Calling all Tech Experts! BF4 Mantle Performance

[Silvertongue19]

Hello Toms community,

So I've been doing a lot of research lately in efforts to determine which GPU I should upgrade to. I've been reading through the forums daily looking at the GTX 770 vs R9 280x. Possibly the R9 290 if I can sell my current GTX 570 for enough. Really what I'm mainly concerned with is getting the best BF4 experience and Rome 2 experience possible. Every other game I play will not dip under 60fps maxed out.

It seems the benchmarks and opinions go back and forth between the GTX 770 and 280x so much that I don't even really want to bother asking more opinions as it has been discussed dozens of times already on the forums. Although, what I would love to hear your opinions on is how Mantle is going to change the game in terms of end user experience.

For example, when the BF4 Mantle update goes live in December, what am I going to see from it? If I have a 280x, am I going to see a 10fps increase, 20, ect.? I've tried doing my google/form research and I can't seem to get a concise answer on this one. I've seen various articles giving numerical improvements from a programmers perspective, but nothing regarding the end user experience.


tl;dr As a PC Gamer, what is mantle going to do for me? visually/fps wise

Thanks for your help!

 

[egert]

GTX 770 is better i think for you

 

[bystander]

We do not know what to expect out of Mantle. Given what it speeds up, I will guess it is going to be less than 10% boost, and as much as 20% max. Beyond that, I have no idea what to expect out of it.

 

[Intervenator]

Nobody knows what to expect from Mantle. You can expect for it to give AT LEAST enough of a performance boost to bring the 280X up to speed in supported games compared to the GTX 770.

Personally, I would go for the 280X. For $30 less, you get about the same performance as the 770, but with an additional gigabyte of VRAM. Also, the 280X will have full Mantle support. Mantle may catch on, it may not. However, it WILL definitely be utilized in BF4.

Finally, if you wait a few days / weeks for the next AMD game bundles to come around, you will be able to snag BF4 and another 2 games for free.

 

[Silvertongue19]

Yeah I figured not to much is known. Just didn't know if anyone with more of a programming background would know how much real world benefits this kind of technology can bring us. It's exciting to say the least though. Even a 5-10% performance increase would be HUGE with how close in performance today's cards are.

 

[Krimsonwolf]

Reading other treads on Tom's I would say that most gains from mantle will depend on system specs as a whole. Now a days you really only need to have some amazing GPU with high Video RAM and you'd be playing all games at top specs. Mantle will have the largest increase (maybe that 20% area) for lower end cards. It will work to tear down the boundaries between system CPU/ RAM to increase frames.

Rome 2 had a box for unlimited video memory added in to keep it from down clocking your settings. It was suppose to utilize system Memory then and allow you to go more shinny. I don't think it actually did much. But with mantle it will improve the ability for the game to see that extra memory and utilize it.

Now if you have a 290x in crossfire, Geforce Titan, or 690. You may see about a 2 frame boost only because the game needs nothing else then what was already supplied.

 

[SpiderMonky]

Not sure about FPS increase but mantle is gong to be a huge boost, this is a quote from Chris Roberts, the man responsible for Star Citizen (true pc game lovers need to check this out, https://robertsspaceindustries.com/about-the-game)

" At last week’s AMD developer conference Nitrous, which is a new company working on a next gen PC engine, demoed a scene with over 100,000 drawcalls per frame running at over 60 FPS through Mantle. To put that in context last gen stuff (and a bunch of PC games gated by DirectX) have been stuck around 2,000 - 3,000 drawcalls and next gen consoles (like PS4) can do 10,000 - 15,000 or so. We’re supporting Mantle to push PC graphics performance higher"

 

[photonboy]

**WARNING** 26th Nov is the final day to redeem the NVidia games.

There are several Pros and Cons to consider but I lean towards the Asus GTX770 at this price point. I also like other models like EVGA and MSI but the 770 has a backplate and I know it's well made.

