The AMD Mantle Thread

[Enigmoid]

Kaveri runs bf4 at high and ultra here at 720:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axyHkKn_e80

Now add mantle that lessens the cpu load and it will walk all over a dual core i5 in multiplayer. Whatever the gfx attached.

Now my gaming notebook is loaded with quad core i7 so i am not nervous. But if i had a dual core i5 with a nv card. Man ohh man... Thats not working for the new performance games.

Because a bunch of guys playing on a random computer is suddenly legit? I don't see a CPU-Z shot anywhere and this video could easily be faked to get views.

You are also forgetting that on laptops the GPU takes the vast majority of the hit in the conversion to mobile. Simply put mantle isn't as awesome because the GPU is limiting the settings to begin with. A 650m is mediocre at best when compared to desktop cards. For a SV i5 haswell (say boost to 3.2 ghz which is expected) its like pairing an i3 on the desktop with SUB 650 (desktop) performance. In the vast majority of cases the CPU will not be the limiting factor. You will be lucky to get 1080p medium 40-50 fps on a 650m, at that level the i5 CPU is fine.

Don't get me wrong, there are some games that are CPU limited (mainly Gw2 for me) but not many, especially when we are talking integrated level of graphics.

Mantle very well may walk over it but nothing at this point in time makes that statement likely.

 

[dnakashima]

Here is an interesting thought to ponder
https://twitter.com/g_truc/status/410928850399268865/photo/1

Author is dev at Unity engine.
Kepler draw calls beat AMD/Haswell hands down

I wonder if this anything has to do with AMD being heavy on Mantle

 

[blastingcap]

Here is an interesting thought to ponder
https://twitter.com/g_truc/status/410928850399268865/photo/1

Author is dev at Unity engine.
Kepler draw calls beat AMD/Haswell hands down

I wonder if this anything has to do with AMD being heavy on Mantle

Welcome to the forums

 

[psoomah]

Because a bunch of guys playing on a random computer is suddenly legit? I don't see a CPU-Z shot anywhere and this video could easily be faked to get views.

Nice application of Occam's razor!!!

I too thought it was a hoax, several random guys made up to look exactly like the AMD dudes at the demonstration obviously faking a continuous shot 'video' of playing on a so called Kaveri machine.

Mantle very well may walk over it but nothing at this point in time makes that statement likely.

It's ridiculous isn't it?

 

[Adampa1006]

Nice application of Occam's razor!!!

I too thought it was a hoax, several random guys made up to look exactly like the AMD dudes at the demonstration obviously faking a continuous shot 'video' of playing on a so called Kaveri machine.



It's ridiculous isn't it?

Lmao I haven't laughed this hard in a while, I needed some cheering up. "it's obviously radom dudes faking dressed up to look like AMD people playing on a so called" kaveri" machine "

Occams razor.... The simplest explanation right??

 

[mindbomb]

So do you concede that in terms of actual positional audio, that true audio doesn't do anything different? And changing the argument to "cpu utilization"? Not trying to be facetious or anything, i'm just making sure i'm understanding you here. Because if that is the implication, you're completely incorrect about cpu usage. 3d surround audio takes virtually zero CPU utilization these days, maybe you're thinking of like, 1998 or something. 1998 has come and gone. When aureal was around, this type of thing mattered. 3d hardware audio *had* a tangible and appreciable benefit that could be measured, that is no longer the case.

You can use CMSS 3D now and the effect on CPU utilization is zero. You can also use dolby surround. CPUs are so fast now that these things have absolutely zero effect on framerate. CPUs became so fast 8-10 years ago that 3d hardware accelerated audio became a moot point. Again, you're thinking of 1998 or something when hardware 3d audio mattered. 3d audio has zero effect on cpu utilization currently. Why do you think Directsound stopped supporting hardware 3d audio? It's because it isn't needed. I've sat down and watched CPU utilization on a 3770k with SBX surround, and to say that nothing happened in terms of CPU use would be an understatement, again - it isn't 1998. Intel CPUs are so fast now that this has absolutely ZERO. ZERO effect on framerate or CPU utilization.

i think cmss3d and dolby headphone are actually done in hardware though on creative and asus sound cards. Software like powerdvd have a software version of dolby headphone though, and I think you'll see that it does have a minimal impact like you said. There's also razer surround, which is also in software and currently free http://www.razerzone.com/surround

These are just headphone mixes though, the real benefits would be if you can hardware accelerate all the audio processing. Which isn't really possible with modern windows versions, unless they go with hacks similiar to creative alchemy and asus gx mode. Or I've heard something about windows 8 allowing audio hardware acceleration, but I think it was really meant for tablet apps. And windows 8 is a seldom used OS for gamers anyway.

