(DSOG via MaxPC) Nvidia Finally Officially Speaks About AMD’s Mantle

[Noctifer616]

Mantle is still beta, correct? Mantle may first be release ready when DX12 is.

Current version is RC, if 1.0 ships this year Mantle has a year over DX12.

And DX12 have been in development for years. Unless you say AMD is right and MS, Intel, nVidia and Qualcomm is lying.

Development or talks? I don't buy it that MS would need longer to finalize DX12 than AMD needs with Mantle.

But funny enough, AMD likes DX12 so much it can barely get its hands down.

Why are you showing a Mantle slide? Oh wait, it's DX 12 which does the same thing as Mantle feature vise.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Current version is RC, if 1.0 ships this year Mantle has a year over DX12.

Both goes RTM around the same time. Difference is that AMD does a public beta.

Development or talks? I don't buy it that MS would need longer to finalize DX12 than AMD needs with Mantle.

Yet both nVidia and Intel demoed DX12 (Forza and 3DMark) on Geforce and Iris Pro products. Where was AMD?

Why are you showing a Mantle slide? Oh wait, it's DX 12 which does the same thing as Mantle feature vise.

Yet Mantle is not compatible with DX12.

Do you start to see the problem of a vendor locked API?

 

[Noctifer616]

Yet both nVidia and Intel demoed DX12 (Forza and 3DMark) on Geforce and Iris Pro products. Where was AMD?

MS showed DX 12 almost a year after the interview where the AMD guy said there is no DX 12. It took AMD a year to take Mantle from 0 to beta, I would assume MS could get a working alpha version of DX12 done in about 10 months, just in time for GDC.

Again, DX 12 was not in actual development at the time of the interview. Talked about? Sure. Developed? Nope.

 

[Noctifer616]

Do you start to see the problem of a vendor locked API?

If AMD delivers on the promise that Mantle will be open once it's finished then Nvidia and Intel can make a driver for the API if they so wish.

Right now the arguments stands, but I am willing to wait till the end of the year to see if that will change.

 

[96Firebird]

MS showed DX 12 almost a year after the interview where the AMD guy said there is no DX 12. It took AMD a year to take Mantle from 0 to beta, I would assume MS could get a working alpha version of DX12 done in about 10 months, just in time for GDC.

Shocking that an API that is collaborated by many companies and needs to work on many different types on hardware will take longer to develop than an API that has input from a single company that runs on a single architecture.

Again, DX 12 was not in actual development at the time of the interview. Talked about? Sure. Developed? Nope.

You can believe AMD didn't think DX12 existed, just like I'll believe they did. They didn't want to downplay their own upcoming API. Who would code for Mantle if DX12 is in the works? They needed companies to buy into their API, with DX12 being the competition to that. Best to keep that on the down low.

 

[Noctifer616]

Shocking that an API that is collaborated by many companies and needs to work on many different types on hardware will take longer to develop than an API that has input from a single company that runs on a single architecture.

MS doesn't make the drivers, just the API. The API is designed with a certain feature set and the hardware vendors write drives. On top of that DX 12 doesn't have legacy support like older versions. 3 years of development seams way too long.

 

[Pantalaimon]

Yet Mantle is not compatible with DX12.

Do you start to see the problem of a vendor locked API?

I'm dumb, so I'll ask. It's 2 different APIs. In what way should they be compatible?

 

[blastingcap]

Radeons aren't free either. You have to buy one to use Mantle.

And while Metro is a total abomination, there are technical reasons why DX12 may be limited to Windows 9. As has been stated, DirectX is really tightly coupled to the WDDM that ships with the OS.

With that said, based on the interviews I've seen, they're really trying hard to get it on 7 given the enormous customer base it has.

I already bought one, AMD is the low cost provider anyway, and I don't need the NV bells and whistles like GeForce Experience, so I'd like to see Mantle support. However if DX12 makes it onto Win7 then I don't mind if everything revolves around DX12 instead. I'd still like a non-Windows PC gaming platform at some point... SteamOS?

 

[ShintaiDK]

I'm dumb, so I'll ask. It's 2 different APIs. In what way should they be compatible?

You should ask those that more or less claim its the same

 

[ShintaiDK]

MS showed DX 12 almost a year after the interview where the AMD guy said there is no DX 12. It took AMD a year to take Mantle from 0 to beta, I would assume MS could get a working alpha version of DX12 done in about 10 months, just in time for GDC.

Again, DX 12 was not in actual development at the time of the interview. Talked about? Sure. Developed? Nope.

DX12 is way beyond alpha. Atleast 2 vendors have shown perfectly running drivers on 2 applications in march.
The question you may want to ask is, why didnt AMD have anything to show? Not to mention no DX12 demo running on AMD hardware? Even Intel showed Intel hardware running DX12. Did AMD do yet another huge blunder and put all its eggs in the Mantle basket?

And yes, DX12 have been in the works for years. Unlike what you claim. Unless you say all the companies lie?

