Thief Patch Enables TrueAudio And Mantle: First Benchmarks

[jessterman21]

Great review - test an i3 alongside the others next time!

 

[cleeve]

Don, just a little point that's worth keeping in mind, Tech Report had a lot of data suggesting that in BF4, AMD+Mantle could be the same as Nvidia + D3D, basically implying that AMD's DX drivers have greater CPU overhead than Nvidia's.Could you look into that as well, please?

I will definitely be testing Battlefield 4 with Nvidia cards as well, so it should shed some light on this, too.

 

[cleeve]

Great review - test an i3 alongside the others next time!

Yep, the i3 will be included for sure.

 

[Zeh]

Great review - test an i3 alongside the others next time!

Yep, the i3 will be included for sure.

Please include older processor, like Athlons X2, and Core 2 Duos. If Mantle can increase their performance to playable levels (or even more than that), would mean a lot for people looking to upgrade.

 

[Calculatron]

I was thinking of upgrading my FX-4170 to an 8-core, but I think wait and invest that money into an upgrade from my Radeon HD 6870. Hopefully Radeon GPUs go down to a proper price, soon.

 

[therogerwilco]

I'm a joke. 250's vs 6xx series. How about a 280 and 290 vs a 780 ti and 780.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Don, just a little point that's worth keeping in mind, Tech Report had a lot of data suggesting that in BF4, AMD+Mantle could be the same as Nvidia + D3D, basically implying that AMD's DX drivers have greater CPU overhead than Nvidia's.Could you look into that as well, please?

I would be interested in seeing that as well. It may be the reason Mantle performs better because apart from being written to take advantage of GCN, Mantle is just another API with two layers before the game even sees the GPU (Driver -> API -> Game).

Looks like mantel is just another useless gimmick that only works with low performance CPU. They should have spent the money making their CPUs better rather than waste developer's time with that useless backend.

Surely the fact that it helps somebody means that there was a point to it all, moreso considering Microsoft is taking it seriously.As regards overhead, I think I heard before that AMD cards seem to want more PCI-E bandwidth. Maybe that's related, I don't know. There's also the idea that the delta between AMD and Intel CPUs is reduced when using an NVIDIA card as opposed to an AMD card, but I think I'm going off-track here.

AMDs GPUs do not need more bandwidth. it has been shown that PCIe 2.0 is still more than enough and will be for a gen or two more.

I still find it funny that people think it was only AMD that made Microsoft consider a lower level access like Mantel. DX12 has to have been in progress for a while, it will be shown off this year. In order to gain performance, they need to look at all avenues. And considering that the XB1 is out if they can adapt DX12 to it as well they will benefit a lot.

Looks like mantel is just another useless gimmick that only works with low performance CPU. They should have spent the money making their CPUs better rather than waste developer's time with that useless backend.

How is that a gimmick? And how is it a waste for developers? Heck, it's something new that might create a handful of new jobs at developer level (how is that a bad thing....jobs) and AMD actually nudged Microsoft to have a hard look at what DirectX needs to be at (and will be at) so really, it's a win-win for all. I'm not an AMD fan due to too many experiences that were not too pleasant with their stuff, but still, Mantle is a good thing.

Considering that once DX and OGL have the same feature that will support all GPUs and not just GCN, I don't see why any company will support Mantle when they can use what they have been using for years and know.

 

[maddogfargo]

@ Don W. - Thanks for the quick primer. I was honestly surprised by the amount of improvement. Can hardly wait for the in-depth article.

 

[tobalaz]

3DFX and Glide were simply the pinnacle of PC gaming back in the day on DOS based Windows without the extra application and hardware layers NT based Windows brought along.Remember how big of a drop in performance we had from Win98 to XP?The extra layers between the OS and the hardware caused an uproar to the hardware manufactures. Nvidia and ATI were both up in arms over the added complexity and removal of low level hardware access.Mantle isn't low level, just lower level than DirectX. It bypasses alot of cpu checks DirectX requires and moves them straight to the gpu.Kind of makes me think, what if Mantle was running on FreeBSD or Linux based OSes instead? How much better could we get?Could you imagine a Mac or Linux rig with the same hardware beating down a Windows rig? Its very possible because by nature FreeBSD and Linux both allow lower level hardware access than NT.All of a sudden, Ubuntu based Steam machines are a much bigger threat than they once were thought to be.

 

[Xavier Corraya]

People should keep in mind that while Mantle is very useful for current low end cpu, it also means that your high end i7-4770 will last another year or 2 longer with Mantle support. So while mantle isn't immediate beneficial to those with 100+ fps with ultra settings, in another 2 years, you're going to want a mature version of Mantle.

Yes, right now who with a 4770k are thinking that mantle is useless for them will be useful for them after 5 years. game requirements are increasing rapidly. even a 780ti can not give more than 62fps in Crysis 3 in maxed out settings; we dont know what will happen in future.

 

[goodguy713]

Personally I think it has more to do with Optimizations utilizing the processors better. like threading and making optimal use of the way amd processors are designed. sure you can say its gpu optimizations but I think its mostly just a optimization cpu side. Honestly I have not noticed much improvement with my 270x so I still tend to play with direct x vs mantle I get better frames with direct x.

