AMD : Battlefield 4 Patch, Mantle API and Catalyst 14.1 Update

[BrightCandle]

Its very hard for anyone of the programmers involved with these projects to have implemented their software for Mantle when it hasn't been made available until this weekend. You will definitely have to wait just as they have.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Anyone know of a functional OSD for Mantle? Want to see cpu gpu usage in game

Buy a logitech keyboard with a screen. I've got it on my g15.

 

[Imouto]

Anyone know of a functional OSD for Mantle? Want to see cpu gpu usage in game

MSI Afterburner. x64 support and CPU statistics.

 

[Venomous]

In my reading around I saw that someone was having the same issue and they found that starting the game in x64 mode enabled the menu selection for Mantle.

Yeah I already use the 64bit client and do have igp disabled in device mgr . Lemme see if I can disable it on bios instead

 

[Adampa1006]

14.1 gives me awful performance in every game except BF4. Had to go back to 13.12. Will try again with 14.2 hopefully.

 

[Bateluer]

Here are my tests with StarSwam and Mandle vs D3D using my i5 4670 and R9 290X.

D3D
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1ebxcjdo2q99vb7/StarSwarm Benchmark Catalyst 13-12 D3D.txt

== Results ================================================
Test Duration: 360 Seconds
Total Frames: 13078

Average FPS: 36.33
Average Unit Count: 4141
Maximum Unit Count: 5508
Average Batches/MS: 579.71
Maximum Batches/MS: 1479.87
Average Batch Count: 19010
Maximum Batch Count: 113558
===========================================================

Mantle
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7eu0xd7bmxqa08t/StarSwarm Benchmark Catalyst 14-1-1dot6B Mantle.txt

== Results ================================================
Test Duration: 360 Seconds
Total Frames: 22107

Average FPS: 61.41
Average Unit Count: 4572
Maximum Unit Count: 5802
Average Batches/MS: 1023.23
Maximum Batches/MS: 2676.89
Average Batch Count: 18757
Maximum Batch Count: 101649
===========================================================

The difference is pretty staggering. In D3D mode, in the heavier scenes, frame rate dropped below 12. In the Mantle version, the lowest I think I saw was 26. Impressive. Have to remember this is a tech demo.

 

[jackstar7]

BF4 was a nice experience with Mantle so far. Generally very smooth, even with 79xx trifire.

No problems with other games I play.

 

[DarkKnightDude]

Interestingly Tomb Raider and Wargame runs way better with 14.1, not sure what they did. However, Minecraft appears to be broken, all the textures are missing.

 

[SimianR]

come someone needs to test a Core 2 Duo with a 290x

I actually have a Core 2 Duo - E8400 system with an R9 290 that I use for mining Maybe I'll throw BF4 on there and give it a go.

 

[UaVaj]

No need for that as it's just a levels issue. All the info and everything is rendered. A quick way to test this is opening the image in Photoshop/whatever and boosting the highlights.

DX
Mantle
Mantle highlighted

This guy has the same issue.

DX
Mantle
Mantle highlighted

Repi acknowledged it as a bug already anyway.

hope you are right and it is just a lighting level bug. until then you have the benefit of the doubt.

cause that washed out mantle rendering is lacking, even with the performance gain.

 

[smackababy]

Anyone having trouble installing the beta driver?

 

[Bubbleawsome]

No sir. Installed fine on my 7770.

 

[smackababy]

I restarted and it seems to be working. It was stuck at the "finding system configuration" or something. Actually installing now.

 

[n0x1ous]

MSI Afterburner. x64 support and CPU statistics.

yeah thats what I normally use but it doesn't work with Mantle. Unwinder said it will be a while as AMD hasn't even put out the SDK yet.

 

[jason166]

I also have a HD7850 with an i7 920 for my son's rig and its getting some weird stuttering with mantle enabled. The FPS seems to be slightly improved.

I'm running a 270 (Basically a 7870) and I get a bad stutter every 5-10 seconds. The frame latency in between those stutters is notably better, but the game is basically unplayable in Mantle mode for now on this card.

Here's hoping they can work out the kinks sometime soon.

 

[Tmf]

My experience with 14.1 beta and BF4 has been kind of lack luster on my 280X. When using the Mantle api I get a huge FPS lag spike every so often. Once every 5-10 minutes it seems. Not a huge deal but still annoying. With DX11 I am crashing pretty often. Went back to official drivers and haven't had a crash yet with DX11 but I've only played a handful of games. Obviously these are beta drivers and mantle isn't optimized for GCN 1.0 cards yet so I'm not too bummed. Still very optimistic about things to come.

 

[Will Robinson]

Seems to be working well on R280X and others...

 

[Tmf]

Seems to be working well on R280X and others...

The performance I got with mantle was solid. The little 1-2s frames drops is what bothered me. Could easily be isolated to me as I've been playing with various other overclocks (cpu/ram) on my systems recently. All my time spent with Mantle has been in 64 man servers so overall system strain is pretty high. However there is no sign of the issue when using DX11 outside of random crashing with 14.1 beta drivers. I should probably put everything back to stock for more reliable testing so I can better evaluate things.

 

[Gloomy]

The performance I got with mantle was solid. The little 1-2s frames drops is what bothered me. Could easily be isolated to me as I've been playing with various other overclocks (cpu/ram) on my systems recently. All my time spent with Mantle has been in 64 man servers so overall system strain is pretty high. However there is no sign of the issue when using DX11 outside of random crashing with 14.1 beta drivers. I should probably put everything back to stock for more reliable testing so I can better evaluate things.

Try turning down the texture quality to see if that eliminates the stutter.

 

[Will Robinson]

AMD have mentioned a bit of random stuttering with the new Mantle drivers in its Beta form.
Probably worth waiting till a few more optimizations have been done before you'll get all the smoothness and higher frame rates etc you are after.

 

[Stuka87]

I have only played BF4 with the 14.1 drivers. But my FPS went up by a LOT. I was playing on a 64 man servers that was on Shanghai. Played for about 5 mins, was averaging mid 40's for frame rates. Sometimes it would just sit at 30.

I then switched to Mantle, relaunched the game and joined the same server, and I was nearly always at 60 with drops to 50ish now and then.

I DID however get the stutter that some others reported. Every few minutes or so I would drop down to single digit frame rates for about 1-2 seconds. Then it would come back up and start running fine again.

This was with the machine in my sig playing at 1080P High.

 

[Paul98]

A lot of people would be using mantle in BF4 if it didn't have that stutter, hopefully they fix that quick and release a new driver.

 

[smackababy]

Played two games using Mantle and don't know if I noticed the difference. I was feeling pretty bad though, so that might have contributed. Running everything on Ultra @ 1080p, was still pretty smooth.

 

[kane15]

i have to say im blown away by the performance of mantle and sad these drivers are so broken, and i have one of the so called card's they focused on 290x playing with mantle BF4 feels soooo smooth like you're gliding on ice on maps where id dip into the 60's i now never drop under 120 its really amazing, i just hope they can fix these drivers because i had to roll back to the old ones and now i know what im missing out on

 

[codyray10]

I got into a server today for about 5min with Mantle enabled. Stuttering made it pretty much unplayable with 7870's crossfired. The game did seem to play/look a bit smoother for the few seconds it wasnt stuttering.