Anandtech reviews DirectX 12 (Star Swarm)

[Opcode]

Any proof of this?

Check AMD's official blogs as that's enough "proof" you will get without an inside source.

 

 

Well, I'll give you an idea. First he claimed AMD helped Microsoft out, later on he claimed Nvidia stole Mantle code during DX12 collaboration (I told him before D3D12 was dev'ed together with all partners Intel/AMD/Nvidia). http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/277275-will-amd-make-a-comeback-against-intel-once-dx12-comes-out-and-mainstream-developers-kill-support-for-4-cores/page-3#entry3779237

I asked him for a source, "my own sources". 

 

 

D3D9 which was developed for the first xbox in 1999 was low-level, so I don't see how Mantle which hasn't even reached a console yet would be lower than D3D12. It's not even proven that Mantle is lower than D3D9/10/11. Also if you would consider yourself somewhat real, Microsoft isn't going to beg AMD's help if their so overhyped API (AMD begged/paid devs to use it) isn't even performing properly better or even worse struggling fixing their dx drivers. Who knows what Mantle is, maybe it's just the game reporting Mantle instead of DX11 with the right driver overhead fixes.

"Anandtech speculates that AMD’s new Mantle API might be a direct copy of Xbox One’s low level Graphics API. Even though AMD hasn’t confirmed it yet, all the signs point to this being true."

 Digital Foundry issues the exact opposite statement. According to Digital Foundry, the Mantle API appears to have much in common with PS4′s GNM API. Digital Foundry also says that their is a promise of 9x increase in draw calls from CPU, which are expensive to process but can benefit greatly from this API on PC. AMD can perhaps clarify whether Anandtech is correct or Digital Foundry.

http://gearnuke.com/rumor-amds-mantle-api-direct-copy-xbox-ones-low-level-api/

 

AMD did help Microsoft out in collaborating on DirectX 12 by opening Mantle up to them. I don't even need to dig up sources for that as it's posted all over AMD's official blog. Microsoft is not a hardware manufacture nor are they any good when it comes to working with hardware. DirectX has been a high level API for an extremely long time now because Microsoft lacks the innate ability to bring it down to a low level securely.

 

The rumor of Nvidia snagging some of Mantle code is rumor. Something that we cannot confirm whether it was that or them threading out their driver model. In which I explained in the post you've linked so thanks for helping me keep me from explaining the rumor here as well. Tho that in no way relates to the subject being discussed at hand.

 

As for the rest of your post I won't even bother commenting on as that's your own collaboration to this thread (e.g. not in reference to me). If you got more questions hit me with them. Tho if you wan't to turn this into another you're right I'm wrong argument that carries on for several pages I don't mind.

[Faa]

 

DirectX has been a high level API for an extremely long time now because Microsoft lacks the innate ability to bring it down to a low level securely.

Nope, D3D8 IS a low-level API.

"Windows supports DirectX 8.0, which enhances the multimedia capabilities of your computer. DirectX provides access to the capabilities of your display and audio cards, which enables programs to provide realistic three-dimensional (3-D) graphics and immersive music and audio effects. DirectX is a set of low-level Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that provides Windows programs with high-performance hardware-accelerated multimedia support."

https://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/what_is_directx.mspx?mfr=true

You're lying to favour Mantle here, someone with your brains is more than capable of googling D3D being high or low-level rather than looking at AMD's nice PR pictures taking them as a fact.

 

As for the rest of your post I won't even bother commenting on as that's your own collaboration to this thread (e.g. not in reference to me). If you got more questions hit me with them. Tho if you wan't to turn this into another you're right I'm wrong argument that carries on for several pages I don't mind.

We're asking for a proof which you can't provide therefore you're wrong, I can tell you to look at Nvidia's official blogs as proof to counter you >.>
 

[Faa]

Any proof?

 

The DX12 demonstration at last year's GDC was hilarious though.

No point you're asking for a proof. Mantle was announced in November orsomething and DX12 was demonstrated in february, do you really think MS will manage making a completely new API in 2 months time?

