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Hz so good
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Fri Jan 17, 2014 12:20 am

Prestige Worldwide wrote:
Looks like the 13.55 driver set to arrive this month is going to enable Mantle and TrueAudio support in their drivers. The mantle patch can't possibly be coming too late after that.

http://videocardz.com/48716/amd-mantle- ... ater-month



About time. With as much fuss being made about Mantle, does anybody see TrueAudio going anywhere? Personally, I'd love to see more effort being put into the audio side of gaming. The last time we had a really big shift was moving from General MIDI to streaming audio and applying environmental effects with DirectX.

Egad, I'm getting old. I remember when Adlib and Soundblaster were duking it out for top spot in a PC, with the Roland MT-32 sitting there, just out of reach.
 
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Fri Jan 17, 2014 12:28 am

wierdo wrote:
My understanding is that Mantle helps lower CPU overhead, helps make it easier for less powerful processors to handle demanding games. One example in CES was a game running on a Bulldozer downclocked to 2ghz w/Mantle to illustrate this overhead reduction.


Yup... and consider how powerful the GPU is in kavari. Why did the spend so much effort on improving the GPU? Just cause they could? I think this is foreshadowing for what is to come, especially if mantle starts taking advantage of HSA. Why wouldn't it? This is like a prime example of where AMD can prove it's technology. They not only have the hardware, but they will also have a foothold in software to make a case for their ideology. They may be able to implement a lot of this without the help of other software developers (the limitation of introducing cutting edge ideas), which will naturally be drawn into things once they see the benefits.

Putting all the pieces together, there definitely looks like there will be a tie in between the two. We may be at the precipice of a big plan about to be executed...
 
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Fri Jan 17, 2014 2:25 am

Hz so good wrote:
About time. With as much fuss being made about Mantle, does anybody see TrueAudio going anywhere?

Most definitely. It's the first non software audio tech with massive amounts of power behind it, and third party support like FMod and whatnot should make it easy to implement. I imagine it'll take longer than Mantle to get general support though.
Nice interview - http://pixelrant.com/2013/10/08/everyth ... echnology/
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Fri Jan 17, 2014 11:55 am

Savyg wrote:
Hz so good wrote:
About time. With as much fuss being made about Mantle, does anybody see TrueAudio going anywhere?

Most definitely. It's the first non software audio tech with massive amounts of power behind it, and third party support like FMod and whatnot should make it easy to implement. I imagine it'll take longer than Mantle to get general support though.
Nice interview - http://pixelrant.com/2013/10/08/everyth ... echnology/



Nice interview! Thanks!
 
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Sun Jan 19, 2014 3:54 pm

I'm really excited to see how it turns out either way. Innovation is a good thing.
 
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Sun Jan 19, 2014 4:13 pm

Thief developer
"All this is good but the audio processing required can cause CPU overheads for the many and complex calculations required which also require a lot of RAM, explained Bucci. However, if you have an AMD GPU with TrueAudio it will be able to handle all these overheads he said, which should mean that the game can run smoother with your CPU and RAM devoted to the other non-audio, non-graphical gaming calculations without hindrance."

So it would interesting to see if this game will run better on a a8-7600 then an Intel i5 (If you dont have a true audio enabled discreet GPU)

(I think 35w kaveri based laptop are going to be a pretty sweet deal for gamer on a budget.)
 
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Tue Jan 21, 2014 2:59 am

..if this game will run better on a a8-7600 then an Intel i5 (If you dont have a true audio enabled discreet GPU)...

no that won't happen.

games have had 3d sound forever. adding effects to the sound can can cause cpu overhead yes, but is not a problem if your cpu already does better rate.

not knocking kaveri, but a8 7600 won't run faster than i5 because of the "complex audio engine" of this game
 
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Mon Jan 27, 2014 10:10 am

Mantle Delayed due to EA's resources being prioritized to fix bugs (good in my book, got killed by enemies with 0HP quite a lot this weekend)

http://wccftech.com/amd-mantle-update-b ... me-issues/
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Mon Jan 27, 2014 10:19 am

Prestige Worldwide wrote:
Mantle Delayed due to EA's resources being prioritized to fix bugs (good in my book, got killed by enemies with 0HP quite a lot this weekend)

http://wccftech.com/amd-mantle-update-b ... me-issues/



Good call.