I'm also fascinated by Mantle, and I think many people will be very surprised at what it can do though the adoption rate may be so slow initially I can't currently factor it in too much. My opinion will change once the BF4 update is released. Keep in mind that however better BF4 may run, Mantle will be much, much better when utilized properly in the future but by then you may already be in the market for another card.

The GAMES deals is really problematic as the NVidia ones rock but you'd have to go buy one today or tomorrow to redeem the codes in time.
GTX770:
- three great games (ouch, 26th November is the final date I believe to redeem...)
- G-SYNC
- PHYSX
- Shadowplay

 

[Sczw]

If I were you, I'd wait to see how much mantle affects gameplay, than decide. But Nvidia saw that coming and chickened out the three games to the 26th. And, yes the gtx 770 performs better than the 280X By 1-2% as far as i can tell, but the 280X overclocks well. It all depends if you want the games, or the potential 5-15% increase of FPS with Mantle.Hope I was able to help.

 

[photonboy]

Mantle and games:
Mantle is ONLY useful for games that use it which is zero right now, BF4 soon and at least three other games in the near future. After that, who knows.

Again, get a good CUSTOM COOLING solution such as the Asus DCU2 because the new AMD cards can perform much WORSE as the temperature rises.

What AMD did with the new cards is frankly baffling to me. The GPU can be throttled by temperature which is fine, but in a hot case it might get 75% the performance as one with really great cooling. The CURRENT cards lost a lot of performance so AMD released a driver patch to force the FAN PROFILE to run the fans faster to increase performance, thus increasing the noise.

That's why you need to wait for custom cooling and new benchmarks in a real case.

 

[timelord84]

bro i dont know if this is true but i heard of a bf4 demo running at the highest settings on a 280x or 290x and of course mantle, the CPU was an FX8350 downclocked to 2Ghz, YES TWO GHZ, and it ran flawlessly allegedly..

even if that's remotely true it's worth waiting to see by Christmas for yourself cause that's nothing less than epic.

 

[Corey Carpenter]

Hello Toms community,

So I've been doing a lot of research lately in efforts to determine which GPU I should upgrade to. I've been reading through the forums daily looking at the GTX 770 vs R9 280x. Possibly the R9 290 if I can sell my current GTX 570 for enough. Really what I'm mainly concerned with is getting the best BF4 experience and Rome 2 experience possible. Every other game I play will not dip under 60fps maxed out.

It seems the benchmarks and opinions go back and forth between the GTX 770 and 280x so much that I don't even really want to bother asking more opinions as it has been discussed dozens of times already on the forums. Although, what I would love to hear your opinions on is how Mantle is going to change the game in terms of end user experience.

For example, when the BF4 Mantle update goes live in December, what am I going to see from it? If I have a 280x, am I going to see a 10fps increase, 20, ect.? I've tried doing my google/form research and I can't seem to get a concise answer on this one. I've seen various articles giving numerical improvements from a programmers perspective, but nothing regarding the end user experience.


tl;dr As a PC Gamer, what is mantle going to do for me? visually/fps wise

Thanks for your help!

 

[Corey Carpenter]

Hello Toms community,

So I've been doing a lot of research lately in efforts to determine which GPU I should upgrade to. I've been reading through the forums daily looking at the GTX 770 vs R9 280x. Possibly the R9 290 if I can sell my current GTX 570 for enough. Really what I'm mainly concerned with is getting the best BF4 experience and Rome 2 experience possible. Every other game I play will not dip under 60fps maxed out.

It seems the benchmarks and opinions go back and forth between the GTX 770 and 280x so much that I don't even really want to bother asking more opinions as it has been discussed dozens of times already on the forums. Although, what I would love to hear your opinions on is how Mantle is going to change the game in terms of end user experience.

For example, when the BF4 Mantle update goes live in December, what am I going to see from it? If I have a 280x, am I going to see a 10fps increase, 20, ect.? I've tried doing my google/form research and I can't seem to get a concise answer on this one. I've seen various articles giving numerical improvements from a programmers perspective, but nothing regarding the end user experience.


tl;dr As a PC Gamer, what is mantle going to do for me? visually/fps wise

Thanks for your help!

