The AMD Mantle Thread

[McLovin42]

We will see how this will turn out.

I say max 10% ish extra FPS for most people with high end systems

Yep, that's going to be the real world average tops on the few Frostbyte based games you see with Mantle over the next 2-3 years. No better in reality than a good driver optimization. Its not going to do any magical wonders in real world play.

 

[Spjut]

We will see how this will turn out.

I say max 10% ish extra FPS for most people with high end systems

I'm not so sure about that. Go Crossfire with high-end GPUs and you'll need to give your CPU a hefty overclock to get all extra performance.

Here I'm hoping for some R9 290x Crossfire benchmarks in 720p

 

[krumme]

We will see how this will turn out.

I say max 10% ish extra FPS for most people with high end systems

With or without msaa x4 in bf4?
At what res. Multiplayer. Number of players. Map. Where and when. 5% lowest fps or what?
What is a highend cpu excactly?

 

[PPB]

I say from 10% (minimum possible gain, people playing high res with all the eyecandy and AA) to 70-80% (people like me, playing all low with no AA and currently having my GPU sitting at 40% load most of the time).

 

[McLovin42]

I say from 10% (minimum possible gain, people playing high res with all the eyecandy and AA) to 70-80% (people like me, playing all low with no AA and currently having my GPU sitting at 40% load most of the time).

Anything significant over 10% I think is going to be nothing more than a pipe dream. I will personally be blown away if it hits in the 20% range.

 

[BrightCandle]

Its not even remotely that simple.. A game that isn't limited by draw calls at all (a lot of games are 200-300 not even 3000) wont see a single extra FPS at all.

 

[Skurge]

Its not even remotely that simple.. A game that isn't limited by draw calls at all (a lot of games are 200-300 not even 3000) wont see a single extra FPS at all.

Im sure there will be other things like different ways to do AA for example. or Different ways to do Crossfire.

 

[rancherlee]

I'm waiting to see exactly how well it works, I'm sitting on a bubble with my Phenom 6x 3.8ghz as most of the time it feeds my 7950 to 99% but there are some dips into the 70-80% range during intensive battles where the processor is maxed at 100%. It keeps me from running 60hz V-sync since the CPU is limiting the game to under 60fps and not the GPU. If the difference is similar to the gain I got going from Win7 to 8.1 I'll be a happy camper! If not I'll be searching for a new MB/CPU

 

[sontin]

One of the things that developers said about Mantle was that it was much easier to debug. DirectX is like a black box. You pass it parameters, and ask to do something and when something goes wrong, you don't know where it failed or why it failed. They found Mantle to be much more *revealing when there was a problem.

*best word I could think of at the time.

Not really.
DX is open. There are enough tools which allow you to debug DX. Otherswise nVidia and AMD would not be able to programm drivers for the API...

 

[Stuka87]

I am expecting a decent boost in BF4 as I am very CPU limited. My CPU sits at 90+ utilization and my GPU averages around 60% utilization. Now I do have vsync on, which can lower GPU usage. But unless its a small enclosed map, I am in the 40-50fps range.

 

[McLovin42]

Its not even remotely that simple.. A game that isn't limited by draw calls at all (a lot of games are 200-300 not even 3000) wont see a single extra FPS at all.

Very good point.

 

[7stars]

pardon, here and not only, I keep reading about people who consider BF4 as a "mess" or other really bad opinions...i don't own the game now and true that Dice delayed Mantle to focus first on the already released DX version BUT
sincerely,...What are these important and fundamental bugs which should make it a "mess"... ?
can you list them please?
are we sure that there's not someone who likes to just bloat problems or nvidia boys which don't like this DICE/AMD cooperation ?
Because i know that they released many updates... therefore possible that it has so critical bugs yet?
i don't mean that the game has no bugs...but i'd like to understand if they are so evident and critical...thanks

 

[krumme]

Very good point.

Flat out wrong as said by johan himself. Plenty of gpu optimizations not dependant on drawcall limitations. Go see johans presentation at apu13 if you want examples.

Drawcall limitation is just easy to understand and can pose the biggest improvement.

 

[ASM-coder]

Not really.
DX is open. There are enough tools which allow you to debug DX. Otherswise nVidia and AMD would not be able to programm drivers for the API...

If you watch this video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSY2KXBoro0 you can see the developers discussing the benefits of Mantle for debugging. They even bring and discuss the tools you mention, but it seems they think that Mantle is better. At about 2:17, Tim Kip(I think) is asked a question about control, and describes a real case scenario with memory usage, and the discussion continues. At 6:00, the discussion gets to the point where they call DirectX a black box, and they all seem to agree.

 

[Imouto]

Its not even remotely that simple.. A game that isn't limited by draw calls at all (a lot of games are 200-300 not even 3000) wont see a single extra FPS at all.

