AMD Mantle update...

[BababooeyHTJ]

Would have been more fair had they used DX11.2. From what I'm hearing Nvidia is having significant gains in cpu limited scenarios with DX11.2.

[Lightman]

Would have been more fair had they used DX11.2. From what I'm hearing Nvidia is having significant gains in cpu limited scenarios with DX11.2.

Can't be more fair as they used BOTH Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. Re-read graph descriptions

[Hornet331]

Wonder if eidos still bothers with a good implementation of mantle for thief after seeing how this game bomb, especial on pc.

[Sparky]

I'm still waiting on an official driver release with Mantle support. I've had mixed results with beta drivers in the past so I'd rather just wait. But I am getting impatient

[MaddMuppet]

I'm still waiting on an official driver release with Mantle support. I've had mixed results with beta drivers in the past so I'd rather just wait. But I am getting impatient

I don't blame you for waiting. I couldn't hold out myself as I play lots of bf4. These 14.1 drivers would seriously be some of the worst I have experienced. They are buggy as hell.

[figuretti]

New beta driver guys

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads...14-2-beta-1-3/

[Sparky]

I don't blame you for waiting. I couldn't hold out myself as I play lots of bf4. These 14.1 drivers would seriously be some of the worst I have experienced. They are buggy as hell.

Every time I load BF4 it complains about my old drivers (13.9). But hey, they work so I'm not screwing with them until I have reason to!

New beta driver guys

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads...14-2-beta-1-3/

Known Issues
Thief does not render the right eye when CrossFire and Stereo 3D is enabled

[BababooeyHTJ]

Can't be more fair as they used BOTH Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. Re-read graph descriptions

Thats what I get for doubting pcgh. They do a great job, thanks for pointing that out.

[STEvil]

New beta driver guys

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads...14-2-beta-1-3/

Dunno if BF4 or 14.2 1.3 is at fault, but I just get a black screen after the map loads in bf4 99% of the time. Once I spawned with no GUI and was under the map, couple times BF4 froze. Had a heck of a time installing the drivers as well as the ATi uninstall tool wouldnt get rid of the previous drivers.

[kromosto]

they confuse us by releasing both at the same time.

[figuretti]

I have installed the patch on BF4, but my driver is not updated... when i get home tonight i'm gonna test if i suffer the same errors as STEvil in the game

[figuretti]

I call this "The Mantle Effect"... http://www.dsogaming.com/news/direct...draw-overhead/

[zalbard]

I call this "The Mantle Effect"... http://www.dsogaming.com/news/direct...draw-overhead/

Great news. But I reckon this will kill Mantle right off.

[Stukov]

Great news. But I reckon this will kill Mantle right off.

Not necessarily. Mantle is supposedly very similar to the implementation of the consoles, as a developer or publisher, using methods and tools similar across multiple platforms reduces cost. Secondly, DirectX and OpenGL are notoriously slow in their adoption of new standards, with Microsoft usually also for attaching whatever DX upgrade to their newest OS, leaving older versions behind. Mantle works regardless of OS version. Mantles success or failure will come more from AMD's ability to dedicate themselves to Mantles continued development and steady innovation, while leveraging their power they have from hardware in the consoles.

[STEvil]

Found another 14.2 issue, streaming videos will "bounce in place" between a few frames if you pause them in a browser tab (firefox and opera both have this issue so far) then press play later. If you pause then press play then pause again it seems to work ok. weird..

edit

non-stream videos work fine so far (VLC)

[blindbox]

Tried the 14.2 update. I see about 10% more fps on my 7850 on BF4 with details on medium (with 14.1, my fps was worse with Mantle). Disappointingly, as pointed by someone else on another forum (can't remember where), I'm getting that CPU-spike bug. It's easy to trigger, just do many 360s extremely fast. This doesn't happen with DX11. Reporting the issue, having a 10% increase in fps is pretty nice...

[sobol]

STEvil
There's fix for black screen at loading time, it has helped many users as reported by them on various forums.

EA_Rick:
"Hi everyone,

We are aware that some of you have been experiencing some crashing since the patch this morning. Below is a workaround for this problem:

1. Go into your game directory (dir:\Program files(x86)\Origin Games\Battlefield 4)
2. If you have a ?user.cfg? file, open it in notepad.
3. Delete the command line ?UI.DrawEnable 1?
4. Save the file
5. Start the game

If you do not have this file on your system but are still crashing please post here with details of what is happening so that it can be further looked into.
Thanks.

