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re: Mantle

KazeoHin said:
AMD is a business, and thus it would dominate and stab Nvidia and Intel in the back if it had the chance, but it doesn't. So it plays the 'good guy' card. I have no illusions to that, BUT the more I could encourage market competition, the more I will.
Click to expand...
One problem is that competitivity is often expressed through proprietary and/or vendor-specific solutions. Mantle gives market underdog AMD an edge against the currently-entrenched NVIDIA, but through a solution currently specific to their platform. While this doesn't appear to have so far hurt NVIDIA users, the long-term ramifications of this solution are still unclear.

You can say the same thing about Gsync, of course. These small proprietary pushes can be good for the industry in certain sets of ways but they can also be harmful to it in other ways.
 
wonderfield said:
One problem is that competitivity is often expressed through proprietary and/or vendor-specific solutions. Mantle gives market underdog AMD an edge against the currently-entrenched NVIDIA, but through a solution currently specific to their platform. While this doesn't appear to have so far hurt NVIDIA users, the long-term ramifications of this solution are still unclear.
Click to expand...

I'm still at a loss as to why people are thinking Mantle can be detrimental to Nvidia/Intel even if they are supporting it. The people that are saying Mantle is an underhanded tactic to take over the API market and hurt the performance of their competitors are the very same people saying it won't gain traction and therefore we will never see a Mantle only game.
 
LordEC911 said:
I'm still at a loss as to why people are thinking Mantle can be detrimental to Nvidia/Intel even if they are supporting it. The people that are saying Mantle is an underhanded tactic to take over the API market and hurt the performance of their competitors are the very same people saying it won't gain traction and therefore we will never see a Mantle only game.
Click to expand...

The problem isn't the Mantle situation as it currently exists but the potential issue of it replacing DirectX as being essentially the dominant API for PC gaming. Intel and Nvidia adoption would only help to accelerate and increase (greatly) the process of this occurring.

So how would this situation then in turn give AMD a competitive advantage? It doesn't even have to be anything underhanded.

We can go back to your comment earlier in the thread about the benefit of Mantle be quicker to update compared to other APIs because AMD can unilaterally make and implement changes. Let's say AMD decides to make changes to Mantle, do they actually inform Nvidia (we'll ignore anyone else for this example just for simplification) at the exact same time they make their own hardware (and driver) divisions aware? Do they take into consideration and work with (and listen to) Nvidia regarding future changes to Mantle? Does this not lead to Nvidia being perpetually behind in terms of catching up to Mantle changes compared to AMD?

With DirectX (as far as we know, as no one has disputed this) any API changes (such as the next major iteration with DX12) were made with input from all hardware vendors and they were informed essentially at the same time. Would you for instance not say Nvidia has an advantage if MS were to only (or even mainly) listen to their input for DirectX changes and inform them well in advance of anyone else?
 
LordEC911 said:
I'm still at a loss as to why people are thinking Mantle can be detrimental to Nvidia/Intel even if they are supporting it. The people that are saying Mantle is an underhanded tactic to take over the API market and hurt the performance of their competitors are the very same people saying it won't gain traction and therefore we will never see a Mantle only game.
Click to expand...

Mantle is just marketing fluff. It's still in closed beta and because AMD has maybe 1/3 of the video card market there would be zero point to a Mantle only game. NVIDIA has been able to improve performance similar to Mantle using DX11 and with DX12 and OpenGL supporting even more features, Mantle will stay on the shelf that it's named after.
 
limitedaccess said:
The problem isn't the Mantle situation as it currently exists but the potential issue of it replacing DirectX as being essentially the dominant API for PC gaming. Intel and Nvidia adoption would only help to accelerate and increase (greatly) the process of this occurring.

So how would this situation then in turn give AMD a competitive advantage? It doesn't even have to be anything underhanded.

We can go back to your comment earlier in the thread about the benefit of Mantle be quicker to update compared to other APIs because AMD can unilaterally make and implement changes. Let's say AMD decides to make changes to Mantle, do they actually inform Nvidia (we'll ignore anyone else for this example just for simplification) at the exact same time they make their own hardware (and driver) divisions aware? Do they take into consideration and work with (and listen to) Nvidia regarding future changes to Mantle? Does this not lead to Nvidia being perpetually behind in terms of catching up to Mantle changes compared to AMD?

With DirectX (as far as we know, as no one has disputed this) any API changes (such as the next major iteration with DX12) were made with input from all hardware vendors and they were informed essentially at the same time. Would you for instance not say Nvidia has an advantage if MS were to only (or even mainly) listen to their input for DirectX changes and inform them well in advance of anyone else?
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No. What I was getting at is that based on reality, DX12/Mantle will, at best, co-exist.
Worst case scenario, they have a fall-back render path if it really comes down to it.

