[Extremetech] Nvidia’s GameWorks program usurps power from developers, end-users, AMD

[Lonbjerg]

You got nothing.

So you are simply trolling...gotcha.

 

[Lonbjerg]

Lol, what a failure.

But i guess it was so easy to hit the december date that they postphoned it into January - just for the fun.

Bitboys would be proud of AMD and Dice.

It's funny....because one of the PR claims were "Easy to implement in very few man hours"

Guess that was a bogus claim.

 

[taserbro]

Like PhysX is incorporated in to Unreal Engine 3, the same will be with FrostBite 3 and Mantle.

When you make a game you use the same Game Engine for all the platforms (PC, Consoles, Windows, Linux etc). Having PhysX and Mantle incorporated in to the Game Engine means the developer has more tools and needs LESS time to debug and create the game. Since all the features are within the same Game Engine the developer can port from one platform to the other easier. That translates to less time, thus less resources, thus less money spend.

So even if Mantle is a different API, it will be easier to port games within the same GameEngine.

Mantle is a different thing than physx.
Physx lets people use simple calls to do complex things that there were no existing (or poorly made) functions for so you don't have to re-invent it from scratch.
Now if I understood it correctly, Mantle is more akin to letting you break up big pieces of libraries into the basic lego blocks they're made of (and others that only exist in amd land) and using those to build your own blocks that work better.

Being incorporated into an engine doesn't mean you just tick an option and export your executable using a different rendering path that's magically run better on amd gpus. The engine only does what you make it do for you. With mantle incorporated, it means if you chose, you can code in-engine with lower level code than lua and whatever proprietary script language the engine has on top of those. With access to this code, you can painstakingly re-implement already existing functions and libraries into better versions that are more hardware specific in order to exploit your hardware's strengths and bypass its weaknesses and squeeze out more performance wherever it's possible.

Note a lot of those things were already possible but without the blessing of the engine coders and hardware makers, implementing modifications were notoriously hard and could lead to problems no one can help you with like simply not having the hardware spec documentations on the grounds that they were industry secrets on both sides. If you do chose to engage in engine modification (and I applaud any game dev that choses to put time and money for the benefit of pc gaming), mantle will make that part much easier and even impossible things possible in some cases.

There's no question that it can be worth the effort but there's no way it will require less effort especially considering that the pc platform has a bazillion different permutation of hardware and os versions.

 

[3DVagabond]

So you are simply trolling...gotcha.

Again, you got nothing.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Weak. The Mantle BF4 patch is "delayed" on purpose till Kaveri launch.

Can you link to that?

 

[ShintaiDK]

It's funny....because one of the PR claims were "Easy to implement in very few man hours"

Guess that was a bogus claim.

It was always a bogus claim to fuel the hyperhole myths. Just like consoles, that turned into console "alike" and so on. Its simply one pile of BS after the other. And now people start to make up stories about Mantle is delayed on purpose, since the Mantle BF4 patch is nowhere to be seen, and nobody wants to officially comment it.

And SteamOS plus Mantle is the latest hype that wont materialize.

 

[ShintaiDK]

You can't port something which doesn't exist on consoles.
So yes, either he believes that the consoles support a Mantle like API or not.

Microsoft made it very clear: http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/appbuilder/archive/2013/10/14/raising-the-bar-with-direct3d.aspx




So no, if a developer builds a new game for the Xbox One they should start with D3D 11 and then port it to the One or any other Windows plattform.


Optimization happens after the porting to the target plattform.

Bingo, its direct ports. I assume most of the PS4 games can be run directly on SteamOS as well. There is no Mantle anywhere for these.

 

[Final8ty]

Guys

To take advantage off Mantle, the game developer needs to release a patch for the game to use the API, BF4 shall be the first and very soon. The improvements in FPS are very good and worthwhile.

So it is just game patches, if more and more game developers start patching and releasing games with Mantle support then AMD will be doing very well indeed.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=25567161&postcount=1346

 

[Lonbjerg]

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=25567161&postcount=1346

That sound an awfull lot like the API's wars before DX..patch after patch after patch...

