RA92 said:
Hmm, I am actually interested in seeing a source of those 25% increase in performance figures. DX11.1 does leverage Win8 over Win7, but as far as I found out, <url=http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/11/24/battlefield_4_windows_7_vs_81_performance_review/1>it was around 6% when running Nvidia cards and 3% on AMD cards while running BF4.
Even then, you must remember that DX10 features exclusive to Vista never were a game changer (no small thanks to the 360 still being DX9). Shattered Horizon, which made full use of DX10 features, actually bombed because of it's Vista-exclusivity. An incremental API upgrade isn't going to move OS sales figures after alienating such a large part of the user base (I've no trouble believing Win8's kernel performs better; MS actually employs good programmers as evident by their stellar record when t comes to backward compatibility. But that gawdawful tablet interface... Win8 never really recovered from that initial backlash).
Also, doing straight-the-metal coding just sounds silly. You think games are buggy at launch as it is? Bad programming and low level API means frequent system crashes and will make both the developers' and gamers' life hell (there's a reason why Nvidia isn't jumping on AMD's Mantle train). Plus, MS will only roll out that feature with Win9, if they do at all.
http://www.hardcoreware.net/windows-7-vs-windows-8-performance/
Granted 25% was an oversatetement, but if you look at what they actually tested rather than raw framerate you will notice windows 8 has significant increase.
Due to it being a kernel optimization rather than just morepwoerful hardware of course in some tasks its goign to be faster and in some tasks its not. What we have to look at however is overal performance for people that use PCs in most ways they can, because there is a user for everything out there.
I do know that DX10 did not win people over. neither did i claim it did. DX 11 however did, which works with windows 7 and up only. And directx 11 exclusive games, dropping directx 9 support was what got a lot of my friends over to finally leaving XP (personally for me was dropped hardware driver support, curse you HP). in fact it went as far as people blaming developers supporting Directx 9 for lack of photorealistic graphics ( as ridiculous as it sounds, it isnt that far from the truth, at least now anyway, we actually got hardware capable of making graphics that you have to doublecheck to see if its not an actual photo. mostly delivered by mods thought becasue developers cant be bothered making graphic settings for people with high end machines, i guess understandable, they have to program to thel ovest common denominator - consoles).
Oh, and i do completely agree with you about the UI of windows 8 and the like. i still use Win7 myself. merely pointing out that due to it being better under the hood and exclusive support for better directx versions (and there will be better ones in the future as it always progresses) will be a factor for games going exclusive there eventually. Now, hopefully, by then we will have a win8 version that doesnt look and control like crap, probably named WIndows 9.
Straight to metal coding is silly. Theres probably less than 10 people in the whole world that could program a 3D videogame on that. Low level API acess is not straigh to metal programming, its just ability to go through some of the layers of hardware acess thus reducing time needed to process the commands back and forth, as usually it went hardware - drivers - directx - possible windows interference - engine - actual game. being able to remove parts of this will ALLLOW but not force developers to be able to optimize better.
Though you are right, its very likely it will be WIn 9 exclusive.
Nvidia does not need to jump on Mantle train really, since its always been the leader in the GPU market. Even with Mantle boost AMD is not catching up in performance level to something like 780ti even with newer cards from AMD. However there is a difference of Mantle - direct to hardware acess, and low level API acess Directx. On the first one, you can "code to metal". On the second one, you still code to DirectX like you always did. You dont even have to use those features it brings, but then youd probably be supporting the older versions as well anyway.
I did like Nvidia response in one of their panels when asked about Mantle. "Its another Api for makers. we dont need more APIs we got too many already, its confusing as it is".
