Maxwell or Mantle makes you more excited?

What laptop do you have? MSI GX?
You need unlocked BIOS to disable iGPU and then install drivers, possibly modded too. And here you get +4 fps or whatever.

 

A Samsung ultrabook with Radeon 8750M, so no option for bios modding. And even, I would not like to mess more than installing the proper driver.

 

Although not due to Mantle, here are some great improvements to dual graphics thanks to Catalyst 14.1 Beta.
AMD Kaveri Dual Graphics Benchmarked with Frame Pacing Fix - Very Impressive Results

 

Some interesting questions about Mantle answered: AMD Mantle Interview with Oxide Games' Dan Baker | Maximum PC

 

The most interesting part for me was this quote that I've cut & pasted from it:

"Baker: APIs come and go. Once you support more than one, it's pretty easy to support a dozen– assuming there is parity in the hardware features, and assuming you don't have to rewrite your shaders in an entirely different language. If you release a title right now, you would end up with likely six paths. An Xbox360, a PS3, a PS4, a Xbox One, a DX9, and a DX11. For us, the graphics system is just a module that talks to the API. All we did for Mantle was replace the D3D module with a Mantle one. It's about 3,000 to 4,000 lines of code for the Mantle version, which took me personally about two months to write. In terms of support, at least for us, it wasn't terribly difficult."

Sounds like supporting Mantle isn't that much of a big deal for developers, took one guy a couple of months of work. That's not so bad, I'd figured that it would drive up development costs and make the games more expensive - looks like that might not be quite the case. Although, I don't know how important the assumptions are that he talks about, in terms of how likely those assumptions are going to be.

 

I would imagine that if it was accounted for in the beginning of development it would end up being less of an issue since it was budgeted for in the first place. I would also imagine since it benefits AMD that they have developer support to ease integration.

 

AMD needs to publicly release the Mantle SDK so developers can get their hands on it. It'll probably be a while though since it seems Mantle is very much a beta and in need of polish ATM.

 

That may be part of the reason why Mantle hasn't been enabled on laptops, but I think AMD is letting the perfect be the enemy of the good and if I could change my vote I would change it to Maxwell. Wallet willing, I'll likely SLI Maxwell when they hit the top end mobile along with a Broadwell CPU.

 

AMD, where is your new gen of GPU hardware? Where is it?!

 

AMD are hoping that mantle will remove the need to bring out any new hardware.

Hardly heard any rumours about new architecture.

Sent from my One S running Kitkat

 

And just as I'd predicted, CryEngine is getting Mantle support.

Source: AnandTech Portal | GDC 2014: NVIDIA, AMD Announce New Game Dev Partnerships - Crytek, Epic, & More

 

This article talks about NVidia's response to Mantle:

NVIDIA Strikes Back; Announces GameWorks for Unreal Engine 4 & Titanfall | Hardware Canucks

Sounds like NVidia Gameworks could be a way of getting Nvidia optimisations in games. They give an example of Titanfall and an upcoming patch to enable HBAO+ for NVidia, however I can enable HBAO Quality Mode in the NVidia Driver with that game anyway, so I'm not really sure what the difference would be - maybe better optimisation do you reckon? Anyway, I think NVidia's new architecture Maxwell is more than a sufficient response for Mantle regardless. Good that Gameworks could mean better NVidia optimisations in the future though.

EDIT: just tried enabling HBAO+ through the driver in Titanfall for the first time. It works well, no fps lost (at max settings bar x4 MSAA), as max fps is locked at 60fps (although just found out some maps are below 60fps (35-50), so might just run it without HBAO+). Gonna keep that setting enabled. Don't really understand the importance of the upcoming NVidia Gamesworks patch in Titanfall if you can just enable it in the driver & it works well.

 

So? The last two GameWorks-enabled games haven't exactly been stellar. Enabling PhysX Particles in ACIV: Black Flag halves FPS even at Low on the beastliest multi-GPU desktop rigs. APEX Turbulence and Dynamic Fur in CoD: Ghosts? Same thing.

Anyway, GameWorks isn't even a response to something like Mantle. TressFX maybe, but not Mantle.

PhysX has been out for almost a decade, but it never really caught on. Why? Because of its proprietary nature and the fact that nobody really cares about devoting dev time and massive amounts of processing power to what is essentially an improved garbage and debris engine. This GameWorks stuff won't turn out any differently. Nvidia just took TWIMTBP (The Way It's Meant To Be Played™) and slapped on a new moniker.

 

Yeah, NVdia Gameworks does sound more like a marketing gimmick than a real concrete performance advantage, and it's not a specific technology like Mantle. Long live DX12! (I do like PhysX though, DX9 Batman Arkham City, Arkham Origins, Borderlands 2, it's implemented well in those titles. Haha, like the garbage engine comment - true that they do like to get the garbage fluttering about in PhysX!)

