-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
AMD rep: Radeon R9 290X running with Mantle API will "ridicule" Titan in Battlefied 4
- Thread starter DieH@rd
- Start date
"NONONONO those benchmarks are not right ! Mantle is only on AMD, you can't use mantle to compare performance of game !"
Something tells me it will be like Glide days where most of people who didn't have Voodoo where moving goal post like crazy. Meanwhile people who had 3dFX accelerators were playing their games with considerable better performance.
As of article. It is natural that lower GPU with Mantle should beat Titan.
Back then though we didn't have proper internet though...
I expect most of the sites now iwll take measures with both Direct and Mantle and post it in same articles comparing performance.
Consoles have their APIs, which are even more efficient. Mantle is extension of those APIs, created to provide better efficiency to PC gaming.
This was common 10+ years ago, before DirectX and OpenGL unified PC space.
It isn't really a fair fight anyways. Titan has like 20% more die area than what the 290X has if the amd person's statement is taken at face value.
AMD is the minority in the PC market, so people using mantle still have to use direct x if they want to do well.
Mantle pretty much guarantees better performance for cards using the GCN architecture vs the same cards using dx doesn't it?
While I applaud the attempt of that image and it's true we save a ton on games with Steam. That "evidence" has some sneaky twists and disingenuous stuff in it.
One big one being that either new console can "only play games". That's just outright 100% wrong. They can't do as much as a PC, but the certainly aren't closed to only gaming in any way.
Another being that the cost of some games aren't even included...and it brushes that off as if it doesn't matter. (what?)
Where the heck is the $75-$100 operating system (LOL)? Don't give me any "free OS" BS.
Also, what if the person doesn't have any other components (keyboard, mouse, speakers)? What if they don't have a computer desk? What if they're 16 and living with their parents and can't (aren't allowed to) set up the PC on the family TV (or don't have their own TV)...but would be allowed to hook up a console? Etc...etc....etc...
Being an adult, I can easily set up my gaming rigs with any of the 4 flatscreens in the house, but that doesn't mean just anyone can go that route.
They may just want to play one single latest game release and have no other components to sub in (like the kb/m or speakers) or place to "set it up".
That's a pretty simple thing to grasp if you even think about it for 5 minutes.
TouchMyBox
Member
Mandatory
Hopefully they deliver. It would be nice to see nvidia have really serious competition.
They obviously don't do it because they will have 5% boost. Custom API is probably created because they see major benefits from performance perspective. Also i doubt Mantle will be easier to code for since either way they will need to create DX version.
Back in Glide days Voodoo would kill in Glide performance wise almost any card running DX or opengl. It was so fast that most notable devs out there wanted it as standard. UT99 had Glide option, hell even Diablo 2 had glide option which is still by far best version of Diablo 2 with proper spell lighting.
Playing Unreal for first time was amazing.. damn.
You've got to be kidding me. 2900 series was the FX equivalent, that's hardly surprising.
Judging from what AMD is hinting at, it doesnt look like a full Titan on ridiculous clocks can even catch it let alone handing ass.
We will probably get a full Titan, the price depending on how the 290X performs and slots in.
We dont know exact state of API, what we know is that it is open in sense that every dev can use it and it will eventually land on Linux or Mac.
Mantle was made from ground up to work only with Radeon cards with GCN architecture. Its not compatible with any Nvidia architecture.
Vulcano's assistant
Banned
So far I will remain wishful that the 800 series is the second coming of the 8800. It's the price what I was worried about, but AMD is doing a great job so far in easing my mind.
AMD provide the GPU, they will provide the software needed to run it as they have had the benefit of many years writing software for the hardware they develop. MS or Sony wouldn't even know where to start, so yes is my answer.
Expect AMD to be nuts deep in this stuff.
This is quite a coup for AMD, no two ways about it. All the developer community will be optimising for their hardware by default the easier they make it to move code around the various platforms the better it will be for them.
Its "open" yes. Nvidia will love trying to optimize around code that's designed to run around their competitors hardware, but sure its "open."
Basically, B4 is specifically AMD optimized with a new proprietary AMD API.
It remains to be seen if it stays that way or if the API is reasonably abstracted so that different architectures can be supported through different drivers.
AMD's long standing issue has been software support for their hardware designs. Nvidia tackles this through extensive proprietary support. AMD tried to tackle it with support for open standards so far. As they gained the two high-end console systems Mantle appears to be their way to leverage console developers knowledge about low level graphic programming also on the PC (and EA appears to be fully into this, may be the actual cause for their sudden stop to the "unprecedented partnership" with Nintendo as Wii U is not GCN based). But that doesn't help with developers outside consoles unless Mantle can be run on different architectures, I expect AMD to push this at least with its ARM based HSA partners (ARM, Qualcomm, Imagination, Mediatek, Samsung and Ti).
