The AMD Mantle Thread

[Teizo]

Imagine seeing people with 7870's getting higher FPS than people that bought Nvidia GTX Titan,
the [redacted] storm this could kick up.......

Imagine the opposite lol. What if even with Mantle AMD could not keep up with Nvidia's new Maxwell GPU.

 

[Stuka87]

Imagine the opposite lol. What if even with Mantle AMD could not keep up with Nvidia's new Maxwell GPU.

Maxwell is nearly a year out (Assuming it is 20nm). Its not like it is coming out tomorrow. Both AMD and nVidia are stuck with 28nm for the time being.

 

[Stuka87]

It is an open standard; nvidia can use it....will they doubtful.

It is NOT an open standard, where are people reading this? Its cross platform (ie: console, windows, linux), this is NOT the same as open standard.

Nowhere does AMD state its an open standard? And even if it was, it means nVidia would have to implement GCN calls.

 

[Teizo]

Maxwell is nearly a year out (Assuming it is 20nm). Its not like it is coming out tomorrow. Both AMD and nVidia are stuck with 28nm for the time being.

(Rumor) has it that it is going to be Q1 (May) next year (and 28nm).

 

[OCGuy]

Maxwell is nearly a year out (Assuming it is 20nm). Its not like it is coming out tomorrow. Both AMD and nVidia are stuck with 28nm for the time being.

You have a link for this? Last I heard Maxwell will be a Q1/H1 launch...with TSMC ramping up 20nm by the end of this year, making it available for commercial volume Q1.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Maxwell will be 20nm. But its a H2/2014 release. Just as AMDs 20nm cards.

 

[blackened23]

(Rumor) has it that it is going to be Q1 (May) next year (and 28nm).

Rumor also has that it isn't a big performance jump over Kepler due to being 28nm. Videocardz.com had an article write up on this not too long ago. Interestingly enough, there are reports that NV is doing something very different in terms of memory architecture which is similar to HUMA? I don't know the details but the article made mention of this.

Anyway, Maxwell on 28nm? I don't know, man. That doesn't make sense, yet a rumor is a rumor. But it would surely make more sense for NV to put Maxwell on 20nm, although that would put the release well in 2H 2014. 20nm would give nvidia much more xtor density while being relegated to 28nm would make those gains much more limited and would not represent a big increase over GK110.

If anything, if Maxwell is indeed 28nm - I wouldn't expect anything more than a GTX 480 to GTX 580 type of jump (~15%) given similar xtor density. The real gains will be with 20nm, because that would allow NV to pack a significantly higher number of transistors onto the same die size. OTOH, Maxwell being 28nm will severely handicap NV's ability to pack more transistors which is critical for overall performance.

TL'DR: I very much agree with Shintai in that Maxwell will be 20nm and released 2H 2014.

 

[Obsoleet]

Since it was devs asking for Mantle to be created to cut out D3D and OGL overhead... sounds like it's time for me to finally upgrade the 5870 to a GCN card.

This is GG for Nvidia. Winning all 3 consoles this gen is proving to have it's worth. The ATI acquisition is paying off now too. X86 + GCN is a huge win.

 

[Genx87]

I cant believe Nvidia would ramp a 28nm Maxwell with 20nm set to achieve volume by the middle of next year. It would be hot, expensive, and consume a lot of power.

 

[parvadomus]

Maxwell will be more of the same, throw more transistors for more compute performance. If it runs on 28nm maybe it cant even keep up with GCN nor Kepler efficiency wise (gaming wise).
Every new gpu architecture comes with a new process, so it looks "better" on every metric than the previous gen, but what would happen if we could compare it to previous archs on same node?

 

[Arkadrel]

20nm isnt until 2H and late into it.
We could be seeing maxwell around next year september, maybe abit earlier.

also this is a thread about Mantle, stop the derail guys.

 

[tigersty1e]

amd is essentially tied into gcn architecture for the next 10-15 years (life of new consoles) if they push mantle hard.

for titles that don't use mantle this could be bad for amd. imagine playing bf4 with 9800 pro architecture.


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[Genx87]

Maxwell will be more of the same, throw more transistors for more compute performance. If it runs on 28nm maybe it cant even keep up with GCN nor Kepler efficiency wise (gaming wise).
Every new gpu architecture comes with a new process, so it looks "better" on every metric than the previous gen, but what would happen if we could compare it to previous archs on same node?

That is because these designs take into account the node. Without the process node they wont be efficient. Idontcare can better explain it than me. But the complexity of the chip requires a specific node for it to become efficient. If we plopped a maxwell into the same process node as the original pentium. It would probably fill and entire room and lots of air conditioning to function.

 

[beginner99]

Sure it would need to be ported. Moving a game from a console to a PC isnt as easy as people belive. It is ported and would require they create a rendering path to utilize this within a PC game. This will require debugging and testing. So the question will become how many devs will utilize this? Only time will tell.

Well the picture from AMD clearly shows a Mantle driver and the mantel API. As i understood it the driver is like a VM and does the actual work and the devs don't need to worry about porting, only the Mantle driver. Like devs also don't need to worry if DX 11 runs on AMD or NV. The code to the API and the driver does the work. of course you need a driver for each console and one for the PC.