Which has happened multiple times over the last few iterations of MS APIs.
 
you keep believing that, PRIME1.

the 40+ developers involved in the beta believe otherwise.

I wonder who is more of an authority, some nvidia fanboi on the web? or all those developers?

hmmm....whom to believe....
 
LordEC911 said:
I'm still at a loss as to why people are thinking Mantle can be detrimental to Nvidia/Intel even if they are supporting it.
Click to expand...
I'm not suggesting that Mantle is detrimental to NVIDIA or to Intel.

The Mac said:
the 40+ developers involved in the beta believe otherwise.
Click to expand...
Who are the forty developers? At what level is their involvement — participating in the beta or have announced products?
 
why is that relevent?

40 developers=40 developers.

40 delvelopers /= one random fanboi

but since you asked, lets start with the ones we know: Dice, Bioware, Iron Clad/Stardock, Rebellion, Roberts Space Industries, Firaxis/2K,,,.

add to that all but one of the big next gen game engines will suport it.
 
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The Mac said:
why is that relevent?
Click to expand...
Because level of involvement denotes level of investment. Inclusion in a beta program does not suggest anything particular of investment. I'm not suggesting he's right — because he rarely is. I'm merely suggesting that what you believe is a strong indicator of a changing tide may not necessarily be so.

The Mac said:
but since you asked, lets start with the ones we know: Dice, Bioware, Iron Clad/Stardock, Rebellion, Roberts Space Industries, Firaxis/2K,,,.
Click to expand...
Starting is great, but finishing is better. Who are the forty developers?
 
again, not relvelent to my point.

40 delvelopers /= one fanboi.

it makes no difference who they are.
 
Hmmph. Regardless of who I ask, I can never get any details about these so-called "forty Mantle developers" and "fifty Mantle games".

Certainly calls into the question the legitimacy of said claims when such simple questions are met with such blatant dissembling and hand-waving, as though claiming it makes no difference is like some sort of Jedi mind trick.
 
its a closed beta, you arent going to get names until they announce products.

Thats pretty standard practice.
 
wonderfield said:
Hmmph. Regardless of who I ask, I can never get any details about these so-called "forty Mantle developers" and "fifty Mantle games".

Certainly calls into the question the legitimacy of said claims when such simple questions are met with such blatant dissembling and hand-waving, as though claiming it makes no difference is like some sort of Jedi mind trick.
Click to expand...

Because its besides the point to the point he was making and it makes no difference to his point either, so he is not obliged to get into your different point.
 
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The developers i listed have announced products with mantle. There are other i cant remember off the top of my head.

Im not sure where the confusion is here.
 
amd said they signed up 40 devs for a closed beta... who cares.
Already 20+ games confirmed , adoption rate is faster than physx games

*puts on fire retardant suit* :cool:
 
Developers checking out the beta is not the same as actually using it to make games. So far only 2 games have used Mantle and it's been patched in after release and buggy.

Certain people here just keep repeating the same AMD marketing bullet points that were in their powerpoint slides, instead of actually forming their own opinion.
 
Most of the developers that have announced products have openly discussed mantle in various interviews, what exactly is there to "disbelieve" about the announcements?

They said they are using mantle, is there some reason why i shouldnt take them at their word?

as one of the programmers at firaxis pointed out: there are only 3 iterative numbers that matter when discussing render paths: 0, 1, and N. Once you reach N, additional API paths require marginal resources to include.

since most of them are already doing DX, Xbone, and PS an additional path in the form of Mantle is minor.
 
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Garden warfare in 2 days, sniper elite in 4. Every AMD slide from mantled turned out true, and every prime1 comment as turned out blatant lies.
 
I wouldnt say lies, more like FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Distrust).

Lying would require him (or her as someone implied in another thread) to actually know the truth.

lol
 
maboblivion said:
Garden warfare in 2 days, sniper elite in 4. Every AMD slide from mantled turned out true, and every prime1 comment as turned out blatant lies.
Click to expand...

1zoNsJD.jpg


Every slide turned out true?
 
Now you are just grasping at straws.

It was late, not non-exsistant.

Developers frequently push back release dates, that hardly makes them liars.
 
I am looking forward to seeing it perform on MY machine.

Wonder if Future mark will jump on board... see how a specific machine could render with different API's, no doubt other synthetic BM's will do it.
 
Crossfire is still iffy on Mantle. BF4 or AMD are the culprits for not having a smooth gaming experience under crossfire.
 
LordEC911 said:
No. What I was getting at is that based on reality, DX12/Mantle will, at best, co-exist.
Worst case scenario, they have a fall-back render path if it really comes down to it.

Which has happened multiple times over the last few iterations of MS APIs.
Click to expand...