It also turns the circle back into why would nVidia support Mantle. When they have working DX12 drivers, broad DX12 adoption and support with full access to everything. Without being vendor locked into a company that wont give them access under the excuse that its still beta.

 

[Leadbox]

DX12 is way beyond alpha. Atleast 2 vendors have shown perfectly running drivers on 2 applications in march.
The question you may want to ask is, why didnt AMD have anything to show? Not to mention no DX12 demo running on AMD hardware? Even Intel showed Intel hardware running DX12. Did AMD do yet another huge blunder and put all its eggs in the Mantle basket?

And yes, DX12 have been in the works for years. Unlike what you claim. Unless you say all the companies lie?

It also turns the circle back into why would nVidia support Mantle. When they have working DX12 drivers, broad DX12 adoption and support with full access to everything. Without being vendor locked into a company that wont give them access under the excuse that its still beta.

I'm sure they could hack forza motorsport to run on pc if they had to and it's not like DX12 and ascociated games are coming out tomorrow or anything. Some of you just like to argue.

 

[BrightCandle]

For me the tessellation argument is actually a great example of the difference between a standards process for an API and a propriety API. Here is how they differ:

DirectX

With DirectX tesselation couldn't be added at an API layer until all the companies were ready to support it. While AMD had developed the technology and already had it in their hardware the other manufacturers were not ready, so because all vendors needed to be compatible with all major features it was held back until Nvidia (and presumably Intel) said it could progress as they had hardware targeted to it.

While AMD is the initiator of the technologies introduction Nvidia and Intel will both have input into the API and how it functioned. Thus the initial tesselation implementations that AMD had would need to be modified to meet the standard.

Mantle

If AMD invents hardware based streaming asset loading (for example) then they can add it to Mantle with Alpha hardware, provide a game developer with the technology and have a new Mantle implementation out the day their hardware arrives and the day the game releases supporting it. They have no need to wait for Nvidia to support the major feature, they don't need to agree what it will be capable of and develop to a an agreed middle ground instead they can just release it. Regardless of if another company implements some version of Mantle AMD can release a new version with new hardware that the other companies using it don't know about and be blindsided. It would take them years to develop the hardware to support the feature, and if they had such features themselves they wouldn't be able to expose them through the API unless AMD allowed it to be the case.



Its important to note that neither approach is always better, the propriety API gets features out faster and the standards approach ensures compatibility and you need both for different technologies. But you can't call Mantle a standard because it has none of the hallmarks of one, its simply free, and price isn't an important aspect of a standards process. VESA is an enormously expensive spec and organisation to be part of, yet it maintains the displayport standard. You and I can't get that spec without paying a lot of money, but we can implement it once we have it.

Its a vital distinction in the different approaches of these things. APIs where multiple vendors are involved must always be done via a fair standards process, otherwise its problematic for some of the parties involved. But innovative differentiator technologies are always going to be introduced in a propriety way, because otherwise the standards process will slow their release enormously, and in the case of gsync/freesync the standards process stopped it happening for a decade or more until Nvidia stepped up and invested in monitor technology to do it differently.

 

[monstercameron]

^All fair points. See guys it is this easy to discuss something without claiming lies and slinging mud.

 

[BrightCandle]

^All fair points. See guys it is this easy to discuss something without claiming lies and slinging mud.

Alas the same people continue to personally attack to argue their point when they perceive the "opponent" has delivered a decent blow to their argument. Anything goes on Anandtech, you can insult and abuse others as much as you like, you can use multiple accounts to do it and generally be really unpleasant. Notice for example how neither of the threads about the Maximum PC interview have talked about any of the cool technologies that were introduced or the positive things said about the level of investment in PC gaming and the interesting way they solve problems, its all just an argument about the same two technologies over and over. Breaches of the rules result in nothing most of the time on these forums so really we should all just be mildly personally attacking like they do.

I don't personally resort to personal attacks, I have no need or desire for it. I have been called biased to both companies so I feel I run a reasonably balanced perspective. I used to come here because their were smart people talking about and doing interesting things or providing more technical knowledge about some aspect of CPUs and GPUs, all those guys left a long time ago. You don't see people talking about new tools or testing techniques or benchmarks any more. Now its just arguments fuelled by industry purchased social media trolls. I honestly don't understand why anyone else sticks around, it remains a cesspit of the worst type of forum.




If you have complaints about the moderation at Anandtech, use the proper channels.

You do not get to use the forums to air whatever grievances or wrongs you think are happening in VC&G.





esquared
Anandtech Forum Director

 

[frozentundra123456]

Alas the same people continue to personally attack to argue their point when they perceive the "opponent" has delivered a decent blow to their argument. Anything goes on Anandtech, you can insult and abuse others as much as you like, you can use multiple accounts to do it and generally be really unpleasant. Notice for example how neither of the threads about the Maximum PC interview have talked about any of the cool technologies that were introduced or the positive things said about the level of investment in PC gaming and the interesting way they solve problems, its all just an argument about the same two technologies over and over. Breaches of the rules result in nothing most of the time on these forums so really we should all just be mildly personally attacking like they do.

