AMD's Mantle API Is NOT Open Source, Compatible Only With AMD GPUs.

[Ookami]

That's not the main reason people moved from XP, XP is old and outdated...

Still is used in great numbers which piss off dudes from Redmond.

 

 

However what I'm still wondering is if it's possible for users that have AMD CPUs & Nvidia GPUs to get the CPU benefits of MANTLE, if not then they will be forced to go with AMD on the GPU side as well.

Propably youll gonna be only able to use full potential of CPU then. For sure it will block option to work with Nvidia GPU.

[Moistevilmonkey]

will this Mantle work on FX8350 without AMD gfx cards? because all im hearing is that it'll only work with GCN but use all 8 cores of a 8120/8150/8320/8350.. would that mean they're restricting my choice to AMD GFX cards to make the most out of my CPU?? because that'll piss me right off.. only being able to choose AMD cards to play my game using all my cores?? sounds abit like day 1 DLC BS to me.

[TechFan@ic]

will this Mantle work on FX8350 without AMD gfx cards? because all im hearing is that it'll only work with GCN but use all 8 cores of a 8120/8150/8320/8350.. would that mean they're restricting my choice to AMD GFX cards to make the most out of my CPU?? because that'll piss me right off.. only being able to choose AMD cards to play my game using all my cores?? sounds abit like day 1 DLC BS to me.

This is conjecture on my part but the way I understood it was that Mantle will use various optimizations for the GCN ISA to improve performance.. plus it will massively improve distribution of CPU load on multiple cores, if you do not have a Mantle compatible graphics card you won't be able to use the Mantle render & thus you will likely lose on the Mantle specific CPU optimizations.

[Dravic]

Nvidia has notoriously been the WORST vendor for linux support. Linus (not our Linus, the guy who made linux) even went so far as to tell them to eff off and give them the finger. They just this week announced that they'll start supporting linux better, but they still aren't as open to the linux community as AMD has been.

 

You are wrong.

 

Linux drivers from Nvidia were amazingly well-made if you compare them to AMD drivers, but they were always closed project without open source which is why Linus Torvalds said they are the single worst company - they didn't want to make their drivers open cuz their drivers were far better than AMD's drivers so they didn't want AMD to get any ideas.

 

But now... we'll see, it might change.

[qwertywarrior]

this makes sense

whats the point 

it ONLY works on the GCN architecture  its optimized for it 

its a low level API what did u expect

 

u want something that works with all cards ?

its called openGL and DirectX

thats why high level APIs exist

[Marlon]

Its a low level hardware API - so no its not open source, as that would infer people could come along and add new API calls to it, which wouldn't be backed on the hardware level. 

 

However, I presume the API itself will be publicly available, meaning, if it takes off big time, nVidia could (though highly doubtful) design their architecture so its compatible with Mantle. Whats *more* likely IMO is nVidia will write a lightweight middleware driver which will take mantle API calls and convert them into something the nVidia architecture can understand.... if mantle becomes big.

 

It'll still be far closer to the hardware than Direct3D or OpenGL, so it will still get nViidia cards a good performance boost. 

[Exotath]

I find it funny that this is surprising to anyone.

[thexzenon]

I find it funny that this is surprising to anyone.

This. The gaming industry is in a very nice situation. AMD for consoles. Mantle API, SteamOS. Good news for us consumers

[Kamil]

This... Thinking about it, it's a pretty good idea. After picking up support for both consoles, any console developers will use it without a doubt, and that means that any games coming out on console and PC will have AMD optimizations already built in. This would lead to AMD getting better scores on benchmarks than an NVidia card that is technically just as powerful. Pretty nice deal for them.

 

We'll see if NVidia can do anything to compete, though from their recent releases it looks like they're trying to branch out more than improve their core products.

[Katness Everdeen]

Low level API's have to be optimized for a very specific architecture, so it has to be closed down.
Doesn't really bother me, it will improve the gaming experience for half of the community.

[SkulD]

Cross-compatibility makes it a no-brainer for developers to make it the de-facto standard, however if it's GCN-tied then they have to weigh out the cost & benefits of going with MANTLE in addition to DX11 or OpenGL.

For console developers it is still a no-brainer becuase it's compatible with both consoles.

For PC & console developers it's still very attractive because they still get a good chunk out of the PC market.

