AMD Mantle

[darkewaffle]

Surprised this hasn't popped up yet, I figure it's the kind of thing the PC gaming master race would eat right up

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7371/understanding-amds-mantle-a-lowlevel-graphics-api-for-gcn

Ryan provided a great overview of what Mantle is and some of the advantages and challenges it will face, highly recommended.

The cliffs version is AMD is developing an API for AMD GPUs with GCN (so 7xxx series and newer) to allow developers to 'bypass' Direct3D to leverage greater power from the hardware by reducing overhead. Evidently this is something developers have been wanting from AMD and AMD showed a promo video from DICE at their event yesterday with DICE voicing their support of Mantle. Mantle will be implemented in BF4, the first/biggest title onboard with Mantle so far it seems. No news on what kind of performance increases are possible yet.

 

[Revolution 11]

There are several threads about Mantle on the CPU and Video Card forums. Personally, I am excited about the potential of earlier 4K/8K gaming that Mantle could allow. And how this portends to eventual 4K support in the Oculus Rift.

 

[PowerYoga]

already reading them on the vid card forums.

 

[imaheadcase]

There are several threads about Mantle on the CPU and Video Card forums. Personally, I am excited about the potential of earlier 4K/8K gaming that Mantle could allow. And how this portends to eventual 4K support in the Oculus Rift.

Nothing since that is not dependent on Mantle..

 

[Aikouka]

I'm really interested to see what Mantle brings to PC gaming, but there's really not much more that we can do than wait -- possibly until November for AMD's Developer's Summit. Frankly, I just want some juicy numbers to salivate over!

...although, not like any of it matters to me running two GTX 680s in SLI.

Nothing since that is not dependent on Mantle..

I think he's just trying to suggest that the possible increase in GPU efficiency could help make Ultra HD (or greater) resolution far less of an expensive investment... not that it isn't possible without Mantle.

 

[Stringjam]

So what I'm seeing here (if I am correct, since I'm not the most technical bloke), is that:

A game engine (for instance Frostbite 3, which apparently will be doing so) will have the opportunity to develop a game for PC that natively uses the Mantle render path, so that the Direct3D abstraction layer can be completely bypassed?

Caveat.......but only for AMD GPU's.

This sounds pretty huge to me, and would seem awfully relevant to the goals of the SteamBox as well.

 

[Stringjam]

...although, not like any of it matters to me running two GTX 680s in SLI.

But it does matter when those GPU's are capable of handling far more draw calls than they are able to be fed because of the added abstraction layer, correct?

 

[smackababy]

Well, if Nvidia is to be believed, Direct X performance isn't really that bogged down for gaming. The direct to metal path isn't such an improvement as it was in years past because of DX efficiency.

That announcement was made shortly before this Mantle release, so take that as you will though. Really though, pushing 4k is going to take a lot more raw power (even SLI Titans struggle to get very low framerates from the tests I've seen), so a small (even 30%) increase in efficiency isn't going to do much to change that.

Realistically, I think this is AMD trying to leverage their inferior (as in lower raw graphics power) against much more expensive graphics cards. This could work out, depending how robust the tools to use this API are and how easy it is to use it. Paying for a weaker card and getting the same performance in Mantle games as a much more expensive card could garner them more marketshare.

 

[uclaLabrat]

The biggest breakthrough here is the market size: by developing this API (which presumably is also effective on the new consoles since they both use new AMD GPUs) effectively lumps rigs with AMD GPUs into the console camp to an extent. If this API allows basically a straight port of console optimizations into the AMD GPUs, every single developer will be optimizing for mantle.

This has some important connotations:
Amd will be able to get more out of less powerful hardware, giving them a significant edge in performance, and Nvidia will be left out in the cold, since it would essentially take much extra work to get optimizations for Nvidia through directX, which developers arfe less inclined to do, potentially increasing the performance delta even further.

 

[uclaLabrat]

Well, if Nvidia is to be believed, Direct X performance isn't really that bogged down for gaming. The direct to metal path isn't such an improvement as it was in years past because of DX efficiency.

