AMD Catalyst 14.1 Beta Released: What It Fixes and Improves

[tomc100]

Still no fix for Need for Speed Rivals which is unplayable in fullscreen. I thought this was one of the games which would use mantle.

Mantle requires the developer to program the game engine for the API, much like DX or OGL. It isn't just something AMD turns on in the driver package.

The game engine is Frostbite 3 engine. Same one used in Battlefield 4. DICE specifically created that engine to use mantle.

 

[xaephod]

So right now, my 7970 doesn't get any benefit from Mantle? I have to wait for a future catalyst release?

 

[vmem]

"Flickering seen when enabling three 4k x 2k panels at the same time"I'd like to know who tried this 😛

 

[jimmysmitty]

I like free performance just as much anyone else but wasn't the whole reason for the PC gaming world DirectX** driver support was for maintaining uniformity and stability across the PC platform and all games. Maybe many don't remember but there was a time when it seemed every hardware vendor had it's own unique wrapper that allowed for accessing of a game directly to boost performance. This lead to a disarray of competing hardware to software wrappers and drivers tuned for this or that game that split the industry up and gamers got tired of broken games or crashing windows because your hardware setup wasn't always compatible with this card driver or that game wasn't optimized for that hardware. A game will always be faster if it is written to access hardware directly but then it becomes the responsibility of the hardware vendor to offer drivers or wrapper updates for each and every game they want to improve upon. I don't know about you but ATI/AMD has never had the best track record for driver support. Good luck with that guys but you just put yourselves back to like 1995 or something.

The other reason that Microsoft developed DirectX and other OS APIs was to limit direct access to hardware since if the game or application crashed during those days, it normally also caused a hardware fault which caused the OS to crash. Now the driver can crash and the OS will normally be fine.

That is another inherent risk taken with something like Mantle as it can cause system instability if it cannot manage the driver/game crashes without resorting to a hardware fault error.

Still no fix for Need for Speed Rivals which is unplayable in fullscreen. I thought this was one of the games which would use mantle.

Mantle requires the developer to program the game engine for the API, much like DX or OGL. It isn't just something AMD turns on in the driver package.

The game engine is Frostbite 3 engine. Same one used in Battlefield 4. DICE specifically created that engine to use mantle.

No Frostbite 3 was developed as the next iteration of their game engine. It was then they decided to add Mantle support. That does not mean that the engine is going to have it in every game and would rather need to be patched in as it was released before Mantle was even ready.

If they feel it is worth it, they will patch in Mantle support for NFS Rivals, but don't expect it to be natively supported as it is not.

And xaephod, even though the HD 7970 is the first of the GCN cards, they have not written the driver support for Mantle yet and is all that will be needed for it to start working in games that support it. As to why they didn't do it now since there are more HD7970s in gaming rigs than there are R9 290s I have no idea. Maybe it requires more work of maybe they just want to push the new hardware.

Still the benefit will only depend on what CPU you have. If you have a higher end CPU, you wont benefit much.

 

[Morbus]

This is the reason I left ATI and went for a GTX760... I don't regret it in the slightest.

You left because you hate getting performance boosts for free? Well I guess you're better off with Nvidia then. I'm sure they love to take your money for things that should be free.

As if! The nVidia cards are both cheaper and perform better, have more features and better drivers with fewer bugs, and are more power efficient.

These "performance boosts" are negligible and not really that relevant if you consider normal driver updates usually bring performance boosts from time to time anyway. Besides, Mantle is only for Battlefield 4, and I'm not playing or paying for buggy crap from EA or pretty much any other AAA company.

 

[ferooxidan]

what if, hypothetically speaking, it was Nvidia all along that pays people or their own worker to buy the early revision of R9-290/R9-290X and told them to use it for mining so that the priced increased and they just have to cut a lil from their own cards to win the war...just imagine....lol im being ridiculous.

 

[Morbus]

Don't understand the AMD disdain. If you don't like the company and like Nvidia - great. But if you can't see the benfit in a company releasing an API still in it's infancy, first utilized by a medicore developer (my personal opinion of DICE), which offers FREE performance improvement that increases longevity of your GPU/CPU...you're looking at the glass half empty. Me, I'd rather use my AMD card (which surprisingly still plays games w/o Mantle!), and wait to see if other developers are smart enough to dedicate some time to optimize their game for an API that obviously offers users increased performance. If they don't - oh well. We're stuck with DirectX and buying video cards every two years for that little bit of Clock speed until the World burns up and we're all scavenging for a can O' beans.

what if, hypothetically speaking, it was Nvidia all along that pays people or their own worker to buy the early revision of R9-290/R9-290X and told them to use it for mining so that the priced increased and they just have to cut a lil from their own cards to win the war...just imagine....lol im being ridiculous.