Look I wouldn't stress too much about Mantle. I don't think its going to really make AMD cards super quick. It does have other advantages though and that Mantle is actually suppose to utilise their 8 core CPU's correctly which is a major bonus if you have any of their high core count CPU's. That is what I am mainly looking forward to. I would suspect AMD cards to only improve like 10-20% better max. If you have an AMD FX 61/6300 or 81/8300 series chip maybe stick with an AMD GPU as all the consoles now have a similar setup (with obvious optimisations) and it will mean all games will be made to support AMD hardware correctly (hopefully) If you have an Intel CPU get either card it wont matter. Intel CPU's will be on par with new games anyway and faster on old ones that don't support high threads due to a stronger single thread design. And beside AMD I think are making Mantle open/Multiplatform. Meaning Linux and Mac may even pick up support making gaming easier over multiple platforms as well as being available for NVidia to adopt as well. Remember if Mantle was going to give 50% + improvements we would have benchies and screenshots already. Here is the process you should be thinking. Pick your budget --> Pick a card from each brand in that price range --> Check compatibility with existing hardware (mainly Power Supply like power consumption, heat, physical size for case and power connectors) --> Check out benchmarks in the games you want to play, also RAM/CPU bottlenecks --> Buy it. Just a bit of AMD fanboi but the R9 290's are a beast of a card. Get good cooling though they throttle at higher temps. Good luck with your build.

 

[Corey Carpenter]

Hello Toms community,

So I've been doing a lot of research lately in efforts to determine which GPU I should upgrade to. I've been reading through the forums daily looking at the GTX 770 vs R9 280x. Possibly the R9 290 if I can sell my current GTX 570 for enough. Really what I'm mainly concerned with is getting the best BF4 experience and Rome 2 experience possible. Every other game I play will not dip under 60fps maxed out.

It seems the benchmarks and opinions go back and forth between the GTX 770 and 280x so much that I don't even really want to bother asking more opinions as it has been discussed dozens of times already on the forums. Although, what I would love to hear your opinions on is how Mantle is going to change the game in terms of end user experience.

For example, when the BF4 Mantle update goes live in December, what am I going to see from it? If I have a 280x, am I going to see a 10fps increase, 20, ect.? I've tried doing my google/form research and I can't seem to get a concise answer on this one. I've seen various articles giving numerical improvements from a programmers perspective, but nothing regarding the end user experience.


tl;dr As a PC Gamer, what is mantle going to do for me? visually/fps wise

Thanks for your help!

bro i dont know if this is true but i heard of a bf4 demo running at the highest settings on a 280x or 290x and of course mantle, the CPU was an FX8350 downclocked to 2Ghz, YES TWO GHZ, and it ran flawlessly allegedly..

even if that's remotely true it's worth waiting to see by Christmas for yourself cause that's nothing less than epic.

Dude I would wet myself if that were the case. I have been waiting very patiently for AMD FX optimisations. I benched my FX 8350 again a 1st gen i5 750 I think with the same GPU (HD 6870) in it and it got like 10 FPS higher on nearly everything. ** sad face**

 

[viktor001]

I apologize for the length of this post. My summery is at the end...