 

[SiliconWars]

That sound an awfull lot like the API's wars before DX..patch after patch after patch...

Are you just making it up as you go along? We all knew that Mantle needed a patch, nowhere does that link suggest more than one. Your FUD is at epic levels of ridiculousness.

 

[desprado]

Are you just making it up as you go along? We all knew that Mantle needed a patch, nowhere does that link suggest more than one. Your FUD is at epic levels of ridiculousness.

So u are saying it need extra work so it dont reduce the work it increase the work of developers.

 

[AtenRa]

So u are saying it need extra work so it dont reduce the work it increase the work of developers.

FrostBite 3 doesn't incorporate Mantle as of yet. BF4 was not created with Mantle ready, thats why it needs a patch. New games that will be made by GameEngines that incorporate Mantle will not need a patch.

Only extra work will be needed from developers if they like to implement Mantle in already existent Games. New games using Mantle will not need extra Patches or extra work from the developer.

 

[AtenRa]

Mantle is a different thing than physx.

I never said that Mantle is the same thing as PhysX, but i said that as with Mantle that needs a GCN architecture to work the full package, so does Gamwework needs an NVIDIA hardware. So, in order to use PhysX you need an NVIDIA hardware much like Mantle needs an AMD GCN architecture.

Being incorporated into an engine doesn't mean you just tick an option and export your executable using a different rendering path that's magically run better on amd gpus. The engine only does what you make it do for you. With mantle incorporated, it means if you chose, you can code in-engine with lower level code than lua and whatever proprietary script language the engine has on top of those. With access to this code, you can painstakingly re-implement already existing functions and libraries into better versions that are more hardware specific in order to exploit your hardware's strengths and bypass its weaknesses and squeeze out more performance wherever it's possible.

Note a lot of those things were already possible but without the blessing of the engine coders and hardware makers, implementing modifications were notoriously hard and could lead to problems no one can help you with like simply not having the hardware spec documentations on the grounds that they were industry secrets on both sides. If you do chose to engage in engine modification (and I applaud any game dev that choses to put time and money for the benefit of pc gaming), mantle will make that part much easier and even impossible things possible in some cases.

There's no question that it can be worth the effort but there's no way it will require less effort especially considering that the pc platform has a bazillion different permutation of hardware and os versions.

It will require less effort because it has more powerful debuging tools helping the developer understand and know where he made an error. It can takes hours, days, or even weeks to find where is the error in the billions of code lines. With Mantle and Gamework the developer can find it way quicker than before.
Nobody said it will only require a single click, if that was the case everyone would create BF4 games now

 

[SiliconWars]

So u are saying it need extra work so it dont reduce the work it increase the work of developers.

There will probably be 3 types of Mantle games.

1) Simple ports from DX + consoles. Console ports will be very easy and fast - much faster than from consoles to DX. Ports from DX to Mantle (like BF4) will clearly take more work.

This is actually where AMD has their biggest advantage (console to Mantle ports) because time to market is king.

2) "Ports +" - This is what BF4 really is, it's a port from the DX version (which was in turn built with consoles in mind) with extra work put in to it. I guess Thief will also be in this group, as will most early Mantle games.

3) Native Mantle builds. These are the games built from the start with Mantle in mind. That doesn't mean that they need to be ONLY Mantle games, it just means that from the start of development Mantle has been in mind. Stuff like what will come out of Oxide with their Nitrous engine. Performance gains over DX will be huge.

At a game engine level most will be simple (console) ports, with smaller gains than games built from scratch for Mantle. There will be hardly any extra work required here yet time to market will be far superior than with console to DX. AMD might work with devs to get extra work put in to them to increase the gap, making it a "port +".

Edit - you can probably split the ports into console-to-Mantle and DX-to-Mantle ports, as the time and effort required will be quite different in both cases. Performance may also be quite different as it'll be harder to get around the flaws of DX with a simple patch.

 

[zlatan]

Did you read the Xbox One blog posting from Microsoft? There is no Mantle support and i think not even a very low level access to the gpu.
And even Microsoft wrote that they want to port their games easily from one plattform to another.