What if the internet is a lie and it's just my sister fooling me with her haxor skills?

I'm onto you sis!!!1

 

[Hunter_Killers]

And xaephod, even though the HD 7970 is the first of the GCN cards, they have not written the driver support for Mantle yet and is all that will be needed for it to start working in games that support it. As to why they didn't do it now since there are more HD7970s in gaming rigs than there are R9 290s I have no idea. Maybe it requires more work of maybe they just want to push the new hardware.Still the benefit will only depend on what CPU you have. If you have a higher end CPU, you wont benefit much.

You really have no idea what you are talking about and obviously never even tried Mantle. 7970's get a colossal benefit even with a powerful CPU behind it.

 

[jimmysmitty]

And xaephod, even though the HD 7970 is the first of the GCN cards, they have not written the driver support for Mantle yet and is all that will be needed for it to start working in games that support it. As to why they didn't do it now since there are more HD7970s in gaming rigs than there are R9 290s I have no idea. Maybe it requires more work of maybe they just want to push the new hardware.Still the benefit will only depend on what CPU you have. If you have a higher end CPU, you wont benefit much.

You really have no idea what you are talking about and obviously never even tried Mantle. 7970's get a colossal benefit even with a powerful CPU behind it.

It would benefit you to post your proof before talking. I am going based on the current previews and considering that the only GPUs currently supported in the 14.1 driver set is the R9 290/290X then we have no way of knowing until the driver supports the other GPUs.

That said, why would a HD7970 benefit more than a R9 290 series when they are the exact same arch just one has more shaders/ROPS?

Again, if you have actual proof, I am more than willing to look but I haven't seen anything but the 290/290X running Mantle currently which was also stated in this article itself as the 7970 and 280 series should be optimized in a future driver release.

Still it is best to wait but I don't see how a API designed to allow better performance from a GPU to benefit a older GPU with lower specs.

And you are right, I haven't tried Mantle because I don't own BF4. Tried the beta and it was ok. No reason to buy a game I will hardly play to try something. I would rather wait and see how it goes then judge.

 

[tigger888]

its so interesting to watch people who dont bother to follow the news properly spout so much nonsense with such great vigor! A LITTLE clarification, the BIG GAME DEVS **ASKED** FOR MANTLE! DirectX has redundant error checking and validations and can not be multicore without a complete overhaul. Big devs dont make big mistakes like that, they do their own in house validation. Now with the xb1 and ps4 they are already writing "to the metal" on those consoles and get way more performance by being able to take full advantage of the GCN hardware. You dont like the driver? Don't use it!! Its a BETA, Beta does not mean EARLY FULLY POLISHED PRODUCT, it means, TEST BUILD TO FIND BUGS AND PROBLEMS.

 

[luc2k]

I love how AMD is the one with bad drivers when it's nV that has had drivers (WHQL no less) that damaged and/or killed GPUs most recently..

http://modcrash.com/nvidia-display-driver-damaging-gpus/

 

[jimmysmitty]

its so interesting to watch people who dont bother to follow the news properly spout so much nonsense with such great vigor! A LITTLE clarification, the BIG GAME DEVS **ASKED** FOR MANTLE! DirectX has redundant error checking and validations and can not be multicore without a complete overhaul. Big devs dont make big mistakes like that, they do their own in house validation. Now with the xb1 and ps4 they are already writing "to the metal" on those consoles and get way more performance by being able to take full advantage of the GCN hardware. You dont like the driver? Don't use it!! Its a BETA, Beta does not mean EARLY FULLY POLISHED PRODUCT, it means, TEST BUILD TO FIND BUGS AND PROBLEMS.

Even with the single platform system, the XB1 nor the PS4 can not play games at the same quality as a PC can. What we now consider to be the mid range of AMDs high end, the supposed to be $300 280X, is more powerful than either console.

The main difference is not direct access, the XB1 after all is running a modified Windows 8 kernel and probably using DirectX 11 as it's API, but rather that there is one specific set of hardware to code for instead of thousands like with PCs. That alone allows for better performance on lesser hardware and does not specifically require direct hardware access.

 

[childofthekorn]

From the threads and post I've seen it seems to break more than it fixes.

Hence the reason it is a beta...

