The AMD Mantle Thread

[blackened23]

Nice.... looks like EA has busted yet another studio.

If nothing else, EA are consistent. They destroyed and ruined Bioware, Bullfrog, Westwood, the original Origin, among others. Once great studios pushing out awesome games, then were bought out by EA and ruined. Bioware? Creators of the amazing BG series and then dragged the dragon age series into the mud with the godawful Dragon Age 2.

Might as well add DICE to the list of casualties...

Sad too because while BF has generally been better than COD over the years (and I loved BC2 / BF3), at least COD ghosts...works...without crashing....Can't say that i'm really feeling BF4 at this point because even now I still play the game and spawn inside of terrain (not being able to move) and get crashes. 3 patches ago worked better than the most recent patch too. What's up with that. I get more crashes now than I did 3 patches ago. Awesome game huh. What could be an amazing game ruined by being rushed out the door to the point that it isn't even fun to play with the network rubber banding and each patch adding more bugs than the last.

Even the console versions aren't stable. That's just sad. But EA has to get those holiday sales $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ by shipping a broken game.




This is not a Battlefield 4 support thread, this is the Mantle thread. Let's stay on topic please.


-Rvenger

 

[SPBHM]

If "Mantle" is all that it is hyped to be....why do consoles have inferior I.Q compared to the PC?
(It's really that simple)

Just because AMD has no multi-threaded DX driver, dosn't mean that you need to "hack" around that...you just need to update your driver and follow specs. *shrugs*

is it really inferior to a PC running 1.6GHz Jaguar and a "7850 with small OC" (closest thing)?

 

[chimaxi83]

DICE doesn't work on Mantle. The entire Frostbite team isn't part of DICE anymore.

https://twitter.com/repi/status/410451568740139009

Nice.... looks like EA has busted yet another studio.

Perhaps the whole situation should be shared, else it would seem to be something else entirely.

https://twitter.com/repi/status/411911805556895744

If "Mantle" is all that it is hyped to be....why do consoles have inferior I.Q compared to the PC?
(It's really that simple)

Just because AMD has no multi-threaded DX driver, dosn't mean that you need to "hack" around that...you just need to update your driver and follow specs. *shrugs*

Welcome back. What do consoles and their graphics have to do with PC Mantle and this thread?

Do you know how to write driver software better than AMD?

If nothing else, EA are consistent. They destroyed and ruined Bioware, Bullfrog, Westwood, the original Origin, among others. Once great studios pushing out awesome games, then were bought out by EA and ruined. Bioware? Creators of the amazing BG series and then dragged the dragon age series into the mud with the godawful Dragon Age 2.

Might as well add DICE to the list of casualties...

Sad too because while BF has generally been better than COD over the years (and I loved BC2 / BF3), at least COD ghosts...works...without crashing....Can't say that i'm really feeling BF4 at this point because even now I still play the game and spawn inside of terrain (not being able to move) and get crashes. 3 patches ago worked better than the most recent patch too. What's up with that. I get more crashes now than I did 3 patches ago. Awesome game huh. What could be an amazing game ruined by being rushed out the door to the point that it isn't even fun to play with the network rubber banding and each patch adding more bugs than the last.

Even the console versions aren't stable. That's just sad. But EA has to get those holiday sales $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ by shipping a broken game.

I believe the Battlefield 4 support thread is on a different forum.

 

[Firestorm007]

Strange..BF4 works fine on my 780...hmmmm.....Nevertheless, off topic....

Anyway, I wonder when the mantle patch for BF4 is supposed to show up. I thought it was December. I'm really looking forward to seeing some benches.

 

[Noctifer616]

Anyway, I wonder when the mantle patch for BF4 is supposed to show up. I thought it was December. I'm really looking forward to seeing some benches.

Late December is what they said. If there is going to be a delay I guess Johan will let us know trough twitter.

 

[Carfax83]

Just because AMD has no multi-threaded DX driver, dosn't mean that you need to "hack" around that...you just need to update your driver and follow specs. *shrugs*

I suspect that could be a reason why AMD decided to come up with Mantle in the first place, as it removes the need to create multithreaded drivers..

As game engines become more and more threaded, NVidia will gain a strong advantage as their drivers are not only highly threaded, but they support DX11's driver multithreading; which will surely continue to evolve.

The PClab.pl review inadvertently showed that AMD has a serious weakness when it comes to multicore support within their drivers.. And since they haven't bothered to implement DX11 multithreading, it's probably safe to assume they either don't have the resources, or the level of competence to do so..

