Mantle renderer now available in Battlefield 4

[harhar]

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The new game update for Battlefield 4 brings the Mantle renderer that DICE has developed in conjunction with AMD. With this first release of Mantle, you can expect performance increases in the game if you have the hardware to support it. In this blog post, the Technical Director for Frostbite details this exciting new step for the Battlefield series.

Hi,
My name is Johan Andersson and I’m one of the Technical Directors in the Frostbite team and I have something very exciting to share with all Battlefield players: the latest Battlefield 4 update on PC includes the long-awaited new renderer in Frostbite that is using AMD’s Mantle.

Mantle is a new low-level graphics API that we’ve been working very closely with AMD on over the last 2 years and it is a major change & improvement to how we are able to program & use modern GPUs in order to get the most out of them.

Battlefield 4 on PC is already quite heavily optimized using DirectX 11 and DirectX 11.1, but with Mantle we are able to go even further: we’ve significantly reduced CPU cost in our rendering, efficiently parallelized it over multiple CPU cores and reduced overhead in many areas.

The biggest performance gains can be seen when the game is bottlenecked by the CPU which can be quite common even on high-end machines and this was main goal to improve on with Mantle. We’ve also been able to streamline and optimize some of the GPU workload. The end result is that game performance is improved in virtually all scenarios in Battlefield 4 on both Windows 7 and Windows 8 when running with Mantle!

This update is the first release of our new Mantle renderer, and we will continue to provide more tuning for different types of configurations in future updates. Still, we are really happy with the performance improvements that we are seeing with this update and we believe you will be as well.

Read on for the full details on how to enable Mantle, and some information on the kind of performance gains you can expect.

Test case 2: Standard 64-player multiplayer
CPU: AMD FX-8350, 8 cores @ 4 GHz
GPU: AMD Radeon 7970 3 GB
Settings: 1080p ULTRA 1x MSAA
OS: Windows 8 64-bit
Level: Siege of Shanghai
Level was tested with 64 “pseudo players” that we have for our own internal testing that simulates heavy game workload that we have in multiplayer in order to get more deterministic results compared to full real multiplayer. 64 players on the large Battlefield levels is really demanding of the CPU so this test case is primarily CPU-bound.
Result: 18.87 ms/f -> 15.08 ms/f = 25.1% faster


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[lloyd_joy]

all "GCN" based AMD GPUs will be supported by AMD's Mantle right?

[harhar]

all "GCN" based AMD GPUs will be supported by AMD's Mantle right?

Yup, ang mga GCN...

[lloyd_joy]

^ nice... maka experience ta aning benefits sa Mantle diay on my dual HD 7770 GHz Ed... hehehe... naa man ko'g base line data na on the pre-mantle performance nya... huwat ta's upcoming driver releases na mo support sa Mantle API... gawas naman ang patch sa BF4 for Mantle support...

sa akoang statement before na ni sulti ko na "i don't need mantle for now"... basin na twist ni once maka experience ko'g actual benefits... wait and see na lang gyud ko ani on further patches and driver releases...

[Sempron Guy]

In terms of support libog pa kaayo. Some tech sites are reporting that the first mantle driver will only support the R9-290's and R7-260's. Also take note, Mantle will be most noticeable in terms of performance for those who are using midrange-entry level processors. So if you are rocking on an i7-4890 for example gains will be close to none.

[lloyd_joy]

ah i see... wait & see lang gyud usa ta ani... wla pa gani gi release sa AMD ang 14.1 Beta driver nila for AMD Mantle API. sa news late this week man kuno. basin karon or ugma... or early next week... but as of this writing, wla pa ma enjoy ang benefits sa Mantle on BF 4... AMD i-release na ang driver oi... hehehe...

para sa akoa, as long as the same sila'g micro architecture... based on AMD GCN maka enjoy sa Mantle, pero, ambot unsa na version pud kaha ang supportahan in actual... GCN 1.0 or GCN 2.0 ba... kaning Volcanic Islands kay mga GCN 2.0 man sila... mag agad ra gyud ta unsa ang tweaking sa drivers ang himoon sa AMD ani... any gain is a gain man... hope tanan GCN based GPU's supportahan nila... i just crossed my fingers... kay in business point of view, kun ako ang AMD, dili nko supportahan tanan para ang mga AMD GPU users labi na ang mga AMD fan crowd, dapat, ang market kay mo embrace sa akoang new offering ug palit sa akoang bag-ong gi introduce sa market... dako kaayo gasto sa IP (intellectual property) baya ug dagko kaayo ang gasto sa pagbayad sa mga productivity apps (like Adobe) and gaming companies like aning DICE to support the techonolgy. gibayran na sila's AMD... hehehe... this is business all about, isn't it?

the same sa Nvidia... kusog pud kaayo na sila mamayad ug software companies on games and productivity apps para i-embrace ang technology nila... para ana nila duha... go go go Ginebra... sa advertisement pa's Ginebra sauna... "Bilog ang mundo"... hehehe...

anyway, nice gyud ni na move sa AMD para dili ma monopilize sa Nvidia pud oi... share2x lang ba... bottom line, kita ang mga consumers ang mabulahan... from the GPU and gaming software perspective...

sus, lami-a kaha sa "benchmark results" on a R9-290x Crossfirex ani noh on BF 4... bisan pa, 2-way Xfirex lang... enjoy gyud kaayo ani ang mga naka 120 Hz gaming monitors on multi-monitor configuration in "actual gaming experience"..

[keropi]

When they say mid-entry level vgas, it could be that mantle is optimized for vliw based adapters. This will obviously up the ante on lower 7000 cards (not gcn) and all integrated adapters including apus. The big question lies on whether it does employ a more efficient graphics processing than directx or it just eases off the eye-candy?

If we consider, Nvidia also practices this, evidence is the "more efficient" fxaa which comes with Kepler but apparently is an ugly implementation of AntiAliasing. So my assumption above must be fairly neutral.

[lloyd_joy]

sa pag sige'g gamit nko'g maximum MSAA sa mga games... inig balik nko sa FXAA, bati naman... hahaha... sakto gyud tong sulti nimo sauna bro Keropi... ang atoang mata ug brain, maanad gyud sa GFX quality... mahimo sya'g 2nd nature... kun sa cycling pa, ang pag gamit sa clpless shoes, 2nd nature sya... dili ta ganahan mo sakay ug bike kun dili mag clipless pedals and corresponding shoes...

karon, bisan 2xMSAA, dili ko ganahan... tsk tks tsk... in short, nag ka arte naman hinoon ko ani... tsk tsk tsk...

[jinkazama92]

14.1 drivers not released yet................................

[lloyd_joy]

14.1 drivers not released yet................................

mao lagi... pa igot kaayo'ng AMD oi... pa grand entrance... hehehe...