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[DieH@rd]

Compile in high-level API if old:


http://www.dsogaming.com/news/amd-aims-to-give-opengl-a-big-boost-api-wont-be-the-bottleneck/
Well, you gotta love AMD and its engineers. Mantle looks – in paper – amazing, however that’s not the only thing the red team is currently working on. According to Graham Sellers, OpenGL guy at AMD, the red team will be supporting this open API with some high performance extensions that will offer almost similar performance to AMD’s upcoming API, Mantle.

As Sellers claimed, AMD aims to expose all of the hardware of their GPUs with these upcoming high performance extensions of OpenGL, and gamers will be able to get close to theoretical peak and performance. Not only that, but Sellers claimed that games using the modern versions of OpenGL won’t be bottlenecked by the API anymore, meaning that gamers will hit HW limits first.

Now if AMD delivers extraordinary performance improvements with those high value OpenGL extensions, we might see Direct 3D falling in the third place (for AMD cards). Mantle aims to be the best API for all GCN2.0 AMD cards, while OpenGL may be offering performance close to it. Naturally, this only applies to AMD’s cards, so it will be interesting to see what Nvidia’s answer will be to all of this.

Question is whether developers will start using OpenGL more frequently, especially now that Steam Machines are coming out. Moreover, will those extensions kick in automatically or will developers have to program their games in such a way that AMD’s extensions are being utilized?

 

[cyberheater]

AMD are looking hot right now.

Come on nVidia. What is your response?

 

[Durante]

AMD are looking hot right now.

Come on nVidia. What is your response?

Nvidia has been offering OpenGL extensions (and solid, standards-compliant baseline OpenGL support, which is sadly not always true for AMD) for years. They have both spearheaded efforts on vendor-agnostic extensions and offered proprietary ones for GPU-specific features.

I do hope this also means that AMD will also start to care more about their basic OpenGL performance and stability, not just some proprietary extensions.

 

[gofreak]

I think they're just stating a continuance of the status quo rather than anything new in light of Mantle. Vendors always try to better mesh hardware to software with ogl extensions. He sidestepped the mantle comparison a little bit.

 

[cyberheater]

Nvidia has been offering OpenGL extensions (and solid, standards-compliant baseline OpenGL support, which is sadly not always true for AMD) for years.

It's the low level Mantle like performance I'm referring to. I know nVidia's support for OpenGL has been great relative to AMD but at the moment, AMD have the jump in terms of introducing a low level high performing console like API.

 

[Durante]

It's the low level Mantle like performance I'm referring to. I know nVidia's support for OpenGL has been great relative to AMD but at the moment, AMD have the jump in terms of introducing a low level high performing console like API.

So you want Nvidia to also make their own proprietary API? And then Intel? PowerVR? Qualcomm?

As a developer, I'd rather get some solid effort in the OpenGL 5 core specs and efficient as well as standards-compliant support for that from all vendors.

To a significant degree, low-level support can be offered in a vendor-agnostic way in OpenGL. The remaining portion has to be given up to maintain portability.

 

[cyberheater]

So you want Nvidia to also make their own proprietary API? And then Intel? PowerVR? Qualcomm?

I would have preferred that AMD and nVidia worked together to form a version of this technology that would have worked on both systems and have been open sourced.

But as a consumer. If nVidia develop their own low level API. I would hope that developers support it.

 

[Sanjay]

Glide? does this mean we can finally play Majora's Mask at 60fps on UltraHLE instead of 17fps!