OFFICIAL: BF4 Mantle Cat 14.1 Performance and Feedback Thread

[Schro]

Why are the official reviews from big sites not out yet?

It takes a good bit of time to do a proper review on it. A day or two on something like this is nothing more than a rush job...

 

[Brent_Justice]

Also, Fraps doesn't work, because, Mantle. Completely different API than DX. So, you have to use BF4's built in Frametime capture to manually calculate Average FPS for every single data point.

It takes time to find out where there are performance improvements in the game.

I've been working on our preview article all day Saturday, till 4AM this morning, and will be finishing it later today. We only got the driver toward Midnight Saturday Morning. Please be patient.

 

[Dr3amCast]

I haven't tried Battlefield yet, although I did notice the image quality differences even from the initial quick reviews some tech sites had made. But in the Star Swam stress test it literally double my fps:

Direct X

== Results ================================================
Test Duration: 181 Seconds
Total Frames: 3797

Average FPS: 20.91
Average Unit Count: 3771
Maximum Unit Count: 5521
Average Batches/MS: 454.45
Maximum Batches/MS: 838.26
Average Batch Count: 25909
Maximum Batch Count: 97969
===========================================================

Mantle

== Results ================================================
Test Duration: 180 Seconds
Total Frames: 7463

Average FPS: 41.42
Average Unit Count: 3937
Maximum Unit Count: 5443
Average Batches/MS: 833.49
Maximum Batches/MS: 1589.31
Average Batch Count: 24186
Maximum Batch Count: 129989
===========================================================

 

[fanboy]

The driver is not very good for normal uses as I also play World of Tanks and under 14.1 I had to lower settings just to get it up to 50 fps .. I was playing with higher settings and had way better fps with 13.11 so I can't keep this driver for just one game as it seems they lost something in there DX package.

 

[chameleoneel]

To install this driver, I first uninstalled the 13.12whql with the official AMD uninstaller, via ctrl panel. Then I rebooted to safe mode and ran Driver Fusion and then immediately followed it with Display Driver Uninstaller, which initiates an auto-reboot. I then installed the AMD chipset drivers appropriate for my mobo (because I noticed the 14.1 betas don't include the USB filter driver etc), rebooted, and then I installed the 14.1 betas.

My system is the following:

HD 7870 overclocked to 1150 core and 1325 memory
Phenom II X6 overclocked to 3.6ghz
8gigs of ram
Soundblaster X-Fi

Windows 7 64-bit, running BF4 in 64-bit mode.

with these settings:

(I forgot to take a "Mantle" screenshot of settings. Pretend it says Mantle instead of Direct X 11)

I get these image quality differences on the test server and I also noticed similar issues with higher brightness and fogging in Operation Locker and Siege of Shanghai ( the only two maps I have played since Mantle installation):

Direct X 11

Mantle

DirectX 11

Mantle

DirectX 11

Mantle

*these images were taken with BF4's own internal screenshot command. Here are the original, untouched PNG files:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ghku2sj3kyxbb9c/bf4MantleVSdx11testserver.zip


Additionally, Mantle has very noticeable hitching. The more players in the map, the worse it is. On the Test server, it's mild and irregular. On 64 player Siege of Shanghai, it hitches every few seconds, quite noticeable, and occasionally it will hitch super hard and drop several frames. Kinda reminds me of playing the BF4 PC beta...

The DX11 codepath in 14.1 seems to be ok. Though I'll have to play with it more. with 13.12's would give me lighting issues sometimes, after looking through scopes. particularly infrared scopes. After returning to normal/hip view, the lighting would appear very basic for a second and then somewhat quickly bleed back into high quality lighting.

I have frame data from perfoverlay that I will be uploading later. as well as CPU cores and GPU utilization figures from AMD System Monitor.

