Jump to content
Sign in to follow this  
sancron

AMD Mantle Support possible?

Recommended Posts

I just signed up here to push this thread, like nedflanders suggested. I would like to see Mantle in Arma 3, too.

Can't say anything about BF4, but my rig (i5 3470, 7950) showed an FPS increase off 53% on the Star Swarm benchmark when using Mantle instead of D3D. Pretty amazing!

Somewhere I have read that the Mantle driver isn't yet optimized for my GPU, so it might get even better with future releases.

I don't see any reason why this shouldn't possible with Arma 3, as the Star Swarm benchmark is similar to Arma - many units, much AI, and its CPU-limited aswell. Please correct me if I'm wrong with that, I'm not that technical.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
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).

2500k@4,5GHz, 8GB RAM 1600MHz, 7950@1135/1600Mhz.

Go for whatever suits your needs. If you need Cuda and AMD can't offer atm something similar, go with that.

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

Probably because the engine needs to calculate more stuff on the CPU, don't know. It has been the case in BF3 and it's the same with some maps in BF 4. Around that flag I've got some nasty fps drop and stutter going on, somewhere on the other side of the river as well. Not sure what cause it, but at least for me, Mantle took it away.

Anyway, while single cards frame rates may not be impressive, double or triple gpu setups should be quite "wow".

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This needs more attention or atleast a clarification by BI why it may not be possible.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
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.

That certain part of the map might have more objects to render, thus that part of the map would be more CPU heavy.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

bf4-fps.gif

bf4-99th.gif

depends on the scenario, also amd's d3d driver doesn't seem to be as good as it could be, making the mantle gains seem more spectacular.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Of course it depends on the scene, CPU heavy are the ones to look after, not GPU heavy where the gains are minimum if any. ArmA, Skyrim or any other game like that is perfect for Mantle or another similar API.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Snip

Well the impressive thing is not how it runs on High End CPUs or fresh APUs. Its the mere fact that my 4 year old Phenom II x6 1100T paired with a 7870 runs BF4 on Ultra with astonishing 90 FPS. Ima PC gamer since 15 years, never ever you could use 3 - 4 Year old (and cheap) CPUs and play the best looking game with that many frames. Its just amazing.

Edited by duffbeeer

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think the fact that Intel hasn't had much competition in the past 5 years also helps.

I mean I bought an AMD Phenom quadcore 5 years ago, budget/midrange CPU. 3.2Ghz. If I had overclocked that to 4 Ghz, it would beat my AMD FX-8350 4Ghz in every way.

Never b4 have I seen so little improvements in the CPU field. I would have bought a Phenom again if they were for sale. It's that bad.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Depends on what apps are you testing. 8350 isn't that great on stock vs. other overclock cpus, even older, in single threaded situations. go multithread, overclock and watch it shine. It doesn't mean it way way faster, but it still holds it's ground quite nice.

Edited by calin_banc

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It will be interesting to see ArmA 3 performance with mantle support.

According comparing Bf4 engine with Space Swarm, which demand for hardware is more comparable with ArmA then with Bf4, if ArmA 3 implement support for mantle will gain much more than Bf4 dose.

I will like to hear some official devs thinking about mantle and possible usage.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
It will be interesting to see ArmA 3 performance with mantle support.

According comparing Bf4 engine with Space Swarm, which demand for hardware is more comparable with ArmA then with Bf4, if ArmA 3 implement support for mantle will gain much more than Bf4 dose.

I will like to hear some official devs thinking about mantle and possible usage.

from http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?147533-Low-CPU-utilization-amp-Low-FPS/page253&highlight=mantle

missed my point, atm it's available for like 3% of DX11.1> GPUs, hence unimportant for deployment unless you paid to do so ...

now if it's available for all AMD DX11.x cards or hell even DX10.x then it will become relevant faster

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It doesn't take that much to implement and it will be in their engine from the start for all future projects. going on the same thinking pattern, why not supporting dx9 and win xp? It's all about thinking ahead, what this game is suppose to do with hardware in the first place.

Edited by calin_banc

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Could also make an opengl renderer with proprietary extensions. But why bother when it won't really help performance in a big battle and is not supported for a large part of the user base.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
BI take a look FFS.

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

I remember talking about direct x in a pc game lobby before mantle and bf4 existed. I had done so because i was getting direct x problems and read some article articulating something about direct x functions,

cant remember now what it is, it just occurred to me that maybe Direct X was kind of a "cock block" for lack of a better word,

exactly what i said, i swear that lobby was full of devs maybe even amd devs and lo and behold, a year later amd is talking about something better than direct x, probably just coincidence anyway but i also think there is alot of software today that has reigned for too long.

Even look at fraps, people using dxtory now, more efficient.

About time somebody did something right, it never made sense to me when using fraps why it had so much high usage. simple ideas, brilliant for the populace. Even with motherboards, a time when you couldnt use nvidia cards on amd mobos, now everything is working more together and smart.

I have another idea maybe this one is good too, be able to plug and unplug types of chips that hold bios and or motherboard driver information. So no need to use a disc after you buy a new mobo, plus you can easily install a new mobo without having to format the damn computer, life saving time for people who have tons of data on their pc's. That way with pluging your data, run separately from hard drive

Edited by axclaw

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I remember talking about direct x in a pc game lobby before mantle and bf4 existed. I had done so because i was getting direct x problems and read some article articulating something about direct x functions,

cant remember now what it is, it just occurred to me that maybe Direct X was kind of a "cock block" for lack of a better word,

exactly what i said, i swear that lobby was full of devs maybe even amd devs and lo and behold, a year later amd is talking about something better than direct x, probably just coincidence anyway but i also think there is alot of software today that has reigned for too long.

