AMD's GPU '14 Product Showcase Webcast

DPI said:
Huh? What does one have to do with the other? SteamOS is a longterm initiative. Maybe you're not seeing the helicopter view.

In any case I say this announcement does hold some good things, for one its lighting fires under complacent asses that haven't been innovating. Innovation in the PC space has been kind of sedentary and up until yesterday really only Valve has been interested in igniting new fires in this space.
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I don't think it's particularly confusing here. Mantle is going to be a huge performance boost. It's Windows only. Ohh yeah, don't worry, it'll be cross-platform... some day. Just like some day AMD will release non-crappy drivers for Linux. And some day AMD will have a decent video playback solution for Linux. And some day AMD will have Android tablets. Some day.

In the meantime it'll be Windows only.

If this Mantle isn't cross-platform by the time SteamOS releases, I'll have no doubt that MS is pulling strings at AMD to keep this thing on their platform.
 
I would have preferred a better approach where you would have a much lower-level API that is vendor- and platform-neutral but, say, much leaner than OpenGL. As it is now, NVIDIA is going to go off and make their own solution and Intel as well... and now game developers are going to have loads of fun writing games.

Thanks, AMD!
 
jwcalla said:
I would have preferred a better approach where you would have a much lower-level API that is vendor- and platform-neutral but, say, much leaner than OpenGL. As it is now, NVIDIA is going to go off and make their own solution and Intel as well... and now game developers are going to have loads of fun writing games.

Thanks, AMD!
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no youll just end up with games with a sloppy DX port and be locked to one vendor or the other at best and at worst exclusive to one or the other
 
Elios said:
no youll just end up with games with a sloppy DX port and be locked to one vendor or the other at best and at worst exclusive to one or the other
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The thing is... at this point, I don't even give a crap anymore. I have a backlog of games to play already anyway. No AAA games really do much for me anymore except HL and L4D. If the game dev community wants to go full-retard, see if I care. I spend more hours on Angry Birds than I do on PC gaming these days. They're just digging their own graves.
 
Ill start off by saying i didnt watch the reveal, i didnt have time.

However, anything AMD i question for one reason, drivers. My Clevo laptop has dual 6990 cards in crossfire but the driver support is shit. I cant even enable crossfire anymore. And crossfire performance gains are always ALWAYS smaller than nvidia SLI
 
Elios said:
AMD needs to be crucified for even trying this
if you let them get away with this you will not like where it ends
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Sorry but I have to politely disagree. If anything I applaud AMD for doing this. The past couple of years AMD has been on the receiving end of "optimizations" that intentionally hinder their products (i.e. Intel optimized compilers intentionally running an unoptimized codepath when it detects an AMD CPU), not to mention nvidia with their whole "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" initiative a few years back. I don't see a problem with AMD utilitizing their market advantage on this one. Jack Tramiel said it best: "Business is war".

As long as the titles can be made to be cross-compatible (i.e. you can run PhysX titles on AMD GPUs but there's no physics acceleration), sort of like how HIMTBP titles still worked fine on AMD GPUs, I don't see a problem with this.
 
Fifth Horseman said:
Sorry but I have to politely disagree. If anything I applaud AMD for doing this. The past couple of years AMD has been on the receiving end of "optimizations" that intentionally hinder their products (i.e. Intel optimized compilers intentionally running an unoptimized codepath when it detects an AMD CPU), not to mention nvidia with their whole "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" initiative a few years back. I don't see a problem with AMD utilitizing their market advantage on this one. Jack Tramiel said it best: "Business is war".

As long as the titles can be made to be cross-compatible (i.e. you can run PhysX titles on AMD GPUs but there's no physics acceleration), sort of like how HIMTBP titles still worked fine on AMD GPUs, I don't see a problem with this.
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AMD dug there own grave with PhysX (which i hate btw)
NV offered to let it run on there hardware AMD turn it down

NV will counter with there own API
and both will then throw money at devs to get exclusive games
 
Its not a launch, its a introduction to.

