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PDXLAN: AMD Eyefinity, FreeSync, Mantle SDK updates (for Nvidia, Intel too)

presentation by AMDs Richard Huddy here, updates with time stamps below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_3OAD-Dhs0

3:12 AMD Eyefinity update with 14.6 beta drivers for R7, R9
4:00 Combine monitors with different aspect ratios and resolutions
5:02 Create display groups with single click
5:12 5 monitors in portrait, 5 in landscape
5:40 Crossfire frame pacing improvements

8:06 Project FreeSync ("effectively exactly the same as GSync")
9:56 Up to 240 Hz, open specifications.
10:00 Adopted by VISA standards authority, drivers around December
10:15 Compatible monitors available December or January
10:20 One vendor already ships compatible monitors, only firmware update needed.
10:33 free, no license fee. Expects rapid adoption
10:50 First graphics cards for Project FreeSync R9 290/290X & R7 260/260X
10:59 Requires graphics cards with 1.2a DisplayPort connector
11:48 All mayor scaler chip producers announced FreeSync adoption
12:00 Expects FreeSync Monitors to be $100 cheaper than GSync

12:11 Mantle API
13:23 4 years ago talked with DICE
13:43 In BF2, 35% of frame time spent on one CPU core
13:57 Tried to improve DX, couldn't get IHV, Microsoft and devs together
18:03 Support in Frostbite, Cryengine, Nitrous, Osira engines
18:52 Mantle is going open standard
19:05 Was shared with Khronos, Microsoft
19:33 Mantle SDK out this year
19:38 Anyone can build Mantle drivers, no license fee or restrictions
20:51 DX12 not coming to Windows 7, but Mantle games will continue to support it
21:51 100 registered developers now , 40 in June. 20 workstation, 80 game devs.
22:52 Great stepping stone to DX12
23:05 20+ games in development ~15 announced.

overhead if old
 
4:00 Combine monitors with different aspect ratios and resolutions

One of the biggest barriers of entry for Surround/Eyefinity finally solved, hopefully this means more people can start gaming with triple screens, its heaven. Before anyone mentions the gaps, no, you dont notice them in game.

21:9 monitor with 2*16:10 monitors :D, Mix and match.
UHinqca.jpg
 

BPoole

Member
I'm really tempting to sell my Korean 1440p monitor for a Free Sync compatible one since I already have a supported GPU for it
 
Is there a list?
I only count 12:

Battlefield 4
Battlefield Hardline
Civilization: Beyond Earth
Dragon Age: Inquisition
Mirrors Edge 2
Need for Speed Rivals
Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare
Sniper Elite III
Star Citizen
Star Wars: Battlefront
Thief
Next Mass Effect
 
This is great, but I thought Freesync didn't need any extra hardware, and GSync adds more than $100 to a monitor. Unless they're factoring in an expected GSync price cut?

Well it went more or less like this

Stage 1. Freesync will be free
Stage 1b - we ment for hardware makers
Stage 2. There won't be additional costs for producers
Stage 2b - well we ment for licensing this technology
Stage 3. Using free sync will only add 10-20$ to cost of monitor production
Stage 3b- They will cost 100$ less than g-sync (which is nice way of saying $100 premium compared to standard display)

Classic AMD marketing with misleading wording that can be interpreted in several ways.
 

Kezen

Banned
I hope Mantle is alive and relevant once DX12 is officially released, MS left without competition led us to DX11 having barely been updated in 5 years.
 

Zarx

Member
Depending on the state of DX12, mantle may become pretty much irrelevant inside of 18 months.

If mantle goes cross platform it could have an interesting niche. Especially if DX12 ends up being only for Win 10. Especially with the big OpenGL update being a ways off.
 
That is really optimistic, imo. DX11 took forever to catch on.

Who knows, though, there might be more momentum now that "low-level" is a buzzword.

I don't think it's controversial to say that it will be catching on quicker than mantle will, though. That timeframe may be too short, but unless Nvidia decides to support mantle, you'll always end up with a situation where a minority of modern cards that can use Mantle while 100% of modern cards can use DX12. Well, depending on the OS situation I guess! Mantle going mainstream really depends on Nvidia supporting it, but if Nvidia decides it doesn't want to, then... it's hard to see devs supporting it.
 

Eusis

Member
I don't think it's controversial to say that it will be catching on quicker than mantle will, though. That timeframe may be too short, but unless Nvidia decides to support mantle, you'll always end up with a situation where a minority of modern cards that can use Mantle while 100% of modern cards can use DX12. Well, depending on the OS situation I guess! Mantle going mainstream really depends on Nvidia supporting it, but if Nvidia decides it doesn't want to, then... it's hard to see devs supporting it.
I also get the impression that nVidia would be cool on supporting it given how much they seem to want to push their own proprietary stuff, would I be right in that thought?