*Here is the frame data:

I did frame data only, on the test server for the 13.12, 14.1 DX11, and 14.1 Mantle. 13.12 had just been re-installed two days ago, using both driver cleaners mentioned near the beginning of this post. The data is based on a lap around the test server where I shoot a bunch of stuff with an LMG, C4 several things, fly a chopper and shoot some stuff, crash the chopper, ride an ATV, etc. I took care to shoot all the same things, C4 the same things with the same amounts of C4, crash chopper in same spot, etc. As little variation as I could muster.
Here is a quick H.264 encode of one such lap, that I did after all these tests. To capture, I used the MJPEG codec in MSI Afterburner, using BF4's 32-bit mode, via DX11 codepath (Afterburner was never running during any of the other tests). The encode is not meant to be pristine quality. Just quick and dirty, to see what the lap looks like:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3zbectfvt6axfcm/bf4testserverrunsample.mp4

I did both frame data and CPU core/GPU utilization at the same time, on Siege of Shanghai 64 player. All for 13.12whql, 14.1 DX11, and 14.1 mantle (I used a 24/7 Siege of Shanghai only server with 60's average ping. That way I could run the tests all on the same server and map). Each test was roughly 6 minutes. ( set a timer for 6 minutes, but some extra time was added to start and stop both perfoverlay and AMD System Monitor.)

All frame data files:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ou43z6ywg0rl0co/Battlefield4 frame data.zip

All CPU/GPU utilization files:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/e8bi6w39khsymhh/Battlefield4cpuGPUutilization.zip

-------------------------------------------------------

*slightly off topic: it would be nice if they would put the super ammo box back into the test server. I haven't been able to successfully reload any of the rocket launchers or the grenade launcher that you pickup off the ground. The shotguns reload off an Support pack, but it was nice to be able to load in 100 bullets/rocket/grenades/etc and just go for it. Makes doing test runs a lot easier.

Here's two more shots I did in the test server, this time using BF4's internal test tool, found in the video options:

same exact spot, right as you spawn, no mouse movement. The gun just happens to be resting idly, in a slightly different position.

Directx 11

Mantle

 

[StormClaw]

Can anyone post cliff notes? Is mantle a great success?

 

[Dr3amCast]

Does anyone else have really bad audio issues since they moved to 14.1?

When I spawn in BF4, it plays the map loading music in-game. I have no gun effects, can't hear voice communication or anything.

 

[krakerman]

Does anyone else have really bad audio issues since they moved to 14.1?

When I spawn in BF4, it plays the map loading music in-game. I have no gun effects, can't hear voice communication or anything.

I haven't tried 14.1 yet, but I have the same audio problems in 13.12.

 

[Dr3amCast]

I haven't tried 14.1 yet, but I have the same audio problems in 13.12.

How frequently would it happen? It's literally every single server for me

 

[Ihaveworms]

Battlefield 4 multiplayer no longer launches correctly for me. It just dies on the loading screen and I have to kill the process.

 

[Sprayingmango]

It looks like the actual graphics quality is much better with DX11. Notice in those Mantle screenshots above, how the textures look washed out and it looks like there is less detail in the Mantle shots. Is this true?

 

[Druneau]

BF4@640x352

DX11.1 ~190fps
Mantle ~380fps

I'm not going to play this resolution ever, but it's exactly what mantle is for I guess. Remove some bottleneck created by DX api calls.

GPU time was down to 1.1ms, CPU was holding it back.

 

[Porter_]

Does anyone else have really bad audio issues since they moved to 14.1?

When I spawn in BF4, it plays the map loading music in-game. I have no gun effects, can't hear voice communication or anything.

This popped up for me with the last BF4 patch, not the Mantle drivers. Happens very rarely though.

 

[socK]

It looks like the actual graphics quality is much better with DX11. Notice in those Mantle screenshots above, how the textures look washed out and it looks like there is less detail in the Mantle shots. Is this true?

Johan confirmed it's a bug, gamma is a bit off and there seems to be a little bit of extra fog.

https://twitter.com/repi/status/429985248995467265

It pretty much looks exactly the same besides for this.

 

[Enhanced Interrogator]

The difference is enormous in BF4 for me, performance is close to doubled (and I'm STILL CPU limited according to the graph!). I'm being blown the fuck away. I played an obliteration round on Shanghai and it was like 60+ mostly. It was nearly unplayable before...

Q6600 @ 3ghz, 7870

Ok, well this makes no sense to me, I have a similar system and my framerate basically tanked. The beginning of the matches seem to run faster, but all the textures don't seem to be loaded. After I play for about 2 minutes, everything slows down by about 10fps less than normal. So in the middle of Hainan, I get upper 20s instead of 30s. Major hitches all the time too.

Q9650 @ 3.75ghz, 7850 2GB

 

[dragonstongue]

higher cpu but lower gpu shouldn't cause that much an issue, maybe you are running settings to hard?

