AMD Mantle update...

[mars]

ok tried it again just 5 mins ago, indeed a restart of the game was necessary. Game just feels so much quicker, but the difference isnt in the max frames but undoubtedly in average frames, game feels as fast as older fps games.. its honestly very impressive

Yea no stutter nor pauses for me, and I was just in Zavod 64 full server

it does seem like the image quality is different though on close inspection i couldnt really tell if there was quality loss/gain but it does look slightly different

[CrimInalA]

One other issue i'm currently having is I can't get any OSD to display in BF4 with Mantle. No Radeon Pro or Afterburner. I see others don't have this issue, so it must be related to me. I am running Battlefield in 64bit mode, if anyone else gets this.

Fraps doesn't display fps count when using Mantle renderer either . Same in starswarm benchmark .


@MaddMuppet : concerning the stutter you mentioned before . What's the used GMEM when that happens ? I'm noticing that with everything ultra on 2560 resolution my used GMEM is constantly around 3gbyte .. hence the stutter could be some swapping/caching going on ?
What resolution are you playing at btw ?

[DeathReborn]

I get massive pauses of 1-3 seconds every few minutes using 3 different machines Athlon II X4 620 @3.6GHz, 4770K @ 5GHz & 960T (6c) @ 3.6GHz with 7870 2GB, 7950 CF & 7970 GHz respectively but no pauses at all with CF 7870's on a 960T (6c) @ 3.6GHz). I have also had to completely remove 14.1 from 2 PC's and a Laptop as Minecraft breaks completely under those drivers (no textures at all).

It is noticeably faster and smoother on all 4 290X machines though which is a good thing.

[DefStar]

It says in the release notes that there is no 'DX9 Dual Graphics support' in the 14.1 drivers @DeathReborn.

Since I can't use fraps to bench Mantle, I wrote a Java program that parses the BF4 FrameFileLog and outputs my FPS from the frame-times I knew a BS in CS would come in handy.

snip...
Known Issues

Mantle performance for the AMD Radeon™ HD 7000/HD 8000 Series GPUs and AMD Radeon™ R9 280X and R9 270X GPUs will be optimized for BattleField 4™ in future AMD Catalyst™ releases. These products will see limited gains in BattleField 4™ and AMD is currently investigating optimizations for them.
Multi-GPU support under DirectX? and Mantle will be added to StarSwarm in a future application patch
Intermittent stuttering or stability issues may occur when utilizing Mantle with AMD CrossFire™ technology in BattleField 4™ - AMD recommends using the DirectX code path when playing Battlefield 4 with multiple GPUs. A future AMD Catalyst release will resolve these issues
Notebooks based on AMD Enduro or PowerXpress™ technologies are currently not supported by the Mantle codepath in Battlefield 4™
AMD Eyefinity configurations utilizing portrait display orientations are currently not supported by the Mantle codepath in Battlefield 4™
AMD Eyefinity technology is not currently supported in the Star Swarm​ application
AMD testing for the AMD Catalyst™ 14.1 Beta Mantle driver has been concentrated on the following products: AMD Radeon™ R9 290X, R9 290, R9 280, R9 270, R7 260X, R7 260, HD 7000 Series, HD 8000 Series, A10-7850K and A10-7700K. Future AMD Catalyst™ releases will include full test coverage for all AMD products supported by Mantle.
Graphics hardware in the AMD A10-7850K and A10-7700K may override the presence of a discrete GPU under the Mantle code path in Battlefield 4™
Frame Pacing for Dual Graphics and non-XDMA configurations above 2560x1600 do not currently work with Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4. An upcoming release will enable support
DX9 Dual graphics is not supported in AMD Catalyst 14.1 Beta. An upcoming release will enable support
...

[MaddMuppet]

Fraps doesn't display fps count when using Mantle renderer either . Same in starswarm benchmark .


@MaddMuppet : concerning the stutter you mentioned before . What's the used GMEM when that happens ? I'm noticing that with everything ultra on 2560 resolution my used GMEM is constantly around 3gbyte .. hence the stutter could be some swapping/caching going on ?
What resolution are you playing at btw ?

I'm only running 1920x1080p 120hz.

ok tried it again just 5 mins ago, indeed a restart of the game was necessary. Game just feels so much quicker, but the difference isnt in the max frames but undoubtedly in average frames, game feels as fast as older fps games.. its honestly very impressive

Yea no stutter nor pauses for me, and I was just in Zavod 64 full server

it does seem like the image quality is different though on close inspection i couldnt really tell if there was quality loss/gain but it does look slightly different

Glad that helped. Sometimes we miss the easiest things.

[mars]

just to expand a bit, my system specs are

3930k@4.6
290x@ 1080/1500
16gb @ 2133 11-11-11
2560x1440@110Hz
Windows 8.1

and yea smooth no stutters etc
this is for all ultra except MSAA which is 2x

[blindbox]

One other issue i'm currently having is I can't get any OSD to display in BF4 with Mantle. No Radeon Pro or Afterburner. I see others don't have this issue, so it must be related to me. I am running Battlefield in 64bit mode, if anyone else gets this.