I really feel sorry for anyone that followed this thread if anyone had to discuss against such simplistic view points.

Months of this...

 

[moonbogg]

I really feel sorry for anyone that followed this thread if anyone had to discuss against such simplistic view points.

Months of this...

Yeah, maybe this wasn't the brightest prediction. Instead of saying "not a single FPS increase" he should have just been honest and said, "OK, you will get 2-5 FPS increase when draw calls aren't limited."

 

[Stuka87]

pardon, here and not only, I keep reading about people who consider BF4 as a "mess" or other really bad opinions...i don't own the game now and true that Dice delayed Mantle to focus first on the already released DX version BUT
sincerely,...What are these important and fundamental bugs which should make it a "mess"... ?
can you list them please?
are we sure that there's not someone who likes to just bloat problems or nvidia boys which don't like this DICE/AMD cooperation ?
Because i know that they released many updates... therefore possible that it has so critical bugs yet?
i don't mean that the game has no bugs...but i'd like to understand if they are so evident and critical...thanks

BF4 is a LOT better now. I am not going to list every bug they have fixed, because its well over 100 major bugs, and a greater number of small ones. The game crashes far less often, we no longer have the major graphical and audio glitches. Not to mention the netcode issues that have been mostly addressed. Oh, and all the server crashes.

I play the game daily and its quite playable now. But at launch the game was bad. Its no surprise that Mantle was delayed. It has nothing to do with how long it took to implement (unlike what another member here keeps stating). But now that it is far more stable, they can put time into Mantle.

 

[McLovin42]

Flat out wrong as said by johan himself. Plenty of gpu optimizations not dependant on drawcall limitations. Go see johans presentation at apu13 if you want examples.

Drawcall limitation is just easy to understand and can pose the biggest improvement.

Plenty your right, but its still the major one.

Again when Mantle finally comes out for BF4 and the posted results are minimal/marginal where real world in game improvements are in reality non existant, make sure you post back to this thread.

 

[Stuka87]

Not really.
DX is open. There are enough tools which allow you to debug DX. Otherswise nVidia and AMD would not be able to programm drivers for the API...

Define "Open"...

Because to me, that means source code is available to look at. And this is not the case for DirectX. Being closed has nothing to do with being able to code against it. Its an API. MS says "here are all the calls and their uses". You then use those calls to complete the job you want it to do for you.

 

[PPB]

Its not even remotely that simple.. A game that isn't limited by draw calls at all (a lot of games are 200-300 not even 3000) wont see a single extra FPS at all.

Any game can be CPU bottlenecked, even at full HD, you just need to play at the right settings.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

BF4 is a LOT better now. I am not going to list every bug they have fixed, because its well over 100 major bugs, and a greater number of small ones. The game crashes far less often, we no longer have the major graphical and audio glitches. Not to mention the netcode issues that have been mostly addressed. Oh, and all the server crashes.

I play the game daily and its quite playable now. But at launch the game was bad. Its no surprise that Mantle was delayed. It has nothing to do with how long it took to implement (unlike what another member here keeps stating). But now that it is far more stable, they can put time into Mantle.

What? Are we playing the same game? Every other time I die it's in 1 hit according to my perceptions, and I often times shoot people 30 times and register no hits.

The netcode is as broken as ever.

 

[Final8ty]

What? Are we playing the same game? Every other time I die it's in 1 hit according to my perceptions, and I often times shoot people 30 times and register no hits.

The netcode is as broken as ever.

Indeed the netcode is a mess.

 

[bystander36]

Any game can be CPU bottlenecked, even at full HD, you just need to play at the right settings.

I don't think he was considering those who play at low settings with high end cards.

 

[sontin]

Define "Open"...

Because to me, that means source code is available to look at. And this is not the case for DirectX.

Ah...
The high level code is visible obviously.
The problem is more debugging the translation to the GPU-language. And for that nVidia and AMD provide enough tools - here from nVidia:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4sjnbCJ_MXE#t=1329
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAm5ziXE6pA

You see every call.

 

[Stuka87]

What? Are we playing the same game? Every other time I die it's in 1 hit according to my perceptions, and I often times shoot people 30 times and register no hits.

The netcode is as broken as ever.

Sounds like your own connection. Are you playing over a wireless connection? I recently had to switch to wired because I was having so many strange lag related issues. After switching to wired the game play has been flawless as far as networking and lag go. My ping averages in the low to mid 20's on the servers that I play on. And I do not have any hit detection or rubber banding issues. On wireless I had major issues. Turns out there is just a ton of people using 2.4GHz in my area resulting a high noise floor which causes packet loss.

But this is off topic and better suited for the BF4 thread. My point was that BF4 at launch was nearly unplayable so mantle was delayed for a valid reason.