I don't personally resort to personal attacks, I have no need or desire for it. I have been called biased to both companies so I feel I run a reasonably balanced perspective. I used to come here because their were smart people talking about and doing interesting things or providing more technical knowledge about some aspect of CPUs and GPUs, all those guys left a long time ago. You don't see people talking about new tools or testing techniques or benchmarks any more. Now its just arguments fuelled by industry purchased social media trolls. I honestly don't understand why anyone else sticks around, it remains a cesspit of the worst type of forum.

I agree the forums used to provide much more balanced and technically informative posts, but you can still get a lot of useful information. You just have to filter out the bias from both sides. Besides, it is kind of entertaining if you dont take it too seriously!

Part of the problem also is that both cpu and gpu hardware is kind of stagnant right now, so a lot of threads get bogged down in arguing minor details and philosophies in thread after thread.

 

[SirPauly]

DirectX

With DirectX tesselation couldn't be added at an API layer until all the companies were ready to support it. While AMD had developed the technology and already had it in their hardware the other manufacturers were not ready, so because all vendors needed to be compatible with all major features it was held back until Nvidia (and presumably Intel) said it could progress as they had hardware targeted to it.

Where is the data for this?

 

[Erenhardt]

Mantle is still beta, correct? Mantle may first be release ready when DX12 is.

DX doesnt ship as beta. It ships as a final product.

See the difference?

And DX12 have been in development for years. Unless you say MS, Intel, nVidia and Qualcomm is lying.

But funny enough, AMD likes DX12 so much it can barely get its hands down.

Even 3DMark already runs DX12:

Not to mention the Forza demo ran on nVidia. And the 3DMark on Intel Iris Pro.

Who is missing?

LOL. Are you trying to say dx12 is not open API? How is that for a standard?
You just made mantle look so much more open.

 

[Noctifer616]

Not to mention no DX12 demo running on AMD hardware?

The ony had 2 demons. AMD was kind enough to let Intel and Nvidia demonstrate low level API in action since AMD already had games running Mantle at the time.

Also, do note, neither of those are games (one a benchmark the second a console game). We have yet to see PC games running DX 12.

 

[bakalu]

nvidia doesn't care mantle because they have dx12

 

[MathMan]

The tessellation argument is an interesting one when talking about Mantle: it is true that a proprietary API allows a vendor at implement features that are not (yet) part of the DX standard. But there are other way to solve that too: Nvidia has been providing nvapi for years and it does exactly that.

E.g. It was that API that allowed game developers to use partial DX10.1 features at a time when Nvidia GPUs didn't provide the full DX10.1 feature set and couldn't declare itself as DX10.1.

But the thing to note is that it does this within a DX environment, it's a layer that sits parallel to DX and doesn't completely replace it.

So for the sake of discussion, it's important to treat Mantle as heaving 2 possible objectives: driver overhead reduction (something that inevitably will have a short shelve life) and, potentially(?), additional feature not available in DX.

Right now, I'm not aware of anything in Mantle that uncovers HW features in AMD GPUs that aren't otherwise available in DX, but that doesn't mean it isn't there...

 

[Noctifer616]

Right now, I'm not aware of anything in Mantle that uncovers HW features in AMD GPUs that aren't otherwise available in DX, but that doesn't mean it isn't there...

Asynchronous Compute is one thing that isn't in DX and both Nvidia and AMD have support for. Another thing is Advanced Anti-Aliasing Functions that can be found in GCN.

 

[monstercameron]

Asynchronous Compute is one thing that isn't in DX and both Nvidia and AMD have support for. Another thing is Advanced Anti-Aliasing Functions that can be found in GCN.

what are your sources on this?

 

[BrightCandle]

The tessellation argument is an interesting one when talking about Mantle: it is true that a proprietary API allows a vendor at implement features that are not (yet) part of the DX standard. But there are other way to solve that too: Nvidia has been providing nvapi for years and it does exactly that.

That is a lie. NVAPI does not in any way provide gaming features. The way to think about NVAPI is its the API that supports Nvidia control panel, it allows settings like anti aliasing or how refresh will work but it doesn't provide game features. Its mainly for querying the hardware.

You can read all about it on Nvidia's website: https://developer.nvidia.com/nvapi, unlike with Mantle there is complete developer documentation defining every method call.

I think that invalidates your argument.

 

[Noctifer616]

what are your sources on this?

The Mantle whitepaper and devs talking about those features. BF4 and Thief do not support Asynchronous Compute (probably because the Mantle implementation doesn't take on the full potential of the API) but the devs have talked about the feature. It is however used on PS4 games (Infamous Second Son is one that I know), but as far as I know DX doesn't support it.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Yet Intel can extend DX. And you say AMD/nVidia cant?
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/graphi...ons_to_Speed_Up_Rendering_in_Video_Games.html

Someone is terrible wrong.