NVIDIA does $5 million deal with Ubisoft

Fierce Guppy

2013-10-02 19:54

Oh, just spiffy. My interest is in BF4, not Assassin's Creed. This Mantle API used by DICE is making me seriously think about getting Radeon cards for the first time. I'm due to build another high-end gaming rig January next year, maybe sooner. However, the long history of negative comments about AMD/ATI's drivers has made its mark on me, and I'm beset with indecision over which company will get my money this time around.

#4667488

Redemption80

2013-10-02 20:14

This was always going to happen when it seems AMD have partnered with EA. It isn't ideal as it will split PC gaming, but at the end of the day it's a business. Just hope Nvidia help optimise these games though, especially if they could be getting compared to Mantle games. I'm split at the moment, Mantle sounds great but BF4 looks just as crap as BF3 for a SP gamer, while AC4 looks quite good and Watch Dog's looks fantastic. Probably still go AMD for my next GPU though, even though I prefer Ubisoft games the tech geek part of my personality wants to mess about with Mantle more.

#4667499

AC_Avatar100400

2013-10-02 20:29

Going to skip reading every other comment But.Battlefield 4 or Asscreed and watch dogs.Hmm dunno AMD sure seems to win here and Mantle will be in BF4.

#4667505

bobdude

2013-10-02 20:35

ehh im tired of all this crap i don't care about super eye candy just want to play the damn game im buying a ps4

#4667512

peshkohacka

2013-10-02 20:42

....

#4667540

UnrealGaming

2013-10-02 21:10

I'm personally a lot more interested in the upcoming FB3 titles, like Dragon Age, Mirrors Edge, Mass Effect, Star Wars... rather than BF4. It's definitely a great thing that we're seeing support for this API by a major games company. And with SteamOS coming... getting a well supported multi platform low level API is an amazing thing.

#4667543

UnrealGaming

2013-10-02 21:12

@peshkohacka This is potentially a lot more interesting than a few frames you may or may not get in the beginning. Lets look at some of the advantages: Up to 9 times more draw calls than comparable APIs by reducing CPU overhead More fine control over the hardware All hardware capabilities are exposed through the API New rendering techniques Prevents bottlenecks Multithreaded parallel CPU rendering support for at least 8 cores Also, I think the creator of Anti-aliasing said something along the lines " with direct hardware access AA would be 300 times faster". This is a dream come true for every PC gamer and game maker.

#4667564

nick0323

2013-10-02 21:35

Any decent PC games make should optimise their games for ATI/Nvidia if they want to return profit. Now there being lazy and AMD/Nvidia are having to pay for it because games run like pants either because of old code or poor optimisation. Game makers earn enough...grow up.

#4667571

Solfaur

2013-10-02 21:41

I'm personally a lot more interested in the upcoming FB3 titles, like Dragon Age, Mirrors Edge, Mass Effect, Star Wars... rather than BF4. It's definitely a great thing that we're seeing support for this API by a major games company.

I too am very interested to see how Mantle works out in "real world", especially since all the games you mentioned will most likely use Mantle and be AMD optimized. Seriously if that is the case, AMD pretty much put their hands on all the best upcoming games out there. Only one that comes to mind which will be awesome but nvidia powered will be Witcher 3.

#4667681

peshkohacka

2013-10-02 23:43

....

#4667758

UnrealGaming

2013-10-03 01:38

I'm not interested in what they say its going to do, i'm more interested in what is actually going to do. Seeing as Nvidia is paying off Ubisoft, we're going to see yet another fragmentation and yet another proprietary gizmo locked to a card vendor. Instead AMD/NV could've worked with Khronos/Microsoft on OGL5/DX12 to reduce overhead/lag, but that's another missed opportunity.

From what I've heard It's supposed to be open. It's GCN only at the moment.

#4667852

Spets

2013-10-03 05:17

From what I've heard It's supposed to be open. It's GCN only at the moment.

Only thing open about it is that developers can use it, as far as other graphics makers go it's a low level API specifically made for GCN. Either the overheads going to grow with new architectures added, previous architectures could be dropped in the future or they just restricted themselves to using GCN.