Maybe. I don't remember. I have an XDK, so I don't read blogs. The Xbox One uses D3D11.X. It's a low-level API with HLSL. Lower level than Mantle, but higher level than the PS4 API.

Sony is using their own GL. You can port these games even to Android. This happen with a few PS3 games right now.

No. The PS4 don't have a working OpenGL option now. It uses a GNM API with PSSL. Maybe in the future there will be an extended OpenGL ES API for PS4, but I doubt it, because the GNM API is awesome. I don't see why should we use a high-level API on a consoles.

There is nothing like "porting to Mantle". There is only "development of a Mantle path".

If you have a D3D11.X port from Xbox or a GNM port from PS4, than it is easier to port to Mantle than porting these to Direct3D (PC version).

 

[zlatan]

Meh. You didn't understand the concept of a high level API.

Please understand that a high-level API has limitations. Too many layers of abstraction can hurt. There are many D3D11 features that are very useful, but we can't touch these because the API has a very high latency when we use them.

 

[Spidre]

It's really hard to believe this slapfight went on for 13 pages. Sigh...

No matter what, developers are going to pick a favorite company when designing their game. The majority of games are either AMD optimized or NVIDIA, rarely both. No matter which company the devs have a boner for, the other company's cards will run the game worse.

This library Nvidia has come out with just allows devs who have already chosen to be Nvidia optimized to implement the optimizations quicker. With or without the library, the game would run worse on AMD hardware. Devs don't need to use this library, if they want to optimize for both they still can. But as previously established, this usually isn't the case.

I really don't see how this is news or relevant discussion, especially 13 pages worth. An Nvidia game would not cater to AMD features regardless; this library restricting the files makes zero impact on a game that has already decided to focus entirely on Nvidia. Games like Batman Origins would still be obtuse on AMD, and games like BF4 still wouldn't use the library. This will make no change, unless some devs who were on the fence are suddenly seduced by having slightly less work.

 

[Phynaz]

Can you link to that?

I'd like him to also.

I'll keep his post in my sig just so he doesn't forget

 

[Erenhardt]

Meh. You didn't understand the concept of a high level API. Cuda and PhysX run on every supported backend - PhysX supports x86, ARM, PowerPC, Cell and Cuda.

It even worked with AMD GPUs :whiste:

It's really hard to believe this slapfight went on for 13 pages. Sigh...

No matter what, developers are going to pick a favorite company when designing their game. The majority of games are either AMD optimized or NVIDIA, rarely both. No matter which company the devs have a boner for, the other company's cards will run the game worse.

This library Nvidia has come out with just allows devs who have already chosen to be Nvidia optimized to implement the optimizations quicker. With or without the library, the game would run worse on AMD hardware. Devs don't need to use this library, if they want to optimize for both they still can. But as previously established, this usually isn't the case.

I really don't see how this is news or relevant discussion, especially 13 pages worth.

It all started because now AMD will not have means to improve performance of their cards if they don't have access to the code. It got even worst when Warner Bros. refused to implement suggested improvements to the game, leaving their customers (gamers with AMD GPU who bought batman) in the dust with below average performance.

And come on, I didn't see any GE titles that would cripple nv cards performance in any noticeable way. But each and every TWIMTBP title and the same

Cmon now, GTX660 almost as fast as 7950? But its loosing in every other possible benchmark to 7870?

If that was a developer's decision, fine. It is their business, that will suffer from anti-consumer practices in the long run. People will vote with their wallets next time, which means that the sponsor (nv) will need to look deeper into his pockets next time.

Do you guys remember the times on first Never Settle driver update? Massive performance gains from new driver. If this locking out competitor continues, we will need to have two separate AIB to play out favorite games.

Someone, somewhere needs to draw a line. Otherwise we could very well end with games locked to specific hardware manufacturer (nv PhysX like - but the 'disable' option kills the entire game process).

 

[krumme]

It even worked with AMD GPUs :whiste:


It all started because now AMD will not have means to improve performance of their cards if they don't have access to the code. It got even worst when Warner Bros. refused to implement suggested improvements to the game, leaving their customers (gamers with AMD GPU who bought batman) in the dust with below average performance.