For the SS thanks much, it does look a little washed out and not as vivid which of course does not look quite as nice, for me the biggest thing I hate with BFBC2 all the way to 4 is the sheer amount of crap lighting as in when you go from inside to outside the sun/snowblind effect is just way way to severe, and the sunlight while it should be there for realism is just far overdone for fk all. Is this still apparent with Mantle as in better or worse or pretty much same.

So it seems they need to work on contrast and shadow issues along with of course performance tuning, however this is AMD product right now, so it is nice to see Intel cpu get a boost as well but to be fair if it "tanks" on Intel systems well those users have DX for a reason, I am sure they are working diligently on getting it smoothed out.

 

[_orcus_]

Does anyone else have really bad audio issues since they moved to 14.1?

When I spawn in BF4, it plays the map loading music in-game. I have no gun effects, can't hear voice communication or anything.

its a known bug with the newest bf4 patch ... mostly happens the 1st tdm map you load. the next round the sound will work again.

very annoying bug.

 

[dragonstongue]

don't worry by the time the bugs are sorted out they will be on BF5

 

[Trimlock]

It looks like the actual graphics quality is much better with DX11. Notice in those Mantle screenshots above, how the textures look washed out and it looks like there is less detail in the Mantle shots. Is this true?

One looks darker then the other, other wise they look to have the exact same image quality.

 

[dragonstongue]

it is a touched washed but better lighting does not seem as severed though contrast i.e difference between light and dark areas which you can see on the cloud cover is almost non existent with Mantle vs the DX though which looks more "real" is hard to say cause DICE for the last couple of games have seemed to Hollywood the crap out of the experience instead of making it "nice"

I am going to be trying it once they have had time to play with it some. so lose a bit of contrast niceness but the lighting doesn't seem as blinding either I can go for that

 

[The Mac]

"hollywooding the crap out of it" is what makes it immersive.

It wouldnt be very good with stick figures and blocks.

lol

 

[The Cobra]

This is pretty much an unfinished driver from AMD and just wanted it placed into the wild to get feedback on what needs improvement and such. I would imagine that over the next month or two, both Dice and AMD will tweak the drivers and game engine to see some better results.

 

[socK]

Ok, well this makes no sense to me, I have a similar system and my framerate basically tanked. The beginning of the matches seem to run faster, but all the textures don't seem to be loaded. After I play for about 2 minutes, everything slows down by about 10fps less than normal. So in the middle of Hainan, I get upper 20s instead of 30s. Major hitches all the time too.

Q9650 @ 3.75ghz, 7850 2GB

My gains are ridiculous. Maybe try a clean install of the driver? All I did was have the catalyst installer nuke the old one first, then I installed the beta.

I had to drop textures from Ultra to High though, I was getting hitches / stuttering. Bam, fixed, everything is smooth as shit. On some maps like Shanghai, the difference is nuts.

DX

Mantle

 

[maboblivion]

nice socK , that gpu line in mantle is nice and consistent

 

[gersson]

I got lots of slowdown even at the map screen with any settings. I had to uninstall 14.1 now everything's back to normal

 

[cageymaru]

Ok, well this makes no sense to me, I have a similar system and my framerate basically tanked. The beginning of the matches seem to run faster, but all the textures don't seem to be loaded. After I play for about 2 minutes, everything slows down by about 10fps less than normal. So in the middle of Hainan, I get upper 20s instead of 30s. Major hitches all the time too.

Q9650 @ 3.75ghz, 7850 2GB

Different system but similar results as in my first match the game is so damn buttery smooth! The frame rate is higher and the game just runs so good. By the 3rd or 4th map my game is hitching and wheezing; unable to breathe. Every bullet sound freezes my game. Every muzzle flash freezes my game. Every spawn freezes my game until I give up.

This is with CrossfireX enabled or disabled.

 

[mesyn191]

This is pretty much an unfinished driver from AMD and just wanted it placed into the wild to get feedback on what needs improvement and such.

Works fine for me, I've got a single 7970 in the PC with these drivers on it and its great.

I've ran DIII, Insurgency, Pinball Arcade, Pinball FX2, Gish, Path of Exile, and CS:GO without issue. When I wasn't running those I left Milkway@Home and WCG running to number crunch over night. Everything was still fine.

Its a stock OC'd XFX card too BTW.

