Both Mantle and DX12 can combine video memory
Robert Hallock (Head of Global Technical Marketing at AMD) shared something interesting on Twitter earlier on. You guys know that when your have a GPU graphics card combo with dual-GPUs that the memory is split up per GPU right ?
Thus an 8GB graphics card is really 2x4GB. As it stands right now, this will be different when DirectX 12 comes into play and apparently already is with Mantle. Basically he states that two GPUs finally will be acting as ‘one big’ GPU. Here's his complete quote:
Mantle is the first graphics API to transcend this behavior and allow that much-needed explicit control. For example, you could do split-frame rendering with each GPU ad its respective framebuffer handling 1/2 of the screen. In this way, the GPUs have extremely minimal information, allowing both GPUs to effectively behave as a single large/faster GPU with a correspondingly large pool of memory.
Ultimately the point is that gamers believe that two 4GB cards can’t possibly give you the 8GB of useful memory. That may have been true for the last 25 years of PC gaming, but thats not true with Mantle and its not true with the low overhead APIs that follow in Mantle’s footsteps. – @Thracks (Robert Hallock, AMD)
There is a catch though, this is not done automatically, the new APIs allow memory stacking but game developers will need to specifically optimize games as such. An interesting statement.
Keep in mind though, this is a marketing rep talking ...
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Pretty much.
Time will tell I guess, but very promising from these new APIs. Hope it comes to fruition! Would be a huge boost to gamers everywhere and makes CF/SLI far more relevant (not that it isn't already, just more!)
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If it's true then hopefully they'll be able to patch it in for older games like with Battlefield 4 and mantle support, I've been using SLI since Voodoo2 days and I always thought it was a shame you couldn't use the memory on both cards, it's a huge waste, anyway fingers crossed this works.
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Awww this is sexy.
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5GB will be good, I tried running some stuff with 5k resolution, Ran slow but AWESOME. Some UE4 tech demos, looks OUTSTANDING, but running with full 7-8gb Vram? The 970 sli will be on their good for nothing knees, beggin' for Xtra mercy.
Our cards as of now like I have stated once before, ain't fast enough to fully utilize the 8gb Vram, even if it did, how fast would the card run actually? DIRT SLOW, Slow as Molasses W/Sweet Brown Shuga(Suger).
Even with the new Radeon 3XX series, 8k resolution with maxed out settings? I think even with three of them at full scaling speed, will still have a hard time, But this is just my own opinion. I would love to see 8k benches with that card, sorrie for being off topic here.
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this has to be the best news about graphics for since sli/cf existed