A beta that has bugs? WOOOOOOOOOO theres something you never ever see from anyone other than AMD. A beta that got held back because it had issues and yet gets released with issues, good job Mantle didn't get released back in December isn't it?

Don't understand the AMD disdain. If you don't like the company and like Nvidia - great. But if you can't see the benfit in a company releasing an API still in it's infancy, first utilized by a medicore developer (my personal opinion of DICE), which offers FREE performance improvement that increases longevity of your GPU/CPU...you're looking at the glass half empty. Me, I'd rather use my AMD card (which surprisingly still plays games w/o Mantle!), and wait to see if other developers are smart enough to dedicate some time to optimize their game for an API that obviously offers users increased performance. If they don't - oh well. We're stuck with DirectX and buying video cards every two years for that little bit of Clock speed until the World burns up and we're all scavenging for a can O' beans.

The problem is that AMD's PR hyped the crap out of this API and claimed that it has been in the works for a couple of years and before the release of BF4 they said it would be ready in December of last year, so when it turns up late and buggy why shouldn't people question it?

 

[Mousemonkey]

I love how AMD is the one with bad drivers when it's nV that has had drivers (WHQL no less) that damaged and/or killed GPUs most recently..

http://modcrash.com/nvidia-display-driver-damaging-gpus/

I tried those drivers on my 660Ti's and 560Ti and they both survived so one obscure website seems, well odd. How comes non of the more well known sites never ran the same story? And why do AMD fans always try and deflect the issue at hand?

 

[childofthekorn]

So AMD gave DICE some cash to showcase their API. How is that reason to say Mantle is a waste of time and a P.O.S? It's something that you dont have to use. It's something that takes nothing away from the performance of a GPU that is just as strong as its competitors. And it doesn't cost anything to you - yes prices are high..blame the retailers. They proved the API can offer better performance - I doubt it will get worse from here.

No one is saying it is a POS. I never did but rather there is no incentive for other devs to program for it. If a new game dev came out during the 360 vs PS3 and were new with little funds do you think they would opt to code for the 360, which was a much more simple build on PC them port to 360, or the PS3, which had to be coded for specifically?My point is that while Mantle does show performance improvements, it only does so for people with a very weak CPU backing up a very strong GPU and only for a very small market share currently. If Microsoft adds in the same feature to DX12 do you think devs will stick with something they are familiar with or will they spend more time and money developing for a new API?Companies do not think in terms of performance for the masses but rather what it will cost to develop, support and patch said title and how much they will make. If they add another API to its list of support that means more people to pay to support said title and thus less revenue.I am all for more performance but so far the previews are showing Mantle as almost pointless for enthusiasts who will have higher end CPUs and only good for those who have lower end CPUs and for some reason decided to buy a really high end GPU.My point about the cost of the 290/280 series is not to say Mantle sucks more but rather that the GPUs that support, or will support Mantle, are out of reach for the common person as most people will not spend $700 on a single GPU let alone $400-$500 for a GPU that is 2 years old (7970/280X) thus the market share for those that can actually utilize Mantle is still very small.And I doubt that a person who is going to pay the $700 for a 290X (no I don't count the stock ones as no one wants those compared to the Tri-X or DCUII) is going to only spend $100-$150 on a mid range at best CPU. Rather they are going to buy a i5/i7 or FX CPU to fit their enthusiast mind set, much like I have always gone with higher end CPUs with higher end GPUs. Thus again the market share where Mantle will benefit people is again smaller.Again I am all for better performance and utilizing the power of a GPU, which a 7970 still has some to give but Mantle right now is nothing to go crazy about and if Microsoft adds in the same abilities into DX12 then I doubt it will go anywhere as devs will stick with what they know rather then spend money on something new.

MouseMonkey has actually been spreading his fanboy rhetoric around regarding Mantle being a "POS". Also the 8350 + 7970 had improvements of 25% in Dice's internal tests. I'm curious to see if it carries over to real world usage.

 

[tomc100]

Still no fix for Need for Speed Rivals which is unplayable in fullscreen. I thought this was one of the games which would use mantle.

Mantle requires the developer to program the game engine for the API, much like DX or OGL. It isn't just something AMD turns on in the driver package.

The game engine is Frostbite 3 engine. Same one used in Battlefield 4. DICE specifically created that engine to use mantle.