The day after the D3D12 keynote, I got on the phone with Tony Tamasi, Nvidia's Senior VP of Content and Technology. Tamasi painted a rather different picture than Corpus. He told me D3D12 had been in in the works for "more than three years" (longer than Mantle) and that "everyone" had been involved in its development. As he pointed out, people from AMD, Nvidia, Intel, and even Qualcomm stood on stage at the D3D12 reveal keynote. Those four companies' logos are also featured prominently on the current landing page for the official DirectX blog:

http://techreport.com/review/26239/a-closer-look-at-directx-12

[Mew]

Faa, on 06 Feb 2015 - 5:51 PM, said:

Their DX11 results are completely off, I get 60 fps there with my 970

Are you running the RTS test at extreme or just the default test?

 

Edit: Just ran it with the settings that Anandtech used. I'm on Windows 8.1 with Catalyst Omega. With directx11, I average 9.21 fps with average batches/ms at 943.82. With mantle, I average 30.25 fps with average batches/ms at 7314.24. My results seem pretty much in line with the r9 285, I have turbo disabled on my i5, so I'm running at 3.5ghz instead of their 3.8ghz and my 7950 oced to 1ghz core.

[Victorious Secret]

No point you're asking for a proof. Mantle was announced in November orsomething and DX12 was demonstrated in february, do you really think MS will manage making a completely new API in 2 months time?

The day after the D3D12 keynote, I got on the phone with Tony Tamasi, Nvidia's Senior VP of Content and Technology. Tamasi painted a rather different picture than Corpus. He told me D3D12 had been in in the works for "more than three years" (longer than Mantle) and that "everyone" had been involved in its development. As he pointed out, people from AMD, Nvidia, Intel, and even Qualcomm stood on stage at the D3D12 reveal keynote. Those four companies' logos are also featured prominently on the current landing page for the official DirectX blog:

http://techreport.com/review/26239/a-closer-look-at-directx-12

 

People find it too hard to believe that AMD might have seen what DX12 was offering and made Mantle on their own at the same time, cause that is more likely than "Nvidia, Intel, AMD AND MS copied from Mantle within a few years to make it to market"

Ugh. Fanboys on either side. DX12 is a industry wide collaboration that will outlive Mantle by a large margin precisely because all the big boys are so heavily invested in its success. But hey, lets make this another "AMD IS BEST LOL" and somehow try and convince people that MS scrapped whatever DX12 was before when the public saw Mantle. Yea, thats what happened. 

[Linus_torvalds]

will HD 7970 support DX12?

[Humbug]

will HD 7970 support DX12?

probably. A 7970 is based on GCN architecture, like xbox one which is getting dx12. There may be a couple of features that require new hardware but that prob won't be a big deal. You will get the performance and multithreading benefits.

[mr moose]

Guys, this discussion has been done to death, every thread gets inundated with links to official blogs and quotes from all the DX developers/partners yet for some reason people still want to believe dx12 is mantle and to date the only evidence provided is hearsay and links to insinuations from game devs.

 

Enough!  If some sort of irrefutable proof comes out that dx12 is mantle or was written after mantle I'll eat my hat and half my wardrobe, because on the balance of available evidence it didn't.

[Sauron]

To me that seems like a game that was very poorly optimized for AMD... 9 fps on an R9 290x is unacceptable...

[NeatSquidYT]

If DX12 is as good as the graph shows, I'm hyped.

[mr moose]

Well right now we got irrefutable proof that an API having been claimed to be in the works for many years, still isn't able to beat Mantle which made it to market over a year ago.

 

And I'm not even concerned about who copied whos API.

 

It baffles me as to why anyone would jump to the defense of MS given how they evidently do jack shit for gaming on PC.

 

And conversely why would anyone jump to conclusions to hang shit on them?   Answer: It's fashionable to hate on anyone who has a better product than AMD (even if it isn't better). 

[Sauron]

Well right now we got irrefutable proof that an API having been claimed to be in the works for many years, still isn't able to beat Mantle which made it to market over a year ago.

 

And I'm not even concerned about who copied whos API.

 

It baffles me as to why anyone would jump to the defense of MS given how they evidently do jack shit for gaming on PC.