I don't get what the big deal is about mantle. Its just like giving a game optimizations for cpu and gpus for that vendor, wither it be AMD or Nvidia. You can still play the games on the other hardware using the Direct X API or OpenGl.

Why complain? Its a good thing. It helps PC's use their full resources.
 
jwcalla said:
I don't think it's particularly confusing here. Mantle is going to be a huge performance boost. It's Windows only. Ohh yeah, don't worry, it'll be cross-platform... some day. Just like some day AMD will release non-crappy drivers for Linux. And some day AMD will have a decent video playback solution for Linux. And some day AMD will have Android tablets. Some day.

In the meantime it'll be Windows only.

If this Mantle isn't cross-platform by the time SteamOS releases, I'll have no doubt that MS is pulling strings at AMD to keep this thing on their platform.
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Its hard to imagine MS putting corporate arrogance aside enough to endorse something that undermines their own DirectX and enables put to avoid a forced windows update to get access to the latest renderer. With making DX 11.1 and 11.2 exclusive to Win8/8.1 they're trying to force people off of Win7.

As for whether mandrake or mandarin or whatever is a "huge performance boost" remains to be seen. With AMD's hit-and-miss track record of driver updates I have some serious doubts about their ability to chew as big a piece as they've bitten off in attempting to propagate an entire API to compete with DX.
 
Rauelius said:
I wonder if this helps with SteamOS at all?
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Nope. Mandible at this stage of the game is little more than AMD making a run at brand lock-in. SteamOS is almost certainly about OpenGL, which is brand agnostic. But rather than getting more behind an open initiative like NVIDIA has been doing lately they're only interested in what benefits their own cards - or at least gives the impression of benefitting their own cards - after all we haven't seen any benchmarks yet.

Microsoft has to be seriously fuming right now on account of their console contract with AMD.
 
DPI said:
Microsoft has to be seriously fuming right now on account of their console contract with AMD.
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MS and Sony have made a Frankenstein's monster in AMD
where AMD is now in place where they could dictate the use of a low level API that can only run on AMD hardware
 
mrmandude said:
AMD and nVidia would have to have architecture that's incredibly similar for that to work, and that's just not going to happen - there is no "ISA" low level API because that, too, wouldn't be a low level API.
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I never said a GPU instruction set would be an API. And, yes, architecturally, there would have to be similarities — that's what standardization is — but only the front-ends need to be similar, and even then, there's great room for flexibility. Despite using the same instruction set, modern AMD and Intel CPUs are wildly different animals.

mrmandude said:
It's sort of like taking AMD and Intel CPUs and using the same ISA (higher level API) but coding your software in such a way that the L3$ latency would be much more important.
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I'm not following your analogy.
 
Elios said:
if any thing it hurts it since its not using AMD hardware
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It's an operating system, hardware has little to do with it. There is little reason for Valve to lock AMD out of implementing Mantle on SteamOS, Nvidia may be embedded to work tuning the kernel for games but at the end of the days both companies need Valve since they have control of most of the PC games market.
 
Wow. I'm excited and pissed off at the same time.

I love to play around with new gear, but its hard not to envision the industry heading further down a dark return to the past.

I mean, we have already moved back to the old days of mainframe and clients, software as a service, and subscriptions. And yes, I'm still talking about gaming. Now a return to vender specific APIs?

I can't say I'm too excited about the audio. I realize its for gamers and not audio enthusiasts, by why can't I have both? Why not make it similar to the Auzentech X-Fi Home Theater HD? That would be really exciting. Especially if it included a special mic or wand to tune an EQ to your room and speakers.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to the [H] review at launch. AMD is trying something different, which in itself is great, but I can't help but draw a parallel to Apple for making proprietary popular again. :(
 
I wouldn't be surprised if BF4 will work better on Nvidia than on AMD. Even with Mantle and close relationships with DICE. New things, new problems and all the fun stuff with waiting for drivers and updates etc..
 
some of us here are old enough to remember that glide spanked the shit out of direct3d, close to metal APIs are awesome because it allows game developers to truly take advantage of the hardware, higher level APIs like open GL do not

yes it does require extra development time to code a separate API if it's a cross platform or pc title but honestly who cares
 
Reality said:
some of us here are old enough to remember that glide spanked the shit out of direct3d, close to metal APIs are awesome because it allows game developers to truly take advantage of the hardware, higher level APIs like open GL do not

yes it does require extra development time to code a separate API if it's a cross platform or pc title but honestly who cares
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The dev companies cares

Extra development cost money, many are not even willing to properly port a title to PC, and that is something that benefits all PC users.
 
