The AMD Mantle Thread

[BallaTheFeared]

The difference here is that the Oxide presentation isn't a scripted benchmark.

No but it is just draw calls, no AI or physics or anything else.

Not to downplay the absurd draw call tax we all pay on PCs, but the other elements are just as important if not vastly more important when it comes to gameplay and immersion than simply having more object calls on your screen.

All those other objects are either going to be inanimate and pointless, or extremely dumbed down, or worse a huge obstacle to simulate on a PC due to not enough processing power.

 

[biostud]

Not to downplay the absurd draw call tax we all pay on PCs, but the other elements are just as important if not vastly more important when it comes to gameplay and immersion than simply having more object calls on your screen.

Depends, I often think that certain games needs more draw calls to be really good.

 

[gorobei]

No but it is just draw calls, no AI or physics or anything else.
...
All those other objects are either going to be inanimate and pointless, or extremely dumbed down, or worse a huge obstacle to simulate on a PC due to not enough processing power.

actually the demo had AI, ship avoidance,inter swarm avoidance, self swarm avoidance, enemy targeting. dont know about physics. but the particle engine for the effects was working, doesnt look like they did much for the explosions but they were there.

 

[Paul98]

No but it is just draw calls, no AI or physics or anything else.

Not to downplay the absurd draw call tax we all pay on PCs, but the other elements are just as important if not vastly more important when it comes to gameplay and immersion than simply having more object calls on your screen.

All those other objects are either going to be inanimate and pointless, or extremely dumbed down, or worse a huge obstacle to simulate on a PC due to not enough processing power.

Clearly it had AI as it wasn't scripted and what we were seeing on screen was the AI moving to where they thought they should be, target and fire their weapons. As they had already said that this also left a lot of CPU power unused. This was a demo created to try out things and see what the change was in draw calls.

 

[NTMBK]

Kabini obviously. With a GTX680 to remove GPU bottlenecks.

http://adrenaline.uol.com.br/biblioteca/analise/784/amd-a6-5200-kabini.html?pg=05

The API benefits is hugely overestimated.

Ah, that makes more sense. Thanks for the correction.

 

[krumme]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4gaVvHXNC8

Neither can hold 60 fps min in the campaign. And BF4 campaign is hardly CPU limited.

On MP its more like 50 avg (jumps from 40-60)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkjS4wLEQX0

Which is around i3 level (ultra settings). When you take into account the 6 core and the fact that the console is not running ultra the framerates are comparable. I'm not seeing much if any console optimization here.

Similar framerate on a slightly stronger CPU at more demanding settings.

Look at your chart again. The quad core amds eg. 3.3 is running at same speed. They are far far stronger than jaguar. And the effect of going from 4 to 6 cores is not that great. You still have the lead thread in a console running 1.7ghz on a single jaguar core. It is a huge difference.

You want to play china rising on a kabini cpu on dx? Good luck. It will murder the game. I take a core i3 any day.

 

[krumme]

No but it is just draw calls, no AI or physics or anything else.

Not to downplay the absurd draw call tax we all pay on PCs, but the other elements are just as important if not vastly more important when it comes to gameplay and immersion than simply having more object calls on your screen.

All those other objects are either going to be inanimate and pointless, or extremely dumbed down, or worse a huge obstacle to simulate on a PC due to not enough processing power.

Agree all the other parts is also important. But with dx the devs can eg not even control for sure if an object is going to eg the compute part !! Try to grasp how freaking idiotic that is. Dx is a black box for the devs. Its trial and error. I dont think people in general know how bad dx is for performance games. Look at mantle execution model. I think most of you guys think what mantle does is what is happening in dx today. Its that bad. Dx is driving like driving blind. Mantle just does what is natural. If its a compute task the devs can line it up in line for the compute part and know its going there. Its that simple.

 

[Enigmoid]

Look at your chart again. The quad core amds eg. 3.3 is running at same speed. They are far far stronger than jaguar. And the effect of going from 4 to 6 cores is not that great. You still have the lead thread in a console running 1.7ghz on a single jaguar core. It is a huge difference.

You want to play china rising on a kabini cpu on dx? Good luck. It will murder the game. I take a core i3 any day.

Obviously the console version is different than the PC version. Probably due to the weaker CPU a lot of the CPU heavy options have been cut out (shadows, etc).

Looking at FX and kabini you must remember than kabini does not have the module penalty (has the weird stuff with BF4 and hex cores been fixed?). I was comparing against sandy i3 because generally kabini performs around dual + HT sandy/ivy against quad kabini at the same speed.

Looking at the 4300 and the 6300. 6300 is 34% faster in raw framerate despite clocking 9% slower (normalize the clockspeed and the 4300 would get 52 fps so the 6300 would be 44% faster which is really good scaling). Completely ideal would be 50%.

I'm simply saying that an 8 core kabini has roughly the same throughput as an i3 ivy at roughly twice the clockspeed (3.2 ghz). Reduce kabini to 6 cores but at the same time reduce game settings and the two are fairly well matched in terms of power.

