AMD Mantle Support possible?

[Furret 0]

According to one report, AMD has 36% of the market, not really all that small.

Not all AMD devices support mantle

[sxp2high 22]

Mantle is awesome :)

http://www.golem.de/news/amds-mantle-api-im-test-der-prozessor-katalysator-1402-104261-3.html (German)

Edited February 1, 2014 by sxp2high

[robowilso 40]

With this 'Mantel API' , Would it still allow for the Ultra-Large terrains Bohemia is so famous for?

[progamer 14]

Not trying to be argumentative, but have you tried VBS 2 64bitexe? It performs worse than Arma 3

Yea, 64bit is not really the answer to performance problems. The developers have even stated this multiple times.

---------- Post added at 07:13 ---------- Previous post was at 07:11 ----------

Mantle is awesome :)

http://i.imgur.com/0ilDBlb.png

http://i.imgur.com/nB0pSAQ.jpg

http://www.golem.de/news/amds-mantle-api-im-test-der-prozessor-katalysator-1402-104261-3.html (German)

Your forgetting how anti competitive that battlefield 4 uses mantle. They have a deal with AMD to only optimize the game for Nvidia cards once and constantly try to optimize the game for AMD cards. They may not be the best example due to giving all the support to AMD rather than both companies cards.

[DaViSFiT 21]

Beside Mantle has big potential and will grow further in the future, the best way to optimize arma3 would be: make the dedicated server support 4+ cores and optimize the netcode and everyone will stop complaining about arma3 performance issues. I have 70-80fps playing alone, on good servers@start i have 50 but others with not highEnd cards and not perfect internet connection have 25fps. Of course this will drop down to 50% and my grafic cards is going to sleep mode cause my pc isnt the limit (gpu load@ 35%, cpu load@ 10%)

[Kid18120 10]

Until we actually see real people doing real benchmark comparisons, Mantle's claimed performance gains mean nothing.

I watched a video yesterday the AMD rep claimed "Up to 45% performance increase!", yet he failed to list specs and what the previous framerate was running off of DX.

It's all a bunch of marketing bullshit until there is proof of how good it is.

Want to see an actual benchmark ?

Play BF4 - it has Mantle support since last patch of some days ago.

[nicolasroger 11]

Your forgetting how anti competitive that battlefield 4 uses mantle. They have a deal with AMD to only optimize the game for Nvidia cards once and constantly try to optimize the game for AMD cards. They may not be the best example due to giving all the support to AMD rather than both companies cards.

Most tester use exactly the same AMD card to compare perfromance (Radeon R9 290X in that particlaur test). They simply switch from directx 11 to Mantle in the option. So to me it looks like the tests are fair.

From what I read, Mantle does wonders when a game is CPU limited (like arma 3!). This could probably greatly increase arma 3 FPS for those with the right GPU.

[roshnak 41]

Yea, 64bit is not really the answer to performance problems. The developers have even stated this multiple times.

It might not be the only answer, but it would certainly help. Their reasoning from 2008 that most computers don't have enough RAM to justify a 64-bit executable doesn't hold up anymore.

[froggyluv 2135]

It might not be the only answer, but it would certainly help. Their reasoning from 2008 that most computers don't have enough RAM to justify a 64-bit executable doesn't hold up anymore.

Maybe so but I have 16GB ram and Vbs 2 64bit still runs worse than 32bit Arma3

[Leon86 13]

Most tester use exactly the same AMD card to compare perfromance (Radeon R9 290X in that particlaur test). They simply switch from directx 11 to Mantle in the option. So to me it looks like the tests are fair.

From what I read, Mantle does wonders when a game is CPU limited (like arma 3!). This could probably greatly increase arma 3 FPS for those with the right GPU.

It's not the directx overhead that makes arma run slow, it's the other cpu calculations, unless you run insane viewdistances, then mantle would be useful.

[nicolasroger 11]

It's not the directx overhead that makes arma run slow, it's the other cpu calculations, unless you run insane viewdistances, then mantle would be useful.

Well i am no engine expert but I heard drawcalls in arma 3 is really high.

[Leon86 13]

it depends on settings, if you're on a little island offshore with 500m viewdistance it's really low, but fps will still be low if there's a big battle going on a few km away.

[JamesSaga 1]

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/02/03/amds-mantle-api-arrives-in-new-beta-driver-free-star-swarm-benchmark-released/

Is it worth me installing these drivers to play Arma or will it break horribly?

[nicolasroger 11]

It might worth it, but don't expect to get mantle for arma 3.

[JamesSaga 1]

^^ Thank you will test tonight and see if I get any performance gain.

[calin_banc 19]

It's not the directx overhead that makes arma run slow, it's the other cpu calculations, unless you run insane viewdistances, then mantle would be useful.

No, you don't need to go to 12k. the performance in arma drops much faster than that and it drops like a stone and that's in the editor, just yourself, no ai, no "complicated" math. Anyway, real BF 4 numbers on my rig.

http://imgur.com/idv20MP

http://imgur.com/5OszVSU

http://imgur.com/UmODhlT

Basically it's 45fps vs. 69fps (dx11.1 vs mantle), win8.1 (so the game already runs better than in plain dx11), in the situation that I've got the worse performance. 5040x1050, 4,5GHz 2500k, 7950 at 1130/1600, other settings in pic 3. Performance difference it's around 50% in "tough" areas, not so much in others. Overall, lower input lag, constant and higher fps.

it was on 64 player server full/almost full.