I also made sure to uninstall the old drivers and ran CCleaner + deleted the old AMD folder on C: drive before installing the 14.1's.

 

[dragonstongue]

"hollywooding the crap out of it" is what makes it immersive.

It wouldnt be very good with stick figures and blocks.

lol

lol lol, there is nice clean real life derived type look, then there is "only in Hollywood" type effects, lighting etc, this is far more of that side. There is many great looking games out there but DICE and for that matter EA have to go out of their way to put all kinds of crap in there that detracts from that "immersion element" that you speak of, if anything it makes it feel more like a laser tag VR or some shit then anything else IMHO

Don't get me wrong, it looks good in some places, but if they stopped doing that fresh from a canvas artistic impression they would be far better off it would feel/look that much better, clouds are great as an example, but snowdrifts that have 10 times more specular lighting or a sun that is like a supernova ALWAYS cmon now. Water looks damn nice, as do the explosions, but then there is getting shot at and having blur happen is just more crap that is not needed, different yes, needed hell no, not every game is need for speed or needs that type of effect.

anyways sorry for derailing.

 

[The Mac]

ummm...thats real life.

isnt that the point?

you do have a point though, the specular lighting is a bit overdone.

at least they arent going nuts with the lens flairs a la Michael Bay.

 

[Nenu]

But if that's the case, why isn't Mantle running significantly faster in non-CPU bottlenecked scenarios too?

There will always be one system component at least limiting the framerate otherwise it would be infinite.
If its not the CPU it will be something else, likely the GPU.
If the GPU is already registering high usage, you cant expect it to get much faster.

 

[dragonstongue]

still more then there should be to give the effect, and if you really pay attention, no its not at all like real life, its overdone, maybe its a limitation that they have run into, or maybe the don't give a fk and want a "dream like state" even when the whole gritty side was better.

Just as a base example, compare this to say skyrim or even crysis, notice the fantastical look they are giving the "modern" games, for something like skyrim, the look fits, even GTA to have that lens flare sets the mood in some place, but the way EA uses specular effects, retarded dynamic lighting that they use(dark bright dark bright near instant when stepping into certain places especially considering the fast pace this is) it is just more crap for nothing, its just not needed the way it is overused constantly. Simply to much all the damn time. For folks like me that are bothered by the crap contrast and isane brights (not much can do about it) just makes it look like shit and prevents me(and others) from enjoying the game.

I think at least from the SS buddy posted it might make it easier to focus on things and maybe the changes are not so "drastic" even if they are not as lively.

and for the above comment, this Mantle version is shall we say Alpha, they will be tweaking the crap out of it, and the whole context of Mantle was to help AMD CPU/GPU be used more effectively/efficiently, just cause say cpu is loaded 100% in another app/game that same 100% can be loaded in a different way and it will run faster, kind of like burn tests say like furmark it loads things WAY differently then other tests so in this, if Mantle uses something like Kaveri and eventually is tuned to shift performance bias where it needs it when it needs it, the differences should be quite massive.

 

[Enhanced Interrogator]

My gains are ridiculous. Maybe try a clean install of the driver? All I did was have the catalyst installer nuke the old one first, then I installed the beta.

I had to drop textures from Ultra to High though, I was getting hitches / stuttering. Bam, fixed, everything is smooth as shit. On some maps like Shanghai, the difference is nuts.

Ok, I dropeed textures to high and it improved a little, but was still overwall worse than DX11 due to the hitching and lower minimums. Muzzle flashes really screw up my performance in mantle. It really looks like Mantle (on the 7000's) is using more VRAM, or using it less efficiently, given how it responds to ultra textures

Can you tell me what your other settings are? I'm thinking we are using very different settings to get results this different. Mine are usually textures, lighting, and terrain quality on ultra, everything else on high. 2x msaa 1600x1200 (slightly lower pixel count than 1080p). I'm also checking performance in real matches, not in empty servers.

 

[Dr3amCast]

its a known bug with the newest bf4 patch ... mostly happens the 1st tdm map you load. the next round the sound will work again.

very annoying bug.

Has Dice stated there's a fix coming in a future patch?

 

[HybridHB]

Anyone else having the game freeze using mantle? It froze twice on me today. It seems to freeze every time I load back into the game unless I reboot my rig first. Very annoying

 

[dragonstongue]

"It really looks like Mantle (on the 7000's) is using more VRAM, or using it less efficiently"

I seem to remember AMD having a major issue with the 7k series and how it was using its ram quite a few Cat drivers back from launch, it was a very known problem. Hope they did not forget this.