 

[bystander36]

I thought that Mantle did multithreading of the main rendering path. Does that feature require an APU or their GCN CPU's?

 

[Imouto]

There's no Plan B for AMD. It's only natural to put all their resources into Mantle. It's not about resources or level of competence, Mantle must succeed and everything else is secondary at best. After getting the consoles it was much easier to shift all the resources into Mantle since about every single game is designed for them making a non issue having lower performance in DX. AMD is desperately trying to be the brand of reference for desktop gaming much like Nvidia been till now.

A dangerous gambit but AMD has no alternative.

 

[blackened23]

I'd have to disagree on the statement that it was a "dangerous" gamble on AMD's part. I think AMD more or less saw how effective the value adds and features worked out for nvidia and wanted to emulate that somewhat, thus we have Mantle being AMD's value add. If Mantle is great, or good, or even half way decent. It will help sell their cards, period. Now we'll have debates forever about how good or bad Physx or TXAA are, but the bottom line is that there's a niche of users out there that buy nvidia cards because they enjoy the nvidia specific features. There are definitely a lot of people who buy nvidia because they say...."well I want g-sync next year. I like physx. Etc. Regardless of how someone else might NOT value it, it helps nvidia sell cards. So now AMD has that AMD specific feature or "killer app" perhaps that will help AMD drive their own sales. So they're basically doing the same thing here iMO.

We don't know how Mantle will perform yet. Like I said, it could be great or it could be just semi decent. But it will help AMD sell their GPUs regardless. I think it was the smart play on AMD's part. We don't even know how good or decent Mantle is yet and here we are talking about it 119 pages later. It created a buzz, that's for sure.

I really hope they continue down that path because I see some of the aftermarket 290X reviews and their performance is good and where it needs to be. (and without the reference issues) So they're good on that front. Software wise, they're not as good as nvidia. Yet. I would throw my personal opinion out there that nvidia is just hands down superior in terms of adding polished software features on a regular basis (for instance, TXAA, adaptive vsync, driver forced AO, shadow play, etc) So they're emulating nvidia in terms of creating value adds, hopefully they can push a little harder and get the software side up to snuff. That's the next move AMD needs to make. More software features - the last feature I can remember AMD adding was MLAA years and years ago. They need to pick up the pace on that kinda stuff. Then we all win through competition, regardless of which brand one prefers. So I guess, Mantle is the start of where AMD is headed. Hopefully they stay on the right track.

 

[KingFatty]

There's no Plan B for AMD. It's only natural to put all their resources into Mantle. It's not about resources or level of competence, Mantle must succeed and everything else is secondary at best. After getting the consoles it was much easier to shift all the resources into Mantle since about every single game is designed for them making a non issue having lower performance in DX. AMD is desperately trying to be the brand of reference for desktop gaming much like Nvidia been till now.

A dangerous gambit but AMD has no alternative.

To clarify, are you saying that AMD working on mantle is somehow drawing resources from other places, and therefore is a risk or gambit for them to risk ruining the company?

I don't see it that way. Instead, I see it as how it's like a side project. If it succeeds great, but they aren't really risking anything because even if it's a huge flop, their video cards still work great to run non-mantle games. So I'm not understanding the risk/gambit characterization?

 

[f1sherman]

Perhaps the whole situation should be shared, else it would seem to be something else entirely.

https://twitter.com/repi/status/411911805556895744

Well ofc, that's how every sacking & busting story goes - In an effort to bla-bla... WE ARE RESTRUCTURING yadayada...

Bottom line: what are the chances that ANY of original DICE members are involved in... Mirrors Edge 2? ZERO!
DICE has been long dead already, if you're not into BF.

Next station - Star Wars: Battlefront (2015!!!) :thumbsdown:

There's no Plan B for AMD. It's only natural to put all their resources into Mantle. It's not about resources or level of competence, Mantle must succeed and everything else is secondary at best. After getting the consoles it was much easier to shift all the resources into Mantle since about every single game is designed for them making a non issue having lower performance in DX. AMD is desperately trying to be the brand of reference for desktop gaming much like Nvidia been till now.

A dangerous gambit but AMD has no alternative.

Are you serious?
No one out there _really wants to decapitate AMD, but if they stick their head that far, well...


Putting all eggs in a little basket that everyone among heavy hitters can squash at whim.
This is a losing proposition, and this is NOT how AMD is approaching Mantle.

