (GCN and Kepler).

NV just recently started licencing the ip behind Kepler. Even tho it might be targetted at first towards the ultra mobile space, there isnt really a reason Intel wouldnt licence it for their future iGPS (AFAIK they are actually licencing IP from NV in order to come up with the uArch of their current iGPS). That leaves only 2 mayor GPU architectures to optimize to, making low level API for both of them closer than ever. Heck, I dont remember a time when AMD's and NV's uArchs were as close as GCN to Kepler (at least they are a lot more closer than 6xxx/5xxx against Fermi times), so dont drop out the possibility to optimize for Kepler too.

2 obvious drawbacks come from this, the first one being NV not wanting to licence to Intel their latest and greates uArch, but when you think about it, in practice NV wouldnt want to licence it to anyone of the ultra mobile space either, as all of them compete with NV as much as Intel iGPs slowly become to be a threat against NV's dGPUS in the mobile and desktop space).

The other drawback is that, if this comes to fruition, it would be a lot harder to maintain compatibility when we know those optimizations would need to focus on to 2 moving targets (those being AMD's and NV's changing uArchs each generation). But still after seeing these 2 drawbacks, I still think we are a lot closer to achieving a low level API that would work fine for both camps than most bashers in this forum think.

 

[sontin]

Why is it so hard to understand that mantle in all likelihood works on both consoles.

Mantle is a unique pc low level graphics API. It does not exist on the next gen consoles. It was developed by Dice with help from AMD.

I fail to see how mantle creates more work. If the theories about it are to be believed it works on both consoles by default allowing you game code to easily port across. That console game code pre-optimized for gcn now works on PC with no additional work.

Yes, if we believe that Microsoft and Sony using the same software stack for their graphics API. :\

 

[smackababy]

Why is it so hard to understand that mantle in all likelihood works on both consoles. Now let's do some math. Mantle (for consoles and gcn PCs) + DX or open gl = 2. Two sets of code for next gen development. Let's now look at last gen. Ps3 low level api + Xbox low level api + plus DX or open gl for pc = 3.

I fail to see how mantle creates more work. If the theories about it are to be believed it works on both consoles by default allowing you game code to easily port across. That console game code pre-optimized for gcn now works on PC with no additional work.

Both consoles use their own APIs. MS' is based off of DX and Sony wrote their own. So, even if Mantle is identical to that on the consoles in a low level, they still require a high level API to do anything. DX already is a high level API developers are familiar with and writing their own to interact with Mantle in order to HOPE to get performance increases (because if their high level code is worse than DX, they won't get any performance increase) in order to give a segment of potential consumers a better experience is not going to be worth the investment.

If Mantle includes a high level API, we might see SOME developers utilize it, otherwise, they aren't going to code an API that only works on AMD cards (which is the minority of discrete graphics cards). It offers them no advantage to run any mount faster on either card, because that just segments the market. Especially, if they can get incredibly fairy tale numbers people seem to believe around here (50%+). They will release a vastly inferior product to the MAJORITY of the market. If Windows released and only worked on quad cores with HT, don't you think it wouldn't sell as well as Windows that runs on every x86 cpu?

 

[smackababy]

Mantle is a unique pc low level graphics API. It does not exists on the next gen consoles. It was developed by Dice with help from AMD.



Yes, if we believe that Microsoft and Sony using the same software stack for their graphics API. :\

Even if Mantle is identical on consoles and PCs, MS and Sony built their own complete stack (with DX and whatever Sony calls theirs). It is extremely likely, DX calls made (that utilize Mantle) on the console are the same as those on the PC, except the ones on the PC let DX manage the low level calls.

 

[GaiaHunter]

PS4 and Xbone have low level APis targeted at GCN as is Mantle.

Also, in consoles high level APIs do not have to deal with different gpu architectures like DX and OpenGL have to.

So even the consoles high level API isn't as abstract as the DX or OpenGL.

 

[sontin]

DX and OpenGL do not deal with different architectures. They are seperated from the underlying architectures. That's the reason why they are exist and multi port games use them before they start to optimize the games for the target plattforms.

