By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Ramadear on 13 June 2014
Edit Thread
torok said:
Ramadear said:
 


What is this?

You telling me to get more info before discussing graphics then you go on to tell me that the 7850 is a decent gpu? How ironic. 

Mantle has already shown what it can do. Its not about boosting the performance of gpus, its about getting rid of the cpu bottleneck. That is to say a AMD 7850k with a Radeon 290x would get almost the same performance as a I7 3770k with a 290x. Currently with dx11 and prior, this is not the case. The 7850k would be a bottleneck because it wouldn't be fast enough to feed the 290x. This is why with mantle when its used with a high end cpu and gpu, there is no huge performance gains. Because the cpu is already fast enough to feed the gpu. 

In other words if mantle continues to take off, it will make it so that one just has to focus on upgrading their gpu instead of worrying about getting a high end cpu and gpu. Google battlefield 4 and thief mantle benchmarks. The high end gpu/cpu performance doesn't matter, pay attention to the low end cpu with high end gpu benchmarks. Because that is what matters. 

And yes, the mantle api is similar to what is in consoles. How do you think its possible for the ps4/xo to have weak jaguar cpus but be able to pump out decent graphics. With a low level api, the cpu is no longer the bottleneck. 


CPUs aren't the bottleneck on PCs. Of course, if you can pump their performance, it's a good improvement. But it isn't the big issue here. I myself game with a almost 5 year old Phenom II 955 and it isn't an issue. I've already considered upgrading it, but benchmarks actually show that I would get more marginal upgrades (it would be better to grab a high-end cooler or watercooler and overclock it). A good AMD FX 8-core CPU is pretty cheap. Even with that, I would do a better service to myself using that money to replace my GTX650 with a beefier card. I don't think most gamer are thinking about using Titans with a Core i3 to make that a revolution simply because decent CPUs are several times cheaper than decent GPUs.

Despite that, PS4/X1 CPUs don't have to directly feed GPUs. In a PC the CPU have to grab data from RAM and feed the GPU so it can copy it to its memory. PS4 (I will use it as an example because I'm more informed about its architecture, despite the X1 being similar) simply has every info on an unified pool so both the CPU and GPU can use it, with two memory buses, one for the GPU with a higher bandwidth and one that both can use with lower bandwidth. So the CPU can't become a bottleneck when feeding the GPU simply because it won't need to feed it. The GPU can go there and use what it wants.

Thats not what I'm saying. I'm saying with respect to game performance weak cpus become a bottleneck. I can't recommend anyone who has lets say a Phenom II 955 to get a modern gpu such as a 280x as a upgrade. I would tell them that while their performance will be hindered since the 955 can't adequately feed the 280x. This is factual!

The good thing about Mantle and perhaps DX12 is that this is no longer the issue. Its quite expensive to have to buy a new motherboard, ram and gpu just to be up to date. With Mantle you would just have to buy a Amd gpu. So money that would be spent on a mb and cpu could be put towards a good gpu. That is a good deal and opens up the door for many more end users to enjoy respectable performance in games. The only problem at this time is Mantle is AMD exclusive.

With your example on the PS4 architecture, I don't think its that simple. In the system can still be cpu limited. I'd say the only game that is available at this time that is cpu intensive is FF14 and in comparison to PC it struggles to maintain high fps. But for the hardware PS4 is using, its doing a good job delievering the goods. If a PC with dx used the same hardware it would peform signifcantly worse than its PS4 counter part. With Mantle it would probably be able to push out similar numbers as found on consoles.

If you feel you got a grasp on the ps4 hardware, then you should know about the x1 hardware. They are virtually the same save for the fact that M$ choose ddr3 for memory. Everyone should already know what that does to the gpu peformance.