 

I don't know, it seems to me tht game was specifically optimized to run like crap on dx11 and optimized better for nvidia cards, hence why mantle works better when available.

[bogus]

Microsoft had to do a lot of ass kissing with AMD to make use of Mantle to get their API safely down to a lower level.

Honstly I don't think there was that much ass kissing because they offered AMD the DX12 features, so it was more of a trade - a smart trade by both partys. If work was already done, why not exchange it? Khronos still got the best deal of them all since they had to give nothing to AMD

Now if you ask me, wich one brought more value to the table? Oh that's a easy one - it was Mantle. Hell all of the DX12 selling points is all the Mantle features

Even last week some people got pumped up about the new usage for multi gpu for alternate rendering on DX12... when that was yet another old feature from Mantle

They literally copied alot of a stuff, and that's fine since Mantle is getting proprietary DX12 features. But I still think the line between dedicated API and generic API will still show, and it's already showing.

[bogus]

People find it too hard to believe that AMD might have seen what DX12 was offering and made Mantle on their own at the same time, cause that is more likely than "Nvidia, Intel, AMD AND MS copied from Mantle within a few years to make it to market"

Ugh. Fanboys on either side. DX12 is a industry wide collaboration that will outlive Mantle by a large margin precisely because all the big boys are so heavily invested in its success. But hey, lets make this another "AMD IS BEST LOL" and somehow try and convince people that MS scrapped whatever DX12 was before when the public saw Mantle. Yea, thats what happened. 

Oh sure, because in the fairy tales world you copy the shit out of eachothers IP, and you manage to develop it and release it first to the market with alot of game developers supporting and developing it, and you still have AMD people coming out to the public claiming, several times, that Microsoft asked AMD to get Mantle features and in trade Mantle is getting DX12 proprietary features, and you get Intel (one of the DX12 developers) publicly claiming they asked to access Mantle, and AMD still gives their IP (wich by your lol logic is DX12 features) for Khronos to use it for free - all without a single lawsuit ... RIGHT! LOOOL

Not to mention the fact that the technical presentation of DX12 in GDC14 was literally made by AMD, Frostbite and Oxide - when all NVIDIA and Microsoft did was to be in the stage running a terribly version of Forza on the PC @1080p with ridiculous framerates, in a fucking Titan.

The fanboy in you is so strong your logic flushes down the drain

Wake up dude, DX12 is using Mantle features and that's fine. Stop being a butthurt fanboy because AMD actually pushed the industry forward and made such a great work they were asked to share their work for other APIs. Nothing wrong here. You just need to deal with it.

NVIDIA claiming dX12 was in the works for 4 years doesn't invalidate none of the Mantle work or features - in fact it shows how desperate they were to try to be relevant in this next gen of APIs. DX12 has more features besides what they are getting from Mantle, such features could be in the work for 10 years for all we care - what matters is that the features from Mantle are being used by DX12 and Mantle is getting DX12 features (the ones NVIDIA claimed to be in the work for 4 years).

[Opcode]

 

 

Nope, D3D8 IS a low-level API.

"Windows supports DirectX 8.0, which enhances the multimedia capabilities of your computer. DirectX provides access to the capabilities of your display and audio cards, which enables programs to provide realistic three-dimensional (3-D) graphics and immersive music and audio effects. DirectX is a set of low-level Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that provides Windows programs with high-performance hardware-accelerated multimedia support."

https://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/what_is_directx.mspx?mfr=true

You're lying to favour Mantle here, someone with your brains is more than capable of googling D3D being high or low-level rather than looking at AMD's nice PR pictures taking them as a fact.

 

We're asking for a proof which you can't provide therefore you're wrong, I can tell you to look at Nvidia's official blogs as proof to counter you >.>

 

 

If you care to explain as to why Microsoft went from a low level API to a high level API (we all know DirectX was low level at one point) then I think you'll come to find out that everything you spew is just nonsense. It'll take you days to answer this one question and you'll still be wrong. Manipulating people by pushing subject matter that's not directly relevant to the subject at hand doesn't make you any more right. Just like DirectX was low level at one point doesn't mean it was done right. Also it's printed clear as day on AMD's official blogs that they opened up Mantle to Microsoft as collaboration on DirectX 12. I don't wish to provide a link because I like making people learn how to dig up sources themselves (it's there).

