Comments Locked

48 Comments

Back to Article

  • policeman0077 - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    first one?
  • louisjustis - Monday, February 10, 2014 - link

    Its relible comment.
  • louisjustis - Monday, February 10, 2014 - link

    My friend earn daily $500
  • Slomo4shO - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    Now we just need a thorough review of mantle.
  • Friendly0Fire - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    Relying on developers to implement proper frame pacing in Mantle? I'm not sure that's the greatest of ideas honestly...
  • xdrol - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    If you want low-level access to hardware (=Mantle), don't be surprised if you don't get complex high-level features.. If you want the API and the driver to do stuff for you, DirectX still works.

    Mantle is not for the everyday Indie developer, it's first targeted for AAA titles that can afford the extra cost for using a practically beta level environment, what is still probably full of bugs..
  • Friendly0Fire - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    Oh I know, I'm just saying that even large devs like DICE push out products with a shitload of bugs and problems, so expecting them to actually take care with frame pacing (which is, in the big picture, a rather minor thing) when a lot of configs tank to <30 fps is a bit foolish.
  • mr_tawan - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    Many game developers, including indies, ueses 3rd-party engine like UE, CryEngine, Unity, OGRE (anyone use it ?) etc. Implying that these engine already have good platform-abstraction codes, I believe that Mantle could be widespreaded if it shows performance benefit in wide margin.

    Though it might not be very popular to developers using in-house engine, especially those who don't do platform abstraction.
  • djentleman - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    Indie developers only care about getting the game finished. Not about only benefitting half of the PC space.
  • mr_tawan - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    Indeed. But what if they're using engines that utilizes Mantle by chance ? Mantle would be widespread a little further, right ?

    This might happen when Untiy (for example) has adopted Mantle into one of its supported platform.
  • TheJian - Tuesday, February 4, 2014 - link

    You still have to code for it. It isn't just DONE because the engine includes it. All engines have phsyx support now, but how many games did that get us? Unless AMD pays someone, it will likely just be a hunk of code that CAN be used, but sits idle. No different from NV a physx etc. NV only pays when they want to advertise how great it is, so that is the ONLY times we get physx games. This will be no different for Mantle, and probably worse since AMD has no cash to do this funding compared to NV. Also Mantle capable products are nowhere near 1/2 the market.

    Also it seems only good for low end cpus/apus. High end stuff gets <10% which is hardly more than most driver revisions get these days. Most of those get 5-20% across many games so for these people what is the point?

    Worse, we don't even get a date for phase3, which never should have even had a phase2 or phase 1...ROFL. We waited how long for this stuff? Mantle still beta? That isn't a finished driver, that's a help us fix it driver. By the time they get their drivers FULLY fixed it seems you'll be moving to a new card anyway... SAD. I will be dumping my 5850 for a maxwell soon it seems as AMD can't get their act together even after all this time. We are like 7 months into this phase crap right? How long does it take to fix a problem? Will we be at 1yr by the time phase3 rolls out and will it still be beta then too? Consoles have really killed R&D for everything else at AMD.
  • dave2150 - Tuesday, February 4, 2014 - link

    'AMD has no cash to do this funding compared to NV'

    Stop posting nonsense. The fact that they could afford to get DICE (Battlefield4) to support mantle, shows that your comment it totally ignorant and you know nothing of what you talk about.

    Go back to some NVIDIA fanboy forum where you can cry together about your card not supporting mantle.
  • Gadgety - Friday, February 7, 2014 - link

    @dave2150 "'AMD has no cash to do this funding compared to NV' Stop posting nonsense."

    Your statement made me curious. So I checked some facts:

    AMD got net cash improvement of 21 MUSD from operating activities for the entire 2013. Ouch. Not a whole lot. Free cash per share, was 0.17. Compare this to Nvidia, cash from operations 827 MUSD, for the first three quarters, with a free cash per share of 0.95. So AMD has far less cash than Nvidia.

