Testing AMD’s Mantle

Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare

“Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare digs into the trenches with an explosive new Co-op and Multiplayer action experience. Blast zombies and plants across a mine-blowing world that delivers the depth of a traditional online shooter blended with the refreshing humor of Plants vs. Zombies.” From PvZGardenWarfare.com

In Plants Vs Zombies Garden Warfare we did a 5 minute loop of the Port Scallywag Map, we tried to make this as repetitive as possible to keep the results accurate. PvZ:GW does not have a benchmark tool so the margin of error is more significant than usual. We used Fraps to monitor the frame-rate during DX11 mode and during Mantle mode we had to use a make-shift frame-rate recording mechanism. Holding Ctrl+R gives a frame-rate counter in the top right of the screen. Using a custom screen-capture program I then captured a screenshot of the benchmark run with the frame-rate counter showing every second throughout the duration of the benchmark run and averaged those out, that’s an average of 300 screenshots. This is a method that is subject to a lot of margin of error but it was the best we could do given the fact we or our AMD representative did not know of any frame-rate recording instrument within the game. We used the Ultra preset and the 1920 x 1080 resolution to test.

The results in PvZ:GW were staggering. From DX11 to Mantle we saw a 50FPS rise with the FX 4100 and a 40FPS rise with the FX 8350. This is hugely promising and goes to show how effect Mantle is, remember PvZ:GW is a very new game too so the significant jump will probably be improved down the line with more patches and such.