AMD Mantle Performance Preview in Battlefield 4 @ [H]

GoodBoy said:
2, the game developers aren't going to push the limits if there isn't hardware that can run it.
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Agreed, there are plenty of already available games, and upcoming games that put even an r9 290x to it's knees. ;)

God, so stocked for Star Citizen!!! :D
 
I have a rig with an el-cheapo X4 955 CPU plus a 7970GE GPU. Man, Mantle is a gift from God for this combo. Without Mantle, BF4 was playable @1080p ultra with 4xMSAA but there were area's in some maps were framerates sank around 30, even when there was nothing special going on graphical wise.
Now with Mantle those 30's become 60. :eek: Up to 45%? Up to 100% for me! And só smooth with those better frametimes.

Thank you AMD for giving this rig a second life! :)
 
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Sigh...All this GPU talk.

Does Mantel make a difference?
Yes! There is no debate about this but where the difference is made seems to be at the CPU (not GPU).
AMD is now promoting mantle but why not go back to building a video card to suit the API? Wouldn't that in effect make DX or OpenGL a low level API? Before someone says it; Yes, I'm sure a proprietary video card design with a proprietary API is going to perform better. But it would only be so for the design goals (eg, PhysX, TressFX, etc), .

At least Glide was a subset of OpenGL. Mantle seems to be a whole different kettle of fish.
 
Becasue they API itself cant do it no matter how much hardware you throw at it.
 
ecktt said:
Sigh...All this GPU talk.

Does Mantel make a difference?
Yes! There is no debate about this but where the difference is made seems to be at the CPU (not GPU).
AMD is now promoting mantle but why not go back to building a video card to suit the API? Wouldn't that in effect make DX or OpenGL a low level API? Before someone says it; Yes, I'm sure a proprietary video card design with a proprietary API is going to perform better. But it would only be so for the design goals (eg, PhysX, TressFX, etc), .

At least Glide was a subset of OpenGL. Mantle seems to be a whole different kettle of fish.
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YOu are missing the point.
AMD is a CPU and GPU company. They've figured out two things:
1- They can't beat intel at CPUs
2- They are having a really hard time beating Nvidia at GPUs (not to say they're losing, but a least via steam surveys, they are always trailing).

THese have been true for a few years now. BUT, one thing has changed recently:
3- AMD is about to get a TON of experience making CPUs and GPUs for consoles.

I suspect Mantle is not meant for PCs in the long run. Instead, PCs will be a testbed for an API they are designing for the next generation of consoles. There, the CPU plays a different role, and Mantle will likely play to the limitations inherent to a console. A leaner, more bare-metal API that is cross compatible for PCs and consoles. What theya re doing is locking down this AND the next generation of consoles while locking down the API they use to keep Nvidia out.
 
Not really shocking. With an API specific to hardware you would expect better perf compared to a general purpose API against and standardized DDI.

That said, I think MSFT has kinda ignored PC gaming for some time. It doesn't seem to be a priority. I hope AMDs move to a proprietary solution will motive MS to give DX some TLC. With the recent regime change in Windows (Sinfoski office clique out, new guys in across the top) hopefully they'll stop kissing enterprise ass long enough to think about consumer graphics.
 
I waited until now to get Mantle and finally play BF4. When I install BF4 first back then, I was able to max it at 1080p with everything on Ultra etc all the sliders to the right, the fps would hove between 39 to 77fps with 62fps average. With the latest patch in DX11.1, I noticed a boost of 53-123fps with 77fps average, may be the combination of patches and driver updates fixed its performance. With Mantle I noticed a performance gain of 10fps average, from 57fps to 106fps with an average of 87fps. I lost max fps compared to DirectX11, but I gain minimum and average fps and more consistent performance. I also noticed that Mantle uses up to 3.5GB of VRAM ( I suspect that since my card has only 3GB, the rest is swapping to System RAM through the PCI-E), and the CPU usage is almost the same as DX11 except that one core is always pegged at 100%, the remaining are around 35-66%.
 
Maybe someone has already asked this, but I was curious if there was a difference in power consumption when the same game is played at the same settings with Mantle vs. D3D
 
Mtnduey said:
Maybe someone has already asked this, but I was curious if there was a difference in power consumption when the same game is played at the same settings with Mantle vs. D3D
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Generally speaking, Yes. If a CPU was a bottleneck, the gpu may have been running at 60-80% its potential capacity, it might be down-clocking and/or able to run the fan at a slower RPM. If the CPU bottleneck is removed by mantle and the GPU is now the limiting factor so its running at 100% potential capacity or near there, it'll be using a bit more watts.
 
kache said:
Agreed, there are plenty of already available games, and upcoming games that put even an r9 290x to it's knees. ;)
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The only way any game right now (besides Crysis 3) is putting an R9 to its knees is if you crank the resolution to something stupid high. Which I mean, you can do with any card. Take any game, crank resolution until framerate sucks.

Meanwhile, I'm waiting for games that actually use that hardware to make better in game assets and richer art direction. Not just enable me to have a high native res.
 
chameleoneel said:
The only way any game right now (besides Crysis 3) is putting an R9 to its knees is if you crank the resolution to something stupid high. Which I mean, you can do with any card. Take any game, crank resolution until framerate sucks.

Meanwhile, I'm waiting for games that actually use that hardware to make better in game assets and richer art direction. Not just enable me to have a high native res.
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AC4 fully maxed out puts my r9 290 to it's knees. ;)
 
Modred189 said:
YOu are missing the point.
AMD is a CPU and GPU company. They've figured out two things:
1- They can't beat intel at CPUs
2- They are having a really hard time beating Nvidia at GPUs (not to say they're losing, but a least via steam surveys, they are always trailing).