 

[OCGuy]

Well the picture from AMD clearly shows a Mantle driver and the mantel API. As i understood it the driver is like a VM and does the actual work and the devs don't need to worry about porting, only the Mantle driver. Like devs also don't need to worry if DX 11 runs on AMD or NV. The code to the API and the driver does the work. of course you need a driver for each console and one for the PC.

Which has been the dream of PC gamers everywhere since....yesterday I think.

Easy porting to PC for lazy developers will somehow benefit PC gaming instead of homogenize it with consoles......lol.

 

[mindbomb]

a few ppl have been making comparisons to physx, but they really aren't apt.
physx could work in software, usually leaving certain effects for hardware acceleration, basically side stepping the whole need for multiple different api's.

meanwhile, mantle will only work on GCN cards. It's basically the perceived faults of physx fully realized.

 

[Stuka87]

Which has been the dream of PC gamers everywhere since....yesterday I think.

Easy porting to PC for lazy developers will somehow benefit PC gaming instead of homogenize it with consoles......lol.

Which would you rather have...

A handful of games every year, half of which have terrible performance because dev's did not have time to optimize, and 4-5 games that are optimized.

Or a TON of games that do not require optimization, and just require control reworks for mouse/keyboard and such?

 

[OCGuy]

Which would you rather have...

A handful of games every year, half of which have terrible performance because dev's did not have time to optimize, and 4-5 games that are optimized.

Or a TON of games that do not require optimization, and just require control reworks for mouse/keyboard and such?

Are you serious? This is an enthusiast forum (usually). Ill take the 4-5 real PC games a year over "control reworks."

Why not just plug an Xbox controller into your PC...or why not just play on a console?

 

[BoberFett]

There's a reason Direct3D/OpenGL became the standard and hardware specific APIs died. People cheering this announcement solely based on claims of increased performance are being short sighted.

 

[Stuka87]

Are you serious? This is an enthusiast forum (usually). Ill take the 4-5 real PC games a year over "control reworks."

Why not just plug an Xbox controller into your PC...or why not just play on a console?

By real PC, you mean PC only, or at least PC first, then ported to console? Outside of MMO's and RTS games, when was the last "real PC" game released?

Outside of some steam games, I cannot think of many PC only games to come out in the last year. I think the only one I own is Mechwarrior Online. Every other game is either on a console, or is an indy game.

With a game ported to PC via Mantle, you can still change graphics settings, run different resolutions, etc. Nothing changes there. You can still play with mouse and keyboard. What else is there that makes a port different than a PC first game? Typically it has always been performance.

 

[OCGuy]

By real PC, you mean PC only, or at least PC first, then ported to console? Outside of MMO's and RTS games, when was the last "real PC" game released?

Outside of some steam games, I cannot think of many PC only games to come out in the last year. I think the only one I own is Mechwarrior Online. Every other game is either on a console, or is an indy game.

ARMA 3 is one of them.

If you like to emulate consoles on your PC, I have no problem with that. To try to force everyone into doing that......you are in the wrong forum.

 

[Carfax83]

a few ppl have been making comparisons to physx, but they really aren't apt.
physx could work in software, usually leaving certain effects for hardware acceleration, basically side stepping the whole need for multiple different api's.

meanwhile, mantle will only work on GCN cards. It's basically the perceived faults of physx fully realized.

PhysX can also be ported to other APIs like OpenCL. Mantle being an API itself with GCN exclusivity, I don't know how other IHVs could use it without completely rewriting it.

But then I'm no programmer. :hmm:

 

[Grooveriding]

Trying to call Battlefield 3 and now Battlefield 4 anything other than some of the most cutting-edge PC games is laughable. I guess Crysis 3 is also not one of the best examples of tech on the PC as well because it's also on console ? Man those are some sour grapes.

Then using Arma 3 as an example of a cutting-edge PC game ?! An unoptimized turd pile that doesn't even take advantage of more than two cores and has abysmal multi-gpu usage....

There are literally only two or three games that rival Battlefield 3 and 4 in visuals and technology on the PC. This Mantle initiative sure has ruffled some feathers...

 

[OCGuy]

Trying to call Battlefield 3 and now Battlefield 4 anything other than some of the most cutting-edge PC games is laughable. I guess Crysis 3 is also not one of the best examples of tech on the PC as well because it's also on console ? Man those are some sour grapes.

Then using Arma 3 as an example of a cutting-edge PC game ?! An unoptimized turd pile that doesn't even take advantage of more than two cores and has abysmal multi-gpu usage....

There are literally only two or three games that rival Battlefield 3 and 4 in visuals and technology on the PC. This Mantle initiative sure has ruffled some feathers...

I guess under the new definition of "optimized", which is "dumbed down".


Up is down, down is up!

 

[thilanliyan]

Are you serious? This is an enthusiast forum (usually). Ill take the 4-5 real PC games a year over "control reworks."

The problem is, is that that is not going to happen. Unfortunately most games we get on PC have been console ports, and it will likely stay that way. If Mantle makes it easier for devs to port to PC (and/or the other way around), maybe the games won't be horribly unoptimized, and we may even get some games that were going to be console exclusives, which is a win in my book.