AMD Mantle API [updating]

[lanek]

The number of games released and announced since its introduction, DX11, the number of fingers on my hands...

I had an argument with someone in another forum recently about how awesome Mantle (and low level PC API's in general) are and his counter argument was that its their impact on PC gaming as a whole is virtually nil. And with only two games and a tech demo currently supporting it and no other big game announcements that I'm aware of (engines don't count unless we also have word of games running on those engines that support the API) it was certainly a difficult argument to defend against. Perhaps there are some huge UE4 and CryEngine announcements just around the corner that your dying to tell us about - I truly hope there are, but right now all I see are big game announcements and launches (wolf, witcher 2, watch dogs, batman, ac unity etc...) and not a hint of Mantle support despite some of those games having huge CPU requirements and thus being perfect Mantle candidates.

We want more Dave, please make it happen

I think it is minimize the things a little bit here.

Games takes time to be made, games who will be released in the next months are allready in developpement since a long time, and i dont see the developpers suddenly deciding to change direction or add ressources for developp Mantle ( without saying studio budgets allowed for games currently in developement are not really extensible).

Now you have many big game engines who will support Mantle: CryEngine, Frostbyte, Oxyde etc etc etc .. Thoses engines have been annonced as used in many games for the end of this year and the next years. So if developpers want add Mantle support it will be really more easy now as a good part of the work is allready made.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Now you have many big game engines who will support Mantle: CryEngine, Frostbyte, Oxyde etc etc etc .. Thoses engines have been annonced as used in many games for the end of this year and the next years. So if developpers want add Mantle support it will be really more easy now as a good part of the work is allready made.

This is the crux of it, even though the engines support Mantle, will be see the big games built on this engine supporting it? I hope so, but to have a truly appreciable impact on PC gaming as a whole you need to be hitting a significant percentage of ALL high end PC games and not just a very select few.

I hope Mantle can pull this off and I take on board yours and 3dcgi's comments about timing but I'll be very dissapointed if for example at least 50% of all UE4 and CryEngine games announed from this point forwards don't also announce Mantle support.

 

[Kaotik]

I wouldn't hold my breath on any UE(4) game ever supporting Mantle, unless the game dev implements the support by themselves (like in case of Thief), Epic is too deep in bed with NV to build the support to the engine directly

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I wouldn't hold my breath on any UE(4) game ever supporting Mantle, unless the game dev implements the support by themselves (like in case of Thief), Epic is too deep in bed with NV to build the support to the engine directly

Yeah, unless they start to lose a lot of engine licensing to Crytek due to Mantle it's doubtful Nvidia would take kindly to them supporting it Considering their close partnership with Nvidia, they'll try to wait it out until Dx12.

Regards,
SB

 

[NThibieroz]

Josh is probably too humble to mention his blog post here so I'll do it instead:
http://www.joshbarczak.com/blog/?p=99

 

[Arwin]

Yeah, unless they start to lose a lot of engine licensing to Crytek due to Mantle it's doubtful Nvidia would take kindly to them supporting it Considering their close partnership with Nvidia, they'll try to wait it out until Dx12.



Regards,

SB

I was never a big fan of UE as a platform, but it's not getting any better with this kind of thing.

 

[Dave Baumann]

The number of games released and announced since its introduction, DX11, the number of fingers on my hands...

And to answer that very point, our current projection points to Mantle adoption being roughly as fast, to faster in option than DX11:

http://community.amd.com/community/amd-blogs/amd-gaming/blog/2014/05/28/mantle-101

A few more blogs as well:

http://community.amd.com/community/.../05/28/mantle-in-the-words-of-game-developers
http://community.amd.com/community/amd-blogs/amd-gaming/blog/2014/05/28/the-performance-of-mantle
http://community.amd.com/community/...05/28/mantle-the-start-of-low-overhead-future

 

[pjbliverpool]

Cheers, that all sounds very promising but the real killer app for you would be something like Watch Dogs that has crazy high CPU requirements that you can bring right down with Mantle. Hopefully there's something like that on the pipeline and we'll hear about it soon.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Cheers, that all sounds very promising but the real killer app for you would be something like Watch Dogs that has crazy high CPU requirements that you can bring right down with Mantle. Hopefully there's something like that on the pipeline and we'll hear about it soon.

