Are we supposed to get a sneak peek at performance gains with Mantle next week from the APU13?
Without specifics, and ideally a post-release summary from a developer that actually used Mantle all the way through, I'm not sure how much we can fairly or accurately speculate on these merits. I think the fact that there is a definite, clear break in PC gaming that this creates between GCN cards and everyone else is the core of some people's interests, and concern.
Nothing I've heard makes that differentiation logically go away, unless we fast forward in time to a point where there is no other manufacturer in PC video cards, other than AMD, and therefore everything is GCN by default. That doesn't seem like a rosey future to me, personally.
Are we supposed to get a sneak peek at performance gains with Mantle next week from the APU13?
From what I understood (as someone that hasn't played BF4 yet) is that the issue was that many (not all) users with Win 7 were having problems with CPU core parking being overly aggressive when dealing with BF4, leading to their CPU being wildly under-utilized.
Win 8/8.1 handles thread scheduling and load balancing differently, and so was not as prevalently impacted.
There was a fix circulating that used Regedit/a patcher program to disable the aggressive CPU core parking. Once that happened, suddenly people that had that fix work (a fair number, anecdotally) saw much improved framerates, less dips and smoother loading and play.
Interesting, given the big draw from Mantle, so far as anyone expressly knows, is to reduce the API overhead from DX - typically something that is CPU bound - as DX has to interface with lots of other memory systems to make draw calls etc.
Patching the OS registry to more fully use all the available cores suddenly relieved the surprisingly massive CPU bottleneck, and people (again, anecdotally) reported getting very clean and smooth frame rates with even older hardware (570's and 68/6950's).
There are some links over in PC gaming, I think, including some pretty interesting gameplay footage with a CPU usage/Framerate overlay with and without the fix, if people are interested.
Yes.
Who knows, maybe even Kaveri + R9 290x showing off the HSA/GPU System Integration capability that would mean close 290x HSA/hUMA additive integration with Kaveri. That combination running BF4 Mantle would be insane.
There is a stickied Mantle thread.
Tom's Hardware's AMD Q&A session clarified some matters.
snip
Interesting times.
Can you post a link please? It's bad form to rip off entire chunks of content from other sites like this without a link at LEAST.
This is assuming you are actually copy-pasting from some sort of article.
If you are just writing your own opinion, please make it clear that it is your OWN opinion and not something someone at Tom's wrote.
I dont know how important the pr events are. Its more marketing and showoff. Its when the programmimg for the new consoles start we will see how easy it is to port between the platforms.
As everyone wants the console market programming for mantle at the same time seems as an obsiois move. How much and especially to what degree that will happen remains to be seen on the 2014 2015 timeframe. And from real results not talk this nov & dec.
Probably some of the Devs already know how easy porting is, and and to what degree porting is possible. That's why you see companies jumping on Mantle board.
If thats the case; will they speak out loud about it?
According to AMD Mantle will allow either to cranck up the fps
or get more eye candy , whatever the combinations it seems
to me that 20% better perfs than DX is not worth it in respect
of the required investment , 20% can be easily reached thanks
to a 10% bigger computing area in a chip along with 10% higher
frequency thus increasing the perfs improvements numbers required
to render the whole API thing valuable.
The thing is that 10% bigger computing area , respectively bigger die and frequency means more heat and power consuption. Also, 10% increase in computing area could possibly decrease the number of chips per wafer, thus increasing the price per chip and negatively affecting the purchasing of more powerful cards. Customers will still the be purchasing lower end cards (or stick to their existing ones) and still not be able to play (respectively buy) games.
According to AMD Mantle will allow either to cranck up the fps
or get more eye candy , whatever the combinations it seems
to me that 20% better perfs than DX is not worth it in respect
of the required investment , 20% can be easily reached thanks
to a 10% bigger computing area in a chip along with 10% higher
frequency thus increasing the perfs improvements numbers required
to render the whole API thing valuable.
R290X computing area is about 70-75% of the chip at most ,
10% more would add 32 mm2 worst case , GK110 would still
be 20% bigger than this theorical enlarged Hawai , so there s
no issue yield wise , the only drawback would be as you pointed
the thermal caracteristics but still it would had been less costly
than engaging in a software adventure wich imply involving
a lot of external ressources who are not automaticaly favourable
for such a dive in the unknown , hence Mantle s advantages should
far exceed the 20% random number that run by there for it to have
any relevance and attractivity.
According to AMD Mantle will allow either to cranck up the fps
or get more eye candy , whatever the combinations it seems
to me that 20% better perfs than DX is not worth it in respect
of the required investment , 20% can be easily reached thanks
to a 10% bigger computing area in a chip along with 10% higher
frequency thus increasing the perfs improvements numbers required
to render the whole API thing valuable.