 

My excitement has switched back to Maxwell, especially after the DX12 announcement

 

Both have equal interest for me because on one end, Nvidia seems to be releasing a new architecture that's much more energy efficient, not to mention faster, while AMD is focusing on the software end of things to bring in more performance and also reduce the CPU usage as well.
Mantle is still in its early stages, but it would appear that it's producing intriguing results regardless.
We have yet to see actual performance gains from Maxwell - although in honesty, I would like to see AMD releasing a new architecture themselves. Something akin to Maxwell, but GCN based... maybe GCN 3?

 

I just tried again with the newest 14.3 Beta V1.0 Driver, but mantle is still not working with mobile switchable graphics. I do not even care anymore, just want a fast benchmark.

 

But the thing is, you can already enjoy Mantle-enabled titles today if you have the hardware. But DX12 games won't hit the market until the end of 2015 (or so they say), but given the historically slow pace of adoption of a new API by game devs (just look at how many are still taking their sweet time shifting over to DX11), realistically that's more like 2016 or 2017. By that time, Nvidia's post-Maxwell uarch Volta will already be on the market.

To give you some perspective, DX10 came out in 2007 with Windows Vista but never gained traction before it was superseded by DX11. Most studios simply stuck with DX9, ignoring DX10 altogether, until DX11 came out. DX11 was released in 2009 alongside Windows 7 but it didn't become mainstream until 2012. BF3 (tail end of 2011) was the DX11 killer app and pretty much singlehandedly drove adoption of the new API among gamers purchasing new DX11-class GPU's and competing developers.

Since DX10 and DX11 are pretty much on feature level parity save for CS and tessellation (DX10 was supposed to be the monumental API change but it didn't actually happen until DX11), it basically took 5 whole years (2007-2012) for most of the game industry to transition from DX9. And of course there are still stragglers *ahem* PlanetSide 2 *cough*

Now I know both DX10 and DX11 uptake were held back by the previous-gen consoles. And in the case of DX10, by Vista's perceived suckiness/lack of market share and initial performance issues compared to DX9. With Xbox One supporting DX12, hopefully adoption will be much quicker compared to historical trends. But given the modern AAA game dev cycle and whatnot, realistically it's gonna be at least 2-3 years from now before DX12 games show up in the mainstream. This is a point I've made many times before, call me a pessimist. That's a long, long ways off and it leaves Mantle as the sole means of achieving that CTM/console-like performance and control in PC games as well as more time for it to gain headway among consumers and devolopers. The Internet started ringing the death knell for Mantle as soon as DX12 was announced, but I don't think that's necessarily the case here (yet). And it doesn't really matter which API "wins" in the long run because we as gamers all win. Plus if it weren't for Mantle, DX12 and all this hoopla surrounding it wouldn't even be a thing.

 

Even if Mantle doesn't work yet on mobile (which is odd to say the least - doesn't make too much sense honestly), the 14.1 driver fixed a lot of the frame pacing issues, and hopefully 14.3 Beta drivers incorporate this.
Highly recommended to have apparently.
Have you tested those drivers?

 

Pff, DX12 vs Mantle? Haha, so funny.
With microsoft trying to hard-lock its DX releases to releases of Windows, we're talking 2 years minimum until we see anything from Microsoft to allow low-level hardware access. Not gonna happen.

 

So people think DX graphics API adoption is painfully slow? Look at all those "highly advanced state-of-the-art" OpenGL 1.5 apps.

 

Yeah the pace of adoption and evolution of OpenGL has been even worse than D3D in recent years, plus it's not really relevant to PC gaming anymore, although that may change in the near future.

 

I'm so sick of rigid corporate and marketing structures hindering progress. I would give my money to the company that doesn't play by the rules!

Sent from my One S running Kitkat

 

Thought you guys might be interested in this article I found at Guru3D this morning:
NVIDIAs TBA DX11 Driver will be better than Mantle

NVidia will be releasing a driver update that seemingly massively increases the efficiencies of it's GPU's (see the "Continuous API Efficiency Improvement" Graph), and the article poses the idea that with driver updates like these NVidia doesn't need a Mantle style driver if it can increase efficiencies to such a degree on the current DX11. Now, I don't fully understand the significance of all of the efficiencies they refer to in the various graphs, but it does look promising. What do you guys think? I wonder when that driver will be coming out?

(Maxwell & now this, things seem to be just looking too rosy for NVidia for my liking!)

 

What is most exciting?

- A new architecture that makes the GPUs much more efficient and powerful that works across all APIs and all games.
- A new API that give you 5-10% more FPS on the systems that doesnt have a crappy CPU.

If this poll isnt proof that people are easily influenced by hype and marketing, I dont know what.

Mantle is good for GX notebooks with crappy APU and maybe online gaming with GTX 880M SLI on servers with 64 players. Even there I`m not sure we will see much gains. Mobile CPUs are extremely overpowered for the GPUs we use in our notebooks.

