Thursday, January 30th 2014
AMD Mantle Driver to Only Benefit Four GPUs Initially
Crushed your F5 key on AMD driver download page yet? Unless you have four very specific AMD Radeon GPUs, you can stop it right now. According to DICE, developers of the first game to take advantage of Mantle, the 3D graphics API AMD is introducing with its Catalyst 14.1 beta driver, will give tangible benefits to only four specific GPUs - Radeon R9 290X, R9 290 (non-X), R7 260X, and A-Series "Kaveri" APU-integrated R7 200 series.
Owners of all other Radeon GPUs, including those based on the Graphics CoreNext (GCN) architecture, such as the recently launched R9 280X and R9 270X, are out of luck, for now. AMD is still ironing out issues with Mantle on those other GCN GPUs. Interestingly, in the same press note, DICE posted performance numbers yielded on an HD 7970, which look promising. AMD is expected to release its Catalyst 14.1 beta driver a little later this week, as it's jousting with some last-minute bug-finds.
Source:
DICE
Owners of all other Radeon GPUs, including those based on the Graphics CoreNext (GCN) architecture, such as the recently launched R9 280X and R9 270X, are out of luck, for now. AMD is still ironing out issues with Mantle on those other GCN GPUs. Interestingly, in the same press note, DICE posted performance numbers yielded on an HD 7970, which look promising. AMD is expected to release its Catalyst 14.1 beta driver a little later this week, as it's jousting with some last-minute bug-finds.
133 Comments on AMD Mantle Driver to Only Benefit Four GPUs Initially
lulz.
I think you're blowing it out of proportion here. I game with an MSI GAMING GTX780, and have a single ASUS 7970 MATRIX that my memory review rig uses. Both are based on Intel.
So, does Mantle help me?
Personally, I've got not emotion involved in any of this, but I am curious as to what MANTLE actually represents, and how this "free" thing is an actual thing or just a marketing ruse by AMD to get AMD GPU buyer to stop using Intel chips so much ,and buy AMD CPUs, since that's the most common thing.
I mean, I have no problem playing BF4 on a single 7970 now...so this "free" stuff...uh...whut? It gives me more...what? I just simply don't have enough information to understand what AMD is doing, where they are headed, and why. This isn't me as an AMD user complaining...man, Intel sent me three 4960X CPUs. ASUS sent me a RAMPAGE IV BLACK EDITION. G.Skill sent me a 32 GB ram kit. MSI gave me a GTX780. Thermaltake is sending me a PSU. I'm working on getting other hardware. I ain't got nothing to complain about...except my confusion. I sold nearly all of my AMD cards, got most of my money back, too.
I want to know.. because I do reviews. CPU reviews, at times, too. So, I need to know this stuff, but AMD doesn't have a lot of info for me, if any, that provides something I can relate to the end user as a tangible benefit...as a feature that they should look for as reason to buy AMD products. I don't pay for hardware any more...so the standard "blah blah blah complaining fanboy blah blah blah blah" comments don't apply to me, personally. I just state the facts, as I understand them, because that's my job. :p
Both 5000 and 6000 series are old cards. You can't expect everything new to be supported in old cards. And Mantle is NOT DirectX 11. The fact that they support DirectX 11 doesn't mean they are going to support Mantle.
Mantle is an API...a set of commands given to the GPU by the system, in order for the GPU to output a signal. It replaces DirectX, and uses different compression/algorithms etc, so this requires supporting "decoding" hardware on the GPU itself, which is present in GCN designs.
It provides a benefit, by both lowering CPU load, and limiting CPU-GPU communication bandwidth and time, allowing more commands to be sent to the GPU at once, eliminating bottlenecks in performance that are currently in place(on AMD CPUs).
You keep moving the goal posts. First, it only support a few cards. Then I proved that AMD supports all GCNs, which is 2 generations BTW. You are still unhappy. Now you want support for ALL cards? LMAO
It's not going to happen! Why?
1. Because 99% of the time those owners of cards 3+ generations old will not have a CPU bottleneck. Mantle would prove useless even if they support it.
