Even more good news from AMD. Mantle SDK will be available to anybody and Nvidia and Intel can make drives for Mantle if they want to. For Intel, I am pretty sure their will use Mantle for their Iris Pro and Integrated Graphics. I doubt Nvidia will ever use Mantle as they like to do their own thing.
Freesync monitors will come up and they will cost $100 less than G-sync monitors.
I can't wait to see the Freesync monitors and how the Mantle SDK will come out.
This is all really exciting to hear. I think Mantle has a lot of potential and this will allow it to be further developed into something really awesome. I'm sure Intel will snap it up. They were already talking about it with AMD a few months after they announced it. nVidia will not support it. I believe they already stated that.
I'm a bit confused about FreeSync though. Why do we need a special monitor? I thought it was part of the DP 1.2A standard so anyone with a 1.2A monitor and GPU could take advantage of it. They are acting like it needs special hardware? nVidia said they won't be supporting it or AdaptiveSync, but if it is just part of the standard then what would they do? Like turn it off on purpose?
It is cute how they actually think G-Sync is going to be a thing still... Poor nVidia.
The reason that you need a special monitor is because before the specification was finalized, it couldn't really be implemented. The standard for Adaptive sync was introduced, so now the first monitors with it available are now shipping.
It is pointed out in the article though that some monitors already have the ability to have it enabled. This is probably because it is based on a known standard (that has been around in laptops for years), and some manufacturers put it into their monitors before it was finalized as a way of future proofing. Now that everything is finalized, they are able to enable it with a firmware flash. Why the firmware has taken this long on those specific monitors, I don't know. It is likely a competitive thing and they couldn't release it until those others started shipping. So yeah.
Though you could have been talking about nVidia being a horrible company with that "special monitor" comment. Either way, nVidia is a horrible company. They are trying to get as many proprietary things as they can so that they can get some leverage over AMD who just won't let them win. A constant thorn in their side. AMD could do the same thing, but they aren't. They are showing the people that there is no reason for all of this bullshit to go on. We can have competition and advancement at the same time. Screw walled gardens. The gaming industry needed a new API. Everyone knew it. Game devs went to AMD to request it becasue they likely had no chance with Microsoft. They could have made it proprietary. They didn't. Everyone knows we needed it, it forced Microsoft's hand with DirectX, but in the mean time, WE STILL NEED IT, so they are trying to make it the standard. nVidia could share PhysX, but screw that. They need a reason for people to buy their stuff other than straightforward competition. G-sync too. Meanwhile AMD again sees that the industry needs it, so they point out nVidia's shit with Adaptive/Free sync (which has been around for a while). Like it is ridiculous. There is a reason that so many people are fervent AMD fanboys. At the end of the day, competition benefits everyone. nVidia just wants to benefit themselves, hence the proprietary nonsense.