 

Very interesting. Thanks robbo.
That driver seems to be able to tweak DX with drivers. Sort of.
Almost looks to be good to be true though. I want to see real test before I believe this.
But Nvidia should have kudos for sticking with DX and working with Microsoft on getting a better DX version out instead of making a complete new API that is locked down on one brand`s hardware.
People think Mantle was made to make software more efficient for gamers, but it was more likely made to market AMD GPUs.

 

I think it's funny that the same people who criticized Mantle for being 'unproven' have nothing but good things to say for DX12, which has no repeatable benchmarks and won't be released for another year and a half. Quite a double standard.

 

There is a BIG difference between how Microsoft presented DirectX and how AMD teased Mantle.
One presents factual evidence based on a real run, the other one was just hyping it up without showing anything.

Microsoft:

DX11

vs
DX12



AMD:




One is trying to rebuild their API without comparing against a competitor , while the other one is making vague marketing slides and matching it against the competitor.
Mantle was nothing but an attempt to sell more AMD GPUs. DICE wanted a more to the metal API, AMD saw marketing possibilities in this and jumped onboard to make it. Of course AMD officially supports DX after Microsoft presented it, or else it would hurt their reputation and show their true disappointment that Microsoft ruined their plans. I don`t think they thought a major DX update was this close.

 

First slide. Comparison on 2 separate games of 2 DIFFERENT GPUs.
Lets take a game Thief and all we see is a fps difference on certain GPU +4% R335 vs R331 and 11% RNEW vs R331. As Veronica Mars said once in this old show "Wooo! Its graphics! And it's colored! That must be truth"
LOL. In this case you need to say "That must mean smth ". I will go back 1.5 year and take driver overview where Stalker COP was like +50% on certain GPU and create super beautiful graphic. Will that mean that Nvidia already knew about Mantle plans of AMD and at that time already gave counter attack or all this is bullXXXX?))

Second slide: was that comparison made to a R290X on DX or on Mantle? Nobody really knows. While author acts like it was clearly compared to a Mantle results vs DirectX on Nvidia results.

Third slide is TOTAL CR@P. For all time I remember myself GPU was GPU and CPU was CPU. CPU ALWAYS was a 1 core or couple but highly clocked while GPU was a bunch of smaller little cores clocked lower. That is how GPU works and CPU. Nothing has changed for tenth of years so why the h@ck did they show those graphic? Answer is because it is beautiful. And it was meant for XXXXXXes who understands zero and just reads some sold articles.

 

Wow man, I didn't really understand all that, but I think you need to calm down a little, I only posted a link to an article I thought was interesting! ;-) Maybe if you didn't rant so much in your post I would have wanted to have read it more than once to try & understand what you were talking about!

 

I would love to be excited about maxwell, but my wallet tells me to be excited about mantle, and eventually the new DX releases.

 

Yep Nvidia is never cheap.

 

Calm down guys. NV vs AMD forum war is enough. Let's not get into MS vs AMD.

 

Looks like that new NVidia driver that I talked about (as a rival to Mantle) is going to be released in April sometime according to Toms Hardware:
Nvidia Boasts New Driver Surpasses AMD's Mantle in Games

Also some new info about the driver that I haven't seen in other reports. NVidia have admitted that minimum frames per second are still lower than Mantle in some instances, but their average frame rate has improved - NVidia are said to be still working on those minimum frame rates.

 

I wonder how nvidia is doing this if DX is at the root of the inefficiency due to draw calls. I wonder how they are essentially working around DX. It seems like it would just speak to a gross inefficiency in their drivers, not DX.

 

Yeah, that's a good question, it does seem strange how an inefficient supposed bottleneck like DX11 could be worked around, when the driver still has to communicate through that passage.

 

Also don't forget that Mantle shows it's best on slow CPUs while Nvidia tells that it gets performance boost on an I7 CPU. So Nvidia is definitely not fixing that exact problems of DX11 which AMD is trying to fix by Mantle. Nvidia is just optimizing its drivers as usual.

 

Do we have any more info on anymore Maxwell mobile GPUs? Gtx 870mx?

Sent from my One S running Kitkat

 

You might want to keep an eye on this thread, although it can get off topic once in a while!

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...s-about-nvidia-s-maxwell-154.html#post9614986

 

Haha you mean all the time it's off topic as we speak

 

Very true! I think it's because it's a quiet spell at the moment with what's happening with Maxwell, so people just getting bored and talking about other stuff until more new details surface about Maxwell.

 

AMD took the lead on the poll. I chose Maxwell, but I think I am more interested to see what AMD brings to the table.

 

The world's first quad core GPU! 4 Hawaii GPUs cooled by a portable fridge!

Sent from my One S running Kitkat

 

Firaxis jumps the Mantle ship. Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth will support Mantle.

Sid Meier's Massively Anticipated Reboot ' Beyond Earth' will Come with Mantle API

Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth Supports AMD Mantle

 

Civ huh? Now that's a game which would benefit greatly from reduced CPU overhead.