NATHAN LAWRENCE reports on several AMD warning shots across Nvidia’s bow
Nvidia has a fair bit of catching up to do in its ongoing GPU war with AMD if revelations from the recent Future of Compute event are anything to go by. What began as a celebration of AMD-forged firsts quickly extended into new announcements and official pledges for greater future computing efficiencies. PC PowerPlay was on hand at the event to glean the most interesting details.
Future of Compute marked the first public announcement of AMD’s Excavatorbased CPU (it’s optimised for low-power notebook/convertible devices), codenamed ‘Carrizo’, which is slated for release in 2015. Details were, unfortunately, scant, but AMD’s CVP and Product CTO Joe Macri confirmed Carrizo will take advantage of unified computing efficiencies as the first CPU with full HSA 1.0 support.
Carrizo boasts an APU configuration, with support for graphics API essentials of AMD’s Mantle, Microsoft’s upcoming DirectX 12, and dual-graphics CrossFire support. In terms of security, Carrizo will utilise ARM TrustZone technology, which means enterprise-grade hardware protection for purchasers. Outside of these details, neither Macri nor anyone else at AMD was willing to discuss any additional Carrizo elements.
BEYOND REALITY
What Macri did want to discuss was his opinion on the next essential focus of computing technology: namely, the importance of virtual reality. During a roundtable discussion, Macri praised Chairman & CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg for his foresight in regards to his multibillion-dollar purchase of Oculus Rift. Macri insisted that virtual reality will have an important place in the not-so-distant future, extending beyond gaming and, at the very least, into the realm of education.
President of Futuremark Oliver Baltuch, announced that 3D Mark 12 Dandia is slated for release in late 2015, then used a 3D Mark demo to showcase the power of the Mantle API versus the current PC standard DirectX 11. With the showcased potential to render around 50,000 objects per frame, Mantle blew the DirectX 11 test away with a whopping 700% improvement. For those gamers whose loyalty lies with Nvidia, though, Microsoft’s indevelopment DirectX 12 API is slated to reap similar improvements.
Richard Huddy, Chief Gaming Scientist at AMD and man with bragging rights to coolest job title ever and digitised cameo in Max Payne, was quick to clarify that AMD and Microsoft are not in competition with their respective APIs. Instead, Huddy suggested the best way to view Mantle was as a stepping stone to DirectX 12, effectively offering Mantlefriendly developers a preview in regards to the potential of what DirectX 12 will have to offer when it’s released. It was refreshing to hear Huddy explicitly state that Mantle is not for every game.
As it stands, Mantle is growing in popularity, with reported adoption from 10 developers and more than 20 games launched or in development with support for the API. Huddy also stated that almost 100 developers have registered for the Mantle beta program. Currently, four game engines have integrated support for Mantle – Frostbite 3 (Dragon Age: Inquisition), CryEngine (Star Citizen), Nitrous Engine (Star Swarm) and Asura Engine (Sniper Elite 3) – while the AMD API was also used in the modified Unreal Engine 3 powering Thief and the Civilization game engine for Civilization: Beyond Earth.
TAKING UP THE MANTLE
While Huddy was happy to highlight the 41% frame-rate boost in Battlefield 4 and 66% fps improvement in Thief with Mantle activated, it was more interesting to see how Firaxis Games had cleverly utilised Mantle to improve multi-GPU smoothness in Beyond Earth. The usual approach to multi-GPU rendering is for each video card to alternate between rendering an entire full-screen frame. While this boosts frame rate, it also has the potential to impact overall smoothness, which Firaxis countered by utilising Mantle-powered split-frame rendering, whereby one GPU rendered half the frame and the other CrossFire-connected card rendered the other. Ultimately, simultaneous splitscreen rendering equates to an overall smoother gameplay experience thanks to less latency.
Huddy also reiterated the reality that Mantle has no licencing fee and simplifies the process of porting games from console to PC, further incentivising other developers to jump on the AMD API train. He finished his presentation with the tease that there would be more Mantle announcements in the coming months.
By far, the most secretive part of the event was in regards to the feature-rich release of AMD Catalyst Omega drivers. Aside from an extensive laundry list of bug fixes and healthy performance increases across Radeon and APU products, Omega is focused on more than just games improvements. AMD Fluid Motion Video provides smooth Blu-ray playback for low-power APUs, Contour Removal eliminates compressed video artefacts, while Omega downloaders can anticipate additional video upscaling enhancements in the form of boosted lowerres content to 1080p-like playback and 1080p videos pushed to 4K-like presentation.
Omega also supports the Radeon-powered external-GPU Alienware Graphics Amplifier, which boosts Alienware 13 notebook visual fidelity, albeit via a proprietary connector. Adam Kozak, Desktop Product Marketing Manager at AMD, hopes other OEMs will follow Alienware’s example of an external GPU option, which will likely occur if consumers adopt the Alienware Graphics Amplifier.
ULTRA FREE
The most exciting Omega inclusion, though, is the inclusion of FreeSync technology. This technology properly achieves what Vsync sets out to do, eliminating screen tearing while simultaneously removing the associated latency. Joe Chan, Vice President of Samsung Electronics Southeast Asia Headquarters, announced that all Samsung UHD monitors released in 2015 will support AMD’s opensource FreeSync technology. No word on pricing for the UD590 and UE850 range, but the royalty-free nature of FreeSync should result in a comparatively cheaper RRP when compared with Nvidia’s G-Sync technology.
Outside of AMD’s promise that FreeSync will result in no stuttering or tearing, alongside full frame rates and fast input, it’s also slated to be compatible with standard monitor features such as colour processing, scaling and OSD. Having seen it demonstrated on a prototype Samsung UHD monitor, we can confirm the results of FreeSync tech were both immediately noticeable and sufficiently impressive.
Given AMD’s proven commitment to opensource technologies such as TressFX, Mantle and, most recently, Freesync, Nvidia is going to have to step up its game if it wants to compete with AMD in the eyes of open-source-loving developers and GPU-loving consumers.