News - AMD Mantle boosts Battlefield 4 performance by 45 per cent

[kalniel]

I would be interested in hearing the opinions of other Nvidia users?

Well I'm a user of both. I think it's worrying if it takes too much dev time away from other things, but if it doesn't take much dev time above what they're already doing for consoles then I'm for it - I'd rather competition was fought in this kind of way in terms of more openly improving use of graphics hardware than through propitiatory closed nonsense like nVidia keep trying to pull. And something has to be done about the inefficient windows way of graphics calls vs consoles.

[crossy]

I'm going to sit on my hands for the moment I think.. I'm either going to go for Kaveri or an FX-6300 + R9 270 2GB, which will properly work about £100 more roughly though. Hopefully DDR3 prices will start to drop too!

I'm going to agree with what Cat's said - go for the discrete graphics unless you're stuck for cash, and if you look around you might be able to get in on a FX-8 series. On the DDR3 front, prices are already pretty reasonable - unless you're looking for something crazy spec (e.g. 32GB of 2100MHz RAM). I've got 8GB of 1600MHz going spare if you want.
An FX would be an upgrade for me, I'm on 1090T and 7970 and it's running pretty sweetly. Put it this way, I can run 1080p at very nice settings. Oh, and (respect to Cat) my 1090T is running o/c - 4.1GHz on air cooling with as much stability as you can expect from Windows.
Running an Asus Sabretooth in my rig at the moment and that was definitely upgrade of the year - even allowing for moving my app partition to SSD. System is quicker and considerably more stable (even OC'd) than it was with my old Asus board.

I am very impressed with Mantle they have started out very well, so far there is 20 games in the development stage.
I have always had Nvidia cards and have started to get tired of paying so much for a card, I think the 7 series really highlights this point. To me its looking like AMD are becoming a very viable alternative for me with my next GPU upgrade.

I would be interested in hearing the opinions of other Nvidia users?

I've been a long time NVidia loyalist, and I switched to AMD Q2 last year. I've not regretted the switch as the 7970 that replaced my old 400 series NVidia card is incredibly powerful. I paid above £200 for my 400 series card, and under £300 for the 7970 so I'd have expected a boost, but it's been nice to (for example) max out the settings in Just Cause 2, and get some very juicy visuals in Sleeping Dogs.

Only downsides being increased power draw (although I applied a pretty hefty upclock to my cpu at the same time) and definitely more noise. The NVidia cards I've had in recent memory (7800SLI, 8800GTX, 460SOC) have all been very quiet, whereas with the 7970 you're very aware of when it's having to work hard. Then again, maybe it's just a noisy fan on mine.

Would I replace my 7970 with an R9 or 700 series? Juries out at the moment, the 7970 is less than a year old and it's doing what I want, and hey maybe I can get a warehouse clearance 7970 and Crossfire? From what I've seen there's no "best card" out there - it depends what games you want and at what resolution. At the moment I'd probably pick based on price/performance and bundle.

[herulach]

I'm going to sit on my hands for the moment I think.. I'm either going to go for Kaveri or an FX-6300 + R9 270 2GB, which will properly work about £100 more roughly though. Hopefully DDR3 prices will start to drop too!

You might want to consider (assuming they're compatible), which those slides suggest they are, one of the APUs and an R9 270. You should see gains in some games by making use of crossfirex. I don't know how the cost/performance/clock stacks up against the 6 core FX line though.

[robb213]

I'll only believe it when I see specific results from 3rd parties. It could also vary greatly from developer to developer. Although like GlideAPI and nVAPI, I don't think we'll see it used much 3 years from now. I'm all for performance increasing non-proprietary tech though!

I am very impressed with Mantle they have started out very well, so far there is 20 games in the development stage.
I have always had Nvidia cards and have started to get tired of paying so much for a card, I think the 7 series really highlights this point. To me its looking like AMD are becoming a very viable alternative for me with my next GPU upgrade.

I would be interested in hearing the opinions of other Nvidia users?

What I always tell everyone is they both have their pros and cons, and simply to evaluate your position to see which is better for you. I take it RadeonPro is improving by the day (I've never used it so I can't really say), but I can't see myself living without Nvidia Inspector. I would suggest though to wait until Maxwell releases, since the drop to 22nm has led to many awesome speculations--but we'll only know when they're out. It's not like they're far from release now, hopefully Q2 2014.