~Rick."

From myself, I can add that if you don't have the file, you can create it, put that line, start game, crash, remove it from there and it should be sorted.

[Sparky]

Even if Mantle only served to give DX and OGL a shove, then that's still a good thing.

[Iconyu]

Even if Mantle only served to give DX and OGL a shove, then that's still a good thing.

Fully agreed, neither API showed much sign of evolution and Mantle literally was the API equivalent of the Oxygen Catastrophe.

[STEvil]

STEvil
There's fix for black screen at loading time, it has helped many users as reported by them on various forums.

EA_Rick:
"Hi everyone,

We are aware that some of you have been experiencing some crashing since the patch this morning. Below is a workaround for this problem:

1. Go into your game directory (dir:\Program files(x86)\Origin Games\Battlefield 4)
2. If you have a ?user.cfg? file, open it in notepad.
3. Delete the command line ?UI.DrawEnable 1?
4. Save the file
5. Start the game

If you do not have this file on your system but are still crashing please post here with details of what is happening so that it can be further looked into.
Thanks.

~Rick."

From myself, I can add that if you don't have the file, you can create it, put that line, start game, crash, remove it from there and it should be sorted.

I dont have anything in that folder... and cand even find a user.cfg in any of the myriad of c:\ folders that EA/BF4/origin use... wth.

Nothing in prosave either.

EDIT

user.cfg is best found by right clicking BF4 shortcut then going to "open file location" as the user.cfg has more than one area it can be stored in. Good job DICE/EA.

[Heinz68]

Wonder if eidos still bothers with a good implementation of mantle for thief after seeing how this game bomb, especial on pc.

Don't worry, sure they will. "Thief Won't Have AMD's Mantle Support At Launch, Coming via Patch in March says Eidos"

[STEvil]

So after a few hours of testing I have to say I rather like the Mantle renderer. It seems slightly more stable and is at least as fast as DX11, if not faster. FPS stability seems to be noticeably improved (less dips and some trouble spots do not "low out" as badly anymore).

One other thing I noticed is that it seems my 290x isnt running quite as warm either. Not sure if thats mantle or just the newer driver having some power optimizations..

[Heinz68]

[H}ard]|OCP BF4 AMD Mantle Video Card Performance Review Part 1

Small part from the conclusion:

When Mantle performance is compared to DirectX 11 performance within the same driver, Mantle added about 10% to the average frames per second on the AMD Radeon R9 290X and the AMD Radeon R9 290. The AMD R9 280X showed a 20% performance increase using Mantle.

Looks like contrary too many arguments the high end set ups also benefit from MANTLE.

[tajoh111]

[H}ard]|OCP BF4 AMD Mantle Video Card Performance Review Part 1

Small part from the conclusion:

Looks like contrary too many arguments the high end set ups also benefit from MANTLE.

This is the next paragraph.

"When Mantle performance is compared to DirectX 11 performance within the same driver, Mantle added about 10% to the average frames per second on the AMD Radeon R9 290X and the AMD Radeon R9 290. The AMD R9 280X showed a 20% performance increase using Mantle.

In each case, the use of Mantle did not increase the best playable settings for each card within the multiplayer environment. The more interesting thing to note is that the DirectX 11 performance of the Catalyst 14.1 and 14.2 Beta drivers appears to be lower than the performance offered by the game's launch drivers from last year. When we look at today's Mantle performance in comparison to our launch day performance, there is little to no benefit from a gameplay experience perspective to enable Mantle at this time."

"The Bottom Line

We have a lot of hope that Mantle will be a net positive for PC gaming based upon the potential that we have seen with it so far. We do not dispute the fact that Mantle is providing significant gains on slower hardware while significantly improving the overall gameplay experience, however, when looking at the benefits provided through the lens of improving upon the best playable gaming experience on current high end hardware, there's simply not a tangible benefit provided to gamers at this time on high-end cards. Those of you looking for smoother frame times in BF4 with CrossFire configurations look to be very much in luck though. And that is something that many of us have been wanting a long."


No one said there was going to be no performance increase, rather, that it was going to be less significant on the high end, particularly in mostly GPU bound situation.

This changes with Crossfire which is CPU bound but this article more or less backs up the predictions people made about mantle.

[LordEC911]

Interesting that 14.1 and 14.2 seem to lower performance. Possibly due to stabilizing frame times?