AMD Radeon Supercharges Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth with Mantle API

[btarunr]

AMD today joins Firaxis Games in celebrating the release of Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth, which features day-one support for AMD's Mantle graphics API to enable top gaming performance for AMD Radeon graphics customers.

"AMD Radeon GPUs with Mantle are over a year ahead of other graphics companies in delivering high-throughput, high-efficiency graphics to gamers and developers," said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager, Product and Platform Solutions Business Unit, AMD. "As gamers settle in for a marathon session of Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth, we're proud that the potent combination of Mantle and the award-winning Graphics Core Next architecture effortlessly enable the definitive experience."



Mantle is a "low-overhead" graphics API that can help improve performance for gamers by making better use of multi-core CPUs, streamlining game code execution, virtually eliminating software bottlenecks and utilizing GPU resources with incredible efficiency.

In performance testing, the AMD Radeon R9 290X GPU with Mantle rendered Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth at higher frame rates than any other single-GPU graphics card.[iii] Gamers looking to secure Mantle's blistering performance for their own empires can do so today with the purchase of an AMD Radeon R9 or R7 Series GPU starting at just $99 USD.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[de.das.dude]

isnt mantle useful only when using a low end CPU? plus anyone paying money for a 290x cant be having a low end cpu....

 

[the54thvoid]

A 4770 at 4.1GHz from Anandtech

A 15% boost from min fps on a single 290x to a smaller 4% boost for ave fps.

Mantle works, no doubt about it but it will be pushed to obscurity in a year or so with the new DX API (which both AMD and Nvidia support).

 

[Silas Woodruff]

A 4770 at 4.1GHz from Anandtech

A 15% boost from min fps on a single 290x to a smaller 4% boost for ave fps.

Mantle works, no doubt about it but it will be pushed to obscurity in a year or so with the new DX API (which both AMD and Nvidia support).

Not to mention mantle improves your performance by covering stuff you can usually see with fog or at least that's how I remember it works.

 

[RejZoR]

Worth it or not worth it, if it brings ANYTHING extra, it's worth it. And considering it gives quite significant boost even on R9-290X, it's certainly worth it.

 

[the54thvoid]

Worth it or not worth it, if it brings ANYTHING extra, it's worth it. And considering it gives quite significant boost even on R9-290X, it's certainly worth it.

Well of course, if you own a GCN card it's great, if it's released in the games you want to play. It's just as meaningless though as Physx unfortunately for people that dont own relevant software and much like Physx, it's not really enough to convince people to 'jump ship' en masse.

Still such a shame that AMD and Nvidia can't just sit the f*ck down and open up their proprietary stuff. It's like Formula One versus Formula Three. A great driver in a shit car in F1 will not win the race but in F3 a great driver will win (same cars). Likewise, that great game you've been looking forward to for 2 years does or does not get those features compatible with your hardware.

Who's optimising the next Witcher the Wild Hunt game?

 

[Sempron Guy]

when asked about Mantle this is what Nvidia said, “We don’t know much about Mantle, we are not part of Mantle. And clearly if they see value there they should go for it. And if they can convince game developers to go for it, go for it. It’s not an Nvidia thing. The key thing is to develop great technologies that deliver benefits to gamers. Now in the case of Mantle it’s not so clear to me that there is a lot of obvious benefits there.”

It's not GCN restricted, Nvidia just doesn't want it.

 

[FrustratedGarrett]

Mantle is great. It works, and it does everything better than DX11, including running shaders writtern in DX11' High Level Shading Language. It is a shame it's not an open standard yet, but hey, it's being used currently to develop the next openGL API, which is great! I don't like DX, and I wish either Mantle or openGL take off.

The implementation in CIV BE is much more efficient than anything DX11 can pull, even when Nvidida uses it's proprietary anti-aliasing with half the coverage and Z samples at each aliasing iteration.
And BTW, the mantle version of CIV. B.E. uses AMD's Enhanced Quality AA which used double the coverage samples and the same number of Z samples.

 

[renz496]

when asked about Mantle this is what Nvidia said, “We don’t know much about Mantle, we are not part of Mantle. And clearly if they see value there they should go for it. And if they can convince game developers to go for it, go for it. It’s not an Nvidia thing. The key thing is to develop great technologies that deliver benefits to gamers. Now in the case of Mantle it’s not so clear to me that there is a lot of obvious benefits there.”