Even look at fraps, people using dxtory now, more efficient.

About time somebody did something right, it never made sense to me when using fraps why it had so much high usage. simple ideas, brilliant for the populace. Even with motherboards, a time when you couldnt use nvidia cards on amd mobos, now everything is working more together and smart.

I have another idea maybe this one is good too, be able to plug and unplug types of chips that hold bios and or motherboard driver information. So no need to use a disc after you buy a new mobo, plus you can easily install a new mobo without having to format the damn computer, life saving time for people who have tons of data on their pc's. That way with pluging your data, run separately from hard drive

I see one big problem with the last suggestion. Outdated drivers. Which seems to be the norm more than the exception. I rarely ever install drivers from manufacturer-supplied CDs, simply because they are usually 1-2 years old. I certainly don't want those preinstalled. A workaround would be that the mobo checks for updated versions on the net once you have installed your OS but thats not much different from how it works today. Certain mobo manufacturers already have those kind of programs. MSI LiveUpdate for example.

But...if you mean that chip is detachable and maybe connects to USB or similar...then you might be on to something. Load the chip up with latest drivers, plug it in mobo and off you go.

At the same time...how do you handle Linux and other OSes (non-Windows)?

Edited by mamasan8

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Well there we have it. BI is officaly not giving a damn about and the whole talk about old AMD cards not supporting mantle is absolutely laughable. BI youre not even giving a damn about current hardware utilization, why do use AMD HD5xxx cards as an excuse? But thanks anyway for admitting that you simply DO NOT CARE.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I have another idea maybe this one is good too, be able to plug and unplug types of chips that hold bios and or motherboard driver information. So no need to use a disc after you buy a new mobo, plus you can easily install a new mobo without having to format the damn computer, life saving time for people who have tons of data on their pc's. That way with pluging your data, run separately from hard drive

Offtopic, but you really dont have to reinstall for a new mobo. Changed a winxp system from pentium4 to core2duo, changed my own system from p5k to p5e to p55-gd65 all with the same windows install.

Well there we have it. BI is officaly not giving a damn about and the whole talk about old AMD cards not supporting mantle is absolutely laughable. BI youre not even giving a damn about current hardware utilization, why do use AMD HD5xxx cards as an excuse? But thanks anyway for admitting that you simply DO NOT CARE.

Mantle is not the only way to reduce cpu overhead on rendering. and it's not just the 5000 cards, also the 6000 and all nvidia cards are not supported. Could also use dx11.1, would make more sense since win8 has a higher market share than amd gcn.

Edited by Leon86

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Well there we have it. BI is officaly not giving a damn about and the whole talk about old AMD cards not supporting mantle is absolutely laughable. BI youre not even giving a damn about current hardware utilization, why do use AMD HD5xxx cards as an excuse? But thanks anyway for admitting that you simply DO NOT CARE.

Don't make things into unnecessary drama. He gave a very reasonable answer: The only mantle game out there atm was paid a million or something to implement it, while the dev and publisher were filthy rich already too. It's also true that not that many people have GCN cards. I would love to see ArmA using Mantle, but let's be real here. Also, ArmA's optimization has been getting better by time and work is being done, though there may be a lot more to do. Still, little reason to throw a tantrum. The game is unique and holy shit it actually works, quite unlike our exemplary Mantle blockbuster.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Well where have you been the last few Arma 3 patches, performance has been degrading across the board not improving. Decisions where made against performance. Also im not buying the BI is poor argument. You could have talked about this some years ago but dayZ and Arma 3 has made BI alot of money now. Theyre also rich now.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Don't make things into unnecessary drama. He gave a very reasonable answer:

I don't think this is a reasonable answer. I see his point BUT ... They have a product they want to sell. The buyers however will have to have a hardware infrastructure to run their product which is, according to steam statistics, probably in the hand of the upper 10% of all steam users. If I look around, a lot of friends would go and buy a used Radeon 7850 to play ARMA3 but they are also sitting on Phenom II X2,X3 and Core2duo and max Q6600 systems. So upgrading the graphic card won't change it. They just don't buy ArmA3 because it sucks on those systems. If a Mantle support would be available, the Framerate of ArmA3 on these systems would probably increase by 30-50% which makes it playable. Instead of $59 for Arma + $100 for a used 7850 (the latter pays of in other games too) they need to invest about $500 to play Arma without Mantle support and this just is to much for a Game as even any hardcore ArmA Fan like me knows.

So spend 3 devs, 2 months on Mantle (Pricetag: X)

Make money and share by getting new costumers. (Priceless)

I think this is a very reasonable decision....

Ned

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
the Framerate of ArmA3 on these systems would probably increase by 30-50% which makes it playable.

Unlikely. the battle simulation is what's holding back performance, not the rendering overhead. On an empty map performance is fine. Or, make a big battle in the editor, get low fps, press escape, freezing the battle simulation and watch the fps go up dramatically.

It'll only allow for higher viewdistance at roughly the same performance, not increase performance.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  

×