2. AMD have publicly stated they are doing minimal to no driver improvement for the 5000 series. I am not sure on the 6000 series but it probably receives the same treatment right now. This is not a surprise as it is very old already. This is like asking NVDA to keep supporting the 9800GTX.
There's something that led me to believe that you are just finding more nonsense to bring up. Let me point this out to you. Mantle is a FREE download/upgrade for everyone except NVDA users. If you are going to complain about FREE, I can't imagine how you will react when you have to pay for a DLC.
The Von Matrices Are you serious? The point of any marketing is to buy their products. NVDA makes you believe that PhysX makes your gaming experience epic and throw out numbers that sounds like every developer is implementing PhysX. Intel marketing makes you believe that you can game just fine on their HD graphics.
As far as marketing goes, I see more marketing for Mantle from EA than AMD. AMD never pushed Mantle promise and my recent purchase of AMD cards did not have "WILL HAVE MANTLE IN THE FUTURE WITH 500% PERFORMANCE PROMISE" anywhere on the box or documentation.
I have no idea what you and Prima are talking about. These are the worst bashing of a free product I've ever seen. It doesn't affect your life if you don't have AMD cards. It only offer free performance if you own AMD cards. Something you never paid for in the first place when you went out and bought your cards. You guys need to breathe some fresh air.
Link to Johan's blog about the mantle update with performance figures
So what you are saying is that Mantle's improvement for you is minimal, probably 2-4% at best because your hardware is already near the max. That's great!
I have an idea for you. Pretend Mantle never existed. Life goes on as usual and you haven't lost anything lol. Seriously, your excuses are getting ridiculous.
AMD is not trying to get people to stop buying Intel chips or NVDA. Did you not read that it works on both Intel and AMD? You get the most benefit if there is a large performance delta between CPU and GPU based on game needs.
I don't understand why you are so mad? Is it because AMD didn't send you more free stuff or prelaunch info?
BTW it's great you get free hardware but nobody cares. Everyone gets perks depending on their jobs. I don't rant about my free car, phone, macbook and expense perks for my job.
I'll give you a tip.
Is about AMD's promises and lies on how they were going to fix Frame Pacing, EyeFinity issues, Crossfire profiles and now the Mantle thingy. Thing is why I kinda stop believing their bs propaganda. That's all.
I'm not mad...
Like, I see you trying to say that I'm mad, and how I feel is unjustified, but you're mis-interpreting how I feel.
Why would AMD send me hardware? Did they launch anything I'd be interested in reviewing?
Nope.
Do I do VGA reviews?
Nope?
Does AMD send me CPUs on launch?
Yep.
Do I get pre-release info?
Yep.
lulz.
I already have the hardware required to investigate Mantle. Well, I don't have a 7850K, but I have all the other AMD APUs, and I've told AMD I'm really only interested in Kabini, so that's no big deal. I'm just wondering which approach I should take in my testing, and how end users can do the same, and what realistic expectations I should have.
It's cool...free stuff...but what am I looking at?
I have high-end hardware for myself, but I review any products that show up on my doorstep, and have some A88X motherboards that fit with these new APUs here to review. Should Mantle be something buyers of such a board should take notice in? Why? Specifics....?
I really don't understand what the problem is. Except Nvidia obviously, that is where the real questions are, and you are right we don't have enough data there, but ... the future is young, more data will happen.
- allows developers to push 10 times more draw calls to the GPU with the same CPU
- allows developers to blue screen the game, not only crash to desktop
The first one gets me much more dynamic objects on screen without fps drop, the second one worries me.@cadaveca
um, its a free boost non the less, what's not to like
Btw dont you want better looking games (CGI gfx) in the future that can utilize extra power and not be bottlencked by dx api..?
it's kinda funny and ironic...
VLIW reached the end of its useful life and could not enable HSA without major additional hardware and a higher overhead. GCN is more suited to the current tasks and games.
Really? The ASRock4Core1600P35 has USB 3.0 support? It would be news to ASRock...