AMD officially launches Mantle, new driver and patches available soon

[Nobina]

What if I have a laptop with descrete GPU, AMD Radeon HD7470M, will it be compatible? All of the previous AMD drivers made my LCD backlit turn off.

 

[Darth Shiv]

"BF4 has so many issues with Mantle it is making testing near impossible"
Completely unsurprising considering how woeful BF4 has been in early releases of... anything!

Fingers crossed it stabilises soon tho!

 

[pmcardle]

on a side note: I don't understand why do people hate the idea of a free performance boost, it's just retarded.

Welcome to the internet. For any tech topic, there is usually a substantial population of argumentative people that fall into at least 1 of 3 categories (sometimes all 3).

Category 1: Not feeling fulfilled unless they are arguing and complaining, hoping to share their misery with the rest of the world.

Category 2: Loves the sound of their own voice, and will spout off on a subject like they are an expert, even though they have no idea what they are talking about, and probably are just copy/pasting from wiki or relaying anecdotal evidence.

Category 3: Fanboy/Fangirl who can't stand their favorite product/brand's competition to have any positive news or traction at all, and so they must immediately attack - even if the attack is unwarranted and/or makes no sense.

So which category do you fall in?

 

[oldikes]

Edit: I decided to remove this, lest I get pulled into a petty argument.

 

[TheBigFatClown]

So AMD couldn't compete with Intel in the CPU arena, and now they are intentionally engineering games to be less dependent on the CPU. Talk about an extremely hilarious fix for their inadequacies.

May I suggest switching from your normal breakfast cereal brand of fruit loops to a more rational brand like "Cherrios"? This is simply one area of performance where AMD seen the opportunity for improvements and so they seized the opportunity. AMD does compete with Intel CPUs and they do it by offering the best bang for the buck. But if you throw the factor of cost out the window then we could all insult AMD on a daily basis. They are the Pepsi to our Coke. They matter.

It's upsetting to think that anybody would insult a company that can produce a CPU with an integrated GPU. A product that has 2.41 billion transistors. A wonder and a miracle of modern technology. And to think that you can purchase it so casually and easily as you would purchase a loaf of Wonder bread!!!! And what do we do? We cry about it!!!

AMD can compete with Intel at the CPU level. They are just a little behind right now. Mantle is a short-term, fill-in-the-time-gap approach. As long as Mantle "does no harm" then it can uh....well...do no harm? *cough, cough*

Although, Mantle does seem very "similar" to the "3DNow" hype of times past. Getting people to buy your products based on a...not yet realized....performance benefit is almost the same as buying stock and hoping it rises. So the real question I would ask myself is...is any AMD product that supports Mantle worth buying "without" the Mantle support. Is it a good "overall" value. If the answer is yes, then Mantle is just the 'icing on the cake' if it ever becomes manifest.

In the interest of full disclosure, I fall into Categories 1 and 2. Thank you for your time.

 

[TheBigFatClown]

Edit: I decided to remove this, lest I get pulled into a petty argument.

Damn you, why do you insist on making my life less relevant? Another lost opportunity for me I suppose.

 

[psycros]

I'm just hoping that they've finally cured the graphics corruption issue on older DX games. Any version of Catalyst after 13.4 has problems with many classic titles.

 

[GhostRyder]

I may have spoken to soon, now as far as that "Benchmark" program goes the mantle API seems works fine in all setups ive tried. BF4 is another story apparently...So far it seems that unless im running all three GPU's in eyefinity 3 monitor mode with Mantle enabled the game will crash. One monitor with 2-3 GPU's and mantle enabled gets only 5 minutes of gameplay before I get the "BF4 has stoppped responding". With single monitor or multi monitor eyefinity and one GPU with mantle enabled I get no problems and some good smoothness.

So for me, it needs some work sadly but im going to keep messing with it for awhile to see if I can get it to work better.

 

[hahahanoobs]

TWO years in the making and DICE and AMD still eff up the release.
DICE releases Mantle patch - AMD delays driver.
AMD includes Frame Pacing 2 in 14.1 driver for Xfire configs - BF4 doesn't support it yet.

AMD said:
Mantle will benefit lower end hardware more than the high end
DICE said:
Up to 58% improvement with high end hardware.

I'll wait for a finished product before I even touch Mantle.

AMD = And More Delays
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Battlefield-4-Mantle-Early-Performance-Testing

 

[cliffordcooley]

"AMD = And More Delays"

LOL

 

[Steve]

Based on my experience with testing Mantle in BF4 is that it doesn’t work. I have spent 2 days trying to get it to work on three different systems with the 290 and 260X. For now I have given up, when it’s not crashing the performance with Mantle enabled is horrible. Interestingly Tim found the exact same thing so I am a little confused as to how other test sites have got this working.

 

[Scorpus]

Based on my experience with testing Mantle in BF4 is that it doesn’t work. I have spent 2 days trying to get it to work on three different systems with the 290 and 260X. For now I have given up, when it’s not crashing the performance with Mantle enabled is horrible. Interestingly Tim found the exact same thing so I am a little confused as to how other test sites have got this working.