I think you're assuming that AMD's strategy with Mantle is similar to nVidia's Gameworks, where supposedly they approach developers to use their tools and unoptimize games for AMD cards.

AFAICS, it's the other way around. Developers themselves seem eager to have something like Mantle to use and it's in their best interest to approach AMD.
It's not AMD's need or job to go after developers and secure big titles (what you call "killer app") in order to block nVidia from having better performance.


Mantle's adoption rate seems really good, nevertheless.

 

[Malo]

I'm sure the developers would love to implement Mantle and really push the limits of their products. Someone like Ubisoft no the otherhand probably wouldn't see the financial benefit of doing so, especially given their relationships with Nvidia.

 

[cringe]

Does Mantle use page-flipping or a render ahead queue for triple buffered vsync?

 

[Arwin]

Does Mantle use page-flipping or a render ahead queue for triple buffered vsync?

I have no actual knowledge of Mantle, but on a very generic level I would assume that Mantle is low-level enough to leave those aspects completely up to the developer?

 

[Andrew Lauritzen]

Does Mantle use page-flipping or a render ahead queue for triple buffered vsync?

I'm pretty sure that Mantle goes through DXGI just like DX or GL. i.e. there's an interface to do any graphics on Windows that you ultimately have to go through and that handles the swap chain and display. (Otherwise how would you do Mantle rendering in a Window?) Thus it's the same as DX/GL on Windows.

 

[Dave Glue]

Have to say Dave and the rest of the AMD Mantle team, very impressed with the latest beta Catalyst and the latest Thief patch with regards to Mantle performance.

I probably have a decently realistic system for Mantle - an A8-5600k APU + R9 270X GPU, so it's not an extremely unbalanced system but in most cases with modern games I'm going to be CPU limited likely before GPU - and of course, GPU limitations are far easier to circumvent as one can easily just pare back resolution/AA if they have a frame rate target in mind.

The previous drivers/pre-latest Thief patch demonstrated periods of significantly increased framerate, but also frequent periods of stuttering. This is now largely eliminated, so far well into the second level and I've had some very brief (likely ~50fps) drops from 60, but otherwise locked at 60fps 95% of the time. That's with every graphical option maxxed at 1080p, the only exception no SSAA which of course is extremely demanding so I leave that off. But no automatic texture management forced, image-based reflection turned on, etc - 60fps pretty much solid.

DX11 frequently drops to ~30fps frequently when overlooking large areas, so Mantle pretty much doubles my performance in these situations and provides a far more consistently smooth experience. Impressive, albeit somewhat frustrating thinking how much smoother other CPU limited games could be if they weren't trying to plow through DX's overhead.

 

[elect]

Some other amd slides

http://www.tweakpc.de/news/31582/mantle-zugkraeftiger-als-dx10-und-dx11-wegbereiter-fuer-dx12/

 

[Malo]

When does that graph officially start for Mantle since it's not actually "released"?

 

[Kaotik]

When does that graph officially start for Mantle since it's not actually "released"?

Since it starts with 1 game at 0, it has to be when Mantle-patch for BF4 and Mantle-drivers were released.

 

[Malo]

Since it starts with 1 game at 0, it has to be when Mantle-patch for BF4 and Mantle-drivers were released.

Yes when they officially release Mantle it will start at 1 because of BF4 but I don't believe AMD consider this slide to have started yet.

 

[3dilettante]

The graph is labeled as tracking API or driver launch. BF4's Mantle roll-out mostly coincided with AMD's Mantle driver release.
Additionally, the latest Thief game also supports Mantle.

 

[Malo]

Given the timing on the graph that would mean 2 more titles are imminent release for Mantle.