 

[ikaz]

I'm not sure why people are complaining that mantle seems to help with only the lowend configuration. If anything people should be happy since that may mean more releases on PC since there will be a larger install base that can play that game with a good frame rate. Not to mention that whole titain fall issue where 17Gigs of the install is uncompressed audio. If they weren't so concerned about fps on lower end machines maybe they could have at least used some sort of simiple compress on the audio.

 

[falchard]

I think the huge performance difference with Mantle and AMD CPUs is more explainable that AMD was involved with the modifications, so they probably made optimizations for their CPU as well in the modified version unrelated to Mantle.

 

[serendipiti]

I think the results are consistent with Mantle wanted to offer: zero overhead. That means the CPU is used at a minimum to handle the job that is done on the GPU, and so, worst CPUs (usually the weakest link in the performance chain) show a bigger improvement. What it seems to also do, is favour GHz over core count...

 

[bustapr]

We know that Mantle improves on weaker CPU setups such as AMD CPUs, but would it work just as well for a pentium or core i3 setup? The improvements on the 4170 are quite amazing.

 

[skit75]

+1 for image quality comparison requests. As an nVidia user/fanboy, I am all for AMD improving Mantle... if for no other reason than to force Microsoft's hand in improving DirectX. Even if the image comparison reveals degradation or loss of quality, the end-users will only care they can play game X or not as hinted by the choice of hardware.

 

[eddym345]

Do you need an AMD cpu for mantle or just an amd card? and what are the cpus that support it?

 

[coolitic]

Mantle lost whatever usefulness it ever had when the OGL and DX decided to develop low-level too.

 

[cleeve]

Do you need an AMD cpu for mantle or just an amd card? and what are the cpus that support it?

Mantle only requires a Radeon card with GCN architecture (Radeon 7000 series and the new R7/R9 2xx series)

Any CPU will work.

 

[alextheblue]

Don: TrueAudio is built into "a handful of GPUs", but it's also in their latest Kaveri APUs, and both PS4 and XB1 use AMD chips with the same Tensilica DSPs. So there's probably a lot of middleware synergy potential. It will also likely be integrated into nearly the full range of GPUs and APUs within the next year or so.

Really, this is only useful if you've mis-managed your build and have a GPU far more powerful than your CPU (e.g., an FX-4170 and an R9-270). It's a cool technology, but the applications seem limited.

I disagree. This will help lowend CPUs in general, not to mention older systems. For someone with a dead-end CPU socket that has little or no upgrade path, you can just slap in a faster GPU. Combined with a low-overhead API (such as Mantle) you can breathe new life into the system on a budget without the CPU bogging you down. Also all GCN-based APUs that are compatible will benefit hugely, especially laptops!

 

[Gruia Novac]

I stopped giving a damn. After 3-5 bsods / week from AMD => 0 BSODS on nvidia .. and I flashed this card like 50 times NO BSOD, no nothing. Amd cards are like made on boats by genius monks..

 

[Harlequin_uk]

when testing truaudio can you compare against creative labs hardware positioning (alchemy) and onboard audio as well? realtek have 3dsoundback for example

 

[Red_Frog]

Don't you people even read, or do you just come here for the pretty pictures? I thought it was pretty well explained that this is a "preview" because they didn't have enough time between the patch releasing and publishing this article in order to acquire and prepare all the data necessary for a full blown comparison. They also made it pretty clear that that article, the one that will contain all their tests with a truckload of pictures, will be coming soon. Keep your knickers on.

Anyway, fun article. I'm not really an AMD/ATi GPU user, love my 1100T though. Mantle looks promising, gets back to what Nvidia and ATi first started with the G/V "Processing Units" to take more of the CPU out of the equation and leave it free to work on less streamlined code. Unsurprising that at the higher end it doesn't make huge differences as Mantle needs a CPU bottleneck, but to someone with a limited CPU it can easily mean the difference between a veritable slideshow and actually being able to play the game. I'd love to see more developments like this, maybe even progressing to a point where DirectX can be ditched entirely. It's just a shame the major groundwork for such a thing, backed by a consortium of influential industry players all working together toward a more universally useful API, doesn't already exist. Wouldn't that be swell, if we had something like that? I mean, with Kinect holding back X1 sales and Windows 8 floundering like the ghoulish monstrosity it is, now would be the ideal time for that type of coalition to make a push. If there were such a thing.

 

[cleeve]

I stopped giving a damn. After 3-5 bsods / week from AMD => 0 BSODS on nvidia .. and I flashed this card like 50 times NO BSOD, no nothing. Amd cards are like made on boats by genius monks..

Sounds like you had a bad card, plain and simple. I've had bad samples from both AMD and Nvidia from time to time, it's a reality of the PC world.

I've been running a Radeon in one of my main rigs and I can't even remember the last time it had a BSOD. Same with GeForce cards, actually.

 

[rolli59]

Looking forward too the in depth review! Certainly looks like improvement with budget CPU's.