 

[Yarn]

But, does this split in development resources (a DX team and a Mantle team) get justified by virtually no returns in investment (would consumers who have a Mantle card not buy the game if it didn't have Mantle specific optimizations? probably not).

If the goal is to sell engines then of course there is a return on investment. If my engine performs and/or looks better more games will liscense it.

 

[toyota]

I used to respect Carmack until "megatextures". after that ass ugly over hyped garbage, I don't really care what his opinion is on things. :biggrin:

 

[Yarn]

How does developing a version of Mantle and then turning around having to develop a version for non-Mantle make it easier to move code back and forth?

Hey!! Crazy idea here, what if mantle is designed in such a way that it is very similar if not identical to the low level APIs in at least one of the consoles? Another crazy idea! Mantle on the PC isn't really the target, the consoles are. What if Mantle just makes it easy to migrate all of your hard won optimizations to the PC. I dunno about you, but I'm convinced |:<...

As for Intel being a sleeping giant in the GPU realm......pfbfbfbffbt

 

[sontin]

If the goal is to sell engines then of course there is a return on investment. If my engine performs and/or looks better more games will liscense it.

Huh? Games need to be develop. They do not run better because Frostbite supports another API.

 

[frozentundra123456]

What exactly is AMD "innovating" here? Moving back to the model of developing games in DOS? Yeah, we had the "omg a high level API will ruin gaming" a LONG LONG time ago.

Nvidia a broken company, still selling more GPUs than AMD. Still not in the red like AMD.

Agreed with your last sentence. I think currently AMD has the best value video cards, and I actually am running a HD7770 and am happy with it.

But to say nVidia is a "broken" company while they have cash in the bank and consistently turn a profit, while AMD has a ton of debt and usually operates at a loss, is beyond ridiculous.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Mantle is a unique pc low level graphics API. It does not exist on the next gen consoles. It was developed by Dice with help from AMD.

Yes, if we believe that Microsoft and Sony using the same software stack for their graphics API. :\

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7371/understanding-amds-mantle-a-lowlevel-graphics-api-for-gcn

Read.

 

[GaiaHunter]

DX and OpenGL do not deal with different architectures. They are seperated from the underlying architectures. That's the reason why they are exist and multi port games use them before they start to optimize the games for the target plattforms.

They do deal with different architectures by being abstract so they aren't architecture specific.

If they only had one architecture to deal with they would be much less abstract.

 

[Yarn]

Huh? Games need to be develop. They do not run better because Frostbite supports another API.

Unless that other API makes frostbite run better.

 

[Ajay]

This is interesting stuff. As I mentioned in the other thread - Carmack and Sweeney had been leading the charge for lower level access to GPUs so that they could extract more performance out of them. Apparently, having multiple code paths wasn't a big concern for them, since, by their nature, the lower level APIs would be different for the two major dGPU manufacturers.

It will be interesting to see some more detailed info come out in November - hopefully some game engine developers will weigh in on what they think around the same time frame.

 

[sontin]

They do deal with different architectures by being abstract so they aren't architecture specific.

...
No, they dont deal with architectures. That's the reason why we can play 10 year old games like Half Life 2 on hardware like Titan.

If they only had one architecture to deal with they would be much less abstract.

Even then a high level API is necessary for people who dont want to go deeper and only want to realize certain effects.

Unless that other API makes frostbite run better.

Which mean you need to develop a Mantle path. Without it, Frostbite is not better or worse than any other Engine.

 

[Yarn]

Which mean you need to develop a Mantle path. Without it, Frostbite is not better or worse than any other Engine.

Which is what I think you keep missing, mantle is not the target. Mantle is just a bridge, presumably most of the work will be done on the consoles and for the consoles where there are incentives for and the ability to do low level optimizations.

 

[tential]

The only vote that ultimately matters is $$$.

Yup. The only people who care about "EA Sucking" are hardcore gamers. My friends consistently buy EA games and I've never ONCE seen a casual gamer say "OMG EA SUCKS". Just people who are hardcore gamers who keep up with game news on forums.

People need to realize that people who post on forums are NOT the average gamer (who makes up the majority of hte market).