AMD Mantle update...

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Originally Posted by vario

Unreal engine is made by Epic Games, also why in the hell they would want to make an api ? They have nothing to gain here, also im pretty sure they cant do anything serious without them engineering their own gpus.
but yea, in order to really get off the ground with mantle AMD needs epic to be on board.

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Unreal api was not my idea :)

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Originally Posted by kromosto

And now with my recently bought 280x cfed with good old 7970 lightning :) :) :) :)

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So is CF working for you now?
I might give it another go on my 290X CF as before it was almost instant crash (5-10s max.)

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Originally Posted by Lightman

So is CF working for you now?
I might give it another go on my 290X CF as before it was almost instant crash (5-10s max.)

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got myself cooler master seidon 240m too installation is still going on. but i will report then.

setup is ready but no bf4 servers :( going in to single player mode

for single player cf is working

i just wish nvidia will end up supporting mantle too...it would be best for everyone

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Originally Posted by Evantaur

i just wish nvidia will end up supporting mantle too...it would be best for everyone

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I hope the same.

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Originally Posted by tajoh111

I think the ideal for developers is Directx 11.1 to be dead and developers have to only deal with a low level API and have to program only for it. As it is now, developers have to code for both directx 11.1(this they have to do) and a mantle version. Considering that Dice has been working on mantle before BF4 release till now and even now it is still very beta, there seems to be considerable work done for each game that uses it. No one wants to work for free, particularly when the only hardware that supports it makes up the minority share compared to Nvidia based cards + pre GCN hardware.

Some developers were asking for it, but not all. And even if they wanted it, it doesn't mean they will work for nothing.

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Originally Posted by tajoh111

If Unreal was going to make something, i think they would go out on to their own and make their own low level API. Unreal is a market leader when it comes to these things and not a follower. And if unreal made one, I am not sure if it would be open, but with the Mantle threat, I bet nvidia would be willing to open up its close to 5 billion dollar cash reserves and try to hammer out a deal.

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You really are a wet blanket aren't you :|

Mantle is still technically beta, and a work in progress. You can't really expect it to be easy-peasy and polished right away particularly when compared to something like DirectX that has been around for years and on its 11th version. I think everyone who is actually involved in actually working with it were and are fully aware there will be more work to start off with and some bumps along the way. Considerable work, the first couple go arounds. DirectX was a lot of work in the beginning too. That doesn't mean it is a ton of extra work for everything forever.

I highly doubt developers would ask for a new API and at the same time demand that they get paid extra to use the API they requested. That's a little ridiculous.

Unreal has always made use of an existing API. They've been using DirectX for all their game engines so far after all. Aside from Unreal typically being an nvidia group, there is nothing stopping Unreal from making a Mantle-based game engine.

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Originally Posted by Sparky

You really are a wet blanket aren't you :|

Mantle is still technically beta, and a work in progress. You can't really expect it to be easy-peasy and polished right away particularly when compared to something like DirectX that has been around for years and on its 11th version. I think everyone who is actually involved in actually working with it were and are fully aware there will be more work to start off with and some bumps along the way. Considerable work, the first couple go arounds. DirectX was a lot of work in the beginning too. That doesn't mean it is a ton of extra work for everything forever.

I highly doubt developers would ask for a new API and at the same time demand that they get paid extra to use the API they requested. That's a little ridiculous.

Unreal has always made use of an existing API. They've been using DirectX for all their game engines so far after all. Aside from Unreal typically being an nvidia group, there is nothing stopping Unreal from making a Mantle-based game engine.

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Epic with unreal engine had some support for different apis, opengl, S3 metal and of course console versions ;-).
And people, Unreal Engine is made by EPIC MEGAGAMES

Derp, yeah, Epic makes Unreal.

But yeah, my point still stands they have never made APIs.

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Originally Posted by Sparky

You really are a wet blanket aren't you :|

Mantle is still technically beta, and a work in progress. You can't really expect it to be easy-peasy and polished right away particularly when compared to something like DirectX that has been around for years and on its 11th version. I think everyone who is actually involved in actually working with it were and are fully aware there will be more work to start off with and some bumps along the way. Considerable work, the first couple go arounds. DirectX was a lot of work in the beginning too. That doesn't mean it is a ton of extra work for everything forever.