    I have feeling this is also part of the reason for a lack of supply of the R9 290x...
  • risa2000 - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    The question is, if the developers will be able to implement it correctly at all, if AMD itself seems to have problems with it.
  • donith - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    I downloaded the installer, but owning a 7950 and not having any Mantle games right now (nor a CrossFire/dual graphics rig) makes it sort of pointless to install a beta. :(
  • mr_tawan - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    I did the samething!
  • ultimaone - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    download star swarm stress demo from steam
  • mr_tawan - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    Tried that, DX runs 6 fps faster than Mantle (average 16fps vs 10fps). I guess my cpu is too slow (Phenom II X4 924).
  • B3an - Monday, February 3, 2014 - link

    Huh? A slow CPU should show the most benefit from Mantle so that makes no sense.
  • xdrol - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    Check the "resolved issues" part at the download page, there are a lot of fixes unrelated to both Mantle and Crossfire, you might be still interested in installing.
  • ultimaone - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    download star swarm stress demo from steam
  • Novaguy - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    Any reason to get these drivers for a an a8-3530mx/6750m dual graphics laptop, or is this just for desktop and HD7000 and later only?
  • djentleman - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    Mantle currently only supports gcn. So no, your laptop isn't compatible, sadly.
  • Gigaplex - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    This driver has more than just Mantle.
  • Flunk - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    Phase 2 Frame pacing. No Mantle for pre-GCN cards though.
  • Mugur - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    7850 -2GB, Core i3 SB here... At first, the performance looked smoother in an empty level, but I have a small freeze each 4-5 seconds for up to a second on some 64 players levels. I'm running everything Ultra, with 2xMSAA and High on postprocessing AA. No issues running 14.1 with dx11...
  • Mugur - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    Also 8GB and a Samsung 120GB Evo with Rapid on... It's strange, but it looks like I have higher disk activity with Mantle enabled during the game.
  • FearfulSPARTAN - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    I have the same setup too practically, same ssd as well. I have not downloaded the driver yet so I cant compare yet but I do currently run bf 4 on high with no aa so im curios what performance I will have.
  • Juppi - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    What about true audio support in new 14.1 drivers?
  • Ryan Smith - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    AMD will have a future release for TrueAudio once Thief is released.
  • Qasar - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    just tried 14.1 and star swarm, with DirectX and mantle, these are the results :
    == Hardware Configuration =================================
    GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series ( OC'd to 1100 core and 1500 ram i think )
    CPU: GenuineIntel
    Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 930 @ 2.80GHz ( i have OC'd the cpu to 4ghz )
    Physical Cores: 4
    Logical Cores: 8
    Physical Memory: 12874518528
    Allocatable Memory: 8796092891136
    ===========================================================
    settings used for star swarm :
    Scenario : follow
    settings : Extreme
    stress test: timed run

    DirectX:
    Test Duration: 360 Seconds
    Total Frames: 10690

    Average FPS: 29.69
    Average Unit Count: 4131
    Maximum Unit Count: 5562
    Average Batches/MS: 510.04
    Maximum Batches/MS: 1197.59
    Average Batch Count: 19953
    Maximum Batch Count: 131759

    Mantle :
    Test Duration: 360 Seconds
    Total Frames: 17231

    Average FPS: 47.86
    Average Unit Count: 4478
    Maximum Unit Count: 5746
    Average Batches/MS: 779.87
    Maximum Batches/MS: 2101.14
    Average Batch Count: 17811
    Maximum Batch Count: 76856
  • tipoo - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    So, HD4000 series on Windows 8, is that supported yet? I was using a hacked together driver which had some bugs from Beyond3D.
  • Gigaplex - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    I don't think it ever will be supported on 8.1 (should be on 8 though with Catalyst 13.1). From what I hear, anything older than 5000 series is unsupported.

    You can however get a modified installer that should allow installing 13.1 on Windows 8.1.
  • tipoo - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    Oh yeah, 8.1 is what I meant. I was using the modded drivers on it already, and they were a bit finnicky with some apps so I went back to Windows 7 for now. I hope to go back if the situation improves, I actually like 8.1 more otherwise.
  • wakuritz - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    Well, I've been looking forward to this release since I first read about Mantle. It's a bummer to know that my 7950 won't benefit much from it just yet.
  • willis936 - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    There's a big issue with using PCIe lanes for multi GPU solutions and it's not even latency. It's bandwidth. List off the chipsets that have 32 PCIe lanes ready to rock. You can count them on one hand and they cost hundreds of dollars. Don't try to oversimplify a hard problem so you can say you're "connectorless" and a save a few bucks on hardware. If dual GPUs weren't practical before they certainly aren't looking any better now.
  • The Von Matrices - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link

    I hope that the final review article tests the effects of PCIe bandwidth on Crossfire scaling with frame pacing. I am wondering if all the additional PCIe transfers due to the frame pacing implementation causes motherboards with PLX switches to finally be worth their additional cost.

