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spigzone wrote:

whiners that are too lazy to, or are unable to, mount

morphine wrote:

I'm having a problem seeing the point of this thread. Unless it develops one fairly quickly, it's going down to Lockville.

Please don't, it's actually hilarious.

As amusing as it is, speculation on Mantle+whatever is already going on here: in your own thread

superjawes wrote:

spigzone, your OP is a prediction that makes a series of assumptions. Namely that AMD will do no wrong and Nvidia will simply roll over. That key assumption is flawed by the state of each company's financials. AMD is making a move for market dominance, but they are doing so on the back of a series of layoffs, losses, and inferior product performance in the desktop GPU and CPU field.

Thanks for replying. The preferred method is quoting a particular point and then rebutting that particular point. That said ... I do not assume AMD will 'do no wrong'. They're substantially late on the new GPU architecture and Kaveri for instance. What I do say, based on the facts on hand, is that AMD appears to be introducing what it needs to introduce to still pull off what they are attempting to do, their Unified Gaming Strategy. If they had 'done no wrong' they would be way ahead of where they are now. As for Nvidia rolling over - I make no such assertion, Nvidia is doing a number of things to fight back, Nvidia Tablet, Shield, working with Steam, GRID etc. JHH is known to be a ferocious fighter. What I am asserting is that the HSA initiave, Mantle, GCN and Kaveri will be such an overwhelming advantage for AMD there is nothing Nvidia CAN do to effectively stop AMD from establishing a gaming hegemony.

Nvidia, on the other hand, has been quite content with its own hardware, which has at times outperformed faster AMD chips. The 700 series is better tuned than the 600 series, but uses the same silicon simply because Nvidia doesn't need to release anything better, at least not yet. I am sure that Nvidia engineers are hard at work on the next generation of Nvidia GPUs, and depending on where that generation is in development, it might be able to respond to the R9 290X and Mantle without losing much performance (if it isn't already accounting for it). And let's punctuate this by pointing out that Nvidia is in good financial state.

AMD and Nvidia are currently at near GPU parity. Where it gets ugly for Nvidia is AMD is shortly introducing a new architecture at the top end, it is reported Nvidia wont be releasing their new architecture until Q4 2014, and Mantle appears pretty solid to give AMD hardware a substantial performance boost across the boards on Mantle equipped games with all, or nearly all, the major developers/game engines on board.

Those are the big ones but you do make other assumptions. Take, for instance, the role of consoles over the next 8 years or so. That assumes that these consoles will perform well, and that console gamers don't start jumping ship for alternatives, like Steam Machines. The price alone could be problematic if Valve can help bring down the cost of a living room PC, offering a more functional gateway to PC gaming. That is going to be a defining point of this console generation because both Sony and Microsoft have been and will continue to advance digital distribution, a field that is already dominated by Valve. If they can bring Steam to a console form, both companies will become very nervous.

Pre-orders are smashing old records. There is avid interest in the new consoles. The gameplay, AI and visuals will be incredible. Why on earth wouldn't they be successful? The price is already affordable compared to last generation and those prices do go down over time, as you know. Valve can do nothing to being down the cost of a living room PC. PC component pricing has been a ferociously competitive low margin commodity segment for years.

That uncertainty casts doubt on the potential success of Mantle as well, and there's no guarantee that Mantle will catch on. And even if it does, that doesn't mean that AMD hardware will always perform better. As I already pointed out, Nvidia has been doing better with slower hardware, they've been posting profits, and they haven't had to release new GPUs or GPU architecture in some time because of their dominance. That gives them a lot of cushion to react to and potentially negate AMD's advantage.

AMD already verified it is collaborating on Mantle with several major developers in addition to EA. Once Mantle is integrated into the major game engines Mantle optimized ports will be all but free to those major developers. There is not downside for them. Where will Nvidia be if Mantle gives AMD GCN cards a 30-50% performance boost across the boards on it's GCN cards and Kaveri and APU13 reveals 30-50 Mantle games in the pipeline, including all the big AAA titles? Two very possible scenarios.

It's fun to speculate occasionally, but understand that it is only speculation.