I highly doubt developers would ask for a new API and at the same time demand that they get paid extra to use the API they requested. That's a little ridiculous.

Unreal has always made use of an existing API. They've been using DirectX for all their game engines so far after all. Aside from Unreal typically being an nvidia group, there is nothing stopping Unreal from making a Mantle-based game engine.

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Well Dice got exactly that. They asked for Mantle and got paid 8 million dollars for the BF4 work which included their mantle work.

No matter what happens, all these games will be coded for Directx 11. This is a fact. Its going to be number 1 priority because it is the largest user base and every single computer with windows supports it. Once the developer finish this version their job is done and they can go home so to speak. They full filled that end the contract with the publisher.

Next comes the optional mantle version. Who is going to pay the developers a months or so(possibly more if its like BF4) of work to finish the mantle version? It isn't a direct copy of the console code as xbox one doesn't use it and PS4 has its own API. It's basically another job. Even though Dice asked for it, doesn't mean they are going to work for free to support it. Their contract with EA ends with them getting a direct x 11 version out(and the console versions). What ever they do after is on their own free time and they are not getting directly paid by EA. In addition, any resources spent on mantle means less resource(time or man hours) to work on other projects. To make matter less attractive, it only works on 20% of the computers at best(remove pre-GCN and Nvidia cards from the equation). The only way mantle has a success of taking off is if Nvidia supports it as well and both companies are able to enable it on all directx 11 hardware.

From what Tim Sweeney said, mantle has some good ideas. I think directx 11 should be more like mantle. But the crux which hurts mantle is its support and the fragmentation it introduces. Here's what Tim Sweeney said.

Sweeney: there's some good ideas in Mantle we really liked the idea of having low overhead access to the GPU, if you look back at DX/OGL, there's a lot of overhead in those APIs and the fact that they date back to the old SGI model of rendering which is very different than the current model, potentially unified memory, good ideas there I hope it really helps the OGL community and MS evolve their APIs. Would I like to have a low level API? Yes. Five of them? Absolutely not. To have yet another API on the PC that's still different than the DX API and OpenGL, and OpenGL ES and different than PS4 low level API, I don't think it's a good idea.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7437/t...real-live-blog

Adding another API out there, that only supports a small portion of hardware is what hurts it compared to existing solutions. Its just more work for a comparatively small user base. For mantle to really take off and I think you guys(even with AMD googles on) should be able to see, is Nvidia needs to support it too, and mantle in general needs to supports older directx 11 hardware. By having a wider range of hardware support, it gives developers more reason to support it and it gives Mantle a chance to kick out one of the existing API's.

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Originally Posted by Sparky

You really are a wet blanket aren't you :|

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I was going to post but I think I will just wait for mantle and catalyst 14.2 support for 7000 series, that way I wont be pulling crap out of my ass to make a comment like tajoh does.

hey Tajoh, an API is used to connect "a something" to "a something else" making an API for a graphics engine which has a limited life cycle is quite pointles.

so under your pretense:

"a something" = the current unreal engine

and

"a something else" = what did you have in mind?

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Originally Posted by vario

Unreal Engine is made by EPIC MEGAGAMES

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I started this and i take full responsibility :) .

If Thief and Star Citizen is going to support Mantle, wouldn't this mean that Unreal Engine 3 and CryENGINE will be supporting Mantle?

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Originally Posted by kromosto

I started this and i take full responsibility :) .

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Yes please, you know what's about to be unleashed sooner or later right....?

"If Thief and Star Citizen is going to support Mantle, wouldn't this mean that Unreal Engine 3 and CryENGINE will be supporting Mantle?"
blindbox: the API is not written for the graphics engine, its written for the hardware, which then devs generate drawcalls into their graphics engine such as Unreal, Crybaby (see what I did there), or any other engine or application to talk to the API which in turn talk to the hardware.

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Originally Posted by blindbox

If Thief and Star Citizen is going to support Mantle, wouldn't this mean that Unreal Engine 3 and CryENGINE will be supporting Mantle?

