AMD Mantle support

AMD Mantle support

Discuss the source code and development of Spring Engine in general from a technical point of view. Patches go here too.

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ismo
Posts: 33
Joined: 27 Dec 2009, 13:52

AMD Mantle support

Post by ismo »

I am wondering would it be possible to add support for AMD Mantle? As spring is sort of swarm game which benefits most of it.

Swarm test result comparisons:
http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/17588 ... irectx-9/2

Also I have no idea how easy/difficult (impossible?) adding of Mantle support would be. But to my understanding it would greatly benefit many players.

Not sure how many of engine developers are "AMD fans", at least in 2009 I guess there were quite few.

P.S. Hmm I am wondering does Spring's GlobalRendering.cpp successfully support Radeon R9 (270, 280, and 290) cards? That is identifying supportNPOTs, and other important rendering features correctly.
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FLOZi
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Re: AMD Mantle support

Post by FLOZi »

I don't mean to speak out of turn, but most likely this would have to be jK or kloot, and you can see jK's thoughts on Mantle here:

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=30959
ismo
Posts: 33
Joined: 27 Dec 2009, 13:52

Re: AMD Mantle support

Post by ismo »

Thanks from that thread link, did not notice that earlier - interesting stuff.

As a side note: just found this http://news.softpedia.com/news/NVIDIA-I ... 3380.shtml

I would be happy if they managed to make it 1.5x faster for starters :)
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smoth
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Re: AMD Mantle support

Post by smoth »

Mantle is such a throwback to the 90s where you had to have this or that hardware or you were forced to go to a software render. Only in this case it would be ati's shit open gl support!
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AF
AI Developer
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Re: AMD Mantle support

Post by AF »

It's CPU not GPU that we're limited by
Super Mario
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Re: AMD Mantle support

Post by Super Mario »

Expecting AMD hatred in 5,4,3,2...
ismo
Posts: 33
Joined: 27 Dec 2009, 13:52

Re: AMD Mantle support

Post by ismo »

AF wrote:It's CPU not GPU that we're limited by
That is valid point, and mantle shines in CPU bound situations ("sucks" in GPU bound):
http://wccftech.com/mantle-api-directx- ... d-creamed/
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AF
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Re: AMD Mantle support

Post by AF »

Sorry I've been shortsighted. By Using Mantle we will quadruple the amount of CPU time available. The many hours spent implementing Mantle and having to manage 2 rendering APIs will give us far more CPU time than the hours optimising what we already have in non-rendering code......

If you're running a fabric factory and making your workers sew the fabric by hand, the solution is not an impressive new sewing needle produced by AMD that reduces the time spent moving your fingers by 30%! The solution is automated sewing machines.

The same logic can be said of using DirectX 12 when it's out, or even just using the available OpenGL extensions that do essentially the same thing

Or incremental driver updates, the newer Nvidia drivers for Dx11 already provide superior performance to Mantle without a new API
ismo
Posts: 33
Joined: 27 Dec 2009, 13:52

Re: AMD Mantle support

Post by ismo »

Hmm interesting thing, indeed best option is to get opengl (or directx) drivers as fast as possible without any 3rd "dirty" solution.

"Now the golden question that comes to my mind is this: If Nvidia could do all this with a Soft update, why didn’t it do it before. The obvious answer to that question is slightly alarming."
Answer: there was no need for such earlier :D

Would have been nice to see those comparisons for other than those very high end cards (R290X and GTX780) as only small fraction of players have such good cards.
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AF
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Re: AMD Mantle support

Post by AF »

We see increases like that in many nvidia driver updates in the release notes, I think the most telling is that right now, if all the engine devs decided they adored AMDs Mantle and desperately wanted to implement it, they couldn't. It may be as much as 2 years before a public SDK is released.
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