There's another important point from that article not directly related to the delay. We've been hearing "45% improvement!" thrown around without a lot of context. Well, that article reproduces the footnotes from the official AMD presentation that included the "45% faster" demo in BF4. Here's the upshot: The "45% improvement" comes from running an R9-290X plugged into a Kaveri board (A10-7850K) that takes the performance from 38FPS (DX11) to 55 FPS (Mantle) at 1920x1080 resolution (ultra quality, most stuff turrned on).

Sounds good right? Well, given even Dice's rather crappy optimizations of BF4 in DX11, it's entirely possible for the R9-290X to hit 60FPS at the same resolution and quality settings right now with the "obsolete" DX11 API assuming you are using a competent CPU. Here's just one example of benchmarks from earlier less-optimized iterations of BF4 where the R9-290X is actually putting up better results in DX11 than what AMD is claiming in its own marketing slides for Mantle: http://www.techspot.com/review/734-batt ... page3.html (Note that the resolution in this test is actually 1920x1200, which is slightly *higher* than the resolution in AMD's own tests).

You can do all this with existing CPUs that are about the same price (maybe even cheaper) than the A10-7850K too, so you really can't make the "BUT IT'S SO MUCH CHEAPER" argument kuz that's not the case.




Here's a link to the slide if you don't want to go through the article: http://cdn4.wccftech.com/wp-content/upl ... rmance.jpg
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Mon Jan 27, 2014 12:16 pm

Prestige Worldwide wrote:
Mantle Delayed due to EA's resources being prioritized to fix bugs (good in my book, got killed by enemies with 0HP quite a lot this weekend)

http://wccftech.com/amd-mantle-update-b ... me-issues/

It hasn't necessarily been delayed based on one support guy saying so.

Until EA/DICE say otherwise I'm still expecting it this month.
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Mon Jan 27, 2014 12:19 pm

The thing that makes Mantle still appear promising despite that data chuckula is that BF4 is known to be GPU bound for almost all processors mid range and up - as is shown in the CPU performance section of the TechSpot article. This suggests that either Kaveri is a step backwards in CPU performance (which doesn't fit with reviews - though it wasn't much of a step forward) OR Mantle really is working.

The performance loss seen between those two benchmarks may be explained by a number of things. The TechSpot review is 3 months old using version 1.0 of the game for example, I understand that the game has received many patches since then. The TechSpot review also states that it used the beginning of the 4th single player mission to benchmark while we don't know which section of the game AMD used to benchmark. It appears very much to be a case of apples and unknown fruit...
 
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Mon Jan 27, 2014 12:42 pm

puppetworx wrote:
This suggests that either Kaveri is a step backwards in CPU performance (which doesn't fit with reviews - though it wasn't much of a step forward) OR Mantle really is working.


I don't think the Kaveri CPU is a step backwards from its predecessor (Trinity/Richland) although it's only marginally faster due to lower clock speeds. However, it's blatantly obvious that Kaveri *is* a step down in performance compared to 6 core or 8 core CPUs in the FX series assuming you aren't doing single-threaded workloads. We've heard plenty about how BF4 is multi-threaded, so more cores will mean those older FX chips are noticeably superior (not to mention any quad-core Intel part from 2011 onward).

The TechSpot review is 3 months old using version 1.0 of the game for example, I understand that the game has received many patches since then.


Yes, I fully agree that unless Dice has been actively working to slow down BF4 that the DX11 numbers on the R9-290X should be even stronger than the review I posted of the 1.0 version that had significant issues.. that's not helping Mantle's case though.

The TechSpot review also states that it used the beginning of the 4th single player mission to benchmark while we don't know which section of the game AMD used to benchmark. It appears very much to be a case of apples and unknown fruit...