#4667864

deltatux

2013-10-03 05:45

I also find this very dumb...put that money towards other stuff that matters...idk Anyways im not a business pro so lol BTW after looking at bf4 forums and playing I can see my GTX 780 is doing better than just about every AMD card lol.... Im averaging 70-100 FPS on 2560x1440 and it appears alot of amd and nvidia users are having issues. BTW game is beta but I cant help to be concerned with the overall quality of th GFX I dont member this large of a difrence from bf3 beta to launch. In fact alot of people agree bf3 looks better than bf4 which obv shoudlnt be.

Are you comparing BF3 retail to BF4 beta?

From what I've heard It's supposed to be open. It's GCN only at the moment.

It will be a miracle if they can do a cross compatible low level API that can work with different microarchitectures. The issues with low level APIs is that it's bound to a specific architecture, that means when AMD pushes a new architecture, likely they have to change Mantle again ... unless they do what x86 does and retain compatibility somehow. That's the same with x86 assembly, it's a low level language that doesn't have any overhead but it's not a portable language. x86 assembly is different than say PowerPC assembly language. deltatux

#4667879

wtsfox

2013-10-03 06:24

didn't they say that bf4 mantle update is comming december this hear?

#4668136

UnrealGaming

2013-10-03 13:15

It will be a miracle if they can do a cross compatible low level API that can work with different microarchitectures. The issues with low level APIs is that it's bound to a specific architecture, that means when AMD pushes a new architecture, likely they have to change Mantle again ... unless they do what x86 does and retain compatibility somehow. That's the same with x86 assembly, it's a low level language that doesn't have any overhead but it's not a portable language. x86 assembly is different than say PowerPC assembly language. deltatux

Of course, but since It's open, couldn't nvidia make use of it for their future GPUs ? Or would they be infringing on some sort of patents for AMD's micro architecture ? Even with x86 assembly, both AMD and Intel CPU can use it.

#4668983

MadGizmo

2013-10-04 12:19

Of course, but since It's open, couldn't nvidia make use of it for their future GPUs ? Or would they be infringing on some sort of patents for AMD's micro architecture ? Even with x86 assembly, both AMD and Intel CPU can use it.

From what I have seen during the presentation Mantle has two layers called "Mantle Driver" and "Mantle API" in a slide. That implicates a close to metal "Mantle Driver" layer and an abstraction layer called "Mantle API" to be used by games or engines. In theory the "Mantle Driver" layer could be implemented for Nvidia hardware support. That would allow anything to run on top of it. The questions are: Would Nvidia care and would AMD object? Would it even be beneficial, because the two systems have a different architecture? http://zapt5.staticworld.net/images/article/2013/09/amd-mantle-primary-100055857-large.png Edit #1: And about Mantle being open source or not? Robert Hallock: "No. It is an API for the industry-standard GCN Architecture and its specific ISA, done at the request of game developers." Robert Hallock describes himself as "PR Lead, Gaming & Enthusiast Graphics at AMD" on LinkedIn. That smells like Nvidia is left out for the future. Edit #2: Will BF4 use the Nvidia API called NVAPI? Johan Andersson: we've been using it since BF3 and continue to use it, has a lot of good small improvements and utilities in it. Johan Andersson is Technical Director on Frostbite at DICE - the guy presenting the Mantle launch at GPU14. That still doesn't mean that the NVAPI is supported by Mantle. It just means that the Frostbite 3 engine will support it.

#4669203

UnrealGaming

2013-10-04 17:20

The driver layer certainly opens a possibility for support of different architectures. I'm guessing, if this API catches on and more top-tier devs start using it, we might see an interest from Nvidia and Intel. But yeah, who knows what AMD's response would be... Very interesting stuff.

#4669268

Passion Fruit

2013-10-04 18:40

Mantle will probably be only used for AAA titles or studios with time and money to implement it. The smaller ones probably won't bother anyway and will stick exclusive to DX where they can still reach 100% off their customers with no other effort.

#4669297

Year

2013-10-04 19:24

It looks likeÂ*NVIDIA spend $5 million to optimize Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed 5 and Watch Dogs. In fact AMD also is rumored to have invested a similar sum in Battlefield 4, exact details about these... NVIDIA does $5 million deal with Ubisoft

ubisoft deal, imagine if there was more to this deal lol "in order to use your brand new graphic card, Internet is Required" 😀

#4669377

StealBalls

2013-10-04 22:13

I LUUUURVE fancy graphics! for real, but when the chips are down, I could not give a rats scheisse if the game does not run properly.