Thursday, January 30th 2014
AMD Mantle Driver to Only Benefit Four GPUs Initially
Crushed your F5 key on AMD driver download page yet? Unless you have four very specific AMD Radeon GPUs, you can stop it right now. According to DICE, developers of the first game to take advantage of Mantle, the 3D graphics API AMD is introducing with its Catalyst 14.1 beta driver, will give tangible benefits to only four specific GPUs - Radeon R9 290X, R9 290 (non-X), R7 260X, and A-Series "Kaveri" APU-integrated R7 200 series.
Owners of all other Radeon GPUs, including those based on the Graphics CoreNext (GCN) architecture, such as the recently launched R9 280X and R9 270X, are out of luck, for now. AMD is still ironing out issues with Mantle on those other GCN GPUs. Interestingly, in the same press note, DICE posted performance numbers yielded on an HD 7970, which look promising. AMD is expected to release its Catalyst 14.1 beta driver a little later this week, as it's jousting with some last-minute bug-finds.
Source:
DICE
Owners of all other Radeon GPUs, including those based on the Graphics CoreNext (GCN) architecture, such as the recently launched R9 280X and R9 270X, are out of luck, for now. AMD is still ironing out issues with Mantle on those other GCN GPUs. Interestingly, in the same press note, DICE posted performance numbers yielded on an HD 7970, which look promising. AMD is expected to release its Catalyst 14.1 beta driver a little later this week, as it's jousting with some last-minute bug-finds.
133 Comments on AMD Mantle Driver to Only Benefit Four GPUs Initially
Just like tokyoduongsaid ''Even if it's 5%, I'll take it as it is FREE''
Support for the other cards will probably be released in the following days, but as noticed by a forum user, they did use a AMD HD 7970GHz edition card in one of the tested specs so support for the HD 7000 series in pretty much here already.
This is already starting to smell like Glide vs Direct3D. And even that at that time there were like 1 million games using Glide, we still know who the winner was in the end. Even 3dFX on its latest life stages starting to develop more for Direct3D than Glide...
"The current release time frame for the driver is "January." AMD doesn't expect additional delays, but it warns that, "as always," its schedule could change."
What Nvidia will do is irrelevant right now. This is something that they can't control without changing the way they do business. Because the only thing they can do is give much higher DirectX performance at the same price points as AMD, and knowing Nvidia they will not do that. They are just too arrogant to ask for less money than the competition for the same or more performance in DirectX.
Also I think you missed about half a dozen articles that say that more than 20 titles are expected to come with Mantle support. Mantle is the easiest way to pass console optimizations to PCs. As long as you have AMD APUs in consoles, Mantle is just far from oblivion.
As for Microsoft. As long as Mantle is not available on Linux, Mantle is a huge positive for Windows against Steam OS and Linux in general. Not to mention another reason for all those XP systems to move on to Windows 8.1. So, until Mantle becomes a problem for Microsoft, which I don't think it is going to happen anyway, it is in their best interest to see it spreading. Don't forget that there is OpenGL. It isn't that Linux doesn't have an API for gaming.
Glide vs Direct3D? There are so many many articles that explain the reasons why Mantle is not another Glide. Google it.
Anyway, like, who does this help, really? Mantle...? AMD CPU users only? This is more niche marketing, disguised as a big deal.
Unless, of course, developers can use it to make porting titles from the consoles over more efficiently, both in time, and the code produced/used. I mean, I understand hardware, generally speaking, but I fail to see why it is even relevant.
Also, what crawled up the guy with the second post's ass and exploded?Seeing it in what? There's barely any "next-gen" console games out...
Hell, where I live, PS4 and XBO just barely started appearing in stores... (was on special pre-oders slightly before tho).
Easy cross-porting with Mantle won't start untill the older consoles die out, and the vast majority of games are released only on the new generation (that's like developing for 4 and a half platforms... or more, if you count Wii U... when they can develop for just 2 and a half... the half being PC development and it's reduced costs supposedly due to Mantle).
...well, if it isn't dead 'till then.
What else do you want to complain about Dave?
Prima.Vera,
Mantle support all GCN cards. You must not have actually read the news from AMD. It clearly stated that.
GCN Cards are the ones from 7000 series and above. How about users with 5000 or 6000 series?! Hmm? Both of those generations support Direct3D 11, but obviously Mantle is to good for them...
Everyone is getting angry about something that AMD is releasing for free. You're not being forced to use it, you're not being hindered by it, so what's with all the hostility? It sounds like some people ran out of their anxiolytic or anti-depressant meds or something. Please, people, lets calm down a little bit. AMD has done much worse things than attempt to release Mantle.
At least give AMD the benefit of the doubt that they're trying to improve the experience with their
cardshardware.No good deed goes unpunished.