No Frostbite 3 was developed as the next iteration of their game engine. It was then they decided to add Mantle support. That does not mean that the engine is going to have it in every game and would rather need to be patched in as it was released before Mantle was even ready.If they feel it is worth it, they will patch in Mantle support for NFS Rivals, but don't expect it to be natively supported as it is not.[/quote]I already know they need to patch it in, that's not my point. The game was advertised in an AMD press conference that it will support mantle. It is one of the 15 games that uses Frostbite 3 to support mantle. Other games include Battlefront, Thief, Mirror's Edge, Plants vs Zombies, etc.

 

[luc2k]

I love how AMD is the one with bad drivers when it's nV that has had drivers (WHQL no less) that damaged and/or killed GPUs most recently..

http://modcrash.com/nvidia-display-driver-damaging-gpus/

I tried those drivers on my 660Ti's and 560Ti and they both survived so one obscure website seems, well odd. How comes non of the more well known sites never ran the same story? And why do AMD fans always try and deflect the issue at hand?

I'm sure the people that actually had the problems are happy for you. As for the site, is clicking the source too complicated for you? It's nV release thread in case you're not convinced. I'll link it at the end for you since it's obviously hard to follow an article's source. Next thing you'll suggest is that it must be some AMD conspiracy on nV's forums.

And what are these issues AMD fans are deflecting in this release thread? That beta drivers have problems? That they're not complete? That Mantle has limited support for now? You're not even giving it a chance to show its potential, but I bet if nV had released something similar, you'd lap it up like a champ.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/544882/geforce-drivers/official-nvidia-320-18-whql-display-driver-feedback-thread-released-5-23-13-/1
Bonus from the past: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/warning-nvidia-196-75-drivers-can-kill-your-graphics-card/7551

Funnily enough, I don't know of any articles about AMD drivers damaging/killing multiple cards in recent years. If there are any cases though, I'm not going to dismiss them like you just because I wasn't affected and because I'm not a fanboy.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Funnily enough, I don't know of any articles about AMD drivers damaging/killing multiple cards in recent years. If there are any cases though, I'm not going to dismiss them like you just because I wasn't affected and because I'm not a fanboy.

Then stay on topic if that is true as your posts seem to be those of a fanboy trying to deflect from the issue that this thread is about.

 

[Hunter_Killers]

And xaephod, even though the HD 7970 is the first of the GCN cards, they have not written the driver support for Mantle yet and is all that will be needed for it to start working in games that support it. As to why they didn't do it now since there are more HD7970s in gaming rigs than there are R9 290s I have no idea. Maybe it requires more work of maybe they just want to push the new hardware.Still the benefit will only depend on what CPU you have. If you have a higher end CPU, you wont benefit much.

You really have no idea what you are talking about and obviously never even tried Mantle. 7970's get a colossal benefit even with a powerful CPU behind it.

It would benefit you to post your proof before talking. I am going based on the current previews and considering that the only GPUs currently supported in the 14.1 driver set is the R9 290/290X then we have no way of knowing until the driver supports the other GPUs.

That said, why would a HD7970 benefit more than a R9 290 series when they are the exact same arch just one has more shaders/ROPS?

Again, if you have actual proof, I am more than willing to look but I haven't seen anything but the 290/290X running Mantle currently which was also stated in this article itself as the 7970 and 280 series should be optimized in a future driver release.

Still it is best to wait but I don't see how a API designed to allow better performance from a GPU to benefit a older GPU with lower specs.

And you are right, I haven't tried Mantle because I don't own BF4. Tried the beta and it was ok. No reason to buy a game I will hardly play to try something. I would rather wait and see how it goes then judge.

It's already been stated that Mantle works on all GCN cards long before the drivers came out. The driver page supports that as well, it just only has examples involving the R9 290 cards. Point being it works just fine on the 7000 series.

http://pastebin.com/ZKvvyqfu

76% increase is pretty damn huge.

 

[Mousemonkey]

And xaephod, even though the HD 7970 is the first of the GCN cards, they have not written the driver support for Mantle yet and is all that will be needed for it to start working in games that support it. As to why they didn't do it now since there are more HD7970s in gaming rigs than there are R9 290s I have no idea. Maybe it requires more work of maybe they just want to push the new hardware.Still the benefit will only depend on what CPU you have. If you have a higher end CPU, you wont benefit much.

You really have no idea what you are talking about and obviously never even tried Mantle. 7970's get a colossal benefit even with a powerful CPU behind it.

