What is mantle and is it worth it to use?

[shakeel amlay]

Hey all
It's just like my heading says. I would like to know what exactly it is and does and if it would be worth it to use in a gaming enviroment.
Here's my specs just in case they're needed:
cpu: I5 4690k (stock)
gpu: Powercolor R9 280 (stock)
ram: corsair vengeance 2x4gb 1600mhz

If I need to add more info please say so.
Thanks in advance!

 

[BigBadBeef]

Mantle is like DirectX, except faster, only works on radeon cards and only on games that support¨it. This very thing inspired the development of DX12!

 

[shakeel amlay]

Is it worth it to use? ANd how do I know what games support and what happens if I run it on a game that doesn't support it? Sorry bout all the questions.

 

[exroofer]

Mantle has to be built in to the game. Thief and Battlefield 4 are a couple of examples that currently support it.
You have to enable it in the game options, it is not something you can "use" at will in any game.

Google "mantle enabled games" There are not that many right now, more are coming. Star Citizen being one of them.
It gives quite a bit of extra performance, especially on mid range cards.

 

[shakeel amlay]

Thanks!

 

[MarkW]

Mantle was an AMD solution to bloated DirectX in Windows. Once AMD announced Mantle, Microsoft got interested, and soon, something very close to Mantle will be released in Windows 10, called DirectX 12. The nice thing is that DX12 will work with AMD, Nvidia and Intel graphics. Some of its features may just work to boost performance from day 1. Most things will need to be programmed by the game programmers specifically to take advantage of the DX12 functions.

So the bottom line is don't worry about Mantle. Most of what Mantle was is going to be included in Windows 10.

 

[renz496]

^ I dare to bet battlefied hardline probably the last mantle enabled game we are going to see. AMD themselves already put mantle initiative to internal development only and asking any developer interested in mantle to look for DX12 and Vulkan instead. As for star citizen probably better for them to focus solely on DX12 because it will work across all hardware. Dx12 might not be able to match Mantle due to mantle being more specific to radeon hardware but still doesn't have to work 2 different API for radeon hardware unless they are actively being fund by AMD to keep mantle optimization going on.

 

[Quixit]

Vulkan pretty much is a more-standardized and updated version of Mantle. Mantle served its purpose, it got us Direct X 12 and Vulkan.

 

[geofelt]

Mantle reduces the cpu path through the graphics driver.
It also can be multithreaded.
That is exactly why AMD pushed mantle as a means to overcome their slower cpu speeds and take advantage of more cores.

With a 4690K, a strong cpu, there will not be much advantage Since you have a amd graphics card, by all means implement it where you can.

Longer term, I expect it to be abandoned.
Partly because it is graphics card specific, and partly because it takes extra work for game developers to implement.

 

[renz496]

Initially AMD intends to keep Mantle around even with DX12 and Vulkan around. Richard Huddy mention in one of his interview that mantle will always be better due to the API were tweak specifically for radeon hardware from the ground up. Personally i have my own conspiracy theory why AMD given up to make Mantle as true open source API like they claim before.

 

[shakeel amlay]

So should I use Vulkan instead? Also hows DX12 gonna work on 'all' hardware? Isn't something stuck on a certain DX once its made?

 

[MarkW]

New things come out all the time. But yes, just like when DX11 came out, it took time for the DX11 games to follow.

But DX12 is a very different animal. It can dramatically improve frame rates in some situations. That is something no previous DX release could say. I suspect there may well be some devs to take the time to patch DX12 support into their games over the next year.

 

[renz496]

Vulkan? You need for the game to use the API first. It is not a matter what API you should use. It is meant for developer. They are the one will choose which API to use to build their game. Dx12 will work with all hardware thatcapable of running the API. Mostly DX11 card available today except AMD 5k and 6k series. Dx12 will be the first directx API that doesn't strictly need new hardware.

 

[shakeel amlay]

Thanks for the help guys! I actually read an article ( don't know if 5 pages counts as an article) on Dx12 in my gaming/hardware magazine, it said that dx12 was meant to fix all the ineffeciencies that was present in older DX's ( please correct me if I am wrong I suck at remembereing stuff, I know it does alot more than what I said)

 

[renz496]

Dx12 will improve upon previous version of DX but that's nothing unsual about that. Just like dx10 is improvement over dx9 and dx11 over dx10. But it doesn't mean game dev will be quick to jump into dx12 despite the goodness.

 

[renz496]

Dx12 will improve upon previous version of DX but that's nothing unsual about that. Just like dx10 is improvement over dx9 and dx11 over dx10. But it doesn't mean game dev will be quick to jump into dx12 despite the goodness.