For a PC exclusive developer like Creative Assembly it's not as attractive because they will have to develop DX11, OpenGL or both in addition to MANTLE, in this specific case having MANTLE support other architectures would be benificial, because the developer won't need to develop for DX11 or OpenGL.

Since amd is pushing Mantle and OpenGL, and Nvidia is also helping OpenGL.

-Mantle will be for consoles and GCN cards.

-OpenGL will be for Nvidia and AMD for PC exclusives.

 

That's the way I see it.

[TopWargamer]

Good thing I:

1) Plan on using AMD for awhile

2) Have a 7000 series card (7950)

[Mooshi]

I wonder something that is kinda related. What if you have zero desire to PC game in the living room, does SteamOS still function like a typical Linux distro or is it something too niche that is gaming in the living room only?

[Humbug]

Tech is such a gamble. I went against my intuition and fanboys got the best of me. So, now what? Sell 780 and buy a R9 at tax time? A88 chipset? APU? Stay with old 990FX and 8350?

You have an FX-8350 CPU and a 780 GPU.

STOP COMPLAINING AND ENJOY THE GAMES

[Andrew0472]

well we can all make the assumption that nvidia won't just let them have the market so something will be done to equal it out or get close to that

[frontliner]

Just because its not open source doesn't mean that competitors can't use it. The API could be licensed to anyone who wants to use it. Also, I would hardly call a tweet an official statement on the license for the API.

[TERAFLOP]

Just because its not open source doesn't mean that competitors can't use it. The API could be licensed to anyone who wants to use it. Also, I would hardly call a tweet an official statement on the license for the API.

License it to who ? it's only compatible with GCN cards.

Adding compatibility to anything else defeats the purpose of the API by increasing the overhead it requires to run.

[Humbug]

Complaining that this doesn't work on Nvidia cards is like complaining that geforce drivers don't work on radeon.

[Kuzma]

When folks recommended 7000 series AMD GPUs, over the Nvidia 600 or 700 series of GPUs to other people & mentioned "console optimizations" as one of the incentives, they were absolutely right about it, I remember @TechFan@ic always mentioned console optimizations for both AMD CPUs & GPUs making their way to the PC.

I've always felt that it's a valid point, but never realized that it would develop into something like MANTLE that just gives massive performance boosts to AMD users, both on the GPU & CPU side.

It's a major reason why we're seeing Nvidia compete more in terms of the feature set, because Nvidia knows competing on performance is going to be extraordinarily difficult from now on.

 

EXACTLY! when everyone said that @TechFan@ic and I were crazy for talking about console optimisations they were the ones that were crazy - I did an entire thread on console optimisations and guess what? I WAS RIGHT!

[Gunjob]

I thought everyone knew it wasn't Open? its a low level API by that alone means its tied in to the hardware so it wouldn't work for the Green team.

[Mooshi]

Complaining that this doesn't work on Nvidia cards is like complaining that geforce drivers don't work on radeon.

 

Or complaining that AMD cards don't have CUDA support.

[LAwLz]

A lot of people seem confused by this. First of all, even if it was open source Nvidia would still not be able to implement it since it's architecture dependent. That's how low level APIs work. So to the people who said things like "Nvidia might implement it if it's open source", no they can't.

Anyway it's a shame that it won't be open source (like I explained above, it can be open source and still only work on AMD GPUs) since that would have made it far more attractive to some free (as in freedom) projects. I don't see any reason why it won't be included in SeamOS though, since they are going to use non-free things in their OS.

[James_AJ]

WHY are people crying over AMD doing this? Like they didn't mention specifically during the livestream that Mantle speaks the language of GCN and there's no GCN in Nvidia. Besides, it's a low level API, come on: it is pretty hardware specific

[MkZ]

How good is mantel vs DirectX 11 in terms of picture quality and dos it have tessellation for example? or is this going to be basically OpenGL but faster?

[ACatWithThumbs]

I don't see Mantle ever beeing really used.
Because Devs still have to support DX10/DX11/Dx11.1/Dx11.2, modified DX11.2 on XboxOne,GNM/GNMX on Playstation 4, and with SteamOS even OpenGL.

I think this will end up the same as PhysX.
And what is when AMD releases 20nm it wouldn't be the same Architekture as the Next Gen Consoles or the HD7xxx and Rx-2xx Series.
They would have to remake it with every Architekture change.
And then older GPU's would have no support.