Ok so i wrote a huge response and then my computer restarted......urgggggg. 🙁 So mantle is as everybody knows a low level API. Now mantle's improvements are split up mainly between cpu overhead and increased draw calls. Cpu over head was mentioned and i would like to add to that. One thing though is that nvidia or intel won't benefit from mantle. However, AMD has stated that mantle is not tied to it's GCN architectural whatever that's supposed to mean. But i do think that nvidia and intel will adopt mantle or something similar seeing what benefits it will bring. But for sure, AMD will have the lead for a little while. So what mantle is doing is allowing the graphics card to talk to 8 physical cores (in AMD's case) and not hyper threads (Intel). This is where amd will win over intel. Intel does have up to six cores but hyper threading won't help with mantle on the table. Fx's eight cores will win out in this case. Now with the rumor of a twelve core fx chip; it would definitely reign supreme. Now that is COMPLETE speculation and that chip has not been confirmed. Just rumor. Now draw calls.... So what a draw call is; is a bunch of polys being renderd by the cpu and back to the gpu. Now this is where the bulk of mantle lies. Increasing draw calls to 300,000+ draw calls has TWO paths. When the programmers decide to code they have to choose which path to take. One is increased graphics and the other is increased performance (fps). Now programmers can take both but i will explain what i mean by that. The second path, is where the programmers focus on increasing the amount of calls per second. Basically, the program can talk to the cpu faster every second. This will increase the performance. (fps) The other path is more draws per call. This is where graphics have been limited significantly. In 3D graphics polygons are renderd into objects that we see on the screen. When artist create objects they have to work under whats called a poly limit. With mantle that limit is theoretically lifted. Allowing artist to create objects that look real. This again is all tied to the amount of polygons that can be drawn per call. Programmers who peruse this path will basically have life like graphics. Now to summarize and talk about what i meant by combining these paths.
BF4, i believe, will do both paths. Dice will probably use halve of mantle to optimize and the other to increase graphics. But the graphics and speed will go up when dice further optimizes mantle. My guess is dice will start with 50,00-100,000 draw calls. Currently i think we are at 10-20k. So what will this look like in terms of the gamer? I think we will see a fps improvement of 30-50 frames. BUT this all depends on how dice divides the paths. And this goes for other mantle supporting games. I don't think they (dice) will improve the graphics quality of bf4 since the game is already out. But they still could. My guess is we will have to wait for battlefront 3 or bad company 3. So i would say stick with fx and GCN and see what happens.

Thanks

 

[Silvertongue19]

I apologize for the length of this post. My summery is at the end...

Ok so i wrote a huge response and then my computer restarted......urgggggg. 🙁 So mantle is as everybody knows a low level API. Now mantle's improvements are split up mainly between cpu overhead and increased draw calls. Cpu over head was mentioned and i would like to add to that. One thing though is that nvidia or intel won't benefit from mantle. However, AMD has stated that mantle is not tied to it's GCN architectural whatever that's supposed to mean. But i do think that nvidia and intel will adopt mantle or something similar seeing what benefits it will bring. But for sure, AMD will have the lead for a little while. So what mantle is doing is allowing the graphics card to talk to 8 physical cores (in AMD's case) and not hyper threads (Intel). This is where amd will win over intel. Intel does have up to six cores but hyper threading won't help with mantle on the table. Fx's eight cores will win out in this case. Now with the rumor of a twelve core fx chip; it would definitely reign supreme. Now that is COMPLETE speculation and that chip has not been confirmed. Just rumor. Now draw calls.... So what a draw call is; is a bunch of polys being renderd by the cpu and back to the gpu. Now this is where the bulk of mantle lies. Increasing draw calls to 300,000+ draw calls has TWO paths. When the programmers decide to code they have to choose which path to take. One is increased graphics and the other is increased performance (fps). Now programmers can take both but i will explain what i mean by that. The second path, is where the programmers focus on increasing the amount of calls per second. Basically, the program can talk to the cpu faster every second. This will increase the performance. (fps) The other path is more draws per call. This is where graphics have been limited significantly. In 3D graphics polygons are renderd into objects that we see on the screen. When artist create objects they have to work under whats called a poly limit. With mantle that limit is theoretically lifted. Allowing artist to create objects that look real. This again is all tied to the amount of polygons that can be drawn per call. Programmers who peruse this path will basically have life like graphics. Now to summarize and talk about what i meant by combining these paths.
BF4, i believe, will do both paths. Dice will probably use halve of mantle to optimize and the other to increase graphics. But the graphics and speed will go up when dice further optimizes mantle. My guess is dice will start with 50,00-100,000 draw calls. Currently i think we are at 10-20k. So what will this look like in terms of the gamer? I think we will see a fps improvement of 30-50 frames. BUT this all depends on how dice divides the paths. And this goes for other mantle supporting games. I don't think they (dice) will improve the graphics quality of bf4 since the game is already out. But they still could. My guess is we will have to wait for battlefront 3 or bad company 3. So i would say stick with fx and GCN and see what happens.