Though I guess it also depends on the state of DirectX 12 and adoption of Windows 10 because by the same token one can change their tune VERY quickly if the alternative is crap.
 

Zarx

Member
I don't think it's controversial to say that it will be catching on quicker than mantle will, though. That timeframe may be too short, but unless Nvidia decides to support mantle, you'll always end up with a situation where a minority of modern cards that can use Mantle while 100% of modern cards can use DX12. Well, depending on the OS situation I guess! Mantle going mainstream really depends on Nvidia supporting it, but if Nvidia decides it doesn't want to, then... it's hard to see devs supporting it.

I don't see Mantle ever going truly mainstream, even if Nvidia/intel and Intel pick it up. I don't think it's ever going to see Mantle as a leading API. But if Mantle is picked up by all vendors and across Win/Linux/Mac it could become a solid alternative. At least until OpenGL NG gets put together (assuming that ends up in a good place), tho if AMD gets their way Mantle will actually be used as a template for OpenGL NG.
 

chithanh

Banned
This is great, but I thought Freesync didn't need any extra hardware, and GSync adds more than $100 to a monitor. Unless they're factoring in an expected GSync price cut?
FreeSync needs no extra hardware, but in order to advertise the Adaptive-Sync capability, the monitor must pass VESA compatibility tests. The cost for that will increase the monitor's price.

Also it seems likely that G-Sync monitor prices will come under pressure once Adaptive-Sync is on the market and works as well as G-Sync (not yet independently confirmed).
 

chithanh

Banned
Depending on the state of DX12, mantle may become pretty much irrelevant inside of 18 months.
It will also depend on how much the gaming community will move to Windows 8/10 in this timeframe. As was said in the interview, Windows 7 supports Mantle but won't support DX12.

I don't see Mantle ever going truly mainstream, even if Nvidia/intel and Intel pick it up.
I don't expect that NVidia will pick it up. Intel has expressed interest in Mantle, but nothing official from them yet.
As it is, Mantle is just another output for game engines which already need to support many APIs (DX11, OpenGL, GNM, DX11.x, Metal, OpenGL ES, ...) so it seems that even if the mainstream goes DX12/OpenGL NG, Mantle won't necessarily go away.
 

Durante

Member
I hope that Nvidia actually bother to write a Mantle driver. I have my doubts.
Why? Their DirectX11 driver is already up to 50% more CPU-efficient than AMD's, and 50% is usually towards the top end of what you can expect with Mantle improvements.
 

Denton

Member
presentation by AMDs Richard Huddy here, updates with time stamps below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_3OAD-Dhs0

The video has been taken private for some reason, I did not find it on youtube...I suppose there is no other source ?

Why? Their DirectX11 driver is already up to 50% more CPU-efficient than AMD's, and 50% is usually towards the top end of what you can expect with Mantle improvements.
Why not? Why would it be bad if nVidia/Intel supported DX and Mantle and OpenGL and devs could choose what they want to implement on which platform ?
 

Durante

Member
Why not? Why would it be bad if nVidia/Intel supported DX and Mantle and OpenGL and devs could choose what they want to implement on which platform ?
Because I really see no point in any vendor wasting time on a different vendor's proprietary API if it can't even conclusively demonstrate a significant advantage compared to a properly optimized implementation of a standard API.

(Please don't start with the "Mantle isn't proprietary" thing, it's silly)
 

Zarx

Member
Why? Their DirectX11 driver is already up to 50% more CPU-efficient than AMD's, and 50% is usually towards the top end of what you can expect with Mantle improvements.

Because a cross platform, modern low level graphics API is a good thing for the industry. In theory OpenGL fills that role but it seems such a bloated mess, with years worth of legacy and patchy extension support. OpenGL NG promises to deliver a fresh slate modern rewrite that would definitely make Mantle obsolete but the Khronos group have promised that before and failed to deliver. If AMD delivers on their promise of making it open and other hardware vendors get on board it could be a good alternative. There are a lot of maybes in there for sure, and it all depends on how open AMD will actually make it, and whether it gets picked up by all the hardware vendors. But in theory it could be a good alternative to OpenGL.
 

Locuza

Member
Why? Their DirectX11 driver is already up to 50% more CPU-efficient than AMD's, and 50% is usually towards the top end of what you can expect with Mantle improvements.
Mantle is still a lot more efficient.
But yeah, i see no way Intel and Nvidia supporting it.
It's so silly.
 

Denton

Member
Because I really see no point in any vendor wasting time on a different vendor's proprietary API if it can't even conclusively demonstrate a significant advantage compared to a properly optimized implementation of a standard API.