 

[chameleoneel]

It really looks like Mantle (on the 7000's) is using more VRAM, or using it less efficiently, given how it responds to ultra textures

CONFIRMED to be an issue (at least for some of us...)

using the same system and the exact settings I posted in a screenshot here (my BF4 graphics settings are the first screenshot):
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1040594668&postcount=29


here is vram usage compared between DX11 and Mantle, on my 7870:

DX11 screen 1
https://www.dropbox.com/s/352up4h89lvcq90/dx11vmemtest1.jpg

Mantle screen 1
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bmarkleomxbinkp/Mantlevmemtest1.jpg

DX11 screen 2
https://www.dropbox.com/s/oo2xpxwo1ed6von/DX11vmemtest2.jpg

Mantle screen 2
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3u3h6e7oxkm309b/Mantlevmemtest2.jpg

As far as I'm concerned, that's a big indication for the source of the stuttering and hitching, right there.

*also captured in the screenshots, looks like Mantle makes my card run quite a bit hotter!

**I took a few more screens. This time after I'd been in the server for several minutes. I basically ran my usual lap and then took a couple of shots. Vram usage is even higher. DX11 temps top out at 58. Mantle pushes it even higher still...

DX11 ground shot
https://www.dropbox.com/s/k43noxu0ns0azlb/1_DX11vmemtestafterseveralminutes.jpg

Mantle ground shot
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jpp0vnxu1icueg6/2_Mantlevmemtestafterseveralminutes.jpg

DX11 3rd person chopper shot
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ipifdhy5jv1a43t/3_DX11vmemtestsveral minutes chopper.jpg

Mantle 3rd person chopper shot
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yf2pgpega6o7c9y/4_Mantlevmemtestafterseveralminuteschopper.jpg

GPU-Z logs tracked during two test laps of the server, mainly to show/compare VRAM usage. but it tracks several other stats, as well:

one lap with 14.1 DX11 and one lap with 14.1 using the Mantle option:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zdtencorj2vjt3q/14_1VRAMtestserverlapsGPUz.zip


Here is a low quality video simply showing what the laps look like. You can watch it streaming, or download the original file which looks better:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wgd3gr8fdlmn429/bf4testserverrunsamplea.mp4

 

[dragonstongue]

DX11 seems to be more vddc volts, but mantle is a large margin more amps, higher temps and quite a chunk of extra Vram (doubled) The amount of ram used is not a guaranteed it will be worse performance I think might be how it is being used in this case, lets hope AMD is well aware of this, temps are still within very good ranges especially with only 25% fan but.

I know when 7k series first launched this was a very known bug as the memory controller and type of ram being used were not playing nicely together.

 

[chameleoneel]

regarding my fan speed:

I have a HIS card that had the exhaust style turbine blower setup. In my experience, those never push enough air. The card used to hit 68C on a custom fan curve, that pretty much cranked it once it hit 55C. I had also applied Arctic Silver Ceramique.
I tore the exhaust shroud and turbine fan off and twist tied two 80mm case fans to the top of the heatsink. The fans are plugged into the mobo, so I just turned the videocard's fan speed setting as low as it would go. Better temps, less noise.

I did a similar mod to an Nvidia 6800 I had 10 years ago.

 

[Pieter3dnow]

Performance wise I could run Ultra on my setup (PII x4 960T@4ghz R9 290x). On default Ultra settings under 14.1 I'm getting high framerates still in the 100+ but the drawback is that it freezes every now and then , drawing effects and stuff like ADS when being fired at or turning a direction where people fire at me would be single digit frames for me. That would happen with jumping over sandbags in Silk road map on TDM.

Killing the eye-candy (no HBAO or SSAO) and some of the texture blurs with effects set to high more or less limited the framedrops.

There few things that I really don't like it seems that crashing is happening more. Under 13.12 rarely got one. My system is limited however with 4GB of ram.

 

[Enhanced Interrogator]

There few things that I really don't like it seems that crashing is happening more. Under 13.12 rarely got one. My system is limited however with 4GB of ram.

BF4 ran a lot better for me when I upgraded from 6 to 8GB, so you definitely need to upgrade. Shouldn't be too expensive either.