I'm kinda disappointed they went with the new naming system. I really wanted a return of the 9800pro, which I think was one of the greatest video cards ever.
 
Elios I think you have to be careful. Every post you have made has been negative without even mentioning any up side to any of this. WIll there be issues? for sure but you can bet your ass that if nvidia or Intel could do this they would. AMD was smart they got a lock on console hardware and if they get full developer buy in it will likely mean console ports to pc will be easier. This is a business after all and they want to make alot of money. I do expect to see some problems but the fact is low level api's will always perform better. The amount of dev time required to write for an api is not as much as you would think. I think overall this could be good for gamers but not good for choice in the hardware world in the future but who knows. I just worry a bit that you are pissing all over everything without seeing any good in this and that is in my opinion short sighted.
 
I like that AMD is heavily pushing OpenCL which works cross-platform, and now going to give a cross-platform option for low-level hardware access for better performance for games which can need it.

Win-Win!
 
trudeak said:
Elios I think you have to be careful. Every post you have made has been negative without even mentioning any up side to any of this. WIll there be issues? for sure but you can bet your ass that if nvidia or Intel could do this they would. AMD was smart they got a lock on console hardware and if they get full developer buy in it will likely mean console ports to pc will be easier. This is a business after all and they want to make alot of money. I do expect to see some problems but the fact is low level api's will always perform better. The amount of dev time required to write for an api is not as much as you would think. I think overall this could be good for gamers but not good for choice in the hardware world in the future but who knows. I just worry a bit that you are pissing all over everything without seeing any good in this and that is in my opinion short sighted.
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there is ZERO up side to this other then AMDs bottom line
 
Flopper said:
why?
they still sell games for consoles.
they still sell xbox one.
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Uh, no. Maybe you dont understand the history. When a developer even mentions the idea of wanting to use an API besides Microsoft's, Ballmer pulls the fire alarm.

Understand NVIDIA lost their lucrative Xbox contract to ATI years back, in part because NVIDIA wanted to support OpenGL on the PC. That's how petty MS gets.
 
Elios said:
there is ZERO up side to this other then AMDs bottom line
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I dunno.... I'm going to wait until the reviews come in before I pass judgement on AMD. Granted we all know that canned benchmarks mean dick, but I took a quick peek at the list of 3DMark Firestrike scores online, and assuming AMD didn't... *ahem* "tweak" their drivers for the benchmark, a single R9 290x is spanking a 4-way Titan SLI setup on that specific test.

http://www.3dmark.com/hall-of-fame-2/fire+strike+3dmark+score+performance+preset/version+1.1/4+gpu

If that score is indicative of real-world performance I'll be first in line to pick up an R9-290x. We really won't know until Kyle, Brent, and the rest of the [H] crew get their mitts on one and run it through the wringer though.
 
DPI said:
Uh, no. Maybe you dont understand the history. When a developer even mentions the idea of wanting to use an API besides Microsoft's, Ballmer pulls the fire alarm.

Understand NVIDIA lost their lucrative Xbox contract to ATI years back, in part because NVIDIA wanted to support OpenGL on the PC. That's how petty MS gets.
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This time it may be different considering the competition (Linux and SteamOS). Granted from Microsoft's point of view there really is a legitimate reason behind only wanting developers to use sanctioned API's, and it's not all about locking people to Windows ecosystem. It's more about compatibility and consistency across systems; the lock-in comes in naturally though as a secondary benefit. Using a sanctioned API also should help lower development time since you don't have to write specific code to target specific hardware.