Yeah on my reasonably high end system (i5-3570 + Radeon R9 290) I get serious performance drops using Mantle, as the card won't consistently clock up to 1000 MHz like it does when Direct3D is enabled. I suspect this is a major cause of issues and is likely a driver side thing

 

[St1ckM4n]

Scorpus, why must you appear here with your 'ridiculously photogenic' profile pic. Every time I see you I almost report you for being a spammer based on profile alone.

 

[veLa]

"AMD = And More Delays"

LOL

Don't underestimate the power of AMD.

 

[Randomthom]

So, this will make no difference to me on my 6950 then? Shame... time to upgrade soon then!

 

[VitalyT]

So, for what we know so far from hands-on experience, use of Mantle results in significantly dropped performance instead of an improvement. Some new feature indeed...

 

[Lionvibez]

Based on how flakey BF4 was at launch I don't see mantle running flawlessly till about March or April or maybe june.

Lets see if my predictions holds true.

 

[GhostRyder]

If I disable CFX It seems to run just fine multiplayer or single player on my system. I have not had it crash or act poorly once in that state compared to direct 3D. But in CFX it has problems and the game won't run for me except in eyefinity which is odd because it works decently but I just would rather stick with Direct3D in that sense because I cannot see anything differently since it stays at 60FPS just fine. It definitely needs some work which im sure this month we will probably get another couple patches fixing it. It does its job I have seen from the standard setups using one GPU but thats about it.

Yeah on my reasonably high end system (i5-3570 + Radeon R9 290) I get serious performance drops using Mantle, as the card won't consistently clock up to 1000 MHz like it does when Direct3D is enabled. I suspect this is a major cause of issues and is likely a driver side thing

It does? I may have to have MSI-Afterburner running with the core clocks on screen to see if it does it to me as well because now im curious. I really have not experimented with it in a single GPU config since I have multiple cards.

 

[Guest]

So AMD couldn't compete with Intel in the CPU arena, and now they are intentionally engineering games to be less dependent on the CPU. Talk about an extremely hilarious fix for their inadequacies.

I don't think it's so hilarious. It actually works. Look at these tests: http://pclab.pl/art55953-4.html

 

[cliffordcooley]

I don't think it's so hilarious. It actually works. Look at these tests: http://pclab.pl/art55953-4.html

Not acording to TechSpot Staff.

• Steve
• Scorpus

In time maybe, but currently NO it doesn't work. But it is not the concept that is funny. It is the idea that the concept is needed that is funny. Now you know what context my bad self-proclaimed humor was aiming at.

 

[Steve]

It seems a lot have got it to work and a lot like myself and Tim haven’t been able to. I will be waiting for the next update.

 

[Vrmithrax]

Welcome to the internet. For any tech topic, there is usually a substantial population of argumentative people that fall into at least 1 of 3 categories (sometimes all 3).

Category 1: Not feeling fulfilled unless they are arguing and complaining, hoping to share their misery with the rest of the world.

Category 2: Loves the sound of their own voice, and will spout off on a subject like they are an expert, even though they have no idea what they are talking about, and probably are just copy/pasting from wiki or relaying anecdotal evidence.

Category 3: Fanboy/Fangirl who can't stand their favorite product/brand's competition to have any positive news or traction at all, and so they must immediately attack - even if the attack is unwarranted and/or makes no sense.

So which category do you fall in?

I try (not always successfully) to avoid being argumentative... But I do end up in a little bit of the 3rd category, although I'm a "weird 3" at times... I'm not so much for a specific brand and against everyone else, as I am annoyed by blatant (and often ignorant) fanboyism. If someone spouts obvious nonsense, I have a knee-jerk reaction to call them on it. It can be extreme too - I've found myself defending Apple on a few occasions, for example... Which often makes me feel like I need to take a shower afterwards.

 

[cliffordcooley]

I've found myself defending Apple on a few occasions, for example... Which often makes me feel like I need to take a shower afterwards.

LOL

 

[dividebyzero]

It seems a lot have got it to work and a lot like myself and Tim haven’t been able to. I will be waiting for the next update.

Seems to be quite a range of user experiences. A lot of forums are stacked with people experiencing major issues at the moment- a lot of which are down to the BF4 patch itself, which is making previously (relatively) stable installs unstable. Considering that many of these users are using Intel CPUs + Nvidia graphics, it seems that AMD's driver is far from the root cause.
What seems doubly odd is that some sites are reporting no issues whatsoever:

We also experienced no issues, no crashing, it was rock stable for all the pounding we gave it the whole day.

...which is at odds with a large proportion of users, although I'd note that many users aren't adhering to AMD directive in cleaning out all traces of the iGP drivers, and many of the better behaved installs are Win 8.1

Can't help but wonder if combining AMD and EA beta software isn't akin to watching two paralytically drunk guys trying to find their way back to their hotel in an unfamiliar city.

 

[dcdcchris]

I have to agree with this review, I was really pumped about getting these drivers.... but now I can honestly say I wish they never released it. BF4 is worse than when it was first released. I get horrible stuttering, and worse frame rates than using direct x.

Mantle is garbage in its current form, and should have of been released to the public.