(Please don't start with the "Mantle isn't proprietary" thing, it's silly)

Ok. Let's say Huddy is not lying and the stuff he said here in this thread is true:

18:52 Mantle is going open standard
19:05 Was shared with Khronos, Microsoft
19:33 Mantle SDK out this year
19:38 Anyone can build Mantle drivers, no license fee or restrictions
20:51 DX12 not coming to Windows 7, but Mantle games will continue to support it

And let's say what Firaxis developer said about Mantle is also true:

Simply put, Mantle is the most advanced and powerful graphics API in existence. It provides essentially the same feature set as DX11 or OpenGL, and does so at considerably lower runtime cost.
(http://www.firaxis.com/?/blog/single/why-we-went-with-mantle)

Then I disagree that it would be a waste of time. I have AMD now, I had nVidia in 2005-2013. My next card will probably be nVidia. As a customer of both, I would like them both to support all APIs.

...maybe I am just salty at shitty performance of Unity on anything other than 970/980 and wish Ubi made it on Mantle...from what I read the amount of draw calls in this game is too much for DX11, thus the framerate problems.
 

Locuza

Member
How can Mantle be an "open standard" if AMD is the only one who tells which direction the standard is going?
And that's the reason why it's a waste of time and very dumb for every other IHV to support proprietary tech from the competitor.

The advantages Mantle offers now will come with DX12 for everybody.
 

dr_rus

Member
If they wanted adoption for Mantle then they should've started with that instead of building a proprietary API in secret. No one but AMD will support it now. Everyone else will just concentrate on DX and OpenGL - and that's how it should be.
 

Denton

Member
How can Mantle be an "open standard" if AMD is the only one who tells which direction the standard is going?
And that's the reason why it's a waste of time and very dumb for every other IHV to support proprietary tech from the competitor.

The advantages Mantle offers now will come with DX12 for everybody.

Well if it really becomes open and others can modify/contribute/whatever, then what does it matter that it was developed by AMD and DICE in the first place ?
And yeah DX12 will be nice and all but it is still god damn 18 months or so away, isn't it?
While we could be getting the low-level benefits much sooner with Mantle on both nVidia and AMD if they both supported it and thus gave developers incentive to get in on the action.
 

diaspora

Member
18:03 Support in Frostbite, Cryengine, Nitrous, Osira engines
18:52 Mantle is going open standard
19:05 Was shared with Khronos, Microsoft
19:33 Mantle SDK out this year
19:38 Anyone can build Mantle drivers, no license fee or restrictions
20:51 DX12 not coming to Windows 7, but Mantle games will continue to support it
21:51 100 registered developers now , 40 in June. 20 workstation, 80 game devs.
22:52 Great stepping stone to DX12
23:05 20+ games in development ~15 announced.

All of this is good news.
 

Locuza

Member
Well if it really becomes open and others can modify/contribute/whatever, then what does it matter that it was developed by AMD and DICE in the first place ?
Then it doesn't matter, but the bold one matters and the bold one is very unlikely to happen.
DX12 will come at the end of 2015, the first game with it, who knows?
 

Osiris

I permanently banned my 6 year old daughter from using the PS4 for mistakenly sending grief reports as it's too hard to watch or talk to her
Mantle has no future, although it lived up to it's name in lighting a fire under the CPU overhead of API's debate, so we can be thankful of that I guess.

But ultimately, once DX12 hits, it'll fade into obscurity and irrelevance.
 

Denton

Member
Then it doesn't matter, but the bold one matters and the bold one is very unlikely to happen.
DX12 will come at the end of 2015, the first game with it, who knows?

Very unlikely to happen ? When they announced it just few days ago, publicly ?
I don't even.
 

MaxiLive

Member
Mantle has no future, although it lived up to it's name in lighting a fire under the CPU overhead of API's debate, so we can be thankful of that I guess.

But ultimately, once DX12 hits, it'll fade into obscurity and irrelevance.

I think Mantle will have a good 2-3 years in the lime light due to the console situation and the APIs being similar in some cases.

Also DX12 is going to take at least 1 months to get any form of traction and probably more like 24 months when it becomes mainstream in all games.

Similar with Mantle though very select games are going to use it and it isn't going to be a deal breaker if a game doesnt support it or not.
 