I dunno how far some of you go back but I can vividly remember playing DOS games where you had to configure the game first by picking your video card from a list of supported cards and then selecting your sound card. Whenever I hear about companies wanting to use their own API's instead of standard ones, I always get this mental picture of picking your hardware from my DOS days. :D

Now, although I'm an IT guy, I'm not a developer so I can't say for sure what work would be involved with writing separate code paths for Mantle/TrueSound support. It could be as simple as a checkbox in a compiler. My take on this is that unless it's super-easy to implement, you're going to see a situation like we currently see with PhysX: only a handful of titles being released that utilize it.

BTW, nvidia didn't lose the XBOX contract because of OpenGL. They lost it because someone at nvidia had a big mouth and blabbed to the press about how they had the XBOX contract while they were under NDA. Microsoft got pissed and awarded the contract to ATI instead. :D
 
Fifth Horseman said:
I dunno.... I'm going to wait until the reviews come in before I pass judgement on AMD. Granted we all know that canned benchmarks mean dick, but I took a quick peek at the list of 3DMark Firestrike scores online, and assuming AMD didn't... *ahem* "tweak" their drivers for the benchmark, a single R9 290x is spanking a 4-way Titan SLI setup on that specific test.

http://www.3dmark.com/hall-of-fame-2/fire+strike+3dmark+score+performance+preset/version+1.1/4+gpu

If that score is indicative of real-world performance I'll be first in line to pick up an R9-290x. We really won't know until Kyle, Brent, and the rest of the [H] crew get their mitts on one and run it through the wringer though.
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I am looking at that page, and firestrike for 4x Titan at what looks like stock speed is around 18-19k, that screenshot shows a single R9 290x as around 7k.
 
cyclone3d said:
I am looking at that page, and firestrike for 4x Titan at what looks like stock speed is around 18-19k, that screenshot shows a single R9 290x as around 7k.
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Err, R9 290x shows around 8k for firestrike... so maybe 3x R9 290X would be a decent amount faster than 4x Titan.
 
cyclone3d said:
I am looking at that page, and firestrike for 4x Titan at what looks like stock speed is around 18-19k, that screenshot shows a single R9 290x as around 7k.
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Nevermind, I'm blind. :D I added an extra zero to the end of the R9-290x's score. lol. :D
 
cyclone3d said:
Err, R9 290x shows around 8k for firestrike... so maybe 3x R9 290X would be a decent amount faster than 4x Titan.
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On that note (besides me being blind and adding an extra digit in my head. :D ), re-looking at the scores, the R9-290x doesn't appear to be even as fast as an GTX780. Am I reading that wrong?
 
Reality said:
some of us here are old enough to remember that glide spanked the shit out of direct3d, close to metal APIs are awesome because it allows game developers to truly take advantage of the hardware, higher level APIs like open GL do not
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Theoretically, it may be possible to reap the same benefits with OpenGL extensions. A GL extension can be exactly what it sounds like — an extension to existing capability — but it can also replace existing functionality. They would be vendor-specific at first, certainly, but could eventually be supported by all vendors, as they would be open specifications. Given enough industry support, those extensions could eventually be brought into the core specification.

Without knowing exactly what MANTLE is, though, it's hard to say.
 
DPI said:
Nope. Mandible at this stage of the game is little more than AMD making a run at brand lock-in. SteamOS is almost certainly about OpenGL, which is brand agnostic. But rather than getting more behind an open initiative like NVIDIA has been doing lately they're only interested in what benefits their own cards - or at least gives the impression of benefitting their own cards - after all we haven't seen any benchmarks yet.

Microsoft has to be seriously fuming right now on account of their console contract with AMD.
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Kinda reverse from how AMD supported OpenCL and nVidia had to force Physx on everybody.
 
Rauelius said:
Kinda reverse from how AMD supported OpenCL and nVidia had to force Physx on everybody.
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AMD had a chance to have PhysX run on there cards NV wanted to keep control of drivers and AMD wouldnt give NV the needed info on there GPU for NV to make the driver for AMD hardware
 
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