The AMD Mantle Thread

[3DVagabond]

I find it incredibly narrow viewed to think that just because serious gamers today don't use iGPU that, if the ability to play "serious games" on iGPU existed, that nobody would use them for that.

I could see you guys doing a market study for Henry Ford.

Sorry Henry, we find that more people use horse and carriage for everyday commuting than cars.

HF: My car will be more affordable though.

Sorry, only rich people buy cars.

 

[Minkoff]

You've got to look at a different perspective...
Probably most people do not not anything at all, regarding PCs and components. But they (or ytheir kids) want to be "connected" like anybody else, so they go to a store...not knowing what really a PC can do, and say: "I want a Computer."
It's up to the seller to find what you actualy want or just to sell what ever is unsellable.
At a later stage most customers find that they want to play games (like Crysis) and you see forums fiilled with "Can I play "this" my laptop is Intel (AMD) with 2gig of RAM"
And this you see not only in markets in India and China... but in US and Europe.

So, many of the casual gamers might have found that they want to play better games, but are unable to do so...
Out of those that have already spent their budget on an usless laptop and new purchase is not on the horizont, at least some might see the light at the end of the tunel, and be able to play the new "Plants vs Zombies" due to Mantle.

EDIT: I was thinking...we are what...7 billion. So probably at least one customer is now saying:
"What is this?! I don't want AMD, I want Asus! ...and don't give me that Mantle crap...I will look ridiculous in it"

 

[Paul98]

Is there any more news supposed to be coming out soon about mantle or bf4 mantle patch?

 

[Paul98]

Does anyone have a general idea about how much of the GPU is currently being used in modern game engines? Given the GPU Queue in mantle if there are any major parts being largely underused it could be interesting.

 

[blastingcap]

Hint to those thinking iGPUs are useless: what's to stop a programmer from using the CPU, iGPU, AND dGPU all at the same time?

 

[SiliconWars]

Rebellion throws weight behind AMD Mantle

Our first Mantle supported title will of course be our flagship 2014 game, Sniper Elite 3. And although we can’t talk about them right now we can’t wait to reveal even more titles with Mantle support in the next year.

 

[Gloomy]

Hint to those thinking iGPUs are useless: what's to stop a programmer from using the CPU, iGPU, AND dGPU all at the same time?

windows

 

[blastingcap]

windows

IIRC, AMD's end goal with HSA is to erase the CPU/GPU distinction. And you can already do things like crossfire AMD APU with AMD dGPU.

Also, Mantle should enable alternative OSes like SteamOS to gain market share faster. Though admittedly we're stuck on Windows for now.

 

[bystander36]

Windows is on its way out hopefully. IIRC, AMD's end goal with HSA is to erase the CPU/GPU distinction.

Also, Mantle should enable alternative OSes like SteamOS to gain market share faster. Though admittedly we're stuck on Windows for now.

Why would you want Windows to go away? How would that serve you?

If Windows disappeared, PC gaming would be wrecked beyond repair. Windows unifies the vast majority of PC's into one code path. If we lost that, dev's would have a lot more work porting to several different OS's, or just not port at all.

 

[Paul98]

Hint to those thinking iGPUs are useless: what's to stop a programmer from using the CPU, iGPU, AND dGPU all at the same time?

With mantle, nothing except the programmers

 

[Spjut]

Why would you want Windows to go away? How would that serve you?

If Windows disappeared, PC gaming would be wrecked beyond repair. Windows unifies the vast majority of PC's into one code path. If we lost that, dev's would have a lot more work porting to several different OS's, or just not port at all.

With Microsoft's decision to make DX11.1/11.2 exclusive to Windows 8, the gaming PCs are fractured again. Just like how DX9 lived so long due to XP, so will DX11.0 due to Windows 7.

A big plus for Mantle is that it'll work on Windows 7 as well.

 

[bystander36]

DX11.1 and 11.2 are small differences, and can easily be ignored by dev's. DX11 still works on Win 8.

 

[Gloomy]

it's not possible in other OSs either, I only said windows because that was the relevant one

:|

 

[blastingcap]

Why would you want Windows to go away? How would that serve you?

If Windows disappeared, PC gaming would be wrecked beyond repair. Windows unifies the vast majority of PC's into one code path. If we lost that, dev's would have a lot more work porting to several different OS's, or just not port at all.

I don't want Windows to go away, per se, but I am sick of paying for Windows licenses on all of my machines that I want to have DX11 on. If someone (cough Valve cough) wants to step up and give us a real alternative, I'm all for that. It won't happen overnight, and we'll still need a Windows machine or fast emulator for playing older games, but I am looking forward to a future where SteamOS is massive and developers code for Linux as well.