That's a legitimate argument since we only have video from the AMD demo (showing a guy running around on the deck of an oil tanker or something like that) and we don't know exactly what benchmark run was used in the earlier review. Of course, that cuts both ways.. it might help AMD or turn out even worse.
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Mon Jan 27, 2014 12:59 pm

Might as well give up on Mantle for BF4. Third month of release and still not a peep. Heck Second Assault files are in game right now for PC and we have yet to see OR hear of its release/ unlock. (Actually I think someone said this past weekend LATE February) With this years line ups releases quickly approaching I dont see EA/Dice moving any faster to release whats been promised. Heck for all we know they are already working on BF5.
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Mon Jan 27, 2014 1:36 pm

chuckula wrote:
We've heard plenty about how BF4 is multi-threaded, so more cores will mean those older FX chips are noticeably superior (not to mention any quad-core Intel part from 2011 onward).


Well it depends what you mean by 'noticeably superior', the article you linked shows only a few percent difference between an A10-5700 (94 FPS) and an FX-8350 (96 FPS) - the same is true on the Intel side i3-3220 (95 FPS) and i7-4960x (98 FPS). Granted, they don't give minimum FPS or frame-times for the various processors they tested, so there maybe larger variance there, but generally FPS correlates highly with frame-times.

If they have really hurt performance with their patches then the game may perform vastly differently on different CPUs today then it did when TechSpot performed their tests, which would hurt my presumptions above. The difference however is most likely due to the part of the game tested, the Singapore mission TechSpot is not the same as what we saw from CES.
 
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Mon Jan 27, 2014 1:57 pm

tanker27 wrote:
Might as well give up on Mantle for BF4. Third month of release and still not a peep.

I fail to see how mid December to late January is third month.
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Mon Jan 27, 2014 1:59 pm

puppetworx wrote:
Well it depends what you mean by 'noticeably superior', the article you linked shows only a few percent difference between an A10-5700 (94 FPS) and an FX-8350 (96 FPS) - the same is true on the Intel side i3-3220 (95 FPS) and i7-4960x (98 FPS). Granted, they don't give minimum FPS or frame-times for the various processors they tested, so there maybe larger variance there, but generally FPS correlates highly with frame-times.

Other benchmarks show a considerably different picture, so not really sure what's going on there - http://www.bf4blog.com/battlefield-4-re ... enchmarks/
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Mon Jan 27, 2014 2:08 pm

Savyg wrote:
tanker27 wrote:
Might as well give up on Mantle for BF4. Third month of release and still not a peep.

I fail to see how mid December to late January is third month.



*cough* October 29, 2013 *cough*
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Mon Jan 27, 2014 2:40 pm

tanker27 wrote:
*cough* October 29, 2013 *cough*

Yes, but that was never the release date for the Mantle port so a bit irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Mon Jan 27, 2014 2:55 pm

Savyg wrote:
tanker27 wrote:
*cough* October 29, 2013 *cough*

Yes, but that was never the release date for the Mantle port so a bit irrelevant to the discussion at hand.


It does but you guys hold your breath. Me personally, I dont think mantle will ever see the light of day in BF4. If it ever does it will be too little too late for the game and will be nothing but possibly a POC.

Reviewing the initial slides of the games that could "possibly" use mantle some of those games are right around the corner.
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Mon Jan 27, 2014 3:04 pm

Savyg wrote:
Other benchmarks show a considerably different picture, so not really sure what's going on there - http://www.bf4blog.com/battlefield-4-re ... enchmarks/


That test was done with a dual GPU graphics card (Asus Ares II) - that's probably it, SLI/Crossfire seems to tax the CPU a lot harder than single card setups.
 
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Mon Jan 27, 2014 3:42 pm

Yes, that was done with a dual GPU 7990, where the CPU is by and large the bottleneck on multigpu configs.

With a stock i5 750 @ 3ghz, I got LOWER FPS with GTX 670 SLI (50fps) than I did with a single GTX 670 (60fps) in BF3. I was massively CPU bottlenecked.

Overclocking to 4 GHz alleviated the bottleneck to the point of having 100+ FPS, and getting an i7 3820 gave it a bit of a boost as well. It takes a lot of CPU grunt to keep multiple GPUs fed.

