AMD's new Mantle API

[the54thvoid]

An excellent article from Anandtech

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7371/understanding-amds-mantle-a-lowlevel-graphics-api-for-gcn

The looming fear they have is that AMD will use it's console ties to create a divergence in PC gfx rendering, similar to 3DFX back in the 90's when you had titles that ran on glide only or direct 3D or openGL.

It's this low level API that will make BF4 massively outgun Nvidia's best.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

An excellent article from Anandtech

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7371/understanding-amds-mantle-a-lowlevel-graphics-api-for-gcn

The looming fear they have is that AMD will use it's console ties to create a divergence in PC gfx rendering, similar to 3DFX back in the 90's when you had titles that ran on glide only or direct 3D or openGL.

It's this low level API that will make BF4 massively outgun Nvidia's best.

Good read cheers

 

[Nordic]

Perspective 3 spoke almost directly to what I have been thinking which was that AMD was using their consoles for leverage.

Good read.

 

[buildzoid]

I see it as revenge for Nvidia's PhysX because it'll be exclusive to a few games but in the games where it is it'll be a nice feature and I really doubt devs would scoff on coding for the majority of the PC market.

 

[BiggieShady]

Good article ... now ...

I want to hear what Nvidia and Intel have to say about Mantle.

 

[erocker]

Good article ... now ...

I want to hear what Nvidia and Intel have to say about Mantle.

I think both Nvidia and Intel can figure out direct access to their hardware without the shackles of Direct X.

 

[BiggieShady]

I think both Nvidia and Intel can figure out direct access to their hardware without the shackles of Direct X.

So true, it sucks they don't do consoles though. Imagine Intel and Nvidia developing their low level api-s as Mantle compatible

 

[the54thvoid]

I see it as revenge for Nvidia's PhysX because it'll be exclusive to a few games but in the games where it is it'll be a nice feature and I really doubt devs would scoff on coding for the majority of the PC market.

Huge difference.

Physx is a proprietary coding that allows, where implemented, physics effects to be handled 'more efficiently' on the Nvidia GPU. I say 'more efficiently' as it is a big hit son resources for quite small effects. A game running Physx is still absolutely playable without it.

Mantle is direct hardware access coding (enabled because AMD make the hardware that all games will be coded to, via consoles). This means where it is utilised to a high degree the AMD cards will absolutely fly. If developers neglect DX11 and other open API's, then the other gfx vendor(s) will have a terrible performance hit.

Still to be seen though if AMD use it in what would be a very unspirited and closed source manner. I wouldn't think they would.

 

[Frick]

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.

Rad as tits if true. I always assumed it would be easier to port consoles to PC as they run on (sort of) the same hardware for real, but details are always interesting.

The coming months will be very exciting indeed. Remember Glide.

 

[Vario]

Good time to be running AMD cards especially since they are just carrying forward a lot of them into the R stuff.

 

[BiggieShady]

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.

IMO this is a bit misdirected - they are talking about game engine developers - one big effort to push out Mantle enabled Frostbite, CryEngine, UDK and others ... after that thousands of game dev. companies keep doing what they been doing already - writing scripts and designing worlds/levels in game engine editor. All they would know is that they have much higher upper limit for number of draw calls in new version of the engine (if GCN 2.0 is present ).

 

[Frag_Maniac]

I don't know, whom are you going to trust, someone writing an article that speculates AMD is using their consoles for leverage, or AMD, a vendor whom obviously has a FAR more customer friendly profit margin than their competitor, whom say developers have been requesting it for years so as not to limit PC performance in the mutli plat titles ported to it, esp at the end of the console life cycle.

I see this more as AMD being hesitant for years over what happened with Glide, and waiting for backing from the right dev (DICE), whom not only requested and approved, but help MAKE this API.

Whether numerous developers and Nvidia choose to use this API remains to be seen. There's no reason it shouldn't be a shared, free to use developing platform. Nvidia have talked about CUDA and PhysX being usable by any vendor, now it's time to see how things go when the shoe is on the other foot.

If you ask me, it sounds like Mantle has the potential to be far more universally beneficial to gaming than CUDA, PhysX, or any of Nvidia's contributions.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

you all realize this is just a continuation of CTM aka Close to Metal which was renamed to Stream correct?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_to_Metal

Sounds awfully familiar

 

[Nordic]

you all realize this is just a continuation of CTM aka Close to Metal which was renamed to Stream correct?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_to_Metal

Sounds awfully familiar

It sounds like an expansion of it.