It would benefit you to post your proof before talking. I am going based on the current previews and considering that the only GPUs currently supported in the 14.1 driver set is the R9 290/290X then we have no way of knowing until the driver supports the other GPUs.That said, why would a HD7970 benefit more than a R9 290 series when they are the exact same arch just one has more shaders/ROPS?Again, if you have actual proof, I am more than willing to look but I haven't seen anything but the 290/290X running Mantle currently which was also stated in this article itself as the 7970 and 280 series should be optimized in a future driver release.Still it is best to wait but I don't see how a API designed to allow better performance from a GPU to benefit a older GPU with lower specs.And you are right, I haven't tried Mantle because I don't own BF4. Tried the beta and it was ok. No reason to buy a game I will hardly play to try something. I would rather wait and see how it goes then judge.

It's already been stated that Mantle works on all GCN cards long before the drivers came out. The driver page supports that as well, it just only has examples involving the R9 290 cards. Point being it works just fine on the 7000 series.http://pastebin.com/ZKvvyqfu76% increase is pretty damn huge.

Why are you linking to something that has been removed?

 

[luc2k]

Funnily enough, I don't know of any articles about AMD drivers damaging/killing multiple cards in recent years. If there are any cases though, I'm not going to dismiss them like you just because I wasn't affected and because I'm not a fanboy.

Then stay on topic if that is true as your posts seem to be those of a fanboy trying to deflect from the issue that this thread is about.

Not really, just bringing balance to the "AMD has the worst drivers" spin that is very popular around here. It's nice that you dismissed everything though, but let me bring up a point I've mentioned earlier which is very on topic:

Why are you so quick to dismiss Mantle so early, before we can see what it's capable of (or not)? As an nV user, which I'm sure you are, Mantle does not affect you or their cards in any way. So what is it?

 

[Hunter_Killers]

Why are you linking to something that has been removed?

Because the comments section on the web page ignores spacing in webkit? I already fixed it.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Funnily enough, I don't know of any articles about AMD drivers damaging/killing multiple cards in recent years. If there are any cases though, I'm not going to dismiss them like you just because I wasn't affected and because I'm not a fanboy.

Then stay on topic if that is true as your posts seem to be those of a fanboy trying to deflect from the issue that this thread is about.

Not really, just bringing balance to the "AMD has the worst drivers" spin that is very popular around here. It's nice that you dismissed everything though, but let me bring up a point I've mentioned earlier which is very on topic:

Why are you so quick to dismiss Mantle so early, before we can see what it's capable of (or not)? As an nV user, which I'm sure you are, Mantle does not affect you or their cards in any way. So what is it?

As a 7790 owner I know all about AMD's terrible drivers and where have I dismissed Mantle? Please provide the proof because making such accusations without providing the evidence is just trolling for an argument, and by proof you could quote the posts where I dismiss Mantle like you claim. I can think of only one but can you find it is the question?

 

[luc2k]

Funnily enough, I don't know of any articles about AMD drivers damaging/killing multiple cards in recent years. If there are any cases though, I'm not going to dismiss them like you just because I wasn't affected and because I'm not a fanboy.

Then stay on topic if that is true as your posts seem to be those of a fanboy trying to deflect from the issue that this thread is about.

Not really, just bringing balance to the "AMD has the worst drivers" spin that is very popular around here. It's nice that you dismissed everything though, but let me bring up a point I've mentioned earlier which is very on topic:

Why are you so quick to dismiss Mantle so early, before we can see what it's capable of (or not)? As an nV user, which I'm sure you are, Mantle does not affect you or their cards in any way. So what is it?

As a 7790 owner I know all about AMD's terrible drivers and where have I dismissed Mantle? Please provide the proof because making such accusations without providing the evidence is just trolling for an argument, and by proof you could quote the posts where I dismiss Mantle like you claim. I can think of only one but can you find it is the question?

Your very first post looks like a dismissal to me seeing as this is the first public version. The second one is more of the same. I'd understand the negative/cynical stance if it had been available for at least several months, not days, or if it had been delayed for at least a year or if a year had past with little to no adoption. Otherwise it seems daft just because drivers fix and break stuff with every release and some GPUs like the 7790 have more issues than average (being a test run for the current tech).

"From the threads and post I've seen it seems to break more than it fixes."

"A beta that got held back because it had issues and yet gets released with issues, good job Mantle didn't get released back in December isn't it?"

 

[Mousemonkey]

Is that it? Jeez! So in your eyes no one is allowed to say anything unless it's complimentary to AMD? You should go and check out some of the threads over here :- http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/forum-33.html and you would see where some of those observations come from because that's what they are and if you don't like it then that's just tough because I'm just pointing out what others are saying,