BF4 is very much GPU bound in single GPU configs.
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Mon Jan 27, 2014 5:25 pm

tanker27 wrote:
It does but you guys hold your breath. Me personally, I dont think mantle will ever see the light of day in BF4. If it ever does it will be too little too late for the game and will be nothing but possibly a POC.

Ever the pessimist, with 4 more expansion packs left to out, if Mantle comes with second assault, it's probably plenty enough. Especially if they can cram in some extra eye-candy on the later packs as a bonus for Mantle users. To be honest, I think most of the BF community don't even care about Mantle, if they even remember what it is or know that it exists. It's the tech people that care about it and are exited it might be worth something.
 
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Mon Jan 27, 2014 5:57 pm

Aphasia wrote:
tanker27 wrote:
It does but you guys hold your breath. Me personally, I dont think mantle will ever see the light of day in BF4. If it ever does it will be too little too late for the game and will be nothing but possibly a POC.

Ever the pessimist, with 4 more expansion packs left to out, if Mantle comes with second assault, it's probably plenty enough. Especially if they can cram in some extra eye-candy on the later packs as a bonus for Mantle users. To be honest, I think most of the BF community don't even care about Mantle, if they even remember what it is or know that it exists. It's the tech people that care about it and are exited it might be worth something.


I just want Second Assault to come online. Mantle is a whole 'nuther ball of wax; it'll likely go through the same bug-hunting iterations that BF4 has already gone through, and we'll have to wait at least a month before we can trust the resulting benchmark numbers.
 
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Mon Jan 27, 2014 9:56 pm

This Just In!!!!

Mantle has been placed on the mantle so we can all sit by the fire and watch it.

Another Mantle Disappointment. ;)
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Tue Jan 28, 2014 9:44 am

zenlessyank wrote:
This Just In!!!!

Mantle has been placed on the mantle so we can all sit by the fire and watch it.

Another Mantle Disappointment. ;)


I lol'd
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Tue Jan 28, 2014 11:29 pm

https://twitter.com/thedevelopper/statu ... 0624241664
Hasn't been delayed to February.
Seems it's ready, just waiting on the 13.35 drivers from AMD.
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Wed Jan 29, 2014 5:31 pm

Nice, hope they release it with the new weapon balancing right at the start of the player appreciation month.

I got my Asus DirectCUII 290x OC today and Overclocked it to 1100/5600 GPU/Mem, so Mantle on top of that should be decent performance.
 
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Thu Jan 30, 2014 7:17 am

And here we are. The mid range test case is interesting to me.
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/ne ... ntle-live/
AMD posted some interesting numbers as well. Seems the only time it won't accomplish much is with a high end CPU and lower end GPU.
http://wccftech.com/amd-launches-mantle ... -not-gpus/
Still waiting on the beta drivers to actually show up, but this definitely looks good. I won't have a vidcard for this until March. Heh.
Last edited by LostCat on Thu Jan 30, 2014 7:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Thu Jan 30, 2014 7:24 am

Note: AMD Catalyst™ 14.1 initially supports the AMD Radeon™ R9 290X, R9 290, R7 260X and “Kaveri” APU

Arf, well glad I don't have the card yet anyway hah. (I won't decide if I'm going 270X or 280X until I see if the prices came back down.)

*EDIT: Incorrect info from the BF4 blog, but apparently AMD and DICE are still working on the performance for the other cards.*
Last edited by LostCat on Fri Jan 31, 2014 5:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: BF4 Mantle Thread

Thu Jan 30, 2014 8:17 am

Those results look better than the ones AMD released(presumably singleplayer). It seems to be a pretty nice boost for the CPU bound and for everyone in multiplayer(intuitive given how already GPU bound the game is). Now the wait for independent tests begins.

Edit: EA left the final Mantle screenshot out of their blogpost but they did host it - http://eaassets-a.akamaihd.net/battlelog/prod/61d099d23fe104fe673091d470c96970/en_US/blog/en/files/2014/01/testcase3_mantle.jpg

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