Thanks

This is the best explanation I've read on the Internet(that isn't 20 pages long). Thank you very much for your time!
I've got an 8350 and can't wait for this to get implemented.

 

[viktor001]

I apologize for the length of this post. My summery is at the end...

Ok so i wrote a huge response and then my computer restarted......urgggggg. 🙁 So mantle is as everybody knows a low level API. Now mantle's improvements are split up mainly between cpu overhead and increased draw calls. Cpu over head was mentioned and i would like to add to that. One thing though is that nvidia or intel won't benefit from mantle. However, AMD has stated that mantle is not tied to it's GCN architectural whatever that's supposed to mean. But i do think that nvidia and intel will adopt mantle or something similar seeing what benefits it will bring. But for sure, AMD will have the lead for a little while. So what mantle is doing is allowing the graphics card to talk to 8 physical cores (in AMD's case) and not hyper threads (Intel). This is where amd will win over intel. Intel does have up to six cores but hyper threading won't help with mantle on the table. Fx's eight cores will win out in this case. Now with the rumor of a twelve core fx chip; it would definitely reign supreme. Now that is COMPLETE speculation and that chip has not been confirmed. Just rumor. Now draw calls.... So what a draw call is; is a bunch of polys being renderd by the cpu and back to the gpu. Now this is where the bulk of mantle lies. Increasing draw calls to 300,000+ draw calls has TWO paths. When the programmers decide to code they have to choose which path to take. One is increased graphics and the other is increased performance (fps). Now programmers can take both but i will explain what i mean by that. The second path, is where the programmers focus on increasing the amount of calls per second. Basically, the program can talk to the cpu faster every second. This will increase the performance. (fps) The other path is more draws per call. This is where graphics have been limited significantly. In 3D graphics polygons are renderd into objects that we see on the screen. When artist create objects they have to work under whats called a poly limit. With mantle that limit is theoretically lifted. Allowing artist to create objects that look real. This again is all tied to the amount of polygons that can be drawn per call. Programmers who peruse this path will basically have life like graphics. Now to summarize and talk about what i meant by combining these paths.
BF4, i believe, will do both paths. Dice will probably use halve of mantle to optimize and the other to increase graphics. But the graphics and speed will go up when dice further optimizes mantle. My guess is dice will start with 50,00-100,000 draw calls. Currently i think we are at 10-20k. So what will this look like in terms of the gamer? I think we will see a fps improvement of 30-50 frames. BUT this all depends on how dice divides the paths. And this goes for other mantle supporting games. I don't think they (dice) will improve the graphics quality of bf4 since the game is already out. But they still could. My guess is we will have to wait for battlefront 3 or bad company 3. So i would say stick with fx and GCN and see what happens.

Thanks

This is the best explanation I've read on the Internet(that isn't 20 pages long). Thank you very much for your time!
I've got an 8350 and can't wait for this to get implemented.

One thing that i forgot to mention is that the kind of fps i mentioned in my last post probably won't happened until mantle is fully working which probably will be around Jan or Feb based upon dice's problems with bf4. Also one thing more would be that this is just the beginning.... mantle will only get better as dice mentioned. 300,000+ draw calls won't happen right away but it will get there eventually. My guess would be 1-3yrs. Depending on how fast developers pursue mantle. Sorry one more thing; the reason there isn't any fps statistics out there is because of the reasons i stated in the last post. It really depends on how the developers tackle mantle.

hope this helps.