Will AMD's Mantle revolutionise PC gaming? *spawn

[Cjail]

DF: Could AMD's Mantle revolutionize PC gaming?

 

[Arwin]

DF: Could AMD's Mantle revolutionize PC gaming?

I think this should get its own topic. I agree that this is likely to be huge, especially with the convolution of the resurgence of OpenGL due to mobile development, Mac and SteamOS on the one hand, and the ability to completely bypass DirectX now on the other, which will no doubt be done by all the major game engines. Particularly SteamOS and this combined are likely to accellerate matters here.

 

[Cjail]

I don't agree with what Carmack said..
The similarities between consoles and PC are growing but it's happening thanks to both sides.
PS4 and XBo have" PC like" architectures which I take as a way to build bridges between the two worlds, pass me the expression, not as an act of hostility.
Why should Sony and MS be hostile to Mantle when they in part created the condition for it and ultimately could also befit form it?!
Also given the collaboration between Nvidia and Valve on StemOS I would not be surprise to see Steam Boxes powered by Nvidia GPU and not by AMD.

I don't see a "worlds at war" scenario between PC and consoles.

 

[baten]

IMO it's a given that Nvidia has something similar to Mantle tech and they will push it in the new steamboxes. They have been working with valve since over a year now to develop SteamOS

 

[Npl]

I think this should get its own topic. I agree that this is likely to be huge, especially with the convolution of the resurgence of OpenGL due to mobile development, Mac and SteamOS on the one hand, and the ability to completely bypass DirectX now on the other, which will no doubt be done by all the major game engines. Particularly SteamOS and this combined are likely to accellerate matters here.

And we are back to the days of Glide/metal/Direct3D/OpenGL...
Unless Mantle can easily adopted by all major players and thus replace Direct3D as hardware-independent standard, I dont see this happening at a larger scale.
How many different future versions of Mantle will be coming from AMD alone, if the API is tied to their GCN architecture.

 

[liolio]

And we are back to the days of Glide/metal/Direct3D/OpenGL...
Unless Mantle can easily adopted by all major players and thus replace Direct3D as hardware-independent standard, I dont see this happening at a larger scale.

We don't know much now though it has already been adopted by EA and possibly the finest engine around, it is quite a F good start if you ask me. Now how it will turn out in the long run is obviously unknown, but it could hardly have a better start.

How many different future versions of Mantle will be coming from AMD alone, if the API is tied to their GCN architecture.

It is unknown if it is tied to GCN architecture, we just know previous arch won't be supported which is different. It is unknown if it open or not or to which extend. We will have to wait till November to learn more

 

[Dominik D]

And we are back to the days of Glide/metal/Direct3D/OpenGL...

We've been there for years now. Most engines have many rendering backends using D3D, OGL, OGLES, libGCM and what not. One more, if straightforward for developers to use, is not going to change much.

 

[Ekim]

Anandtech thinks Mantle == Xbox One Api
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7371/understanding-amds-mantle-a-lowlevel-graphics-api-for-gcn

What’s not being said, but what becomes increasingly hinted at as we read through AMD’s material is not just that Mantle is a low level API, but rather Mantle is the low level API. As in it’s either a direct copy or a very close derivative of the Xbox One’s low level graphics API. All of the pieces are there; AMD will tell you from the start that Mantle is designed to leverage the optimization work done for games on the next generation consoles, and furthermore Mantle can even use the Direct3D High Level Shader Language (HLSL), the high level shader language Xbox One shaders will be coded against in the first place. Let’s be very clear here: AMD will not discuss the matter let alone confirm it, so this is speculation on our part. But it’s speculation that we believe is well grounded. Based on what we know thus far, we believe Mantle is the Xbox One’s low level API brought to the PC.

If indeed Mantle is the Xbox One’s low level API, then this changes the frame of reference for Mantle dramatically. No longer is Mantle just a new low level API for AMD GCN cards, whose success is defined by whether AMD can get developers to create games specifically for it, but Mantle becomes the bridge for porting over Xbox One games to the PC. Developers who make extensive use of the Xbox One low level API would be able to directly bring over large pieces of their rendering code to the PC and reuse it, and in doing so maintain the benefits of using that low-level code in the first place. Mantle will not (and cannot) preclude the need for developers to also do a proper port to Direct3D – after all AMD is currently the minority party in the discrete PC graphics space – but it does provide the option of keeping that low level code, when in the past that would never be an option.

 

[zupallinere]

Anandtech thinks Mantle == Xbox One Api
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7371/understanding-amds-mantle-a-lowlevel-graphics-api-for-gcn

Interesting. Interestingly enough Digital Foundry has a bit of a different take:

Mantle appears to have much in common with the GNM API used in PlayStation 4, offering low-level GPU access while retaining a very high level of compatibility with Microsoft's existing programmable pixel shader language (HLSL). The potential here cannot be under-estimated - much of the optimisation work that is carried out on console versions of multi-platform games can now be rolled out to the PC version too. In addition, there is also the opportunity to exploit AMD-specific hardware features that are under-utilised - or perhaps not even implemented at all - in DirectX.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-could-amd-mantle-revolutionise-pc-gaming

On top of that DF suggests that if Mantle gets pulled into the Steam Box both MS and Sony will be facing competition they didn't envision.