[deathjester]

Will wait for release benchmarks. Even the article says to take the benchmarks with a grain of salt. MS showed their initial Forza reveal at last GDC with an Nvidia card. AMD might have been late to the party on DX 12 since they were working on their own API and are heavily involved with the next OpenGL.

 

It is like what a year before this releases? I remember MS said the first DX 12 game would arrive Holiday 2015 (unless that has changed).

 

When that game comes out? I will care. Wish it was Tomb Raider, but will probably be something I could care less about.  Also the Xbox uses a GCN AMD GPU. Highly doubt AMD is going to get screwed on this API, and if it does, something FUBAR is going on. 

[Faa]

Are you running the RTS test at extreme or just the default test?

 

Edit: Just ran it with the settings that Anandtech used. I'm on Windows 8.1 with Catalyst Omega. With directx11, I average 9.21 fps with average batches/ms at 943.82. With mantle, I average 30.25 fps with average batches/ms at 7314.24. My results seem pretty much in line with the r9 285, I have turbo disabled on my i5, so I'm running at 3.5ghz instead of their 3.8ghz and my 7950 oced to 1ghz core.

 

With a less powerful GPU and a CPU that's a bit slower (4960x at 4.2GHz has better singlethreaded performance than a 4770K at stock) they're scoring much better than Anandtech is doing with a 980.

This for Battlefield 4;

 

 

If you care to explain as to why Microsoft went from a low level API to a high level API (we all know DirectX was low level at one point) then I think you'll come to find out that everything you spew is just nonsense.

They went from a high-level API to a low-level API 15 years ago. Proof was up, no point you're trying to straw man this.

 

I don't know, it seems to me tht game was specifically optimized to run like crap on dx11 and optimized better for nvidia cards, hence why mantle works better when available.

Star Swarm is an API/CPU overhead benchmark that was originally developed to showoff Mantle's main purpose being cutting CPU bottlenecks. The reason why their DX11 performance is lacking by a long shot is because their drivers cause such a huge amount of overhead on the CPU which could obviously limit the GPU. This issue is known for almost a year, AMD hasn't even bothered fixing it and Anandtech's new article just freaking proves my point. Their DX12 performance compared to Nvidia is also abnormally lacking.

http://pclab.pl/art57235-3.html

 

 

Will wait for release benchmarks. AMD might have been late to the party on DX 12 since they were working on their own API and are heavily involved with the next OpenGL.

DX11 benchmarks are out lol, their DX11 performance is completely shit compared to Nvidia and it won't be any different with DX12 until AMD fixes their shit.

 

 

Oh sure, because in the fairy tales world you copy the shit out of eachothers IP, and you manage to develop it and release it first to the market with alot of game developers supporting and developing it, and you still have AMD people coming out to the public claiming, several times, that Microsoft asked AMD to get Mantle features and in trade Mantle is getting DX12 proprietary features, and you get Intel (one of the DX12 developers) publicly claiming they asked to access Mantle, and AMD still gives their IP (wich by your lol logic is DX12 features) for Khronos to use it for free - all without a single lawsuit ... RIGHT! LOOOL

Not to mention the fact that the technical presentation of DX12 in GDC14 was literally made by AMD, Frostbite and Oxide - when all NVIDIA and Microsoft did was to be in the stage running a terribly version of Forza on the PC @1080p with ridiculous framerates, in a fucking Titan.

The fanboy in you is so strong your logic flushes down the drain

Wake up dude, DX12 is using Mantle features and that's fine. Stop being a butthurt fanboy because AMD actually pushed the industry forward and made such a great work they were asked to share their work for other APIs. Nothing wrong here. You just need to deal with it.

NVIDIA claiming dX12 was in the works for 4 years doesn't invalidate none of the Mantle work or features - in fact it shows how desperate they were to try to be relevant in this next gen of APIs. DX12 has more features besides what they are getting from Mantle, such features could be in the work for 10 years for all we care - what matters is that the features from Mantle are being used by DX12 and Mantle is getting DX12 features (the ones NVIDIA claimed to be in the work for 4 years).