And come on, I didn't see any GE titles that would cripple nv cards performance in any noticeable way. But each and every TWIMTBP title and the same

Cmon now, GTX660 almost as fast as 7950? But its loosing in every other possible benchmark to 7870?

If that was a developer's decision, fine. It is their business, that will suffer from anti-consumer practices in the long run. People will vote with their wallets next time, which means that the sponsor (nv) will need to look deeper into his pockets next time.

Do you guys remember the times on first Never Settle driver update? Massive performance gains from new driver. If this locking out competitor continues, we will need to have two separate AIB to play out favorite games.

Someone, somewhere needs to draw a line. Otherwise we could very well end with games locked to specific hardware manufacturer (nv PhysX like - but the 'disable' option kills the entire game process).

Who are you talking to?

When you invest in a brand you do that so comsumers stop thinking and use their feelings instaed. You make things easy for them.

Nv can behave like they want as long as its legal and they can command higher prices. Their consumers dont care. Because of the brand value. And thats why a brand is worth so much more than technology or products.

 

[Spidre]

It even worked with AMD GPUs :whiste:


It all started because now AMD will not have means to improve performance of their cards if they don't have access to the code. It got even worst when Warner Bros. refused to implement suggested improvements to the game, leaving their customers (gamers with AMD GPU who bought batman) in the dust with below average performance.

And come on, I didn't see any GE titles that would cripple nv cards performance in any noticeable way. But each and every TWIMTBP title and the same

Cmon now, GTX660 almost as fast as 7950? But its loosing in every other possible benchmark to 7870?

If that was a developer's decision, fine. It is their business, that will suffer from anti-consumer practices in the long run. People will vote with their wallets next time, which means that the sponsor (nv) will need to look deeper into his pockets next time.

Do you guys remember the times on first Never Settle driver update? Massive performance gains from new driver. If this locking out competitor continues, we will need to have two separate AIB to play out favorite games.

Someone, somewhere needs to draw a line. Otherwise we could very well end with games locked to specific hardware manufacturer (nv PhysX like - but the 'disable' option kills the entire game process).

Batman Origins was practically made by Nvidia. It was their game. The devs made it to showcase all the Nvidia exclusives in the best possible light and Nvidia made it very well known. The features were trumped on the box, on Nvidia's website, and they bundled it with their cards. It was really obvious before I bought it what this game was made for.

B:O didn't use these libraries, but I'm imagining that the game would have come out almost identical if they did. This was kind of my point; devs who have a boner for a brand will still make their games to showcase that brand. Not every company is like this, and even if they do want their product to be green, they still aren't required to use this library.

Another, similar game, was Sleeping Dogs. The game ran like butt on Nvidia cards, and it was probably meant to.

 

[NTMBK]

Lol, what a failure.

But i guess it was so easy to hit the december date that they postphoned it into January - just for the fun.

Bitboys would be proud of AMD and Dice.

Seriously? A one month delay in the middle of a Battlefield bugpocalypse, and you're comparing them to Bitboys? Your fanboyism astounds me.

 

[blastingcap]

Seriously? A one month delay in the middle of a Battlefield bugpocalypse, and you're comparing them to Bitboys? Your fanboyism astounds me.

To be fair, I'm less than impressed by how AMD *still* has not fixed crossfire+Eyefinity on anything other than R9 290 series, despite promises to do so months ago. But yeah as for Mantle, I cut them some slack, EA has issues with the core game and bugs right now, so I do not expect them to launch BF4+Mantle until BF4 itself is fixed.

 

[Phynaz]

Weak. The Mantle BF4 patch is "delayed" on purpose till Kaveri launch.

Kaveri is here. Where is Mantle?

So much for that theory.

 

[blastingcap]

Kaveri is here. Where is Mantle?

So much for that theory.

AMD said EA needs to focus on debugging BF4 before it shifts focus to adding Mantle to BF4. I think that's a wise move for both. What good is Mantle if the game keeps crashing? Also, changing an already buggy game with Mantle and then trying to fix bugs makes debugging harder--was a crash caused by the game or the Mantle implementation? etc.