Edited February 4, 2014 by calin_banc

[griffz 1]

could you post mantle/DX comparaison with mesh quality parameter to high or very high ?

regarding arma , it might be a great help for engine. even if it doesnt solve the heavy battle problems, it's still a bonus.

we could get very high view distance for the same price. i take it anyday

Edited February 4, 2014 by griffz

[JamesSaga 1]

So as I thought it works great with an optimized Mantel game (star swarm) but I saw no increase with Arma.

Is there any one who could say with any authority or decent knowledge of how hard/long it would take to develop?

[dm 9]

Anyway, real BF 4 numbers on my rig.

http://imgur.com/idv20MP

http://imgur.com/5OszVSU

That is quite interesting... Why are the screenshots so different in colour/lighting? I'm assuming the only setting you changed between the two was the graphics api?

[calin_banc 19]

could you post mantle/DX comparaison with mesh quality parameter to high or very high ?

regarding arma , it might be a great help for engine. even if it doesnt solve the heavy battle problems, it's still a bonus.

we could get very high view distance for the same price. i take it anyday

it's 67 fps vs. 45fps. Weird as the fps remain the same for dx, probably some limitation or some kind of a bug. Nevertheless, overall the mouse movements feel much precise and the input lag is down, alongside with better and more stable fps.

So as I thought it works great with an optimized Mantel game (star swarm) but I saw no increase with Arma.

Is there any one who could say with any authority or decent knowledge of how hard/long it would take to develop?

You don't see anything in ArmA because the game doesn't support it. It's like any other game, you can have DX11 api, drivers and gpu installed, but if the game is coded for dx9 only, it will run in that api and not in dx11.

That is quite interesting... Why are the screenshots so different in colour/lighting? I'm assuming the only setting you changed between the two was the graphics api?

same place, same settings. You need to restart the game in order to change api. the pic which is whiter, is taken a few seconds after the skyscraper collapsed. The performance was the same before; I wasn't fast enough to type in the command for screenshot in game console, before the building was destroyed.

It's a place on the map where I get bad fps, that huge boost in fps is not all around, just in the heavy limited cpu (or whatever) areas or situations. On ultra (all ultra settings, 4xaa etc) I get the same fps even there - 25fps. That's happening because the limitation goes from the rest of the system to the gpu itself whereas the limitation before was not on it.

[nedflanders 12]

We all know that ArmA3 runs a very complex engine and of course nobody would ever expect it to behave like a tunnel engine you experience in COD or similar games. Of course the engine is much more demanding on the CPU in this aspect and ever since I played Operation Flashpoint I never expected it to run as smooth as the mentioned games.

In fact I think it is very challenging for you (BIS) guys to improve performance without taking complexity out of the game. That said, Mantle offers the unique chance to reduce CPU demand from the rendering engine which in turn is available for the rest of the game and Mantle is probably much easier to implement then any other "optimization" would ever be.#

The payoff? half my friends do not buy ArmA3 for a single reason. They would have to upgrade their Hardware so badly (CPU, Board, RAM, GPU) that its just too expensive. Pluging in a newer Graphics Card is not the problem as this pays of in other games too.

So... in my humble opinion ... Go BIS, it will make your customers more happy AND give you new ones!

Best,

Ned

P.S.: Everybody who shares my opinion should help make this thread longer and more recognizeable...

Edited February 4, 2014 by nedflanders

[nomisum 129]

i dont think anyone could have good points against mantle support. even if it takes some month dev time of a single person, the payoff is promising. even 5fps more means much in this game, seeing some of my friends struggling around 20 fps.

Sent from mobile

[FatFukinLenny 3]

Any way to help improve performance should be looked into that's a given and as ned flanders has mentioned if the game is easier to run them maybe it will lead to more sales! Win win all round..

[PuFu 4600]

It's a place on the map where I get bad fps, that huge boost in fps is not all around, just in the heavy limited cpu (or whatever) areas or situations. On ultra (all ultra settings, 4xaa etc) I get the same fps even there - 25fps. That's happening because the limitation goes from the rest of the system to the gpu itself whereas the limitation before was not on it.

Would you be so kind and post your pc specs?

I am looking into buying soonish a 780/780TI or AMD competitor (r9 series) and this might actually make a difference (also i am sort of CUDA dependent).

P.S.: Everybody who shares my opinion should help make this thread longer and more recognizeable...

yeah well...

Any way to help improve performance should be looked into that's a given and as ned flanders has mentioned if the game is easier to run them maybe it will lead to more sales! Win win all round..

That is very true. I am all for getting away from DX limitations, and mantle seems to be one way to do it. Even if AMD users capable of mantle are low overall, i am certain that will change with time.

Even low on a very fucking long priority list, it should be there (again, i am most likely gonna stick my nvidia 560ti with another nvidia due to cuda)

[NeMeSiS 11]

It's a place on the map where I get bad fps, that huge boost in fps is not all around, just in the heavy limited cpu (or whatever) areas or situations.

Why would a certain part of a BF4 map be heavy on the CPU? Heavy on the GPU would make much more sense.

Anyway, i would like to see this, anything the lower CPU usage is fine. Though a quick look with process hacker reveals that most multithreading usage already comes from a bunch of AMD threads (though to be fair, i have no idea what they do) and i am somewhat doubtful it will help a lot, in the worst case scenario it will still help a bit, or allow us to increase settings a bit without hurting FPS.

Edited February 4, 2014 by NeMeSiS