Mantle supporting Nitrous Engine Demo Released on Steam

[Kreij]

While you are waiting patiently for AMD to get their Mantle drivers out of the lab and into gamers' hands, you may want to head over to Steam as Oxide Games and Publisher Stardock have released a free demo of their Nitrous Engine there, which supports Mantle.

The demo is called "Star Swarm Benchmark", and is a real-time showcase for what the engine is capable of doing. The demo shows two artificial intelligence controlled fleets of starships battling it out. The developers want you to know that the demo is not a deterministic simulation, and repeated runs may produce varying benchmark results due to the highly threaded nature of the Nitrous Engine.





The demo does support the Mantle API, so as soon as you can get your hands on the drivers you will be able to see the performance differences between Mantle and DirectX. The engine is already being used in the development of three game; Stardock's Star Control remake, Mohawk Game's upcoming "Mars", and an unannounced one by Oxide themselves.

You should know that since Stardock has had their hands in the development of this engine from the beginning, you will have to sign-up for a Stardock account when you download it from Steam if you do not already have one.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[RCoon]

Kreij writes articles now?
Awesome!

 

[Frick]

Kreij writes articles now?
Awesome!

That is indeed great, but ... right now it just feels like invite to another flamewar.

Had it been bta I had reported him.

 

[Kreij]

I just posted an article on the availability of a tech demo and benchmark tool. If you guys turn it into a flame war that's not MY fault.
I will, however, be happy to end the flame war.

Now quit fussing and go check out the demo. lol

 

[Assimilator]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2366731

tl;dr this demo is a POS.

 

[Sasqui]

The demo does support the Mantle API, so as soon as you can get your hands on the drivers

When, where???!??!?!?!

 

[Agility]

I lost my jaw halfway through the video....

 

[bogami]

gogo Mantle in we want all games support ! And AMD is back in the game !Lowe to see prices fall . R9-290X in naw 462€ .price is falling. I want to see GTX TITAN Black ed. for less !

 

[TheMailMan78]

Um.......there are no drivers for Mantle yet. This benchmark is useless (EVER MORE SO NOW) because of this. When the drivers come out then we can see. Until then its just wasted space on my HD.

However THANKS BIG K FOR THE NEWS!

 

[RCoon]

invite to another flamewar.

I dont understand why anyone could possibly turn this article into a flamewar. There's literally nothing to argue about, it's just a tool! I just thought it was nice to see Kreij post a news article...

 

[TheMailMan78]

I dont understand why anyone could possibly turn this article into a flamewar. There's literally nothing to argue about, it's just a tool! I just thought it was nice to see Kreij post a news article...

Lately people haven't been really nice to each other. There is a lot of new blood on the forums and they haven't realized the whole picture. Its just computers. Its just the internet. Everything seems to be a flame war anymore if its brand related. That's why Frick made that comment. Personally I just go for the cheapest stable performance. If Mantle brings it, great. Ill buy more AMD cards. If not then Ill stick with NVIDIA. Right now NO ONE in the open market has a working Mantle system. Why? Because AMD hasn't released a driver to support it yet.

 

[human_error]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2366731

tl;dr this demo is a POS.

A lot of misinformed people in that thread. I'm going to wait for bf4 mantle results and see if this demo aligns with that before condemning it.

 

[Easy Rhino]

anything that moves us away from microsoft's directx is a good thing in my opinion.

 

[a111087]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2366731

tl;dr this demo is a POS.

I don't know what is worse - nubs on anandtech or nubs on techpowerup...

 

[Solaris17]

Im really curious as to what nvidias response to mantle will be if they do respond. I'm not saying nvidia has any interest in developing their own API but im curious as to what it would do for the market assuming it didn't fall apart and fragment the shit out of it.


but this post might not make any sense either. im several blue moons deep. and im not sure if it made too much sense to me.

 

[Ikaruga]

I don't know what is worse - nubs on anandtech or nubs on techpowerup...

Noob or not, the demo didn't impress me either tbh, especially the subpar visuals (imho). I know many people worked hard on that presentation, and I don't want to disrespect their work, but I can't help it if the end result looks something like that "bad".

 

[HTC]

Personally, i think they are trying to show it's capabilities the wrong way.


What they should do is make it so that it makes as many ships on screen as allowed by a certain minimum FPS (5, 8, 10, more?): both for DX as well as Mantle.

Both should have the same exact settings except for the above.


IMO, only then would we see the difference.

 

[Scrizz]

Im really curious as to what nvidias response to mantle will be if they do respond. I'm not saying nvidia has any interest in developing their own API but im curious as to what it would do for the market assuming it didn't fall apart and fragment the shit out of it.


but this post might not make any sense either. im several blue moons deep. and im not sure if it made too much sense to me.

I would hope they adopt it too

Don't worry. I understood what you wrote....I think

 

[WhiteLotus]

I'm more interested in this engine being used to make SoaSE 2. Hopefully.