That announcement was made shortly before this Mantle release, so take that as you will though. Really though, pushing 4k is going to take a lot more raw power (even SLI Titans struggle to get very low framerates from the tests I've seen), so a small (even 30%) increase in efficiency isn't going to do much to change that.

Realistically, I think this is AMD trying to leverage their inferior (as in lower raw graphics power) against much more expensive graphics cards. This could work out, depending how robust the tools to use this API are and how easy it is to use it. Paying for a weaker card and getting the same performance in Mantle games as a much more expensive card could garner them more marketshare.

30% is HUGE. If AMD gets 30% more out of their hardware just by virtue of an API, that's the difference between one card being competitive vs. getting blown out of the water.

That basically means a 7970 is now a titan, for free. If Amd manages to bring their A-game and develop a card that is 10% faster than Nvidia's flagship for a similar price, that becomes a 40% advantage, which is on the order of an epic slaughter.

I don't think this can be understated.

 

[smackababy]

30% is HUGE. If AMD gets 30% more out of their hardware just by virtue of an API, that's the difference between one card being competitive vs. getting blown out of the water.

That basically means a 7970 is now a titan, for free. If Amd manages to bring their A-game and develop a card that is 10% faster than Nvidia's flagship for a similar price, that becomes a 40% advantage, which is on the order of an epic slaughter.

I don't think this can be understated.

My 30% was directed in the realm of 4k, even a Titan getting 30% more frames per second, is still under 30FPS and virtually unplayable. So, this API isn't really going to revolutionize 4k / 8k gaming for a good while (when AMD decides to put out a real card targeted at the enthusiast market). We aren't spending thousands of dollars on a monitor to skimp and cheap out with a $300 graphics card.

For the less than absolute top end gaming, the increases will help their lower end cards performance and the biggest market (the budget rig builder) will benefit more from AMD cards in AMD games. But, 30% is absolutely way high on the real world performance this will have.

 

[Stringjam]

The biggest breakthrough here is the market size: by developing this API (which presumably is also effective on the new consoles since they both use new AMD GPUs) effectively lumps rigs with AMD GPUs into the console camp to an extent. If this API allows basically a straight port of console optimizations into the AMD GPUs, every single developer will be optimizing for mantle.

The article mentions that Frostbite 3 is going to be capable of rendering natively to Mantle.

Sooooo......one of the biggest game development engines has made an effort to accommodate a render path that totally excludes the need for Direct3D abstraction?

The SteamBox is suddenly looking a whole lot more viable in the future if this becomes the case.

What if Unreal and CryEngine decide to follow suit? Suddenly we're seeing AAA titles that no longer need Windows.

 

[futurefields]

Seems too good to be true for AMD customers imo.

 

[Red Storm]

The article mentions that Frostbite 3 is going to be capable of rendering natively to Mantle.

Sooooo......one of the biggest game development engines has made an effort to accommodate a render path that totally excludes the need for Direct3D abstraction?

The SteamBox is suddenly looking a whole lot more viable in the future if this becomes the case.

What if Unreal and CryEngine decide to follow suit? Suddenly we're seeing AAA titles that no longer need Windows.

An interesting future lies ahead for the PC Gaming scene.

 

[imaheadcase]

The article mentions that Frostbite 3 is going to be capable of rendering natively to Mantle.

Sooooo......one of the biggest game development engines has made an effort to accommodate a render path that totally excludes the need for Direct3D abstraction?

The SteamBox is suddenly looking a whole lot more viable in the future if this becomes the case.

What if Unreal and CryEngine decide to follow suit? Suddenly we're seeing AAA titles that no longer need Windows.

1. Frostbite 3 uses Mantle for amd cards. But its not exclusively all mantle.
2. It uses DX. It has to since it needs to support other cards.
3. steambox does not have anything to do with it. That is its own thing, might as well call it OnLive, in the house.
4. Again, those games will still have to use DX for games.

Both these techs amd is for AMD. Developers are not going to alienate one user base just because another API comes out. Like Anandtech said Glide died for a reason, developers needed a single API to write with for all users. Will Mantle have a dvantage in games that use it? Sure, but its to early to tell how much, I DOUBT BF4 game is going to punish Nvidia users by crippling fps vs amd cards. That would be dumb.