Which mantle features? Being low-level? D3D8 which is 15 years old orsomething is a low-level API as I proved earlier. What else cutting CPU overhead? If you really think AMD is the only company that's trying to cut CPU overhead then you're being ignorant, every fucking game developer is trying cutting CPU overhead. Don't pretend like its AMD's idea, that's totally delusional. Nvidia has been doing this for OpenGL in 2009 with things like blindless resources; http://developer.download.nvidia.com/opengl/tutorials/bindless_graphics.pdf

Perfect 8 core parallel rendering haha. Let's look at what processexplorer has to say on a 8350 with Mantle (290x) that shows how many threads inside the game's process are and how much CPU they use (each thread can only use 100/8=12.5% because you know each thread can only run at one core at a time);

8-way multithreaded with 5 threads yolo, let alone it's in parallel >.> AMD is outright lying here. 

Give me a reason why MS would implement a feature that doesnt exist in Mantle for their new API? They're trying to implement the fairy tale AMD promised in DX12, for AMD it was an idea and for MS it's a feature. According to Anandtech rumouring Mantle being a straight copy of the Xbox one's low-level API sounds a lot more real than Microsoft begging AMD's help for DX12.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7371/understanding-amds-mantle-a-lowlevel-graphics-api-for-gcn

Why would they need their help for the twelfth version?

Calling people a fanboy is plain silly when you're the one here arguing on the level of the average youtuber having zero proof other than what BS Richard Huddy offers who's usually raging at Nvidia. You should stop drinking kool-Aid from AMD, seems like you totally got fooled by their marketing to a point you're expressing it now by being completely denial.

[Opcode]

They went from a high-level API to a low-level API 15 years ago. Proof was up, no point you're trying to straw man this.

You're completely out of the loop as to why the DirectX API hasn't been low level for so many years. You seem to be so anti-AMD that you're willing to make yourself look a fool over it. You still have yet to answer my question and I doubt you ever will showing your knowledge in this area being about extensive as a broken measuring tape.

[Faa]

You're completely out of the loop as to why the DirectX API hasn't been low level for so many years. You seem to be so anti-AMD that you're willing to make yourself look a fool over it. You still have yet to answer my question and I doubt you ever will showing your knowledge in this area being about extensive as a broken measuring tape.

I gave you a link from Microsoft's own website stating D3D8 to be a low-level API, feel free to go against it you'll be seen as a troll. I'm not anti-AMD, I'm anti-phishing. Look at yourself, you're outright lying about DX to bum Mantle, coming up with claims from your own sources Nvidia stole Mantle code or even better Microsoft needed AMD's help badly for DX12.

We all know your rig is sponsored by AMD, stop astroturfing please. If you're a developer, sorry but you have jack shit understanding of how development of an API works. 

[Humbug]

Yep it's clear from the anandtech article that in draw call limited scenerios AMD's DirectX 11 driver is quicker to CPU bottleneck than Nvidia's. However that doesn't chance the fact that the new generation of APIs like Mantle/DirectX12 are way more multithreaded and CPU optimized than any Direct X 11 implementation including Nvidia's. So it does show the value of these new APIs.

 

A quote from the Anandtech article

Under DirectX 11 the bulk of Star Swarm’s batch submission work happens under a single thread, and as a result the benchmark is effectively bottlenecked by single-threaded performance, unable to scale out with multiple CPU cores. This is one of the issues DirectX 12 sets out to resolve, with the low-level API allowing Oxide to more directly control how work is submitted, and as such better balance it over multiple CPU cores.

 

 

Yes the above is an edge case scenario with over 100,000 draw calls per frame. But it does demonstrate that even on an overclocked i7 4960X the Nvidia drivers becomes CPU limited much more easily in DirectX 11. The Nvidia DirectX 12 driver was entirely GPU limited, only becoming CPU limited when you went down to 2 cores, and even at that configuration the 980 was able to pump out double the framerate of DX11.

 

In real world applications we are going to see a plethora of different bottlenecks/complications so obviously you will not see gains of the same magnitiude. However devs seem to agree that achieving this kind of CPU load distribution was much much more difficult if not impossible using the old graphics APIs. So this is an important step forward for the industry.