 

[wand3r3r]

I suspect that could be a reason why AMD decided to come up with Mantle in the first place, as it removes the need to create multithreaded drivers..

As game engines become more and more threaded, NVidia will gain a strong advantage as their drivers are not only highly threaded, but they support DX11's driver multithreading; which will surely continue to evolve.

The PClab.pl review inadvertently showed that AMD has a serious weakness when it comes to multicore support within their drivers.. And since they haven't bothered to implement DX11 multithreading, it's probably safe to assume they either don't have the resources, or the level of competence to do so..

You've been "hinting" a few times but it feels like grasping at straws. It's pretty far fetched.

 

[Imouto]

AMD has no future developing CPUs. It is dead x86 wise and will be just one more in the ARM pack. The APU side of things isn't going well with Intel pushing harder every year and look at what happened with Nvidia when they tried to enter the ARM market. AMD just can't sustain the damage Nvidia is taking with Tegra and the status quo in the desktop isn't any better with the CPU division losing money every quarter.

I really don't know what kind of killer deal Apple got from AMD to include FirePros in the latest Mac Pro but AMD situation there is even worse than desktop graphics or processors with close to 0% market penetration.

Desktop graphics? 30% market share with pathetic margins and profits.

AMD in the server market? Don't make me laugh.

That's the sad state of AMD and the only thing that can save it is becoming the reference in desktop gaming since everything else failed already. That would lead to more GPU and APU sales as leaving things like this will just go worse with time.

 

[krumme]

I suspect that could be a reason why AMD decided to come up with Mantle in the first place, as it removes the need to create multithreaded drivers..

As game engines become more and more threaded, NVidia will gain a strong advantage as their drivers are not only highly threaded, but they support DX11's driver multithreading; which will surely continue to evolve.

The PClab.pl review inadvertently showed that AMD has a serious weakness when it comes to multicore support within their drivers.. And since they haven't bothered to implement DX11 multithreading, it's probably safe to assume they either don't have the resources, or the level of competence to do so..

Utter confused nonsense.
With dx you cant even know for sure where your object is going. You want good multicore cpu utilization from that platform? Well it goes as we have seen the last 5 years. More like no where than dead slow.
And even with multicore support its of no use as evident from the batch problem.
Its a dead end.
And this test just shows performamce for a 2.3ghz quad core Haswell that does not exist ? - as i can read from the pl translation.
And btw your conslusion is not like the one in the article.

 

[BrightCandle]

One thing that I think is really convincing in that Oxide presentation is the progression of draw calls over time in relation to GPU performance. When in 2007 we had 500Gflop/s and 3000 draw calls and today we have like 6000 GFlop/s and 5000 draw calls it really shows how much those two aspects have widened over time.

The profiles also clearly show the huge amount of CPU time that is wasted with the single threaded rendering of games via DX. Admittedly its not quite as wasted on Nvidia's drivers since it has multithreaded aspects but still the game thread is still being held up by calling into DirectX.

So for a game genre that is draw call limited (RTS and limited by units and effects for those units) it seems apparent that Mantle is going to be a huge win, that 3x performance is possible, just because the games are regularly CPU limited. Moving that bottleneck back to the GPU allows a lot more to happen in game.

A game like Battlefield 4 is probably suboptimal for Mantle actually because it isn't really draw call limited right now, but it might be interesting to see just how much more than can potentially do with it. I want gsync, I want TruAudio and I want Mantle all on 4k already. I am still bummed that I have to choose between these options. They all seem to be fundamentally great enhancements.

 

[krumme]

All the Civ games are turn based, they are not RTS games at all. Civ5 (which I own), would never work as a real time strategy game. Dune2 was a RTS, the first one I ever played back in the day.

I think what ever demo you saw just did some sort of replay of a game in fast motion.

Yes civ is turned based. I cant find the huge difference from 1 to 5 in gameplay experience. Its still flat and have low numbers of units that you can not really configure individually. Will be possible with mantle as i can see it. Huge worlds. Far more granularity in individual control.

I could easily imagine dune 2 expanded in 3d with tons of opportunities like seen in the oxide engine demo. That was btw only 2 months into development with mantle. They hadnt even touched the gpu opportunities at all. Imagine what they can do in a year then?

Then those with cgn and mantle could play dune 2015 in real 3d and in real time while those with nv card can play it on "civ5 3d" turned based, but smooth, Ohhh butter smooth on their new 1080 tn monitor

Btw: It was a demo of an engine. Not game.

