Tells devs to concentrate on DirectX 12, Vulkan. http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2015/03/03/amd-retires-mantle/1
it served its purpose - it forced OGL and MS to rapidly move forward and proved the overheads in the driver - much as Win7 showed what was wrong with vista.... which is only a good thing tbh
I get the distinct impression that Mantle was a clever way of negating the CPU power advantage that Intel has. AMD can't compete with them on the high end front, but they have a better chance in the mid-low range thanks to things like their APUs etc. So an API that helps shift the focus away from CPUs is a good thing for them. DX12 has the same effect, Mantle just helped to nudge it along a little. I mean we saw how Mantle only really had an effect when used in conjunction with a weaker CPU. It stands to reason that DX12 might be similar in that regard, with the biggest improvements coming from places where the CPU is the major bottleneck rather than the GPU. It would be a bit like comparing a current i5 4690k with an i7 5960X. The 5960X is clearly much more powerful, it boasts quadruple the thread count and is a general beast. But for almost all gaming uses, the 4690k just makes more sense thanks to the savings. After all, why go for the expensive beast for gaming when it won't yield better results than the cheaper flyweight? Whilst the analogy is a little crude, that's roughly how I see the situation could be, with an Intel CPU represented by the i7 and the AMD by the i5.
Even though I'm a little sad to see an end to Mantle I'm inclined to agree with Harlequin, it's served its purpose. I do wonder how much of Mantle is going to end up in Vulkan, my guess would be a whole lot.
The points is to get a cross platform low level API, supported by all the devs to get rid the damn windows monopoly. Either way AMD with Mantle, gave a nasty wakeup call to MS and force them to pull out the finger and do something. Kudos.
Did mantle really serve a purpose? After some haphazard googling it seems mantle was announced in September 2013. Then ms announced dx 12 in march 2014. It's not like you can pull a low level api out of your butt that quickly. I think it's something that would take a few years to develop. I reckon that low level dx 12 was already in the pipeline and amd beat ms to the punch rather than spurred much innovation.
BF4 came out with mantle over a year ago - DX12 games wont be here until 2016 at the very earliest so yes , that's 2 years - it did serve a purpose. and games using frostbite 3 engine also support mantle as its baked in ; so that's DA:I , NFS:rivals and more this year. all before DX12 comes out
I would say yes, while Microsoft may have been working on DX12 before AMD announced Mantle they were taking their sweet time over it, we could argue forever about who was really first but i think it's safe to say that without Mantle we would probably still be waiting for DX12. Microsoft has put Windows gaming on the back burner for almost 15 years now.
That's what I often tell people. Unfortunately, they don't realize that AMD is actually a very open and cooperative company, but people strictly see Mantle as an attack toward Khronos, MS, and its partners. I just think it's a shame that AMD, a company that really can't afford to waste developer resources, had to be the one to prove that CPU overhead was too high. Honestly I'm really disappointed in nvidia for not coming up with this. They're usually the ones that find incredibly efficient ways to maximize performance, and they have the Tegra series to worry about, where every Hz on an ARM processor matters. Nvidia also has a pretty healthy income, so this wouldn't have been a detrimental investment for them.
cant wait for thursdday - IF AMD have given mantle to kronos lock stock and barrel for use in vulkan , would explain the different direction part
As I can't like/+1 posts gonna say. Great news and move by AMD. They created an API, showed direction, forced innovation, then reconcentrated the field. KUDOS to AMD.
I guess thats the death toll for my 290X then? No more mantle and DX12 is around the corner! Better start saving I guess