[VijaySathyan]

WOW! I am impressed.

[Rapp]

Sounds very impressive but will hold out until I see the patch released to the public.

[dimscene]

45% does sound pretty good. I just built my uncle a budget PC using the A10-5800K. Should've waited for the 6800K. I think that one has mantle?

[Enter-77]

WOW 45%! I'm shocked! can't wait to see if it actually shows that big of a jump in performance!

[acluacs]

I wish someone would release an actual Mantle demonstration app to prove all this.

[Dan the bloke]

Has there been any word on the battlefield 4 mantle release? You know, the one that was supposed to happen 3 weeks ago...

[kalniel]

Has there been any word on the battlefield 4 mantle release? You know, the one that was supposed to happen 3 weeks ago...

Yes, there was a press release around 2nd Jan that explained the delay:

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/...mantle-delay/1

[shaithis]

Has there been any word on the battlefield 4 mantle release? You know, the one that was supposed to happen 3 weeks ago...

I am dreading it. They've only just finished making the game stable (for the most part at least!).

As for the boost, 45% at best, which could possibly be maximum framerate while staring at a blank wall on an APU system for all we know at the moment. Will be good to know the breakdowns once the BF patch hits.

As a nVidia and AMD user, I am extremely wary of this. AMD should have gotten nVidia on-board at the beginning. Now if this becomes popular or causes nVidias nose to be put out of place, you can bet they will start throwing their weight around.......and cause a gigantic fragmentation in the graphics market as nVidia are much more likely to go with a propriety system pushed under the TWIMTBP banner...

There are many that remember the days of D3D, Glide, PowerVR and OpenGL battling it out and causing grief for end users.

[crossy]

I am dreading it. They've only just finished making the game stable (for the most part at least!).

This must be the multiplayer that you're talking around - based on my limited use anyway. I've given the campaign a good few run throughs and it's been pretty stable for me (dumb luck?). Only criticism I've got is about the convoluted way that you have to undergo to get into the game - all that nonsense with Origin logins, browsers popping up, etc.

There are many that remember the days of D3D, Glide, PowerVR and OpenGL battling it out and causing grief for end users.

And aren't we kind of heading for a rematch - DX v's OGL if SteamOS actually becomes something more than a curiousity?

[Dan the bloke]

Yes, there was a press release around 2nd Jan that explained the delay:

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/...mantle-delay/1

Yeah, Id heard that announcement, but still, we're past the halfway point in January, and theres been no fresh information on it. Just like December, they said it was due for release then, and it got pretty much all the way through before they announced a delay.
Im calling it now, its going to be at least Feb before we see it.

I am dreading it. They've only just finished making the game stable (for the most part at least!).

As for the boost, 45% at best, which could possibly be maximum framerate while staring at a blank wall on an APU system for all we know at the moment. Will be good to know the breakdowns once the BF patch hits.

As a nVidia and AMD user, I am extremely wary of this. AMD should have gotten nVidia on-board at the beginning. Now if this becomes popular or causes nVidias nose to be put out of place, you can bet they will start throwing their weight around.......and cause a gigantic fragmentation in the graphics market as nVidia are much more likely to go with a propriety system pushed under the TWIMTBP banner...

There are many that remember the days of D3D, Glide, PowerVR and OpenGL battling it out and causing grief for end users.

I know what you mean, nVidia arent ones to be outdone
Although I think it might not have been possible to get them on board, because isnt Mantle limited to GCN architecture?
Not even the Radeon HD 6xxx series can run it.

[herulach]

AMD clearly didn't get nvidia on board because they aren't a charity. The system appears to be designed to improve performance on GCN first, just like CUDA is designed for Kepler architecture.

TBH as time goes on I'm thinking more and more that this isn't even targetted at Nvidia, all the numbers I've seen focus on IGP performance vs. intel which makes sense, as its the lower end of the market that drives volume. I'm pretty confident that if there were significant gains vs. nvidia they'd have been all over the presentations.

[kalniel]

Yeah, Id heard that announcement, but still, we're past the halfway point in January, and theres been no fresh information on it.

I guess nothing has changed, so no need for another announcement yet. We'll probably get one in time.