 

[krumme]

AMD has no future developing CPUs. It is dead x86 wise and will be just one more in the ARM pack. The APU side of things isn't going well with Intel pushing harder every year and look at what happened with Nvidia when they tried to enter the ARM market. AMD just can't sustain the damage Nvidia is taking with Tegra and the status quo in the desktop isn't any better with the CPU division losing money every quarter.

I really don't know what kind of killer deal Apple got from AMD to include FirePros in the latest Mac Pro but AMD situation there is even worse than desktop graphics or processors with close to 0% market penetration.

Desktop graphics? 30% market share with pathetic margins and profits.

AMD in the server market? Don't make me laugh.

That's the sad state of AMD and the only thing that can save it is becoming the reference in desktop gaming since everything else failed already. That would lead to more GPU and APU sales as leaving things like this will just go worse with time.

I perfectly agree. Its only getting harder and they will get financially even more restrained. Mantle is the only thing than can help the traditional business for amd. The rest is in embedded in small segments. A 2000 man industry then.

But i am pretty sure they know that,- even though they sometimes do the most idiotic from a business perspective. So we will see a lot of betting on mantle.

I think an important point here is; Its the only savior for gf capacity. Perhaps mubadale can see it. But if they want to sell any kaveri and onwards apu build at gf now is the time to push big time.

Secondly. If mantle does not take off hsa is neither going to. That is a killer.

They ought to look at mantle as their last chance. But if they think its something else probably another stupid greedy investors will pour money into them. Thats how it have always been. But mantle is stellar technology and opportunity and rr and the new gang dont look to be business blind. I am pretty sure this is THE new high performance api.

 

[bystander36]

Yes civ is turned based. I cant find the huge difference from 1 to 5 in gameplay experience. Its still flat and have low numbers of units that you can not really configure individually. Will be possible with mantle as i can see it. Huge worlds. Far more granularity in individual control.

I could easily imagine dune 2 expanded in 3d with tons of opportunities like seen in the oxide engine demo. That was btw only 2 months into development with mantle. They hadnt even touched the gpu opportunities at all. Imagine what they can do in a year then?

Then those with cgn and mantle could play dune 2015 in real 3d and in real time while those with nv card can play it on "civ5 3d" turned based, but smooth, Ohhh butter smooth on their new 1080 tn monitor

Btw: It was a demo of an engine. Not game.

You don't own Civ5, do you?

And what on earth are you talking about in regards to the bolded area? Are you saying there is going to be a Mantle only Dune 2015 and no alternative?

 

[krumme]

One thing that I think is really convincing in that Oxide presentation is the progression of draw calls over time in relation to GPU performance. When in 2007 we had 500Gflop/s and 3000 draw calls and today we have like 6000 GFlop/s and 5000 draw calls it really shows how much those two aspects have widened over time.

The profiles also clearly show the huge amount of CPU time that is wasted with the single threaded rendering of games via DX. Admittedly its not quite as wasted on Nvidia's drivers since it has multithreaded aspects but still the game thread is still being held up by calling into DirectX.

So for a game genre that is draw call limited (RTS and limited by units and effects for those units) it seems apparent that Mantle is going to be a huge win, that 3x performance is possible, just because the games are regularly CPU limited. Moving that bottleneck back to the GPU allows a lot more to happen in game.

A game like Battlefield 4 is probably suboptimal for Mantle actually because it isn't really draw call limited right now, but it might be interesting to see just how much more than can potentially do with it. I want gsync, I want TruAudio and I want Mantle all on 4k already. I am still bummed that I have to choose between these options. They all seem to be fundamentally great enhancements.

I think Gsync will come as open standard under another name. Its simple tech that should have been here years ago. Nv history shows they will keep their standard closed. As for mantle i think amd will open it but keep it under their control. Semi closed. Lets hope sound gets a push with truesound. But i wouldnt bet on it. Sound quality actually in many ways goes backwards imho.

A lot of mantle have been focused on the drawcalls but thats just one little part of it. Go look at the mantle execution model. Its simply radically new all over.

 

[krumme]

You don't own Civ5, do you?

And what on earth are you talking about in regards to the bolded area? Are you saying there is going to be a Mantle only Dune 2015 and no alternative?

I did game civ5 but not for more than a 2-3 hours. I bought some of the new rts but never played them for more than 20 min. I think it was the same as 15-20 years ago. I had some fun with a turret game for some days 2-3 years ago. Cant really remember its name. But could have been made in the 90ties imho.