If all GPU hardware supported Mantle, why would DX and Mantle coexist in actual usage? One of them would have to win out at the end. DirectX and OpenGL right now coexist but I think it is quite clear which is the more important PC gaming API and better supported.

Or do you mean a fallback within the same API? Let's say hypothetically we find out that Nvidia's GTX 8xx series fully support DX12.1 in hardware while AMDs 3xx series will not and would fallback to DX12. Why? Because MS listened to Nvidia for input regarding DX12.1 and informed Nvidia in advance of AMD. Would you not say this is an unfair competitive advantage? This would be the natural scenario with any future development of Mantle.

Mantle being an AMD at the very least gives AMD much better inherent synergy between the API and any hardware development/support compared to competitors. This is why it introduces an unbalance into the GPU market if it were to become the dominant API.

Outside of an AMD bias scenario I really fail to see why this is a hard to accept issue regarding Mantle. Why would AMD even invest in Mantle if it served them no benefit at all? There really isn't a reason to even look at this issue from a technical perspective. If AMD did not see a benefit from the adoption of Mantle they would not pursue it.

I'll also pose this same question to you (and really anyone else that can't see this point of view). If the position were say Nvidia was the developer and owner of Mantle, would you support and have the same viewpoint?
 
limitedaccess said:
If all GPU hardware supported Mantle, why would DX and Mantle coexist in actual usage? One of them would have to win out at the end. DirectX and OpenGL right now coexist but I think it is quite clear which is the more important PC gaming API and better supported.

Or do you mean a fallback within the same API? Let's say hypothetically we find out that Nvidia's GTX 8xx series fully support DX12.1 in hardware while AMDs 3xx series will not and would fallback to DX12. Why? Because MS listened to Nvidia for input regarding DX12.1 and informed Nvidia in advance of AMD. Would you not say this is an unfair competitive advantage? This would be the natural scenario with any future development of Mantle.

Mantle being an AMD at the very least gives AMD much better inherent synergy between the API and any hardware development/support compared to competitors. This is why it introduces an unbalance into the GPU market if it were to become the dominant API.

Outside of an AMD bias scenario I really fail to see why this is a hard to accept issue regarding Mantle. Why would AMD even invest in Mantle if it served them no benefit at all? There really isn't a reason to even look at this issue from a technical perspective. If AMD did not see a benefit from the adoption of Mantle they would not pursue it.

I'll also pose this same question to you (and really anyone else that can't see this point of view). If the position were say Nvidia was the developer and owner of Mantle, would you support and have the same viewpoint?
Click to expand...

I'll answer your last question first. No, I wouldn't have a problem if Nvidia had developed and were releasing mantle and were trying to do exactly what AMD were doing. It's just business doing what business's do, try to make money.

Things change. Why should directx still be the API of choice? If somebody makes a better API why should it not be used? In business sometimes you have to work with competitors. If AMD or Nvidia make a brilliant API, and it's adoption rate is high, then it's up to the other companies either to use a lower performing API, make their own or use the new one. It's that simple.
 
reaper12 said:
I'll answer your last question first. No, I wouldn't have a problem if Nvidia had developed and were releasing mantle and were trying to do exactly what AMD were doing. It's just business doing what business's do, try to make money.

Things change. Why should directx still be the API of choice? If somebody makes a better API why should it not be used? In business sometimes you have to work with competitors. If AMD or Nvidia make a brilliant API, and it's adoption rate is high, then it's up to the other companies either to use a lower performing API, make their own or use the new one. It's that simple.
Click to expand...

Those aren't the points of contention though.

The issue isn't AMD developing and promoting the adoption of Mantle. The issue is whether or not other competing hardware makers should support this effort. I am against the idea that any competitor in a given market would actually function as a fair and neutral sole steward of what could potentially be a requisite standard (or quasi standard) in that market. As such I don't agree with the sentiment of supporting a movement for all hardware vendors to adopt Mantle (partly fueled by underdog bias, among other factors of bias) and speed its adoption rate as I believe in the long run that would be detrimental to the competitiveness of the GPU market.

Likewise the issue isn't Mantle as a competitor to DirectX or any other API. Another entrant (this was already addressed in one my earlier posts) in the API market adds another competitor which is inherently better for it. The issue is the detrimental effect it would have on the hardware market if an API that is controlled by one of the competitors in that market was the standard. Either a third party (with no vested interest, eg. DirectX as currently is) or every hardware vendor having their own API is a better situation for the GPU the market in terms of competitiveness.
 
limitedaccess said:
Those aren't the points of contention though.

The issue isn't AMD developing and promoting the adoption of Mantle. The issue is whether or not other competing hardware makers should support this effort. I am against the idea that any competitor in a given market would actually function as a fair and neutral sole steward of what could potentially be a requisite standard (or quasi standard) in that market. As such I don't agree with the sentiment of supporting a movement for all hardware vendors to adopt Mantle (partly fueled by underdog bias, among other factors of bias) and speed its adoption rate as I believe in the long run that would be detrimental to the competitiveness of the GPU market.

