Pretty impressive that they can release anything that resembles Mantel before Mantel is out of beta and goes to other GPU's (which let's face it, will not happen, so I guess it's not THAT impressive) and DX12. Also props to NVidia for making drivers that support 4.5 so fast, hell they came out before this news post. I still think high adoption for OpenGL from the large names on Windows is a pipe dream, but at least they are trying. And I hope so much that I am wrong about that. At least "DX11 emulation features" for importing might help that cause. It' a great way to deal with MS and the behemoth they are, make the transition painless or at least as painless as possible.

I don't want to break someones dreams, but bare implementation which nVidia does at each OpenGL release is not happy one. And as for OpenGL NG, HH did not write it is out yet, and it will not be out for a lot of time. Now to show how ignorant people are: "Khronos Group/microsoft can make completely new API which has nearly nothing to do with previous one on fundamental basis (M$ already did that), now Khronos will do same. But as long as they name it in way common *d*ots are used to, it is OK and no bashing comes into their face." See? If AMD donated entire work to either of them silently and they released it under their name, everyone would be applauding to M$/Khronos for their improvement and nVidia would implement it day one as it is easy to do copy/paste and few exports for their teams which do it on daily basis.

Pretty impressive that they can release anything that resembles Mantel before Mantel is out of beta and goes to other GPU's (which let's face it, will not happen, so I guess it's not THAT impressive) and DX12. Also props to NVidia for making drivers that support 4.5 so fast, hell they came out before this news post. I still think high adoption for OpenGL from the large names on Windows is a pipe dream, but at least they are trying. And I hope so much that I am wrong about that. At least "DX11 emulation features" for importing might help that cause. It' a great way to deal with MS and the behemoth they are, make the transition painless or at least as painless as possible.

Actually, it is OpenGL NG and it is the next generation of OpenGL ( not the 4.5).. i dont think it is even on alpha build outside testing build for some developpers. In reality they are just calling to participation for it ( huum AMD maybe lol )..

Aug 11, 2014 Khronos announced a call for participation today in a project to define a future open standard for high-efficiency access to graphics and compute on modern GPUs. Key directions for the new ground-up design include explicit application control over GPU and CPU workloads for performance and predictability, a multithreading-friendly API with greatly reduced overhead, a common shader program intermediate language, and a strengthened ecosystem focus that includes rigorous conformance testing. Fast-paced work on detailed proposals and designs are already underway, and any company interested to participate is strongly encouraged to join Khronos for a voice and a vote in the development process. Complete information on joining the Khronos Group is available online.

Now im allready happy to see the improvement on OpenGL 4.5..

From Gamespot article: "Amusingly, and I don't know how relevant it is, you can make your own decision on that, for me it's entertaining: one of the companies that approached us [about Mantle] was Intel, and we said to Intel, 'You know what, can you give us some time, to fully stabilise this because this has to be future proof, but we'll publish the API spec before the end of the year.’ And if Intel want to do their own Mantle driver and want to contribute to that they can build their own. We're trying to build a better future." AMD's Richard Huddy

Actually Intel have allready start with Mantle ( you know it is easy, you go on AMD developper central, you go on Mantle SDK, and you can apply there ). http://developer.amd.com/mantle/

I hope the new competition will continually force MS to up their game with DX, make gaming better on the PC whilst consoles only get limited gains. I'm sure the Xbox division won't mind cuz they told us they were committed to PC right? lol.

Considering MS just announced the new Tom Raider will be exclusive to the XBox One (how much did they pay for that?) i doubt MS does care about PC gaming. They'll make Directx 12 just good enough to counter Mantle and that's it. And don't be fooled the low level part of Directx 12 would not exist without Mantle and the lack of power of the XBox One.

I'm conically confused, so does this need a new GPU ? Will GT800 series support it ? Or is it just an upgrade for any OpenGL 4.x supporting cards.

Well, if Windows 9 is a 'free' upgrade from Windows 8.1, it's not going to be much of an issue 🙂. If people expect Microsoft to keep supporting Windows 7 adding new features to it they will be sadly disappointed, and disappointed with every other software company out there. Oh no, how sad, you bought a new car and how dare they not give you the better engine that is in the next years model? You can apply it to just about any other business. The alternative business model is you pay a subscription fee, and that covers new versions of software as well, but that would be worse since you would be 'forced' to pay the yearly subscription fee. If Windows 9 is a free upgrade to Windows 8.1, why would you want to stick with Windows 8.1?

There's software with lifetime licenses available. Not that I don't understand why Microsoft would stick DX12 in Windows 9 or disagree with the decision.

I'm doubting "win 9" or whatever they call it will be a free upgrade. They have never done that before, though who knows... maybe MS will surprise me. I wouldn't be surprised if they do like they did with win 8 when it first came out and sell it for really cheap for a couple of months. I think I paid $25 for win8, I can't remember exactly.. but it was cheap and I wouldn't really miss that $25 if I ended up hating it like I thought I would, and was glad I did when I realized it was just fine after a classic shell install. Not that I use it for anything but games I can't play in linux.. but not the horrid OS some make it out to be. I'm glad AMD kinda lit a fire under everyone asses with mantle. Why everyone waited this long to try and get "closer to the metal" is beyond me. If any API is in dire need of a complete redux it's OGL though. I'm not a dev but I read all kinds of "nerd news" and according to many It's bulky and has far too much legacy stuff that is hardly ever used if at all anymore. There are far too many ways to do the same thing and apparantly it's hard to figure out which way is faster. Why everyone can't just sit down and collaborate on a "one API to rule them all" kind of thing I don't understand. It would be to the benefit of everyone. If MS does make win9 a dependency of DX12 and they fail again to get people to adopt it en masse.. it may just be the downfall of DX. As Linux is my OS of choice and being a gamer that is exactly what I hope happens. Someone posted a link to the following when I read the news elsewhere and was a good read. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/88055

would love for opengl to make come back but i just dont see this happening sadly, but atlest i dont have to update my HW/OS to get support for low api unlike what most likely gona happen with DX12 Hell its 2014 and alot games still use DX9 few that use DX10 which really few or hell DX11 usual endup being after thoughts. DX9 is still defacto defualt for most games.... Cause MS likes to play that game of DX version only works with this "OS" which why DX10/11 are failures in the adopt/used rate comapred to DX9

When i was saying that the call of Khronos could be hear by AMD .. i was wrong, it is allready the case .. Something interessant in a discussion between Huddy ( AMD ) and TR following his presentation on Siggraph conference. http://techreport.com/news/26922/amd-hopes-to-put-a-little-mantle-in-opengl-next

Huddy told us AMD has done a "great deal of work" with the Khronos Group, the stewards of the OpenGL spec, on OpenGL Next. AMD has given the organization unfettered access to Mantle and told them, in so many words, "This is how we do it. If you want to take the same approach, go ahead." Khronos is free to take as many pages as it wants out of the Mantle playbook, and AMD will impose no restrictions, nor will it charge any licensing fees. While Huddy didn't say how closely OpenGL Next might mirror Mantle, he repeated the contention that Mantle shaped DirectX 12's development. We expressed some doubts about that contention when we addressed it earlier this year, but Huddy was adamant. Development on DirectX 12's new features may have begun before Mantle, he said, but the "real impetus" for DX12's high-throughput layer came from the AMD API.