 

[erocker]

Marketing marketing marketing. Now they're going towards the broader audience.

 

[Finners]

I'm not impressed without actual demonstration, ATM its all talk and if it can be patched into battlefield 2 months after release it doesn't give me the impression its fundamental to the game engine

 

[Relayer]

I'm not impressed without actual demonstration, ATM its all talk and if it can be patched into battlefield 2 months after release it doesn't give me the impression its fundamental to the game engine

Likely the reason it'd being added later is because BF4 is a PC game being ported to consoles. So, they can take the console optimizations and add them to the PC version. Typically, it will be done the other way around. Just like now the game will be made for the consoles first and then ported to PC. In that case the console optimizations will already be present and kept for the PC version where in the past they couldn't be used.

 

[AsRock]

Rad as tits if true. I always assumed it would be easier to port consoles to PC as they run on (sort of) the same hardware for real, but details are always interesting.

The coming months will be very exciting indeed. Remember Glide.

Remember Quake 3 , Well if my memory serves me right glide and 2 3DFX cards with a cable connecting them together.


Hopefully AMD pull this off as it be interesting were it leads. Shame about Frostbite it's one engine i don't games using well with the exception of Medal of Honor, however there is the upcoming Dragon Age. But that only makes me think DA3 will be as lame as DA2 was haha.

 

[Doc41]

That was a nicely detailed article, however "Mantel"s real world reliability and performance is yet to be known.

if it really turns out like how "great" AMD makes it I might consider and AMD GPU in my future build.

 

[Nordic]

I thought I read somewhere that it would also be utilized by the crytech engine.

 

[Mussels]

i like where this is going - i just remember the days when glide sucked for having the 'wrong' graphics card

 

[ST.Viper]

Well in my opinion if Mantle will become widely accepted among game devs in upcomming months/ years I don't see why AMD wouldnt share it with Nvidia for let's say PhysX / CUDA support on AMD's gpus. What do you think guys?

 

[de.das.dude]

i have no idea what the article meant XD

 

[TRWOV]

The thing that AMD has going for them is that engines will come with a Mantle compiler so actual developers won't have to deal with machine code themselves, otherwise this wouldn't fly nowadays.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

I'm doubting this is exclusive to Frostbite. The Mantle driver and API are described as layers between the hardware and graphics application (game), no more. That DICE helped design it does not in itself mean it's exclusive to their engine or favors their engine. We all know AMD and Nvidia like games to work better on their hardware, but they'd be crazy to make an API that makes games require a certain ENGINE to work better.

Furthermore, it's not exclusive to AMD. Nvidia and Intel can choose to support it if they wish, which will likely only happen if it takes dominance in the majority of game development, and even then probably only until those vendors come up with a low level API of their own to improve rendering efficiency.

Oddly enough, when commenting on it, John Carmack said nothing of Nvidia or Intel, only mentioning "I doubt Sony and MS will be very helpful".

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/09/27/carmack-shares-thoughts-on-steambox-and-amds-mantle/

Where I don't get Carmack's (and other's) comments is in their implying AMD is merely leveraging their console hardware, vs answering years of requests from des to make the process easier. However Carmack says it much more politely ("AMD has an interesting opportunity with Mantle because of their dual console wins").

AMD having "won" console contracts is nothing new, and it's more due to Nvidia being unwilling to compete in that arena than AMD "winning" it from anyone. Indeed, Nvidia have made it easy for AMD to get exclusive console contracts year after year by their apathy toward that market and it's lesser profit margins, and it may come back to bite them in the ass eventually.

I see Mantle as being a bit like Euphoria. Mantle is to rendering efficiency as Euphoria is to physics realism. Either can be applied on top of an existing game engine to enhance performance. Despite what many have said, Euphoria is NOT a physics engine. The problem is, when great ideas like this come along, it's only big developers like Rockstar that want to go the extra mile and use them. Smaller dev teams on tighter budgets don't want to go there, and it has more to do with worrying about the learning curve and production time, than any fees to use it, and AFAIK, Mantle is actually free to use.