It's fun for me to speculate a lot. But 'speculation' isn't a static - it's a differentiative process existing on a potentiative spectrum. Speculation can be 'blue sky' - highly speculative, or 'well grounded -barely speculative and anywhere in between.

Collapsing differentiation into a generalization is the bane of discourse, expanding differentiation into new understandings and realizations is the glory of discourse.

lol'd @ self-quoting

I provided a generalized response because your posts are making a lot of general assumptions. You claim that your are basing your conclusions on facts, but the reality is that you are basing your conclusions on assumed results. You look at a fact, come to a conclusion, then come to another conclusion based on that conclusion.

AMD's "Unified Gaming Strategy" actually has to work for it to help AMD. That is, something like Mantle must be fully functional and better than DX or OpenGL. More importantly, however, it must be significantly better. If it only offers a modest boost, the developer transition will be slow, giving Nvidia more time to respond, and they have plenty of time as-is.

Nvidia is doing a number of things to fight back, Nvidia Tablet, Shield, working with Steam, GRID etc....What I am asserting is that the HSA initiave, Mantle, GCN and Kaveri will be such an overwhelming advantage for AMD there is nothing Nvidia CAN do to effectively stop AMD from establishing a gaming hegemony.

But there's another assumption and incorrect observation. What you're listing isn't Nvidia's response to Mantle (you seem to assume that it is). Remember, the 7000 series was technically faster than the 600 series, but superior driver design gave Nvidia cards better performance prior to frame pacing fixes from AMD. That is where Nvidia can counter Mantle first because, in order AMD to gain dominance, their hardware will have to significantly outperform the competition. If it's only a few frames difference, AMD might gain share in 2014, but Nvidia will still retain enough to stay strong into Q4, which, as you pointed out, is when we can expect new architecture.

I should also point out that AMD still hasn't released a new architecture yet, and even then, it will only appear on the R9 290X and possibly the R9 290. The remaining lineup of AMD's new cards are just rebadged 7000 chips, which are competing with rebadged 600 series chips. That means that the majority of the field will be the same until either team does a genuine product refresh. And again, if we expect that in Q4 2014 for Nvidia, they could potentially be ahead of AMD at those lower price points.

Pre-orders are smashing old records. There is avid interest in the new consoles. The gameplay, AI and visuals will be incredible. Why on earth wouldn't they be successful?

A lot can still change, and there's always a gap between launch and when they finally hit their stride.

The price is already affordable compared to last generation and those prices do go down over time, as you know.

Um...no? The cheapest launch console, excluding the Wii, was $300 last time. Sure, there were some caveats to that SKU, but now the cost for entry is $100 more. Furthermore...

Valve can do nothing to being down the cost of a living room PC.

...they already have. Well, they will when SteamOS launches, cutting $100 from the price of a living room PC. Yes, there are strings attached, but so to are there strings tied to consoles, like limited launch libraries further limited by excluding backwards compatibility. This is an issue that Steam Machines will not have.

AMD already verified it is collaborating on Mantle with several major developers in addition to EA.

Does not mean that all major developers will drink the Mantle Koolaid and abandon alternatives.

Once Mantle is integrated into the major game engines Mantle optimized ports will be all but free to those major developers.

MAJOR assumption that this will happen. Like I said, Mantle needs to be significantly better for everyone to hop onto its bandwagon right away. I also find it highly unlikely developers will go all-Mantle if it means that people running Nvidia or Intel graphics will have a crummy experience. You see, developers and publishers don't care about Mantle, really. They care about selling products. So if Mantle means cutting off potential customers, it will not get adopted. The whole point of porting anything is to increase market penetration.

Prestige Worldwide wrote:

lol'd @ self-quoting

Yea... There is a scene from LOTR I could link to (it has Smeagol in it), but I probably shouldn't

Spigzone has been banned for corporate shilling.

Thank you, Scott.

Damage wrote:

Spigzone has been banned for corporate shilling.

Awwww....shilling or not, I would have loved to hear his reaction to:

morphine wrote:

Aaaand, Mantle won't be available on the XBox one: clicky.