Durante

Member
How can Mantle be an "open standard" if AMD is the only one who tells which direction the standard is going?
If they wanted adoption for Mantle then they should've started with that instead of building a proprietary API in secret.
This hits the nail on the head, pretty much. If you want to look at how cross platform, industry standard APIs are built, look at the Khronos process for OpenCL. In the end, it's basically cross-platform CUDA, but its creation was still a long process proceeding in roughly this fashion:
  1. Apple spearheads the creation of an initial proposal, and submits it publicly to the standards body (Khronos).
  2. They form a working group where a large group of hardware and software industry partners come together, and refine the proposal into a release candidate all can agree on for 6 months.
  3. The standard is approved and ratified.
  4. Implementations of the standard start trickling in from various industry partners.
  5. It is continually refined by the working group process at Khronos, with all members having the ability to contribute, and a formal process in place to guide its development.
That may sound plodding and cumbersome -- and really, it can be -- but this is how real open standards are made. Not by working on a hardware-specific API for your stuff with your closest partners in secret and then saying "bam it's open".

...maybe I am just salty at shitty performance of Unity on anything other than 970/980 and wish Ubi made it on Mantle...from what I read the amount of draw calls in this game is too much for DX11, thus the framerate problems.
Probably too much for AMD's DX11 implementation, sure.
 

Locuza

Member
Very unlikely to happen ? When they announced it just few days ago, publicly ?
I don't even.
I thought you were speaking of "really open", not half open.
It's AMD proprietary API and their intellectual property.
The only think they do is giving licenses without fees, open the documentation, making it possible for everybody to write drivers for it.
Nothing else.
AMD don't offer an open and fair Development Board.
You have one at the Khronos Group, an IHV neutral at Microsoft, but you don't have one at AMD and that's the main problem.
 
I can't believe how many of you are sold on glide 2.
Mantle is not good for anybody except AMD. I am of the opinion there's about a 0% chance nVidia or intel ever touch it. They're not charities... neither one of them has issues with cpu efficiency or just plain weak cpus.
It's too bad AMD can't write proper drivers. I feel for them but mantle was never a good idea.
 

Denton

Member
This hits the nail on the head, pretty much. If you want to look at how cross platform, industry standard APIs are built, look at the Khronos process for OpenCL. In the end, it's basically cross-platform CUDA, but its creation was still a long process proceeding in roughly this fashion:
  1. Apple spearheads the creation of an initial proposal, and submits it publicly to the standards body (Khronos).
  2. They form a working group where a large group of hardware and software industry partners come together, and refine the proposal into a release candidate all can agree on for 6 months.
  3. The standard is approved and ratified.
  4. Implementations of the standard start trickling in from various industry partners.
  5. It is continually refined by the working group process at Khronos, with all members having the ability to contribute, and a formal process in place to guide its development.
That may sound plodding and cumbersome -- and really, it can be -- but this is how real open standards are made. Not by working on a hardware-specific API for your stuff with your closest partners in secret and then saying "bam it's open".

Well I don't know much about these processes, I admit. And yeah, I assume you are right that this would have been a better way to go about it...unless they tried and nobody was interested so they did it alone (it would not surprise me, but who knows).
In any case, as many people said Mantle at least forced the change in other APIs, so even if Mantle itself won't be widely adopted, it has still contributed to positive change.
I just wish it was adopted so that positive change could benefit us, gamers, now....and not in a year or more when DX12 hits.

Probably too much for AMD's DX11 implementation, sure.
Well to be fair, Unity runs like shit on nVidia cards not called 970/980 too. And for this past year that I have been using that 280X, I ran all games except Unity perfectly well, like Watch Dogs, Ryse, BF4..all of them.

I thought you were speaking of "really open", not half open.
It's AMD proprietary API and their intellectual property.
The only think they do is giving licenses without fees, open the documentation, making it possible for everybody to write drivers for it.
Nothing else.
AMD don't offer an open and fair Development Board.
You have one at the Khronos Group, an IHV neutral at Microsoft, but you don't have one at AMD and that's the main problem.

We'll see how open it ends up, obviously I hope as much as possible, which would be in everyone's best interest.

I can't believe how many of you are sold on glide 2.
Mantle is not good for anybody except AMD. I am of the opinion there's about a 0% chance nVidia or intel ever touch it. They're not charities... neither one of them has issues with cpu efficiency or just plain weak cpus.
It's too bad AMD can't write proper drivers. I feel for them but mantle was never a good idea.

Yeah all those developers from Dice, Firaxis, Rebellion, Oxide, Cloud Imperium..they must all be really idiotic to support this. That was sarcasm.
 
Small update:

We now know that the video was removed because of the DX12 statement.
AMD press release said:
There have been reports based on a video of Richard Huddy of AMD making speculative comments around DirectX 12 support on versions of Windows. Richard Huddy does not speak for Microsoft, and he was unfortunately speculating from Microsoft’s publication of key dates and milestones for Windows 7 lifecycle and mainstream support policy. Richard has no special insight into Microsoft’s Windows or DirectX roadmaps. Microsoft is a key, strategic partner for AMD and we're continuously collaborating with them on DirectX 12.
The video has been taken private for some reason, I did not find it on youtube...I suppose there is no other source ?
 
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