 

[Staples]

Call it what you want. At the end of the day, this will allow you to get more performance out of your AMD GPU.

If it is anything less than 20%, I will not be interested.

I'd love to hear what kind of performance improvements we can expect.

 

[futurefields]

Is this analogous to 3dfx Glide?

 

[smackababy]

Call it what you want. At the end of the day, this will allow you to get more performance out of your AMD GPU.

If it is anything less than 20%, I will not be interested.

I'd love to hear what kind of performance improvements we can expect.

Well, the actual performance couldn't be a huge amount. The API might bog things down some, but the overall performance is still based on how powerful the card is. There are users in VC&G talking about a Titan getting 60FPS and a 7870 getting 120FPS, as if that is anywhere near realistic.

20% sounds right, but that is just speculation on my part.

The whole "this is what developers wanted!" isn't something I've ever heard since we left the DOS era behind. During that transition, it was a real concern whether a high level API could perform as well as the low level DOS allowed. But, DirectX proved to be good enough then, and has really improved from what I've heard.

And, the argument of "we want direct access to the metal" really translates into "we want more power to do what we can" and AMD didn't deliver that. The rumors of the next AMD card being twice as fast as the 780 appears to be greatly exaggerated and the benchmarks look to be below the 780 from AMDs own slides. So, they didn't bring more power and are trying to find a way to squeeze what power they could bring, the more efficiently. Now, if Nvidia says "hey MS, we are going to let you have direct access to our metal using DX and this low level API we wrote" AMD loses big time.

 

[Staples]

Well, the actual perform... snip

If BF4 supports it when at general availability, I am sure we will see head to head performance benchmarks (DX vs Mantle) very soon. (well the game better give you the option of rendering paths).

Since DX10, DX has allowed a pretty low level API and if that is true, I really can't see more than a 20% performance increase on AMD GPUs.

(but I would liked to be proven wrong).

 

[smackababy]

If BF4 supports it when at general availability, I am sure we will see head to head performance benchmarks (DX vs Mantle) very soon. (well the game better give you the option of rendering paths).

Since DX10, DX has allowed a pretty low level API and if that is true, I really can't see more than a 20% performance increase on AMD GPUs.

(but I would liked to be proven wrong).

I am hoping when BF4 comes out with their Mantle update (which won't be at launch according to them) someone can do a direct comparison with a Mantle enabled card. Benchmark with Mantle, benchmark without Mantle and give a real performance increase.

However, I believe the efficiency of each will strongly rely on the developer's attempts at being efficient in each. I posted a thread in Programming to ask more developers about high level vs low level API efficiency, so hopefully, I can get some real answers. I always assumed the high level APIs have come along far enough, we don't really need to both with low level APIs much to get performance pretty close. Otherwise, other than ease of development, why would people not just translate everything into machine code and not rely on an interpreter?

 

[Aikouka]

But it does matter when those GPU's are capable of handling far more draw calls than they are able to be fed because of the added abstraction layer, correct?

I said that because this is an AMD-only library. So, regardless of how good it is, it doesn't affect my PC in it's current configuration. However, I am still interested because I like to take changes into account for when people ask for recommendations or I get the upgrade itch. I'm also planning on building my brother a gaming computer for Christmas, and I want to make sure he gets a good machine -- not like the parts list he linked me. D:

 

[CuriousMike]

The Nintendo 64 and the PS1 did not run Glide.

The XBOX One and the PS4 can run Mantle.

Big distinction if I'm a developer.

 

[smackababy]

The Nintendo 64 and the PS1 did not run Glide.

The XBOX One and the PS4 can run Mantle.

Big distinction if I'm a developer.

I now have to incorporate an extra effort in developing to ensure a less than majority of gamers get more performance from my game than those that use strictly DirectX. More time developing, more complexity, more versions, more money spent with no real return on investment.

Big distinction if I'm a developer.

 

[pcslookout]

AMD won't support this in BF4 until Dec. right?

What happens until then ?

 

[Staples]

Well I've got to say, if both the next gen consoles can support Mantle and most PC games are ports of games that were developed for consoles, then Mantle may actually get some support (unlike physx and other CUDA processing in games).