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News AMD Mantle gets support from Cloud Imperium, Eidos and Oxide

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Meanmotion, 4 Nov 2013.

  1. Meanmotion

    Meanmotion bleh Moderator

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  2. will_123

    will_123 Small childs brain in a big body

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    Could they not just give devs access to this via openGL? Rather than trying to create another directX specifically for their hardware.
     
  3. Dave Lister

    Dave Lister Minimodder

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    I can't see it being a huge success if games makers need to use both mantle and direct x. I'm really excited by the prospects for it but AMD need to let other GPU manufacturers get in on the action or it will be a failure. And if AMD are hoping to destroy Nvidia with Mantle they had better think again, Nvidia are too successful at present to go down because of a new API.
    I mean even if AMD limited other brands to 5x more draw calls and licensed it for free, then keep the magic 9X to themselves for now - that would alleviate the problem.
     
  4. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    From my limited understanding of Mantle it works bellow DirectX and OpenGL allowing developers to bypass some DirectX and OpenGL calls to speed things up that are typically slower when using the higher level API's
     
  5. technogiant

    technogiant What's a Dremel?

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    Nvidia can't make use of it...it's nothing to do with politics or business....it is designed to make full use of the GCN architecture which obviously Nvidia don't have.

    As it seems that developers are coming on board with this I suppose the best Nvidia could do is rewrite Mantle so that its lower level code could talk to its gpu architecture and keep the higher level code that meshes with the game engine and os the same.

    But not being a coder not sure if that even makes sense.
     
  6. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    Why would Nvidia rewrite Mantle when they have had their own API for over 5 years, being used in BF3, BF4, and many other games.
     
  7. Dave Lister

    Dave Lister Minimodder

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    I didn't know that, thanks for the info technogiant. In that case I can't see it being a proper success. It sounds good but needs to be openly available to all the GPU people.
     
  8. technogiant

    technogiant What's a Dremel?

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    What api is that?....the reason they would want to rewrite mantle is that it appears that it may well receive a lot of support from developers because of amd's soon to be large hardware base.
     
  9. rollo

    rollo Modder

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    Nvidia has several low level unique apis.

    Problem with either company is they are usually locked to that manufactures cards. Look at the state of physics, Nvidia has aprox 62% Desktop GPU market share right now. Even with it been 2 / 3 of all cards sold in pc market Physics is used in maybe 10 games total.

    AMD cause is helped by the consoles been on GCN archi but even then the sony gpu is doing 900p bf4 and 1080p in ghosts whilst the xbox one is only at 720p so huge differences already showing. In bf 4 case the game is surely optimised around mantle or similar low level apis.

    AMD is surely moving away from GCN Architexture for its next card so where does that put mantle will we see the technology ported to all future AMD cards and if so will there be a performance hit for doing so.

    I can imagine a scenario where a 290x will be faster than there next gen top end card due to Mantle in bf4 at least that would be a huge problem.

    Personally do not think a low level API that is not made by someone but Nvidia , AMD, Intel is a good thing, Simply because they will all be manufacture locked to that hardware. Great for them but bad for the consumer.

    I remember the damage Glide did and the prices that were been charged for top end 3dfx cards because of basically just what Glide was capable off. Not sure I would really like to see those days again.
     
  10. ObsCure

    ObsCure What's a Dremel?

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    Any source for that claim?
     
  11. technogiant

    technogiant What's a Dremel?

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    So if Nvidia are and have been for many years making low level api's for their own cards then I don't see there can be any argument against AMD doing the same thing....and the 60% of the pc market that Nvidia control.....just how does that size up when compared to the total GCN ownership of both the console and pc market....peanuts.

    I've seen your argument about Mantle and what happens when AMD migrates to the next archi several times before...but I'm not sure that it holds much water....I mean just look at driver releases...they cover several generations and archi's of gpu with one driver...so it's not beyond imagination that Mantle releases will also be good for several generations of gpu...and beyond that does anyone really care if comparatively ancient cards are not supported in new releases...certainly the enthusiasts would not be worried as they would have the more current versions of gpu and the remainder could just satisfy themselves with running the D3D version on their older hardware.
     
  12. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    NVAPI. https://developer.nvidia.com/nvapi

    One thing to remember with AMD's soon to be large hardware base is that its based on rather low end hardware even by today's standards, how much faster will CPU's and GPU's be in a year or two ? and when cross platform games are developed will they bother with optimisation for the PC much, or will we end up with rather lack luster ports pandering to the lowest common denominator ?
     
  13. dyzophoria

    dyzophoria Minimodder

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    won't it be better to have your API work perfectly on low end hardware then scale out?, as far as I remember, feature wise the only difference from the lower end to higher end hardware are GPU clocks and bus size, architecturally speaking I think it will be same across everything should it not?
     
  14. Rapp

    Rapp Minimodder

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    With AMD getting the graphics cards for the next gen consoles I think that Mantle is going to be huge as the developers may as well use it to get better performance on the console and most things are just ported to the PC now anyway.

    I think it is going to be a turning point for AMD if they get the pricing right on the graphics cards which they have done.
     
  15. Harlequin

    Harlequin Modder

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    just read that

    will be using mantle as well!
     
  16. phuzz

    phuzz This is a title

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    It'll be the same situation we've had since the original XBOX, lots of lazy ports, a bunch of so-so releases and the occasional company completely re-working a console version for the PC market.
    Something like Mass Effect is probably a good example. It looks better on PC, but there's no real changes to gameplay.
     
  17. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    Yea im not saying Mantle wont be a good thing for gaming, its just when you compare the specs of the Xbox One (lowest specs hardware wise) it comes out roughly the same as a mid range PC.

    The question is will game developers want or be able to scale upwards by a long way.
     
  18. rollo

    rollo Modder

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    Some ports are so lazy they do not even remove the xbox controller from the tutorial. People are expecting alot from the next gen of consoles, Personally think the market is very different than 8 years ago when the ps3 and xbox 360 launched and they will face a much more difficult time convincing people to part with there cash.

    Only 2 games that looked next gen were watchdogs and Titanfall both are delayed till 2014.

    Ps4 has the quicker gpu this time around and is more easily accessable. That should help get better ports of games from that system graphically at least.

    Anyone saw anything new to the world that actually looks worth buying on these consoles. As the removal of Watch dogs and Titanfall really took away alot of the new IP stuff that was coming out.
     
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