The bold was just trying to be fun and dreaming about new games. The point was. In typical games we have 2-3k drawcall. With mantle we get 100k with the same kind of optimization. Just that could enable another kind of game. A 3d dune. Lol.

But oxide is making the engine. They had a lot of questions. People seemed interested. What i saw was impressive. I am just dying to get some new games.

What we can dream of; huge maps in bf5. 128 players. Huge view distance. More dynamics to the caracters and objects. Bang! Lol.

 

[bystander36]

I did game civ5 but not for more than a 2-3 hours. I bought some of the new rts but never played them for more than 20 min. I think it was the same as 15-20 years ago. I had some fun with a turret game for some days 2-3 years ago. Cant really remember its name. But could have been made in the 90ties imho.

The bold was just trying to be fun and dreaming about new games. The point was. In typical games we have 2-3k drawcall. With mantle we get 100k with the same kind of optimization. Just that could enable another kind of game. A 3d dune. Lol.

But oxide is making the engine. They had a lot of questions. People seemed interested. What i saw was impressive. I am just dying to get some new games.

What we can dream of; huge maps in bf5. 128 players. Huge view distance. More dynamics to the caracters and objects. Bang! Lol.

I own Civ 4 and 5, and I had played Civ 1 and 2 way back in the day. I don't think I played Civ 3. The point is, these are not RTS's and never will be. It would be like making Chess real time. It is a turn based game at its heart and will remain so, or they'd alienate their core crowd who has a big following. It isn't really a game that suffers from performance either.

Dune 2 was one of the first real time strategy games back around 1991-1992. I also owned that game. It was a great game, but much more Starcraft like than Civ like. They are very different games. Civ games can be won with almost no combat.

Talk Dune 2, talk Starcraft, Warcraft, Total Annihilation, Warhammer and so on, but Civ games are not part of the genre.

 

[Lonbjerg]

is it really inferior to a PC running 1.6GHz Jaguar and a "7850 with small OC" (closest thing)?

Show me a console game with better I.Q than a PC game.
It's that simple.

 

[krumme]

I own Civ 4 and 5, and I had played Civ 1 and 2 way back in the day. I don't think I played Civ 3. The point is, these are not RTS's and never will be. It would be like making Chess real time. It is a turn based game at its heart and will remain so, or they'd alienate their core crowd who has a big following. It isn't really a game that suffers from performance either.

Dune 2 was one of the first real time strategy games back around 1991-1992. I also owned that game. It was a great game, but much more Starcraft like than Civ like. They are very different games. Civ games can be won with almost no combat.

Talk Dune 2, talk Starcraft, Warcraft, Total Annihilation, Warhammer and so on, but Civ games are not part of the genre.

Its not same genre. And not the slightest cpu limited like our old and new rts can be for drawcall for good reasons. Its always been an issue for rts from my experience. The tremendous slowdown that suddenly happens with many objects. It can kill a computer.

Oxide have obvious reasons to go for mantle for their new engine because of their own games. Its easy to understand.

But we will know more about mantle and eg new compute opportunities in the comming year. And hopefully get some completely new games.

But looking back at the experience dune2 gave. What wouldnt i pay for that experience today? More than a new highend gfx !

Unfortunately what unique mantle bring us will mostly come from oxide and a few others. Truely new games and experiences.

I think the rest is just 20% faster aaa games in general and perhaps some better quality ports.

It all depends if the consoles can provoke some new game types using the mantle like api. That would make for a difference. As pc plus consoles is a huge market.

 

[Lonbjerg]

Welcome back. What do consoles and their graphics have to do with PC Mantle and this thread?

It''s supposed to be a low level API...close to the metal.....like the console...or did AMd get that part wrong?
All their talk about "10x more draw calls" are pulled right out of the console-enviroment.
You could read post #1...that would remove your apparent confusion.

Do you know how to write driver software better than AMD?

I have delivered zero multithreaded DX drivers.
AMD has delivered zero multithreaded DX drivers.

In the case of multithreaded DX-drivers...AMD is no better than me...or visa versa this data and time.
Sorry if you do not like facts.

 

[zlatan]

Just because AMD has no multi-threaded DX driver, dosn't mean that you need to "hack" around that...you just need to update your driver and follow specs. *shrugs*

Deferred context is a massive failure. Mantle will provide a much better way for multi-threaded rendering, because the command buffers can be re-used. This is how deferred context should work in DX11, but MS choose a very inefficient implementation to ensure backward compatibility.