 

[blastingcap]

i think cmss3d and dolby headphone are actually done in hardware though on creative and asus sound cards. Software like powerdvd have a software version of dolby headphone though, and I think you'll see that it does have a minimal impact like you said. There's also razer surround, which is also in software and currently free http://www.razerzone.com/surround

These are just headphone mixes though, the real benefits would be if you can hardware accelerate all the audio processing. Which isn't really possible with modern windows versions, unless they go with hacks similiar to creative alchemy and asus gx mode. Or I've heard something about windows 8 allowing audio hardware acceleration, but I think it was really meant for tablet apps. And windows 8 is a seldom used OS for gamers anyway.

Actually if you read Anandtech's explanation it sounds like they can do quite a bit of hardware processing with TA. Offload it to the chip.

 

[mindbomb]

yea, i'm trying to piece together how it works from the article, but i can't figure it out.
Is it just surround virtualization for headphone and speakers? That could work universally, but is already possible with inexpensive sound cards or free software.
Is it gonna be hardware acceleration like eax was? That would explain why specific game engine support is necessary, and it's the only way something like simulating audio elevation would be possible, since I think software audio is gonna be limited to 7.1 channels (with no elevation info). But hardware acceleration isn't possible on modern windows. So, what, is this gonna be a steam OS thing?

 

[NTMBK]

Actually if you read Anandtech's explanation it sounds like they can do quite a bit of hardware processing with TA. Offload it to the chip.

Yup, that's the entire purpose of TrueAudio. The consoles don't have much CPU to spare, so they have added multiple DSPs to offload work to- the TrueAudio chip is one example, but there are also "data move engines" (for packing/unpacking textures and resources), and hardware image scalers. There's more information in here:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-the-complete-xbox-one-interview

The fact that this stuff is coming to the PC is just a nice bonus for AMD. They did the work putting the coprocessors into the console chips, and can bring them to PC as a nice little value-add.

EDIT: Specific quote here:

Digital Foundry: You talk about having 15 processors. Can you break that down?

Nick Baker: On the SoC, there are many parallel engines - some of those are more like CPU cores or DSP cores. How we count to 15: [we have] eight inside the audio block, four move engines, one video encode, one video decode and one video compositor/resizer.

The audio block was completely unique. That was designed by us in-house. It's based on four tensilica DSP cores and several programmable processing engines. We break it up as one core running control, two cores running a lot of vector code for speech and one for general purpose DSP. We couple with that sample rate conversion, filtering, mixing, equalisation, dynamic range compensation then also the XMA audio block. The goal was to run 512 simultaneous voices for game audio as well as being able to do speech pre-processing for Kinect.

Notice that the XBox One doesn't have TrueAudio, it has a custom solution which can handle the Kinect. PS4 has TrueAudio, however.

 

[krumme]

Here is an interesting thought to ponder
https://twitter.com/g_truc/status/410928850399268865/photo/1

Author is dev at Unity engine.
Kepler draw calls beat AMD/Haswell hands down

I wonder if this anything has to do with AMD being heavy on Mantle

Yes you are right, this is just marketing bs, because NV is afraid of Mantle.

Its not interesting what the theoretical difference is between tahiti, hawai and kepler is. What matters is what can you do in actual games.

With dx, the maximum drawcall you can do in a game is 3k, very seldom and when optimized heavily for it, its possibile to go to 10k.
Its not possible to go any further because then the cpu loads becomes to big. The reason is DX.
So what you are seeing on this graph, is just typical misleading marketing BS paid and directed from NV, its not happening in real games. Thats a facts. No games go there now, and there is a psysical reason for it.

With mantle the 2-3k will go to 100.000 - and possible op to 2-300k or even 1M when heavily optimized. Oxide showed a demo doing it from an actual new game engine - from actual gameplay. At the same time they could lower cpu freq to the half. The reason is Mantle greatly reduces CPU load at the same drawcall. So with this technology its possible to both have 1500% more drawcalls (objects), and at the same time lower freq to the half. You can have you cake and eat it.

I dont think the devs will use it that way though only. Perhaps we will get 1500% as many drawcalls, half the cpu demand. But at the same time they would use the opportunity - as said by one of the devs, - not to use the artists time to eg. stack multiple objects onto a single texture without any reason than its needed to reduce drawcalls. It will reduce programming cost greatly, motivate the programmer, and there will still be headroom for plenty more drawcall and less cpu load.

So yes. The stuff was misleading. And NV is using their power to arm wrestling and pathetic PR, instead of innovating.

I actually think their stupid behavior - like seen here - during the last years is a contributer to devs lining up behind Mantle. Its not a tactics you can use to win the war, just the battles.

 

[krumme]

Yup, that's the entire purpose of TrueAudio. The consoles don't have much CPU to spare, so they have added multiple DSPs to offload work to- the TrueAudio chip is one example, but there are also "data move engines" (for packing/unpacking textures and resources), and hardware image scalers. There's more information in here:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-the-complete-xbox-one-interview

The fact that this stuff is coming to the PC is just a nice bonus for AMD. They did the work putting the coprocessors into the console chips, and can bring them to PC as a nice little value-add.

EDIT: Specific quote here:

Notice that the XBox One doesn't have TrueAudio, it has a custom solution which can handle the Kinect. PS4 has TrueAudio, however.

