AMD's low-level Mantle API is being backed by another top-tier game developer, the company announced at the Game Developers Conference. Crytek has hopped on the bandwagon to integrate Mantle into an upcoming iteration of CryEngine, which will be used for upcoming games such as Star Citizen, among others.

CryEngine, like EA DICE's Frostbite engine that also supports Mantle, has typically been harnessed for graphically impressive games such as Crysis and Ryse: Son of Rome. Any extra performance that you can squeeze out of hardware in games like this can be a godsend, especially on entry-level hardware that can struggle to run the game at all.

Crytek joins a range of other developers committed to integrating Mantle into their game engines and games, including Rebellion Developments (Sniper Elite III), Eidos Montreal (Thief), Oxide Games (Nitrous game engine), Cloud Imperium Games (Star Citizen), and, of course, EA Dice (Battlefield 4, and all upcoming Frostbite-powered games).

At GDC 2014, AMD also announced partnerships with two other game developers as part of their Gaming Evolved program. Through a partnership with Square Enix and Airtight Games, upcoming title Murdered: Soul Suspect will feature DirectX 11 effects optimized for AMD hardware. Another developer, Xaviant, will integrate TressFX Hair and TrueAudio into Lichdom, a game which we first saw at AMD's GPU14 Tech Day last year.

Neither Murdered: Soul Suspect nor Lichdom will feature Mantle API support at this stage, but AMD is taking it one step at a time. In the coming days we should also expect news surrounding DirectX 12, which looks to be a low-level graphics API competitor to Mantle.