Guild Wars 2

Hello, I know that the mantle is not much known, at least among the players but if it is true i just part of what AMD says it will be better than DirectX. Arena will consider supporting Mantle?

Don’t have your hopes up too high. Changing or implementing an alternative API is expensive and time consuming and ANet is a relatively small company. Also GW2 is currently running on Dx9. Mantle is not yet too well tested to see what kind of performance increase it would give over newer DirectX’s in MMOs and GW2 specifically, over Dx9 it would probably be noticeable. I would rather count on newer Dx than Mantle, but I’m not even counting on that very much.

Mantle is plenty well known, we have nutjobs here who praise Mantle as a golden calf and think it is the best thing in the world and it’s extremely easily to implement. Truth is, it takes rewriting the current engine, and on top of that, with DirectX 12 on the horizon, I wouldn’t hold too much hope for Mantle lasting (Unless of course DX12 turns out to be a sham and piece of crap), unless AMD has more money to throw at devs to input the same thing that DirectX would do, except DX12 would work for NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, etc. whereas Mantle would be proprietary to AMD.

Mantle was simply a beacon, and it has already shined it’s light, now we have DX12 to look forward to thanks to Mantle.

You won’t see it in GuildWars 2 though, regardless. DX9…. and that is all :P

Mantle is both game AND hardware dependent. This is a terrible system and problem on many fronts. First of all AMD has a significantly smaller install base (source: steam hardware survey). Devs must add extra work for a smaller fraction of their (potential) install base. The expected return (in revenue) on so much work is minimal. This is why most PhysX or mantle games are in essence subsidized by nVidia or AMD respectively. AMD paid EA to put mantle in frostbite and nVidia paid WB to use PhysX in Arkham Orgins. GW2 is too small to warrant such sponsorship in hopes of extra gpu sales and not next gen (such as star citizen or star swarm) as to be sponsored as a “demonstrator”

note: Hardware dependency is not great but not terrible either. nVidias g-sync or shadowplay requires nvidia hardware, but does not require any work on implementation for the game devs This is the key point that can allow hardware specific features to flourish.

the final fact for mantle being put on the back burner for many devs is the news that Microsoft is upgrading DirectX 12 to include many of the benefits (low level abstraction) that mantle has (yay for competition!). However DX12 is not hardware limited and will work on ALL cards that support dx11.

It’s not going to happen.

It will be interesting to see if ANY games (that AMD doesn’t in some way fund) will support it. This is AMDs attempt to differentiate themselves from Nvidia in a war they are currently loosing and I personally think it’s a desperate move at best. I don’t discount it may have technical merits, but no developer in their right mind is going to follow the first looser in the graphics chip race down an exclusive rabbit hole if they have a choice.

Then again, I’ve been wrong before… (and for disclosure sake, I’m a die hard Nvidia user).

Brother Grimm.5176:

It will be interesting to see if ANY games (that AMD doesn’t in some way fund) will support it. This is AMDs attempt to differentiate themselves from Nvidia in a war they are currently loosing and I personally think it’s a desperate move at best. I don’t discount it may have technical merits, but no developer in their right mind is going to follow the first looser in the graphics chip race down an exclusive rabbit hole if they have a choice.

Then again, I’ve been wrong before… (and for disclosure sake, I’m a die hard Nvidia user).

There already is a small list of games that currently support mantle. BF4 being one of them.

charonbobo.4698:

Hello, I know that the mantle is not much known, at least among the players but if it is true i just part of what AMD says it will be better than DirectX. Arena will consider supporting Mantle?

It has been stated already, but let me state it one more time.

Mantle will probable never come to GW2. For all the reasons posted here, but also for one more reason;

the current API is DX9. Upgrading to DX10, DX11, DX11.2, and possibly DX12 is ALOT easier and cheaper (man hours for programmers) then doing a complete recode from the ground up to support an API that only supports 1 vendor.

In honestly, I would rather see GW2 go full OpenGL so I can play it natively on Linux rather then a DX upgrade.

I would love to see Mantle support as well, but I too don’t really see it happening. DX12 may be a bit more plausible, but who knows.

Is the renderer API in it’s current state really a problem though? Sure, DX9 may have a bit of CPU overheat that’s not warranted, but I’m pretty sure overall CPU usage stems from other design decisions (aren’t reflections and shadows done CPU-side, along with water being invisibly-drawn everywhere while also being reflected?)

OpenGL from my understanding would allow for compatibility with many computers, cross-platform, and can allow for some cool optimizations, along with zero overhead. Is there any reason why this wouldn’t be a better option instead of DX12 or Mantle?

Espionage.3685:

I would love to see Mantle support as well, but I too don’t really see it happening. DX12 may be a bit more plausible, but who knows.

Is the renderer API in it’s current state really a problem though? Sure, DX9 may have a bit of CPU overheat that’s not warranted, but I’m pretty sure overall CPU usage stems from other design decisions (aren’t reflections and shadows done CPU-side, along with water being invisibly-drawn everywhere while also being reflected?)

OpenGL from my understanding would allow for compatibility with many computers, cross-platform, and can allow for some cool optimizations, along with zero overhead. Is there any reason why this wouldn’t be a better option instead of DX12 or Mantle?

The way that Anet decided to use DX9 for GW2 is what the issue is. They are relying on DX9 to deliver 2013 type graphics and features. DX9 is NOT designed for that.

They are pushing |——————-| that much data inside of a DX9 pipe that is |——| that big. Thats the best way I can describe why the CPU gets bottle necked so much for this game, as we all know its the render thread – DX9!

Brother Grimm.5176:

It will be interesting to see if ANY games (that AMD doesn’t in some way fund) will support it. This is AMDs attempt to differentiate themselves from Nvidia in a war they are currently loosing and I personally think it’s a desperate move at best. I don’t discount it may have technical merits, but no developer in their right mind is going to follow the first looser in the graphics chip race down an exclusive rabbit hole if they have a choice.

Then again, I’ve been wrong before… (and for disclosure sake, I’m a die hard Nvidia user).

It will depend on which 3rd party engines support it “out of the box”. So far it’s DICE’s Frostbite engine and there is a plug in for the UE3 which the new Thief uses.

It’s far easier to let a game engine developer add it than adding it to a game engine you cobbled together yourself.