Okey thanx. So ms made the custom audio part.

True audio cost. MS need to adapt to Kinect and perhaps wants special voice recogniction hardware/software?

Besides TA will be slowly to come to games. Like i said its a long learning process for the sound artists.

I am still baffled how much power my Audessy multieq ex surround reciewer requires for room equlization. Its constantly burning a lot of power, and thats even with a dedicated dsp chip. I mean its got a blower inside the amp!!! - lol And i am sure it could easily use 100 times as much computing power to achiewe better fidelity and precision.

I asume it is, - but do you think audioprocessing is more simple for headphones?

 

[dacostafilipe]

Gibbo from Overclockers

In a few days, that shall change and my god is the performance gain a nice one.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=25476857&postcount=100

It was only me and I saw some really good stuff, but can't tell you anything, sorry guys.

If AMD can pull this off, then WOW.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=25477144&postcount=943

 

[tonyfreak215]

Doesn't he get free stuff from AMD? Bleh, we can ignore his comments. He's an AMD shrill....

/sarcasm

 

[NTMBK]

Doesn't he get free stuff from AMD? Bleh, we can ignore his comments. He's an AMD shrill....

He gets free stuff from everyone, because he's responsible for making purchasing decisions for Overclockers UK...

 

[desprado]

He gets free stuff from everyone, because he's responsible for making purchasing decisions for Overclockers UK...

So true man it is all just marketing and sweet talks until we real performance by our self.

 

[tonyfreak215]

He gets free stuff from everyone, because he's responsible for making purchasing decisions for Overclockers UK...

I know. I was being sarcastic. I'll add a sarcasm tag.

I'm really excited for Mantle. Shame I don't have a Mantle capable card though.

@Desprado; you know he gets stuff from NVidia also, right?

 

[desprado]

I know. I was being sarcastic. I'll add a sarcasm tag.

I'm really excited for Mantle. Shame I don't have a Mantle capable card though.

@Desprado; you know he gets stuff from NVidia also, right?

Of course that what i said all are sweat talks and marketing until we see real performance.

 

[NTMBK]

Of course that what i said all are sweat talks and marketing until we see real performance.

This. :thumbsup: We'll know all about how Mantle performs when we see the independent benchmarks, and until then it's all just worthless speculation. I can't wait to finally find out!

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Here is an interesting thought to ponder
https://twitter.com/g_truc/status/410928850399268865/photo/1

Author is dev at Unity engine.
Kepler draw calls beat AMD/Haswell hands down

I wonder if this anything has to do with AMD being heavy on Mantle

It's open GL and not direct X in the chart. Relevant, but due to the limited use of Open GL is games it's not that big of a deal. What happens when you match mantle up against those numbers?

 

[FiendishMind]

Yes you are right, this is just marketing bs, because NV is afraid of Mantle.

Are you just assuming any time Nvidia is portrayed in a positive light, the only possible explanation is Nvidia marketing? :biggrin:

This post http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1814672&postcount=19 provides a little more context to those numbers.

 

[krumme]

Are you just assuming any time Nvidia is portrayed in a positive light, the only possible explanation is Nvidia marketing? :biggrin:

This post http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1814672&postcount=19 provides a little more context to those numbers.

Context is:
you link to a person first post at b3d. How trust worthy is that for a starter. Excactly when nv pr machine is in full gear.
Next time better tell that and link to the entire thread.

But you are welcome to explain to me how you interprete the results and the premises and asumptions for them. Will you care to do that?

Secondly all the graphs is just worthless because nv cards simply can not do it in actual games. And never had. And never will. Because of dx that happens to be what is used, and mlst of all because of real world programming limitations. Fact.

Cgn will be 30 times as fast for drawcalls. But only with mantle. What this thread is about.

 

[FiendishMind]

Context is:
you link to a person first post at b3d. How trust worthy is that for a starter. Excactly when nv pr machine is in full gear.
Next time better tell that and link to the entire thread.

The fact that that was his first post could be construed as suspicious if he was anonymous but since he is a Unity Engine developer who was specifically invited to join that thread by it's OP, your mistrust seems misplaced.

I would've linked to the whole thread (as it's a very interesting thread) but because that thread is not about Mantle per se, I thought it would be a bit too off topic.

Secondly all the graphs is just worthless because nv cards simply can not do it in actual games. And never had. And never will. Because of dx that happens to be what is used, and mlst of all because of real world programming limitations. Fact.

Whether or not that amount of draw calls are possible in practical applications with existing APIs is actually the topic of that thread. You might consider giving it a read before you continue to assert your certainty that it is impossible.

 

[blastingcap]

Are there any actual game developers on this thread who want to weigh in on whether Mantle will help or hinder your productivity?

 

[blastingcap]

P.S. https://twitter.com/AMDRadeon/status/411586461381562368

 

[VulgarDisplay]

P.S. https://twitter.com/AMDRadeon/status/411586461381562368

What on earth could they be announcing on Kimmel? Is he some sort of tech news comedian now? Seems really strange.