One of the big "wins" you get with an APU would be drawcall efficiency and now with Mantle you could get better performance from discrete GPUs hanging out there on the PCI-e bus and as a result might the push on APUs be a bit more blunted ?? Still cheaper of course

 

[fehu]

all this talk about mantle on the one, but it looks a better solution for sony rather than for microsoft that want to have control of the api their console is using, and maybe facilitate the porting to dx and not to an api that runs on linux and mac too

 

[swaaye]

We've been there for years now. Most engines have many rendering backends using D3D, OGL, OGLES, libGCM and what not. One more, if straightforward for developers to use, is not going to change much.

It's more about whether or not you can play everything optimally with just one PC 3D card. That was the problem in the '90s. Every hardware vendor had their groovy to-the-metal API. Direct3D sucked. Almost nothing ran OpenGL well.

Things like Physx and CUDA have been causing problems already. Now we're slipping into the graphics themselves again.

 

[Scott_Arm]

If anything it is an incentive for Microsoft to review their driver model and their API. A little competition isn't a bad thing. OpenGL isn't exactly pushing Microsoft to improve. I'll be curious to see what kind of benefits this really has. If you can get some performance gains and some exclusive rendering techniques, then that will be a big selling point. To be honest, I'm more curious about how much of a benefit it can have on the low to mid-range GCN cards rather than the high end ones. If this can make Battlefield 4 perform better on a low spec machine, then that could be a huge win. That's assuming there is also good stability and not OS issues. I still don't understand how you can get low-level access to the GPU and CPU without potentially screwing up some important mechanisms of the underlying OS, like scheduling, especially on the CPU.

 

[MfA]

AMD is competing with NVIDIA to see who can screw Microsoft hardest after the console contracts are signed.

 

[Tchock]

AMD is competing with NVIDIA to see who can screw Microsoft hardest after the console contracts are signed.

I don't see it that way. Not if Mantle branches out into the high performance niche for flagship titles, leaving DirectX to be the general API that is stable and easier to deploy on. I wouldn't even be surprised if AMD had MS' go-ahead with regards to this.

 

[Dominik D]

It's more about whether or not you can play everything optimally with just one PC 3D card. That was the problem in the '90s. Every hardware vendor had their groovy to-the-metal API. Direct3D sucked. Almost nothing ran OpenGL well.

Things like Physx and CUDA have been causing problems already. Now we're slipping into the graphics themselves again.

These are completely different stories. Old metal APIs were quirky, buggy, depended heavily on HW implementation of "stuff". Most cards today have fairly solid drivers that deal with well established rendering pipeline, developers have lots and lots of data to draw from when figuring out how one would build API to optimize performance and not make developers' lives harder. Compute on GPU although astonishing as it is not as mature as rasterization is. Domain-specific accelerators (PhysX and stuff) are also trying to do something new, it's harder to steer efforts like these in the right direction. What I guess I'm trying to say is this: graphics are mature enough to make this seemingly disastrous split and not kill anyone in the process, IMO.

 

[Arwin]

I don't see it that way. Not if Mantle branches out into the high performance niche for flagship titles, leaving DirectX to be the general API that is stable and easier to deploy on. I wouldn't even be surprised if AMD had MS' go-ahead with regards to this.

Of course there is a risk that for less performance critical stuff, OpenGL will start to be used more, having an advantage of portability to tablets, linux, mac, etc. The risk that DirectX will end up being marginalized is at the very least not decreasing.

 

[liquidboy]

Interesting. Interestingly enough Digital Foundry has a bit of a different take:



http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-could-amd-mantle-revolutionise-pc-gaming

On top of that DF suggests that if Mantle gets pulled into the Steam Box both MS and Sony will be facing competition they didn't envision.

One of the big "wins" you get with an APU would be drawcall efficiency and now with Mantle you could get better performance from discrete GPUs hanging out there on the PCI-e bus and as a result might the push on APUs be a bit more blunted ?? Still cheaper of course

AMD Radeon seems to prefer AnandTech's take - https://twitter.com/AMDRadeon/status/383349757428506624

 

[fellix]

PCGH asked Raja Koduri about Mantle and its "openess". He replied that AMD doesn't see Mantle as an open standard like OpenCL or OpenGL. He also tried to brush aside comparisons with Glide but then stated: If a competitor were to approach AMD to make their own backend and drivers for Mantle, AMD would not dismiss them right away.

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Grafi...D-Low-Level-API-Mantle-Battlefield-4-1090085/

 

[swaaye]

Sounds to me like there's no chance of competitors considering adoption of it.

 

[Jawed]

Apparently a single 290X was driving the 5760x1080 live play of BF4 Angry Sea and no one said it was running in Mantle mode.

So, erm, it seems PC gamers don't need Mantle