No OSD can be displayed on Mantle because it doesn't run on the DX API. Overlays require DX to work. It's also why all sorts of streaming program that relies on hooking to DirectX doesn't work either, but capturing window and playing windowed mode should work, regardless.

[MaddMuppet]

No OSD can be displayed on Mantle because it doesn't run on the DX API. Overlays require DX to work. It's also why all sorts of streaming program that relies on hooking to DirectX doesn't work either, but capturing window and playing windowed mode should work, regardless.

I thought that might be the case. Will try out the windowed mode. Thanks for that.

[Sparky]

I don't like running in windowed mode too much.

[DeathReborn]

It says in the release notes that there is no 'DX9 Dual Graphics support' in the 14.1 drivers @DeathReborn.

The machines with Minecraft on are all running single GPU's (5850, 5750 & 660M). I will be finding out at the weekend how the LAN group like Mantle in BF4, got 8 coming so lots of feedback to be had.

[kromosto]

only thing that disgusts me about mantle is 7xxx and 280x optimization part. ok of course they will need optimizations but they already should have a noticeable performance increases over directx because of mantles less overheads compared to directx.

[MaddMuppet]

I don't like running in windowed mode too much.

Agreed, but just to check out a few things, I would really like some form of OSD.

[DefStar]

There is absolutely zero performance increase using 7970/280x cards. Since we can use BF4 in-game console to capture frame-times...I wrote a java program to parse the frame-times in the output file "FrameTimeLogxxx.csv" and Mantle's Min, Avg, Max frames are always the same or within 1fps of DX 11's Min, Avg, Max. On a good note though, there are no spikes in the Mantle frame-times so at-least its not breaking anything.

Edit: also, I don't know what your'e need for OSD in BF4 is but, I can use the in-game console to display FPS and Graph.

Using the specs in my signature (crossfire enable)
BF4 1080p Ultra (no FXAA)(yes 4x MSAA) Tashgar SP Jeep Ride:
Mantle: Min 98, Avg 115.7, Max 129,
DX: Min 98, Avg 115.4, Max 130,

[STEvil]

SP isnt much of a CPU load

[DefStar]

Your right about that hahaha! But no I'm not going to waste my time benching for performance they have yet to implement, I just wanted an excuse to write a quick app. Maybe you could bench MP STEvil?

[STEvil]

i'm waiting for 14.2 I think, havent had much time for gaming recently due to work so just reading stuff for now

[MaddMuppet]

There is absolutely zero performance increase using 7970/280x cards. Since we can use BF4 in-game console to capture frame-times...I wrote a java program to parse the frame-times in the output file "FrameTimeLogxxx.csv" and Mantle's Min, Avg, Max frames are always the same or within 1fps of DX 11's Min, Avg, Max. On a good note though, there are no spikes in the Mantle frame-times so at-least its not breaking anything.

Edit: also, I don't know what your'e need for OSD in BF4 is but, I can use the in-game console to display FPS and Graph.

Using the specs in my signature (crossfire enable)
BF4 1080p Ultra (no FXAA)(yes 4x MSAA) Tashgar SP Jeep Ride:
Mantle: Min 98, Avg 115.7, Max 129,
DX: Min 98, Avg 115.4, Max 130,

It was just to keep an eye on temps and compare memory usage and GPU usage compared to DX11.

[vario]

Some other results from another website that did some serious tests:

780ti vs 290x DX11 vs 290X Mantle

[kromosto]

nice performance gains if you don't use msaa. it will be better after some optimizations of course but i am not expecting much more from this generation.

[STEvil]

It was just to keep an eye on temps and compare memory usage and GPU usage compared to DX11.

I use a second monitor to keep the main one clutter free while gaming :p

[MaddMuppet]

I use a second monitor to keep the main one clutter free while gaming :p

Now why didn't I think of that. Such a simple thing.

[CrimInalA]

Now why didn't I think of that. Such a simple thing.

Or use a G19 keyboard and aida64

[MaddMuppet]

Or use a G19 keyboard and aida64

I like my Mechanical to much for that though.

[CrimInalA]

The strange thing at the moment is that Mantle uses so much more memory compared to directx . Maybe that's the reason they only optimized BF4 for 290X because those cards have 4gbyte memory . 3gbyte is not enough for pretty high settings/resolution . I use over 3gbyte gmem in BF4 using mantle .

I've ran starswarm benchmark with 300 glare overdraw and 1000 shading samples , motionblur off . When i start the benchmark with mantle used gmem : 7600 mbyte , to drop to 3200 after some time . When i start the directx version it only uses gmem 1600mbyte .. .

[blindbox]

People have been reporting stutters with Mantle on BF4 which seems to indicate memory issues, that could be remedied by dropping the texture quality. It doesn't seem to be a separate issue since Star Swarm is experiencing it, perhaps it's a bug?