Likewise the issue isn't Mantle as a competitor to DirectX or any other API. Another entrant (this was already addressed in one my earlier posts) in the API market adds another competitor which is inherently better for it. The issue is the detrimental effect it would have on the hardware market if an API that is controlled by one of the competitors in that market was the standard. Either a third party (with no vested interest, eg. DirectX as currently is) or every hardware vendor having their own API is a better situation for the GPU the market in terms of competitiveness.
Click to expand...

Says you. but I don't agree with any of it. You are just looking at all the negatives, and from a neutral point of view, from a very anti-AMD stance. As I said it's just business.

The other API you mentioned earlier has been around forever and has never made much progress against directx.

If AMD or Nvidia released an API that was universally adopted, why would it be so bad? In fact it makes more sense for one of these companies to develop an API. They are the big players in the gaming graphics industry, they are the ones approaching developers to see what they want. They are also the ones with the most to gain from an API that makes the most use of their hardware. My point is, I think those with a vested interested are the best ones to push a new API forward.

As for competitiveness, I am pretty sure if Nvidia (for example) developed the API and everyone else started using it, then there would be fairly hefty legal seals put on the deal. But it would be a PR disaster if they opened the API to others and then were found out to be gimping performance on other manufacturers hardware, imagine the legal ramifications!! No, The owner of the API would have to make damn sure that it worked the same on all hardware. Which would be a good thing.

No, I don't think it would be detrimental to the GPU market. Why would it? The best hardware will still be the best hardware.
 
reaper12 said:
If AMD or Nvidia released an API that was universally adopted, why would it be so bad? In fact it makes more sense for one of these companies to develop an API. They are the big players in the gaming graphics industry, they are the ones approaching developers to see what they want. They are also the ones with the most to gain from an API that makes the most use of their hardware. My point is, I think those with a vested interested are the best ones to push a new API forward.
Click to expand...

In all the talk there is a lot of whitewashing of the realities involved. I've seen high-profile developers blog about the woes of using a variety of extensions in OpenGL to target architecture-specific GPU features. Then on the other hand we supposedly have these developers begging for a "low-level bare-metal" API.

This is double-speak of course because it's the same concept. A "bare-metal" API necessarily requires different programming for different architectures if you want to maximize results. A good analogy here is CUDA. Obviously a CUDA program will run on both Fermi and Kepler, but you have to alter code based on architecture if you want to maximize performance on each.

So is this what developers are asking for? An API that is splintered across architectures? Because that is necessarily what a "low-level" API entails. Console developers can get away with this because they have one piece of target hardware on one platform.

When Mantle is opened up, what will it really mean? If Mantle is architecture-agnostic then you're not really getting a "low-level" API in the way it's being marketed. It's essentially the same as (core profile) OpenGL or Direct3D in that you have one overall target that covers all cases. But then you can't maximize performance this way. After all, Kepler supports bindless textures and Fermi doesn't.

But if Mantle is architecture-specific, then it will be "opened" initially as a GCN-centric API, and each vendor will have to implement a version for each of their architectures. That's exactly what "low-level" means. Is this what developers are asking for? A dozen versions of a single API?

Wouldn't it just be easier to use OpenGL + extensions?
 
Mantle is NOT a bare metal API.

it is lower level than DX but still requires abstraction which is why it can be agnostic.
 
The Mac said:
Mantle is NOT a bare metal API.

it is lower level than DX but still requires abstraction which is why it can be agnostic.
Click to expand...

Do we have specifics on where the abstraction ends and the low-level begins?

This kind of information is critical before we can judge whether it is better than D3D and OGL. And it would be premature to call for the jettisoning of previous industry standards in favor of Mantle without understanding these important details.
 
jwcalla said:
But if Mantle is architecture-specific, then it will be "opened" initially as a GCN-centric API, and each vendor will have to implement a version for each of their architectures. That's exactly what "low-level" means. Is this what developers are asking for? A dozen versions of a single API?

Wouldn't it just be easier to use OpenGL + extensions?
Click to expand...

The reason for this whole debate is a bit moot. Since DX12 is already prompted as being easy to port to Mantle and vice versa. Then the general argument about Mantle being hardcoded to GCN is moot

And DX12 will be supported by Nvidia and Intel ? So where is the big problem?

OpenGL never solved anything for anyone when you are still hitting that brick wall with cpu overhead and poor parallel processor usage beside not being low level.
 
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According to several developers OGL is a bigger mess than DX, which is why very few of them use it.
 
So basically we're all in agreement that there are no technical reasons for Mantle.
 
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