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Activision Technical Director - "We'll have to support MANTLE now"
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CassidyIzABeast
Member
Zombie James
Banned
Closer to the metal GPU programming on the PC.
It gets way more power out of videocards than Direct X or OpenGL.
Like "coding to the metal" but for PCs I guess?
LiquidMetal14
hide your water-based mammals
Excellent
polyh3dron
Banned
Makes DirectX look like InDirectX by comparison.
nextgeneration
Member
October 15 can't come soon enough. Hopefully, we'll get Mantle benchmarks for Battlefield before the December patch.
thunder_snail
Member
Having it as opengl extension would be much better. It's got more chance of surviving that way.
Yeah. This is kind of my problem with the whole thing.
I'm sure we will get token comments of support from a lot of people and a few big games like BF4 that AMD has helped develop will even support it but I have a hard time seeing it become widely adopted.
thunder_snail
Member
Yeah. Also if it's an extension, Nvidia will have better chance of implementing their own solution without adding additional burden on game developers. It would be good for the whole industry but I guess it's bad for AMD...
Mantle is interesting, but there are huge red flags:
-Interoperability is one of PC's great strengths. Don't just throw it away.
-Do we actually have any benchmarks on Mantle? I know we have the claims about Frostbite 3.
-Smells like 2013's version of Glide. That was a bad time. Let's not go back.
-Interoperability is one of PC's great strengths. Don't just throw it away.
-Do we actually have any benchmarks on Mantle? I know we have the claims about Frostbite 3.
-Smells like 2013's version of Glide. That was a bad time. Let's not go back.
Succinct Verbosity
Member
It's hard to believe AMD were crashing and burning against NVidia two years ago.
I don't think this will happen any time soon.
Brad Grenz
Member
His comments don't make any sense. A GL extension wouldn't accomplish what Mantle is doing, and "wrapping DX or GL around it" would defeat the purpose completely. He must have made this tweet before he knew anything about what Mantle actually is.
iamshadowlark
Banned
It keeps getting brought up but I don't see how GLIDE has anything to do with this.
AdmiralPain
Banned
I see only two options for the green team: Implement its own low-level api or drop prices drastically.
bleachrude
Banned
Again...this is NOT a good thing.
Do you really want devs like obsidian and Kerberos using MANTLE (and I'm not sure why OpenGL is considered better..on benchmarks, DirectX generally beats OpenGL
see http://www.g-truc.net/post-0547.html
and this is a guy who pushes OpenGL pretty hard AND as he mentions, this was a test where the testing method (unigine) was OpenGL to begin with....
That sure as hell doesn't look like DrectX is a poor API. (at least compared to OpenGL).)
Unless everyone starts using the big licensed engines Cryengine, Frostbite Idtech, I am absolutely terrified about this future given the average programmer/developer.
Only triple AAA games are going to be able to work with Mantle (even DICE admits that Mantle isn't for everyone and shouldn't be used...that's the whole reason why it links so smoothly with DirectX
One thing in Mantle's favour is that it is NOT Glide. AMD has explicitly said a game coded only for DirectX will work as normal with an AMD directx supproted card and the reverse is also true...
Now..how they accomplished that is WAY, WAY above my understanding...
onesvenus
Member
Doesn't being an OpenGL extension be a little counter productive? Mantle is used to bypass the thickness of OpenGL/DX, how are you suggesting to work as an extension?
Sure you could have calls that interact with the underlying metal more directly through an extension (and there are extensions that do just that) but you'd have to rely on the standard OpenGL way of doing things. I don't think it would be possible to achieve what they claim Mantle can achieve (9x the draw calls for example) without using a lot of extensions to redefine the standard OpenGL calls... and then you get to the point of why doing so instead of defining something completely apart?
Codeblew
Member
Everything is more preferable than DirectX because it is not limited to Microsoft operating systems.
Revolutionary
Member
Just wanted to say that Glide was an amazing thing for my 12yr old ass w/ shitty integrated graphics that didn't understand anything about video cards and just wanted to play Unreal Tournament.
it was literally the only way I could run the game and I loved it
Truespeed
Member
And I disagree. The adoption of an open, more efficient cross platform solution is better than what we have right now. It's about time the developers and OEM's were given greater say in the evolution of the the API. AMD has been complaining about the performance issues with DirectX and now the full potential of their hardware can finally be realized. Besides, Microsoft should be glad that this burden has been taken from them. This gives them more time and resources to devote to their OS, devices, etc.
thunder_snail
Member
If an api is completely apart from the standards such as opengl, not as many games will adopt it.
Also I highly doubt mantle will be bringing improvement to every opengl calls. It will most likely perform a lot better for a subset of tasks. So if it's implemented as an extension, it'd be easier for coders to maintain different path for different systems that support mantle and those that don't. If both AMD and Nvidia decided to go for their own api's, none of those two will last very long.
Besides, opengl is already a mess with extensions anyways. No reason to hold back now right?
bleachrude
Banned
Except that OpenGL is NOT BETTER.
