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AMD Release Mantle And Delays Beta Drivers, Battlefield 4 Gets Mantle Update

The big moment has finally come as AMD finally release their much anticipated Mantle patch, and their latest drivers are on the way with Catalyst 14.1 Beta. On top of that, Battlefield 4 has officially been given its Mantle update, but you’ll need the as-yet-unreleased Beta drivers to play it, a minor delay due to some slight issues, but AMD are said to be working quickly to get everything synced up again.

The issues immediately caused subpar performance for Battlefield 4, problems with multi-GPU usage, stuttering on Crossfire setups and more. To soften the blow, AMD have shared expected performance figures and Battlefield 4 gamers with the right hardware can see anything from 2.9% to a whopping 40.9% improvement!

CPU-limited scenario: 40.9% (1080p) and 40.1% (1600p) performance improvement under Ultra settings and 4xAA on the AMD A10-7700K with an AMD Radeon R9 290X.
GPU-limited scenario: 2.7% (1080p) and 1.4% (1600p) performance improvement under Ultra settings and FXAA on the Core i7-4960X with an AMD Radeon R7 260X
Average uplift for 1080p: 13.28% (Average of 290X and 260X data on the i7-4960X, A10-7700K, FX 8350 and i5-4670K)
Average uplift for 1600p: 11.35% (Average of 290X and 260X data on the i7-4960X, A10-7700K, FX 8350 and i5-4670K)

StarSwarm from Oxide Games promises even more impressive gains:

CPU-limited scenario: 319% (1080p) and 281% (1600p) performance improvement in the “RTS” test on Extreme settings with the AMD A10-7700K and an AMD Radeon R9 290X.
GPU-limited scenario: 5.1% (1080p) and 16.7% (1600p) performance improvement in the “RTS” test on Extreme settings with the Core i7-4960X and an AMD Radeon R7 260X
Average uplift for 1080p: 115.65% (Average of 290X and 260X data on the i7-4960X, A10-7700K, FX 8350 and i5-4670K)
Average uplift for 1600p: 75.19% (Average of 290X and 260X data on the i7-4960X, A10-7700K, FX 8350 and i5-4670K)

As soon as the driver issues are resolved, expect to see plenty of details on the real world gains the new Mantle API can offer, but if the numbers above are anything to go by, then we should be in for a real treat, especially in tasks that normally rely heavily on the CPU as Mantle is supposed to cut down on the overheads associated with DirectX.

Thank you Fudzilla for providing us with this information.

Peter Donnell

As a child still in my 30's (but not for long), I spend my day combining my love of music and movies with a life-long passion for gaming, from arcade classics and retro consoles to the latest high-end PC and console games. So it's no wonder I write about tech and test the latest hardware while I enjoy my hobbies!