THese have been true for a few years now. BUT, one thing has changed recently:
3- AMD is about to get a TON of experience making CPUs and GPUs for consoles.

I suspect Mantle is not meant for PCs in the long run. Instead, PCs will be a testbed for an API they are designing for the next generation of consoles. There, the CPU plays a different role, and Mantle will likely play to the limitations inherent to a console. A leaner, more bare-metal API that is cross compatible for PCs and consoles. What theya re doing is locking down this AND the next generation of consoles while locking down the API they use to keep Nvidia out.
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Maybe, maybe not. I do remember when AMD released 3DNOW because their floating point performance was 50% of an similarly clocked Intel Pentium II/ Celeron. Quake II was the only game to have support afaik. Intel won that war easily.
I know I've mention this before, the XBOX will not use Mantle. Infact, the XBOX will use DX. Unless the PS4 completely destroys the XBOX in the console wars and AMD manages to make a good driver for Linux (Steambox), Mantle is just muddying the API waters.
 
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chameleoneel said:
Meanwhile, I'm waiting for games that actually use that hardware to make better in game assets and richer art direction. Not just enable me to have a high native res.
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We're past the knee of the benefit curve in either respect. Personally, I think quantization limits are more harmful than, say, polygon limits. We aren't, for the most part, delivering enough pixels-per-inch to make a lot of fundamental quantization problems a non-issue.

I'd rather drive a normal-sized 4K display with really good anti-aliasing (something with temporal filtering) at consistently high frame rates than have more polygons per character or more elaborate shader effects.
 
wonderfield said:
We're past the knee of the benefit curve in either respect. Personally, I think quantization limits are more harmful than, say, polygon limits. We aren't, for the most part, delivering enough pixels-per-inch to make a lot of fundamental quantization problems a non-issue.

I'd rather drive a normal-sized 4K display with really good anti-aliasing (something with temporal filtering) at consistently high frame rates than have more polygons per character or more elaborate shader effects.
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BINGO and they only way to get that is to have the hardware no API can do that part
 
Modred189 said:
I suspect Mantle is not meant for PCs in the long run. Instead, PCs will be a testbed for an API they are designing for the next generation of consoles. There, the CPU plays a different role, and Mantle will likely play to the limitations inherent to a console. A leaner, more bare-metal API that is cross compatible for PCs and consoles. What theya re doing is locking down this AND the next generation of consoles while locking down the API they use to keep Nvidia out.
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I think you are off on this. Mantle is completely meant for the PC. The consoles already use a low level API. With the bulk of programming being done on the consoles, the fact that the consoles are using heavily threaded x86 CPU's, and GCN gfx, AMD is simply providing a similar low level API that's catering to GCN hardware on the PC platform, allowing porting to be simplified and high performing.
 
Modred189 said:
YOu are missing the point.
AMD is a CPU and GPU company. They've figured out two things:
1- They can't beat intel at CPUs
2- They are having a really hard time beating Nvidia at GPUs (not to say they're losing, but a least via steam surveys, they are always trailing).

THese have been true for a few years now. BUT, one thing has changed recently:
3- AMD is about to get a TON of experience making CPUs and GPUs for consoles.

I suspect Mantle is not meant for PCs in the long run. Instead, PCs will be a testbed for an API they are designing for the next generation of consoles. There, the CPU plays a different role, and Mantle will likely play to the limitations inherent to a console. A leaner, more bare-metal API that is cross compatible for PCs and consoles. What theya re doing is locking down this AND the next generation of consoles while locking down the API they use to keep Nvidia out.
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ocne people dont need advanced cpu, they can buy amd 8core, intel gone.
nvidia they also have an advantage.

mantle really lowers stuttering and its way smoother and for my machine works really well.
I started to own the kids again.
 
Kyle
Has Mantle BF4 gotten stable with DICE's latest patch. Are those random frame time spikes solved now. Also have AMD/DICE brought CF support for BF4 Mantle. If yes are you planning on reviewing it. If no has AMD / DICE hinted at upcoming CF support for BF4 Mantle.
 
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/forum/threadview/2979150493838365687/

Mantle
-Fix for a crash that would occur when activating full screen in portrait mode
-Fix for stuttering that could appear during video sequences on multi-GPU PCs
-Fix for a memory system leak that could cause stalls, which would result in frames taking longer to process
-Reduced the amount of stalls that occurred when running with high graphics setting that require more GPU memory than is currently available
-Fixed screenshots on multi-GPU PCs
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raghu78 said:
Kyle
Has Mantle BF4 gotten stable with DICE's latest patch. Are those random frame time spikes solved now. Also have AMD/DICE brought CF support for BF4 Mantle. If yes are you planning on reviewing it. If no has AMD / DICE hinted at upcoming CF support for BF4 Mantle.
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I'm working on a deeper dive right now with the Feb 13th patch as the baseline. I'm not quite ready to draw conclusions on overall stability/usability (should be able to over the next week or so - this is being approached a bit differently from the "normal" testing that you see out there), but it does seem that Crossfire isn't working for me with a pair of 290X's on a single screen using Mantle.
 
Looking forward to the new Catalyst 14.1 Beta 1.7 and newer. Huge difference now even with a higher end CPU. :eek:

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Battlefield-4-PC-238749/Specials/Battlefield-4-Second-Assault-Benchmarks-1109970/

Battlefield_4_Second_Assault_Benchmarks_02-pcgh.png
 
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