AMDs new features

[AWA669]

Will AMDs exclusive features (ie: dx 11.2 mantle) have a huge impact on games over the next few years ? I am asking because I can get a GTX 780 SC ACX for a pretty good price but I am worried I might end up with a card that might not support newer tech

 

[Mousemonkey]

Maybe, maybe not it's far too early to tell (unless you're a AMD fan of course!).

 

[Kari]

dx11.2 not so much...
Mantle on the other is interesting concept, but we won't really know how big impact it'll have on game performance till december when the BF4 mantle version is said to launch. But the AMD guys sure think it'll be bit of a game changer and that “with Battlefield 4 running with Mantle (AMD’s new graphics API), the card (R9 290x) will be able to ‘ridicule’ the Titan in terms of performance.”
http://www.maximumpc.com/amd_r9_290x_will_be_much_faster_titan_battlefield_4

 

[Mousemonkey]

Again, this is provided that you run the game using AMD's Mantle API, which is set to launch in December.

So without Mantle performance will be pants?

 

[Kari]

lol you sure know how to put negative spin on everything, depressed much??

 

[Mousemonkey]

lol you sure know how to put negative spin on everything, depressed much??

Actually I'm quite buoyed up by the fact that they need to resort to software shenanigans in order to level the playing field! :lol:

 

[Kari]

lol you sure know how to put negative spin on everything, depressed much??

Actually I'm quite buoyed up by the fact that they need to resort to software shenanigans in order to level the playing field! :lol:

yeah like nvidia did with their physx and cuda stuff, except this one might actually have positive impact on performance. black kettles and all that

If they've done it originally to be run on the consoles why dont port it over to pc if it makes things run faster than with dx and requires very little effort? everyone wins, well except nvidia...

 

[Mousemonkey]

lol you sure know how to put negative spin on everything, depressed much??

Actually I'm quite buoyed up by the fact that they need to resort to software shenanigans in order to level the playing field! :lol:

yeah like nvidia did with their physx and cuda stuff, except this one might actually have positive impact on performance. black kettles and all that

If they've done it originally to be run on the consoles why dont port it over to pc if it makes things run faster than with dx and requires very little effort? everyone wins, well except nvidia...

Will this feature be disabled for benchmarking so that hardware can tested in an "Apples to apples" type comparison in the same way that reviewers have been doing with PhysX over the last few years?

 

[Kari]

I'm not a reviewer?

 

[Mousemonkey]

I'm not a reviewer?

Neither am I but it's something to think about considering the fuss that gets kicked up about PhysX enabled titles.

 

[Kari]

I'm not a reviewer?

Neither am I but it's something to think about considering the fuss that gets kicked up about PhysX enabled titles.

But if non-GCN cards won't be able run mantle stuff at all (can they?), wouldn't that mean there should always be dx version of any mantle-enabled game available as well for every one else? So non-GCN cards wont get a perf penalty as such, rather just GCN cards gets a boost due to sharing the arch with the consoles...
And if it works well (like no show stopper bugs) I dont think anyone who has a GCN card is going to run the dx version... So I dont know, test them both?

Also what is this going to mean for future archs? Is AMD stuck with the GCN arch and derivatives for the next 10 years? lol so many questions and no answers. Damn those amd press events for teasing people like that.

 

[Mousemonkey]

I'm not a reviewer?

Neither am I but it's something to think about considering the fuss that gets kicked up about PhysX enabled titles.

But if non-GCN cards won't be able run mantle stuff at all (can they?), wouldn't that mean there should always be dx version of any mantle-enabled game available as well for every one else? So non-GCN cards wont get a perf penalty as such, rather just GCN cards gets a boost due to sharing the arch with the consoles...
And if it works well (like no show stopper bugs) I dont think anyone who has a GCN card is going to run the dx version... So I dont know, test them both?

Also what is this going to mean for future archs? Is AMD stuck with the GCN arch and derivatives for the next 10 years? lol so many questions and no answers. Damn those amd press events for teasing people like that.

Well I saw mention that it might be open source in which case it would be up to Nvidia to implement it into their own drivers but at the moment it looks like an AMD and GCN exclusive meaning that it's going to skew any benchmark results in AMD's favour in the games where its used. Much like PhysX.

 

[Kari]

I saw the open source part as well, but if it really is as low level as they make it sound like it won't do them much good since the hardware is different and doing some sort of emulation will kill the perf? (edit this would be true for older amd cards as well)

The skewing comes from a different angle though, like it is not making the others perform worse on absolute scale only the relative performance changes when compare to the gcn cards. Like without physx if it is 50 & 50fps and with physx it goes 45 & 20, then mantle might make it more like 50 & 70. well you get the point...

but yeah, only thing left do now is wait for those cards and bf4 to launch and get benched with and without mantle.