 

The fact that some of you are not currently CPU limited in most games that you play does not mean that it's not important. Good optimization means doing things in the most efficient manner at every stage of the process, regardless of whether or not you can brute force it. Not to mention freeing up CPU resources means that devs can use that CPU power for other sub systems such as AI, for example think about the number of RTS and MMO games which get CPU limited so easily today as the number of units ramp up even on powerful Intel CPUs. An API which can render the same scene with less CPU time is clearly an example of superior engineering. It's clearly doing something right.

 

If DX12 and OpenGL Next can do this it is good for everyone. GPUs are becoming faster and faster at a great pace, it doesn't show any signs of slowing down. On the other hand single core CPU performance seem to have stagnated over the last 4 years both from Intel and AMD. What this trend means is that CPU bottlenecks are going to become more and more significant if we continue to do things using legacy techniques.

 

Try to look beyond how many frames per second more you can get today in BF4 and think about the industry direction...

[Altecice]

Jesus the Nvidia fanboyism is strong in this thread... Its odd to me that in DX12 the 900 series from Nvidia almost use as much wattage as a 290? I thought Maxwell was power efficient? Im glad mantle is doing well but imo it was only to make Microsoft move there ass and produce DX12 so yeah maybe it wont get as far as DX12 but we can at least be thankful it gave speed to Microsoft in making DX12.

[Faa]

Yep it's clear from the anandtech article that in draw call limited scenerios AMD's DirectX 11 driver is quicker to CPU bottleneck than Nvidia's. However that doesn't chance the fact that the new generation of APIs like Mantle/DirectX12 are way more multithreaded and CPU optimized than any Direct X 11 implementation including Nvidia's. So it does show the value of these new APIs.

What are you talking about? Nvidia's DX11 has far more drawcalls than AMD's DX11 and Nvidia's DX12 is 3 times the calls of Mantle;

 

 

Yes the above is an edge case scenario with over 100,000 draw calls per frame. But it does demonstrate that even on an overclocked i7 4960X the Nvidia drivers becomes CPU limited much more easily in DirectX 11. The Nvidia DirectX 12 driver was entirely GPU limited, only becoming CPU limited when you went down to 2 cores, and even at that configuration the 980 was able to pump out double the framerate of DX11.

In RTS mode you never can be GPU limited unless you have a CPU with 20x more IPC /facepalm.

[Humbug]

What are you talking about? Nvidia's DX11 has far more drawcalls than AMD's DX11

Yes that's what I said. See

AMD's DirectX 11 driver is quicker to CPU bottleneck than Nvidia's

 

I am not disputing the effeciency of Nvidia's DX11 implementation within the world of DX11. But despite that AMD's Mantle implementation as well as both Nvidia and AMD's DX12 implementations are clearly more effecient still. This shows the value of the new generation of APIs over any implementation of Direct X 11.

 

In RTS mode you never can be GPU limited unless you have a CPU with 20x more IPC /facepalm

In that case it's a question of where you get CPU bottlenecked. Would you rather be CPU bottlenecked at 30fps or at 60fps? You will always be bottlenecked somewhere, but you want that to happen at an acceptable performance point. A more effecient API can move the point at which that CPU bottleneck occurs, that's very valuable.

[Mainfold]

How to really test DX12? ArmA 3, max draw distance, max graphics. That'll really show what it's good for.

[Faa]

 

Jesus the Nvidia fanboyism is strong in this thread... Its odd to me that in DX12 the 900 series from Nvidia almost use as much wattage as a 290? I thought Maxwell was power efficient? Im glad mantle is doing well but imo it was only to make Microsoft move there ass and produce DX12 so yeah maybe it wont get as far as DX12 but we can at least be thankful it gave speed to Microsoft in making DX12.

Because the GPU usage is around 10-15% in Star Swarm in RTS mode, google the idle power consumption tests there's almost no difference between a 760 all the way up to a 290x (haven't checked it but you get my point). 

Besides we just got two people lying their ass off for AMD and you think somehow we are being Nvidia fanboys >.>