 

[Spjut]

Tomshardware interviewed Johan Andersson, and he gave some details about BF4 on the PS4 and Xbox One. He says the CPUs made things challenging, and that they reached 90-95% CPU utilization.
In the future, Dice is going to move more tasks over to the GPU
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/johan-andersson-battlefield-4-interview,3688-5.html

 

[blastingcap]

Tomshardware interviewed Johan Andersson, and he gave some details about BF4 on the PS4 and Xbox One. He says the CPUs made things challenging, and that they reached 90-95% CPU utilization.
In the future, Dice is going to move more tasks over to the GPU
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/johan-andersson-battlefield-4-interview,3688-5.html

Nice find.

He also says they don't have numbers to share re: BF4 Mantle yet:

"
Chris: Okay, cool. I know you mentioned that we were going to start getting to the point where we could talk about performance benefits of Mantle in Battlefield 4. Are we there yet or do we need to keep waiting a little bit longer?
Johan: (Laughs) Yeah, we’re not there yet.
Chris: Okay.
Johan: It's a lot of work just putting all of the pieces together and performance is the thing you get last there. I don’t want to give any numbers that are not fully representative yet either.
Chris: Sure.
Johan: Yeah, we’re not there yet."


(SOURCE: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/johan-andersson-battlefield-4-interview,3688-6.html)

He also says on the next page:

"Johan: I think they can go more and more in that direction. I'm not fully sure; there's also the question of time, when you're able to actually, even if you want to go in that direction, when can you deliver that and get everyone on-board and things like that. That’s a pretty important component. Let’s say if it was only DX that went sort of closer to Mantle, that would definitely be a good thing. But the rest of ecosystem is based on [COLOR=blue !important][COLOR=blue !important]OpenGL[/COLOR][/COLOR], so ideally you want OpenGL to move in that direction as well, or OpenGL to become something more like Mantle on the lower level.

I think that's really important because the future is not just DX. Sure, it's pretty dominating on the desktop, and we use a DX variant on the Xbox One, but we don’t use it on PS4, we don’t use it on PS3, we don’t use it on iOS, we don’t use it on Android, we don’t use it on Mac, we don’t use it on Linux. Many of these other [COLOR=blue !important][COLOR=blue !important]platforms[/COLOR][/COLOR] are really important also, and that's where, I think, ideally I really want to have a cross-platform API, so it's not tied to DX, even though DX is today the most important API out there and the one that most of our users are using by far.

Chris: Right.
Johan: Ideally I would like to see a solution that can work on Mac and Linux, and in the future also on the mobile platforms that are moving forward a lot, and are even more constraining about CPU performance and efficient rendering and power efficiency and all that.
Chris: For all those other platforms you're looking to OpenGL and OpenGL ES then?
Johan: Yes, exactly. Microsoft also, of course, they have DirectX working on Windows 8 tablets and Windows Phone, but they have a tiny, tiny market share there. Microsoft definitely does not have a history of [COLOR=blue !important][COLOR=blue !important]sharing[/COLOR][/COLOR] APIs with the wider industry and things like that, even less than the IHVs have.
Chris: Right.
Johan: IHVs have a better chance of working together with us developers and seeing if we can have an overall cross-platform solution. A little bit difficult challenge overall, but we have to push for what we would like to see out there."

 

[Stewox]

If it was prescripted, they wouldn't announce the release of it with modding capabilities.

 

[BrightCandle]

Ironically even Johan thinkd the future lays in the past with openGL. Everyone may have moved off it as DX drove forward with new features but now the API and features there have stabilised the standardisation process for openGL has caught up and its now available any Windows and most platforms with the only exclusion being the Xbox One. OpenGL extensions also provide high speed direct access to vendor specific features as well, allowing that fast direct hardware access when its needed. All the while support multiple vendors already.

Its kind of amusing. But in the software world we say that the standards always win in the end. Innovation always happens elsewhere but the standards eventually eat up all the other players.

 

[smackababy]

Ironically even Johan thinkd the future lays in the past with openGL. Everyone may have moved off it as DX drove forward with new features but now the API and features there have stabilised the standardisation process for openGL has caught up and its now available any Windows and most platforms with the only exclusion being the Xbox One. OpenGL extensions also provide high speed direct access to vendor specific features as well, allowing that fast direct hardware access when its needed. All the while support multiple vendors already.

Its kind of amusing. But in the software world we say that the standards always win in the end. Innovation always happens elsewhere but the standards eventually eat up all the other players.

MS has been known to do this. They will, when being beaten, do something that kills the competition and then get incredibly lax. Perhaps the developers at MS have found a way to have ultimate job security!

 

[Carfax83]

Agree all the other parts is also important. But with dx the devs can eg not even control for sure if an object is going to eg the compute part !! Try to grasp how freaking idiotic that is. Dx is a black box for the devs. Its trial and error. I dont think people in general know how bad dx is for performance games. Look at mantle execution model. I think most of you guys think what mantle does is what is happening in dx today. Its that bad. Dx is driving like driving blind. Mantle just does what is natural. If its a compute task the devs can line it up in line for the compute part and know its going there. Its that simple.