It's not GCN restricted, Nvidia just doesn't want it.

that slide above is not even from AMD. how can nvidia knows about mantle when AMD refusing to share anything about the API? before the statement above nvidia and intel has been asking AMD mantle spec to which AMD deny. if Mantle is not restricted then prove it by making it work with pre GCN based AMD gpu

 

[renz496]

Mantle is great. It works, and it does everything better than DX11, including running shaders writtern in DX11' High Level Shading Language. It is a shame it's not an open standard yet, but hey, it's being used currently to develop the next openGL API, which is great! I don't like DX, and I wish either Mantle or openGL take off.

The implementation in CIV BE is much more efficient than anything DX11 can pull, even when Nvidida uses it's proprietary anti-aliasing with half the coverage and Z samples at each aliasing iteration.
And BTW, the mantle version of CIV. B.E. uses AMD's Enhanced Quality AA which used double the coverage samples and the same number of Z samples.

AFAIK AMD says that they want to show mantle to khronos group how low level API being done. so far i haven't heard mantle spec has been given to kronos group yet nor the API will used as the base for the next OpenGL spec.

 

[Frick]

I never really read up on Mantle after it was released, but that is amazing. Adding 20FPS at the bottom is a lot better than adding 20FPS to the top.

 

[HisDivineOrder]

Well of course, if you own a GCN card it's great, if it's released in the games you want to play. It's just as meaningless though as Physx unfortunately for people that dont own relevant software and much like Physx, it's not really enough to convince people to 'jump ship' en masse.

Still such a shame that AMD and Nvidia can't just sit the f*ck down and open up their proprietary stuff. It's like Formula One versus Formula Three. A great driver in a shit car in F1 will not win the race but in F3 a great driver will win (same cars). Likewise, that great game you've been looking forward to for 2 years does or does not get those features compatible with your hardware.

Who's optimising the next Witcher the Wild Hunt game?

It's worse than PhysX currently because only recent AMD GPU's support it and given the snafu with regards to pre-existing Mantle games that support older versions of GCN needing patches from the publisher to support Tonga, it seems support is not guaranteed as GCN evolves. Try getting Activision to release a patch more than a month (or often a week) after release. Meanwhile, PhysX is supported by multiple generations of product.

Say what you like, but PhysX is actually better atm than Mantle in terms of support.

when asked about Mantle this is what Nvidia said, “We don’t know much about Mantle, we are not part of Mantle. And clearly if they see value there they should go for it. And if they can convince game developers to go for it, go for it. It’s not an Nvidia thing. The key thing is to develop great technologies that deliver benefits to gamers. Now in the case of Mantle it’s not so clear to me that there is a lot of obvious benefits there.”

It's not GCN restricted, Nvidia just doesn't want it.

Now go look up what Intel said. Intel tried to find out more info about Mantle and do you know what AMD told them? "Not giving you anything. Maybe later." I'm paraphrasing, but you can look it up.

AMD told Intel that Mantle is still in beta and they are not currently sending out info on it until it's finalized. Kinda shoots a hole in your whole, "nVidia's bad cuz they won't support it" theory, don't it?

Intel WANTED to investigate supporting it and AMD said no. By the time AMD actually got around to saying no, Intel had already decided DX12 was the better way to go. Which is the same as nVidia's take.

If anyone is to be blamed for Mantle being unsupported by other vendors, it's AMD, not anyone else.

 

[john_]

About AMD and Nvidia stuff.

Just two things.

AMD Tress FX works on Nvidia hardware just great. Whatever Nvidia creates kills performance or doesn't run on AMD hardware.

When installing AMD drivers it doesn't care if you are not.... loyal enough.
When installing drivers from Nvidia it deactivates everything proprietary stuff from Nvidia, not just when Nvidia is not primary but even if any competitive product is identified in the system. In the future, rumors say, that the driver will be checking every system in the neighborhood to see if there is competitive hardware and it will even blank the screen until you visit that neighbor and break it's system in pieces.