    I have 3 7970's and a Z87 system (16 PCIe 3.0 lanes). I didn't pay extra for a motherboard with a PLX bridge due to the Anandtech "Choosing a Gaming CPU" comparison showing zero performance benefit of x16/x8/x8 PLX over x8/x4/x4 no PLX. I wonder if this has changed with the new driver.
  • Dwolfz - Monday, February 3, 2014 - link

    Mantle works great, except now when I hash (r9 270/r9 270/r9 280x) (if I set one 270 and one 280x) to hash while playing BF4 (playing on a card thats mint mining o/c) for some reason I have to stop hashing on the other 270 or driver messes up and lags.

    Before beta drivers, I was able to play Bf4 on one 270 no problem while running cgminer for the other two cards in the background, no longer can do this sadly.....? it worked fine for the first day, but day two is causing problems.
  • NXTwoThou - Monday, February 3, 2014 - link

    ...and..still no miracast. :(
  • ThomasS31 - Monday, February 3, 2014 - link

    Though I have not running benchmarks, but for HD7870, this Mantle Patch is worse that the DX11.1 path currently. Somehow the drops and stuttering is more pronounced when a lot of things going on (multiple blasts, and lot of players on screen... etc).

    Although the rest is fine... some bugs and freezes are removed/the game seems better. (with also the new patch of course)
  • Dribble - Monday, February 3, 2014 - link

    Tbh BF4 is a pretty bad poster boy for Mantle.

    I mean what would you prefer - for them to fix the game so it worked for everyone, or for them to spend ages doing a mantle code path in addition to DX meaning they aren't fixing other bugs and are probably introducing new ones, and all for a few fps for < 10% of their users?

    Should it take off then nvidia will follow suit and then they'll have to be developing 3 renderers and spending even less time making the game work.

    They'd be better off just getting the game to work correctly with DX, and AMD badgering MS to fix DX (which they seem to be going to do).
  • blake0812 - Tuesday, February 4, 2014 - link

    It's a shame that they won't support the 6000 series for Mantle. I would have loved to see what it would be like though I guess i'm the one who needs to catch up.
  • Vegeta100 - Thursday, February 6, 2014 - link

    can some1 help me i getting i have a 6800k and video card 7850 from amd. i cant download 14.1 and i dont know why?

    it always says "install source package not found".
  • Gadgety - Friday, February 7, 2014 - link

    "AMD tells us that Catalyst 14.1 should significantly improve frame pacing for a subset of existing Dual Graphics setups, and meanwhile this is also the first driver to properly support Dual Graphics with the recently released Kaveri APUs. Dual Graphics has been nearly an afterthought for most buyers due to outstanding issues such as frame pacing, so hopefully AMD is better able to deliver on its potential with these fixes."

    Really looking forward to a test. Even so, it doesn't look like the iGPU Kaveri with a dGPU is going to have Mantle implemented, and there are no provisions for it in AMD's official plans either.
  • louisjustis - Monday, February 10, 2014 - link

    My friend earn daily $500 . He do work just in 1 hour . Try now works77 dotcom
  • rogerthat1945 - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link

    My Asus Z87 rig with Crossfire HD Graphics cards does the install BSoD crash.
  • rogerthat1945 - Thursday, February 27, 2014 - link

    My new Asus Z87 rig with Crossfire HD Graphics cards does the `install` BSoD crash USING the 14.2 drivers.

    Had no problem before with previous driver.
    Wanted to try mantle.
    Back to the drawing board with the life suck.
  • Mombasa69 - Thursday, May 1, 2014 - link

    Oh please drop the Intel junk and let's have a test with AMD CPU's, it's what all the consoles use now, Intel is history.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now