This post is complete nonsense. You do realize that developers have been using DirectCompute in games with none of the issues you are describing?

Civilization 5, Battlefield 3 and 4, Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider all use DirectCompute for certain effects and it's all done through DX11..

 

[Stewox]

Ironically even Johan thinkd the future lays in the past with openGL. Everyone may have moved off it as DX drove forward with new features but now the API and features there have stabilised the standardisation process for openGL has caught up and its now available any Windows and most platforms with the only exclusion being the Xbox One. OpenGL extensions also provide high speed direct access to vendor specific features as well, allowing that fast direct hardware access when its needed. All the while support multiple vendors already.

Its kind of amusing. But in the software world we say that the standards always win in the end. Innovation always happens elsewhere but the standards eventually eat up all the other players.

At the end of it OpenGL still needs drivers on a regular basis, OpenGL didn't help id Software in their situation with Rage PC release for AMD cards, if they had Mantle at the time, that scenario wouldn't have happened.

MS has been known to do this. They will, when being beaten, do something that kills the competition and then get incredibly lax. Perhaps the developers at MS have found a way to have ultimate job security!

I hope not, I despise that company and I hope they go away soon, and their octopus network, locking chains on the industry and preventing innovation.

 

[NTMBK]

I hope not, I despise that company and I hope they go away soon, and their octopus network, locking chains on the industry and preventing innovation.

You mean the company responsible for stabilising the PC software market, providing a consistent API and platform for developers to target and giving them a basis for producing great software? Microsoft aren't all evil, despite the bad press they seem to get. Quite a few of their products have been useful, and let other people do great things.

 

[blackened23]

Have Battlefield 4′s Woes Delayed AMD’s Mantle Roll-Out?

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/news/video/have-battlefield-4s-woes-delayed-amds-mantle-roll-out/

This unfortunate situation doesn’t necessarily preclude an eventual release of a BF4 Mantle patch this year but it has delayed its implementation beyond an optimal, attention-garnering date. You see, the days between Christmas and New Years aren’t the best time to introduce a potentially game-changing technology since very few folks are paying attention to the news tickers. However, money may end up being the deciding factor here since AMD pumped some serious resources into BF4’s PC development and is still counting on Mantle to become an integral part of the game’s forward progress.

After discussions with all parties involved, we haven’t been able to get a clear, official statement of where Mantle stands in relation to Battlefield 4 but one thing is certain: AMD is dead set on getting Mantle purring like a well oiled engine. The silence regarding an official rollout date is telling though.

Looks like December for BF4 Mantle isn't happening. Game is broken. Priority goes to fixing the actual game. Which is unfortunate because many of us are anxious to see what Mantle can do.

 

[BrightCandle]

It may just be that the mantle layer wasn't ready either. There is every possibility that AMDs api and driver for mantle are still too buggy to push for release. Regardless it doesn't look like we are getting mantle this year, because now onwards is a really bad time to push put a potentially very buggy release with all the devs on holiday.

 

[Gloomy]

I doubt it's that buggy, it's supposed to be closer to how their hardware works. less code = less bugs

It's more likely DICE/the frostbite team having too much on their plate.

 

[blastingcap]

If their fixes for the DX version change the game enough, won't that possibly break Mantle compatibility? So they would have to fix it for DX, then re-validate all their Mantle work, which takes extra resources and presumably extra time.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Have Battlefield 4′s Woes Delayed AMD’s Mantle Roll-Out?

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/news/video/have-battlefield-4s-woes-delayed-amds-mantle-roll-out/



Looks like December for BF4 Mantle isn't happening. Game is broken. Priority goes to fixing the actual game.

The question is, with the spinoff of Frostbite as it seems. Will Mantle ever happen for BF4? The game is a disaster and rumours says heads are starting to roll at DICE. And in terms of the game, Mantle must be absolute at the bottom of the priorities. EA/DICE must be at a point, where its about salvage what they can from the game and revenue, rather than to do anything fancy for a minority segment that doesnt contribute to anything since they already run the DX path. Its all about resources. Something some people quickly disregarded as an issue with Mantle implementation.

 

[Skurge]

The question is, with the spinoff of Frostbite as it seems. Will Mantle ever happen for BF4? The game is a disaster and rumours says heads are starting to roll at DICE. And in terms of the game, Mantle must be absolute at the bottom of the priorities. EA/DICE must be at a point, where its about salvage what they can from the game and revenue, rather than to do anything fancy for a minority segment that doesnt contribute to anything since they already run the DX path. Its all about resources. Something some people quickly disregarded as an issue with Mantle implementation.

Talk about hyperbole.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Have Battlefield 4′s Woes Delayed AMD’s Mantle Roll-Out?

Between this and the recent inquiry about performance to wit they still have no numbers to even start discussing Mantles effect on BF4 I'd wager that Mantle for BF4 isn't very close to a release stage.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Talk about hyperbole.

There is a lot of that in this thread from both sides.

 

[DarkKnightDude]

Lets label everyone a side!

I wouldn't be shocked if they delayed Mantle for BF4, gameplay and bugs are more important atm, and DICE is just doing a horrible job of it.