Fresh off the GPU14 event/livestream, I thought it would be a good idea to create a thread dedicated to AMD's MANTLE.
What we know:
- MANTLE is a low level API for the GCN architecture. Its main goal is to bring "that robust Console-like performance to the PC" (in the words of DICE's Johan Andersson).
- Is being built by AMD in close collaboration with DICE/EA
- Battlefield 4 will be the 1st game to use MANTLE, not out of the box, will receive free update around late December.
- Lots of focus on CPU performance (small batch problem non existent, low overhead, perfect parallelism, etc).
- Highly optimized GPU usage (full access to hardware capabilities, lots of low level optimizations, new rendering techniques).
- Early Hardware & Software requirements:
CPU: Any modern CPU.
GPU: GCN card (HD 7000 series and up)
OS: Windows 7 or Windows 8
Mantle enabled game of course.
What we don't know:
- The big elephant in the room: Solid performance numbers, while everything we know about Mantle right now sounds like a clear upgrade over Direct3D and OpenGL, we still have no idea how this will play out. I could see it going in a couple of ways:
* The completely over the top/optimistic scenario: Mantle will increase performance way past our expectations, something unlike anything we've seen before.
* The more realistic one: Mantle will bring that console like robustness in performance closing the gap between min FPS and max FPS making Mantle enabled games much more enjoyable. Performance increases in the ~15% range.
* Worst case scenario: Mantle completely flops, performance increases in the single digits, maybe some stability issues?, etc etc.
- Will AMD really let NVIDIA/Intel use it?, while they've said over and over again that Mantle has the necessary abstraction/high level stuff built in into it for easier compatibility with other vendors, politics will play a big role here according to Johan Andersson, he's already come out saying that AMD + DICE will have important meetings over the month or so to discuss Mantle's real future.
What we know:
- MANTLE is a low level API for the GCN architecture. Its main goal is to bring "that robust Console-like performance to the PC" (in the words of DICE's Johan Andersson).
- Is being built by AMD in close collaboration with DICE/EA
- Battlefield 4 will be the 1st game to use MANTLE, not out of the box, will receive free update around late December.
- Lots of focus on CPU performance (small batch problem non existent, low overhead, perfect parallelism, etc).
- Highly optimized GPU usage (full access to hardware capabilities, lots of low level optimizations, new rendering techniques).
- Early Hardware & Software requirements:
CPU: Any modern CPU.
GPU: GCN card (HD 7000 series and up)
OS: Windows 7 or Windows 8
Mantle enabled game of course.
What we don't know:
- The big elephant in the room: Solid performance numbers, while everything we know about Mantle right now sounds like a clear upgrade over Direct3D and OpenGL, we still have no idea how this will play out. I could see it going in a couple of ways:
* The completely over the top/optimistic scenario: Mantle will increase performance way past our expectations, something unlike anything we've seen before.
* The more realistic one: Mantle will bring that console like robustness in performance closing the gap between min FPS and max FPS making Mantle enabled games much more enjoyable. Performance increases in the ~15% range.
* Worst case scenario: Mantle completely flops, performance increases in the single digits, maybe some stability issues?, etc etc.
- Will AMD really let NVIDIA/Intel use it?, while they've said over and over again that Mantle has the necessary abstraction/high level stuff built in into it for easier compatibility with other vendors, politics will play a big role here according to Johan Andersson, he's already come out saying that AMD + DICE will have important meetings over the month or so to discuss Mantle's real future.