FTFY
TOAO_Cyrus
Member
Its open but all the means is nVidia is allowed to implement it on their own. IE they are allowed to copy all the parts that are exposed to developers without getting sued for copyright infringement. AMD has a massive head start in that regard so nVidia cards wont be seeing any benefits for a while.
PlumCantaloupe
Member
I hope Nvidia does something about this for those if us that just dropped hundreds of dollars on their cards in the last few months.
Worse-case scenario is that devs don't even bother optimizing for Nvidia cards anymore.
Worse-case scenario is that devs don't even bother optimizing for Nvidia cards anymore.
Sectorseven
Member
Is the Mantle thing on all OS's, or does it require Windows 8?
Frankfurter
Member
I'd say the main point is that AMD obviously designed this to take full advantage of its own GCN GPUs, so just copying everything and using it on a current Nvidia GPU simply won't yield the same advantage (or might very well actually make it perform significantly worse).
@Sectorseven As far as I know it's generally open in terms of OS.
Mantle is bigger thing thanks to securing all new consoles by AMD. Without it you would still have developers coding for different non GCN hardware and i doubt frostbite devs would do anything.
Thanks to securing consoles AMD now have option to use Mantle as their bullet point.
It is direct opposition to how things were done before where 80-90% of devs used nvidia as their primary lead platform. Thanks to this games on Nvidia hardware had less bugs and better performance.
No they will just do what they did with AMD. Meaning less performance and more bugs.
Moral Panic
Member
Exactly. Mantle being "open" is completely meaningless in terms of nVidia/AMD battle.
michaelius
Banned
2900 uses same architecture as 3800 and then 4800 series and with some modifications was also basic of 5800.
What does "open" even mean in this context besides PR speak when it's an API designed specifically for select AMD cards?
API's are not protected by copyright law by the way, only their implementation is, and that's very much an AMD proprietary technology that will only work with their own cards.
illustri0us
Banned
do you think will mantle utilize amd's upcoming cpu's too? im an i5 owner and dont want to be locked out of full mantle
professor_t
Member
Why do you have to bring that shit in here? How is it relevant?
professor_t
Member
I'm really getting tempted to switch back to AMD. I love my 670, but Nvidia has had a horrible time with their drivers for the last, I don't know, 5-6 months. Given that the consoles are going AMD only, I'm starting to think we'll see a performance shift just be virtue of parallels in coding.
I wouldn't do anything until we see how this pans out over the next 6 months. I won't be changing my 670's until I see how AMD leverage their position.
I'm fully expecting Nvidia to suddenly start have problems with driver optimisation and AMD to suddenly having drivers that just work because games have been coded on them from the start.
michaelius
Banned
I don't think so.
AMD has minority of market share and among those cards GCN is also only a part. It would be bad for AMD itself as it would be shitting on everyone who bought VLIW based cards in last few years.
So for next few years making game run badly on direct X would be commercial suicide for game maker.
This is very similar to how Xbone buyers feel MS will achieve parity.
Meccanical
Member
I'm glad I have to wait till 2015 to build my rig anyway.
PC gaming seems to be in a state of flux.
PC gaming seems to be in a state of flux.
Nikodemos
Member
True; however, this move is designed as a bit of future-proofing, since most current-gen AMD cards and all of upcoming ones are GCN (also, two out of three next-gen consoles are GCN). Besides, they've had (IIRC) sales increase with GCN cards (people bought more 77xx/78xx/79xx cards compared to their '5' or '6' prefixed predecessors).
KaiserBecks
Member
It's actually the other way around. AMD thinks they can outperform superior hardware with an API. It can't be done. Any performance advantage will be minor and short lived.
michaelius
Banned
Well yeah - but next year or two it should hold true- and in 2015 i'll be looking for second gen 20nmm replacement for my 770 anyway
The funny thing is that it's the exact opposite.
The AMD guys think they will achieve parity with Nvidia with this awesome new API.
You posted the graph yourself, you know that the new high end GPU from AMD gets somewhat above 7K in Firestrike Benchmark, while the 780 and the TITAN can do over 10K.
So how you drawn a parallel between this and the next-gen console situation is beyond me.
Yup.
100x this.
And AMD, throw some money on Ubisoft, Epic, Crytek, Valve and Unity. They all need to get aboard the awesome train.
And for the love of god, someone needs to create kickstarter for collecting money so that Crysis 1 on PC can get Mantle support. Best game Crytek ever made deserves it.
+1. AMD couldn't have pulled off these kind of shenanigans if they hadn't locked down the consoles. If it was just PC that would have started an API cold war. If you're just a PC dev then Mantle won't matter. If you're a multi platform dev, then it has the potential to be the only game in town. After all, even if Nvidia spins their own low-level API it will be PC-only. Why would you want that? When you can have "more and more".
"Open" in this sense means it's not just AMD PCs only. It's also AMD-based Consoles as well.
They own the consoles where the bulk of the money is made.