Nvidia will NEVER support ANY standard that is competitive to it's proprietary stuff. Even FREE standards. So, forget Adaptive sync from VESA, or OpenCL from Chronos, or Mantle, or whatever. They ONLY sell stuff, they DON't support stuff, except if it is necessery.

Nvidia is one of those companies that if it had 90% of the business and Mantle was theirs, they would have stop supporting DirectX and OpenGL the next morning.

 

[arbiter]

when asked about Mantle this is what Nvidia said, “We don’t know much about Mantle, we are not part of Mantle. And clearly if they see value there they should go for it. And if they can convince game developers to go for it, go for it. It’s not an Nvidia thing. The key thing is to develop great technologies that deliver benefits to gamers. Now in the case of Mantle it’s not so clear to me that there is a lot of obvious benefits there.”

It's not GCN restricted, Nvidia just doesn't want it.

Another AMD False truth, Mantle is locked to GCN as much as things like physx is locked to nvidia. Mantle is still CLOSED software so its tied to AMD only. Reason Nvidia won't go for it cause with DX12 coming no reason to support AMD proprietary software when DX12 isn't far off. It won't become an industry standard like AMD wants cause well no support from anyone else cept AMD.

This is what i hate about AMD they make and release these slides of nothing but BS. Truth be told Physx is more OPEN then mantle is, you can go to nvidia and license the SDK for it TODAY, can't do that for mantle today.

that slide above is not even from AMD. how can nvidia knows about mantle when AMD refusing to share anything about the API? before the statement above nvidia and intel has been asking AMD mantle spec to which AMD deny. if Mantle is not restricted then prove it by making it work with pre GCN based AMD gpu

AMD doesn't have the time or resources to make it work on anything else. Plus really there is no reason to support cards that are that old and EOL, so can't blame them.

Now go look up what Intel said. Intel tried to find out more info about Mantle and do you know what AMD told them? "Not giving you anything. Maybe later." I'm paraphrasing, but you can look it up. AMD told Intel that Mantle is still in beta and they are not currently sending out info on it until it's finalized. Kinda shoots a hole in your whole, "nVidia's bad cuz they won't support it" theory, don't it? Intel WANTED to investigate supporting it and AMD said no. By the time AMD actually got around to saying no, Intel had already decided DX12 was the better way to go. Which is the same as nVidia's take. If anyone is to be blamed for Mantle being unsupported by other vendors, it's AMD, not anyone else.

I believe AMD told Intel at the time is to give them like a month to work on the code, well that was least 2-3+ months ago so. AMD and their deadlines tend to never meet. They said SDK by end of year, yea i think more like march.

 

[Sempron Guy]

Q1) Mantle only works with AMD hardware, as a result what incentives are there for more game developers to adopt Mantle when Nvidia and Intel have a larger share of the PC graphics market? Evidence of which has been presented by Jon Peddie Research and Steam’s hardware survey several times.

Right now Mantle only works with AMD hardware, yes, that’s true. But AMD has created what could become the foundation of a new Open Standard. That means that AMD is considering publishing an open SDK later this year, and at that time it would be up to NVIDIA and Intel (and anyone else who wants to consider this path) to decide whether they want to adopt it. If they do so, then they should be able to show performance wins like we have done – and that’s good for all PC gamers.

http://www.eteknix.com/interview-amds-richard-huddy-responds-criticisms-mantle/


http://www.eteknix.com/interview-amds-richard-huddy-responds-criticisms-mantle/
and about intel asking amd for mantle access, here's what Richard Huddy has to say

"I know that Intel have approached us for access to the Mantle interfaces, et cetera," Huddy said. " And right now, we've said, give us a month or two, this is a closed beta, and we'll go into the 1.0 [public release] phase sometime this year, which is less than five months if you count forward from June. They have asked for access, and we will give it to them when we open this up, and we'll give it to anyone who wants to participate in this."

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2365909/intel-approached-amd-about-access-to-mantle.html



http://www.pcworld.com/article/2365909/intel-approached-amd-about-access-to-mantle.html

 

[Fluffmeister]

This good news for AMD and their users..... but I'm still gonna buy a GTX 970.

 

[TheGuruStud]

290x soundly beats a 980 with mantle?