Stuff like OpenGL is nice and all but Mantle is supposedly very similar to next-gen consoles and should be easier to port and already has several companies throwing their weight behind it. Plus AMD's weight. Plus possibly Valve's weight.

DirectX12 could conceivably turn more Mantle-like, but it would necessitate upgrading to Windows 9 or whatever and that's just a no-go for me personally.

it's not possible in other OSs either

Forgive my ignorance, but why is it impossible?

 

[bystander36]

So this is all about Mantle...which means you want to kill off all AMD competitors to realize this perfect world. I personally don't like monopolies.

 

[Spjut]

DX11.1 and 11.2 are small differences, and can easily be ignored by dev's. DX11 still works on Win 8.

Tiled resources has gotten some positive responses. As has the CPU optimizations that were added in DX11.1.

DX11 still works on Windows 8, but DX11.1 and 11.2 don't work on Windows 7. That's why we'll be stuck with DX11.0 for the next years, which is four years old by now. And that's not positive.

 

[bystander36]

Tiled resources has gotten some positive responses. As has the CPU optimizations that were added in DX11.1.

DX11 still works on Windows 8, but DX11.1 and 11.2 don't work on Windows 7. That's why we'll be stuck with DX11.0 for the next years, which is four years old by now. And that's not positive.

Doesn't that show that the industry doesn't want fractured code? If they were perfectly fine with having several different OS's, they'd be fine with creating games that support DX9/DX10/DX11/DX11.1/DX11.2. They don't want that, so they stick with 1 or 2 versions. These different DX versions aren't complete rewrites either.

 

[Spjut]

Doesn't that show that the industry doesn't want fractured code? If they were perfectly fine with having several different OS's, they'd be fine with creating games that support DX9/DX10/DX11/DX11.1/DX11.2. They don't want that, so they stick with 1 or 2 versions. These different DX versions aren't complete rewrites either.

It shows that Windows itself helps to create fragmentation in the PC market.

 

[Gloomy]

Forgive my ignorance, but why is it impossible?

impossible was the wrong word to use, sorry

I meant that it's not really a failure on windows' behalf. Just unsupported.

 

[bystander36]

It shows that Windows itself helps to create fragmentation in the PC market.

As long as there are improvements to be made, there will be some fragmentation.

I don't know how much effort it is for Windows to make every version or DX work with every version of Windows, and I don't know if it is even possible. However, it does make sense that they make the newest versions work on their newest OS first. Vista did get DX11, it just took a few months after Win7 had it. Win 7 may even get DX11.1 and 11.2, but it will take some work to do so, or it may not be possible, if it takes advantage of Win8 differences.

Some of those DX differences are not even OS related, but hardware related. DX11 isn't possible on older hardware.

Even Mantle will have versions eventually. There is GCN 1 and GCN 2 already. You can't expect that to remain the same either.

That said, the differences made in these updates are not complete rewrites. They just require some adjustments here and there. They trickle into the market over time. Windows may slow up some changes in their attempt to be profitable, but it may also be due to costs and time.

On the other hand, OpenGL was largely dismissed over the years because they didn't make the hard choices and improve their API. It coexists on Windows and if Microsoft is the reason for fragmentation, they could just use OpenGL instead, but apparently there is more good than bad with DirectX.

 

[beginner99]

Thats why there's no AMD GPU PhysX and why there won't be NV GPU Mantle capable hardware.

Wrong: PhysX is closed and AMD could not create support even if they wanted too. And it's even worse. NV drivers don't allow run hybrid system in which the NV card is for physx only.

mantle is open. Anyone can create their own implementation of a mantle driver.

 

[bystander36]

Wrong: PhysX is closed and AMD could not create support even if they wanted too. And it's even worse. NV drivers don't allow run hybrid system in which the NV card is for physx only.

mantle is open. Anyone can create their own implementation of a mantle driver.

I'm curious about this. If Mantle's great advantage is close to the metal API calls, how is another architecture going to be written for it. If Mantle could do this, how is Mantle going to allow close to the metal code?

 

[blastingcap]

I'm curious about this. If Mantle's great advantage is close to the metal API calls, how is another architecture going to be written for it. If Mantle could do this, how is Mantle going to allow close to the metal code?

Another arch would be less efficient

 

[Noctifer616]

I'm curious about this. If Mantle's great advantage is close to the metal API calls, how is another architecture going to be written for it. If Mantle could do this, how is Mantle going to allow close to the metal code?

There is still a abstraction layer. As long as GPU's have support for same features they should be able to run Mantle.

At least that's what the developers are saying.

 

[bystander36]

It sounds more likely it will be more like a DX alternative, with low level AMD calls. I'm not sure others would like that, unless they also provide some low level calls for their own hardware.