It loses to DirectX since DirectX9 came out when matched head to head. The documentation and support for OpenGL is also way more haphazard than DirectX.
The biggest and ONLY reason openGL is used is because it's open source.
Open Source does not automatically mean "BETTER" than proprietary.
IncandescentPrecept
Banned
Mantle is an AMD tech, right? Could this be what AMD needs to take Nvidia on?
mugurumakensei
Member
Only on Windows. Linux OpenGL performance in valve's testing is better than DirectX.
Also, OpenGL is not open source. It's an open standard. The drivers are actually where the work for OpenGL lies. Therefore, any lack of performance in OpenGL is because the card manufacturer makes poor drivers for OpenGL.
Truespeed
Member
True, open doesn't necessarily always mean better. But, it does allow companies to get involved and start fixing issues that otherwise wouldn't be addressed or would just be put into a queue and looked at when some big company deemed it was in their best interest to modify their proprietary source code. Case in point, Valve were able to get their games running faster on Linux than on Windows. So more involvement by companies in the guidance and development of this new API can only be a good thing and, although, it's true that open isn't always better than closed, I'm willing to bet that the combined talent and knowledge of all of these companies is greater than Microsoft.
ChiliManiac
Banned
This is probably a Direct response to the fact that DirectX 11.2 is Windows 8.1 and Xbox One only to be honest.
iamshadowlark
Banned
Its not that cut and dry at all. For instance, the OpenGL ES variant used on PS3 performs better than the DX counter part.
This could be good news. Apart for you getting more from your GPU than before (and therefore more value for money), this may push drivers to be more reflective of how console drivers work. Maybe it isn't just about power but also about directX not being responsive to developer needs, being too abstracted for efficient game use.
Now, MS must know this - they do the driver work for Xbox 360 and Xbox one. So IMO the best response would be to rework directX 12 or 13 to include mantle-like features. Allow developers more open access to the GPU while still providing the familiarity hat direct X offers.
I don't know why people are worried by mantle. It provides better performance, and shakes things up and encourages nvidia and MS to respond. You'd honestly prefer things were just left how they were? You spooge over a new GPU offering 20-25% more performance costing hundreds of dollars, yet you turn your nose up at someone giving you that for free (hypothetically)
Now, MS must know this - they do the driver work for Xbox 360 and Xbox one. So IMO the best response would be to rework directX 12 or 13 to include mantle-like features. Allow developers more open access to the GPU while still providing the familiarity hat direct X offers.
I don't know why people are worried by mantle. It provides better performance, and shakes things up and encourages nvidia and MS to respond. You'd honestly prefer things were just left how they were? You spooge over a new GPU offering 20-25% more performance costing hundreds of dollars, yet you turn your nose up at someone giving you that for free (hypothetically)
Bullshit. Glide was awesome.
OpenGL is the standard API for professional applications. Professionals value stability and precision over raw performance. Therefore, the drivers are optimized to deliver just that, not for high performance gaming. Nobody in his right mind would use D3D to drive something like Solidworks or Nuke.
It's not free. The price is paid by developers who must write, test and maintain additional code paths. Though, they have to support a few paths already anyway.
I'm just hoping the API is cheap and simple to support, because it's definitely not going to replace other APIs any time soon.
OmegaDL50
Member
Anything that allows the developers to get access to lower level hardware without more overhead and API's getting in the way of maximizing performance is always a good thing.
Console development is done in such a fashion not having to deal with the issue of OS overhead, which means they can dedicate more of the systems hardware to running the game in an efficient manner. If they can do the same on PC, then those that game on PC only serve to benefit from this.
Hopefully this becomes something that reduces hardware requirements overall. I'll be looking forward to see how this develops.
Console development is done in such a fashion not having to deal with the issue of OS overhead, which means they can dedicate more of the systems hardware to running the game in an efficient manner. If they can do the same on PC, then those that game on PC only serve to benefit from this.
Hopefully this becomes something that reduces hardware requirements overall. I'll be looking forward to see how this develops.
onesvenus
Member
Well, that's until it becomes a standard in itself.
That's a poor argument. Having utilized OpenGL and DirectX for a long time I can see how a new standard can be beneficial. Of course it would come with its own set of drawbacks but mantaining an API for so long what it usually does is add a lot of problems in its own. If you add that the underlying architecture has changed a lot from when those APIs were defined (and yes, I know that they have been updated but their workings are more or less the same) it can be a slow layer compared to what could be done today having the current architectures as a base.
To compete OpenGL and DirectX would have to be redefined and lose the backwards compatibility with older architectures and I'm sure no one has the balls to do it. The only solution is AMD/Nvidia or another player to create its new standard that is much more directly tied with the current hardware.
That is exactly what AMD is trumpeting, porting over from consoles would be easier, cheaper.
childplease
Banned
Hopefully the latter.
Couldn't they just drop prices also and just use mantle themselves ?