Prepare for massive fud from nvidia and fanboys/shills.

DX will always be a joke and barely improve. It's a fat ass software layer from the king's of bloat. DX needs banned.

 

[Sony Xperia S]

I'm still gonna buy a GTX 970.

When and why? How, it was launched quite some time ago, what are you waiting for?

This good news for AMD and their users....

Every single customer who turns their back on AMD is actually quite an unpleasant and in general bad news.

 

[Fluffmeister]

When and why? How, it was launched quite some time ago, what are you waiting for?

Just waiting for payday, which is this friday... then Maxwell baby here I come!

Every single customer who turns their back on AMD is actually quite an unpleasant and in general bad news.

AMD will be just fine, sure they don't exactly rack in the cash, but they have loyal fans with Ruby posters over their beds and everything.

 

[FrustratedGarrett]

Every single customer who turns their back on AMD is actually quite an unpleasant and in general bad news.

Not quite! People have the right to choose whatever they want, be it AMD or Nvidia.
I don't even know what you're talking about, really. Both AMD and Nvidia sell millions of graphics chips every year. The only reason they're not making more money is because they're paying crap load of money to TSMC to fabricate their chase using their silicon. TSMC is making billions every quarter off of mostly AMD and Nvidia.

 

[the54thvoid]

Every single customer who turns their back on AMD is actually quite an unpleasant and in general bad news.

You sir win the prize for most ridiculous statement of the year award.
Was I, for example, meant to continue with my 5850 crossfire disappointment because it's better to stay loyal than have a better solution?
No, people leave AMD for specific reasons, similarly with Nvidia.
Stop being so melodramatic with your posts. It's not the first time you equate 'not buying AMD' with pure evil.

 

[eidairaman1]

Anyone remember options in ut99/deus ex about using different apis. If AMD is pushing this they might gain an edge on nv which plain jane refusing to support it, in the end this would benefit all users whether nv or amd if nv would stop being greedy.

 

[Fluffmeister]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2365909/intel-approached-amd-about-access-to-mantle.html

Gotta be soon then, not much of 2014 left.

 

[GhostRyder]

Well this debate has gotten quite odd but either way Mantle is getting a lot of support from game developers to the point its becoming quite a cool thing.

For the debate comparing Mantle to PhysX, there are some distinct differences. For starters Nvidia purchased PhysX from Aegia which at the time required a separate card to run PhysX calculations and was originally intended to work with ANY video card regardless of manufacturer. Nvidia purchased it and later incorporated the PhysX chips on the Nvidia GPU boards and locked it out as proprietary even limiting using an Nvidia card with another brand of GPU (ATI/AMD) without some elaborate mods of a driver from Nvidia which accidently allowed this to work for a short time. Mantle does not have a "Chip" or specifics that limit it to AMD other than software implementation which is why it could be supported by others on other pieces of hardware (GPU I mean). Its more of whether or not the company wants to program a driver to work with it which is why something like DX 12 can be supported on a variety of old GPU's that were not around even before it was announced. Its up to the companies what cards will support the API's and whether or not they want to devote resources to supporting something pretty old.

AMD is taking their time with it and making sure things are ready for the public before they start shoveling things to the masses. Not like things magically work perfectly and opening it up to to many people before they are ready could result in issues that harm Mantle more than help it. Though to be fair this could even be wrong and they could decide to lock it down, who knows.

A 4770 at 4.1GHz from Anandtech

A 15% boost from min fps on a single 290x to a smaller 4% boost for ave fps.

Mantle works, no doubt about it but it will be pushed to obscurity in a year or so with the new DX API (which both AMD and Nvidia support).

Depends in all honesty, we have gotten almost no real information about DX12 yet so it could show huge improvements or be very meh. I know either way all users will benefit from it in the end.

Either way this game shows nice improvements with mantle at the end along with all the others which only means great things for all in my book.

 

[Sony Xperia S]

AMD will be just fine, sure they don't exactly rack in the cash, but they have loyal fans with Ruby posters over their beds and everything.

Really? And you think their sheer quantity is enough?

I think not.

my 5850 crossfire disappointment

muhahaha

you equate 'not buying AMD' with pure evil

Not quite or only in your imagination.