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Just checked it, new thief uses unreal engine 3 and star citizen uses cryengine 3 so youre right!

kuroikenshi, okay, but doesn't this mean UE3 and CryENGIUNE will support Mantle? I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to tell me here. What you just said doesn't stop my question from being a wrong question, and thus the question still stands. All future frostbite games support mantle for example. Also, here's a nice interview with Dan Baker on why he went mantle and not anything else.

http://www.maximumpc.com/AMD_Mantle_Interview_2014

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Originally Posted by blindbox

kuroikenshi, okay, but doesn't this mean UE3 and CryENGIUNE will support Mantle? I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to tell me here. What you just said doesn't stop my question from being a wrong question, and thus the question still stands. All future frostbite games support mantle for example. Also, here's a nice interview with Dan Baker on why he went mantle and not anything else.

http://www.maximumpc.com/AMD_Mantle_Interview_2014

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That's nonsense, Dan Baker knows nothing. He needs to listen to a certain person here who knows all about it... :p:

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Originally Posted by blindbox

kuroikenshi, okay, but doesn't this mean UE3 and CryENGIUNE will support Mantle? I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to tell me here. What you just said doesn't stop my question from being a wrong question, and thus the question still stands. All future frostbite games support mantle for example. Also, here's a nice interview with Dan Baker on why he went mantle and not anything else.

http://www.maximumpc.com/AMD_Mantle_Interview_2014

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It just means that a developer can do the work for a engine to support mantle, Epic and Crytek haven't jumped on the boat yet, however I don't know how much support they are giving to developers with the transition. Considering the fact that developers are taking the initiative, it would probably be prudent for both companies to step up to the plate sooner rather than later.

i gave up on mantle until new driver and api release. saturday fps fluctuations begin suddenly and what ever i do nothing solved it so changed setting to directx and everything becomes perfect. never had any problem before with single 7970 beside sudden fps drops which wasn't that much a problem.

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Originally Posted by vario

Just checked it, new thief uses unreal engine 3 and star citizen uses cryengine 3 so youre right!

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Both use heavily modified versions of those engines with the game devs adding Mantle support to the engines, not Epic/CryTek doing the work.

CryEngine 3 is so Beautiful!...that is awesome news. I am going to download that StarSwarm demo and also 'hope' they release a new Crysis game or any other CryEngine powered futuristic FPS game. Titanfall is fun and high-paced but I don't feel like taking a moment to look at anything except where the enemy is. I keep replaying levels in Crysis 3 to remember/experience what next-gen visuals are...cause I'm not seeing them anywhere else.

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Originally Posted by tajoh111

It isn't a direct copy of the console code as xbox one doesn't use it and PS4 has its own API. It's basically another job.

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While the above is "technically" true... The low level APIs might still be close enough that "another job" is still or will be far easier than writing for dx11. We can't just assume that since its named different that the workload for porting the game to mantle api is as much work as porting a console game to directx.

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Originally Posted by DeathReborn

Both use heavily modified versions of those engines with the game devs adding Mantle support to the engines, not Epic/CryTek doing the work.

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It really depends on whether Epic/Crytek wants to pay Eidos/Cloud Empirium to backport it or not. That said, there's still the maintenance part of it which is true.

Interestingly, Tim Sweeney (as quoted by tajoh111) and Dan Baker has a different way to things. Dan Baker is like, 'I'm already supporting 5 APIs, one more couldn't hurt...' and Tim Sweeney is the opposite. AMD seems to be aiming for Mantle to be one day be the de facto standard, when you look at how many times they keep saying they want to make the API open, so it all depends on trust here. DisplayPort and GDDR5 is where you should be looking at to see whether AMD will deliver, as those two standards were mostly written by AMD.

Second Assault benchmarks using Mantle and DX11

First set is run on i7 3770K stock and W7 x64 for all cards:


http://cdn.overclock.net/5/57/900x90...ks_02-pcgh.png


2nd set is on overclocked i7 4770K and W8.1 x64
http://i60.tinypic.com/24qitmo.jpg
http://i61.tinypic.com/126ecuu.jpg

I also noticed that first set of benchmarks is done on Cat. 14.1 beta 1.7 instead of released 1.6, but that might be just a typo.

Thanks to PCGH for the results!