Ode to Mantle

[GodisanAtheist]

I recently picked up Dragon Age Inquisition and have been running it on the system in my sig (only the Q9550 is at stock settings thanks to being stuck on a g41 back-up board that I never got around to replacing). With the DX 11 renderer the game is perfectly playable at high settings but a little choppy in heavily populated areas.

I decided to give the mantle renderer a shot, and WOW, the game runs smooth as butter everywhere at high settings. Its like night and day. DA:I was the first game I've played that made me think it was time for that core upgrade I've been putting off (Married with children, don't game as much as I used to). Mantle may have just saved me a couple hundred bucks.

Reviews never really did mantle much justice as they're usually run on beefcake processors that don't bottleneck a card like my Q9550 does my 7950. I'm a true believer now, I've dipped into the punchbowl and drank the coolaide.

If this is the future Vulcan and DX12 promise, sign me up. Thanks AMD!

 

[Silverforce11]

It helps alleviate the current CPU bottleneck but if anything, I think DX12 games will USE that extra head-room and cram in more features, effects, to end up with a new bottleneck again. But with better visuals.

ie. Ashes of Singularity, thousands of units in an RTS fighting, instead of the current ones like SCII with hundreds. Scales goes up, but then you still need a fast CPU. Time to let the Q9550 retire in peace.

 

[3DVagabond]

Review sites only come up with outside the box testing for AMD when it shows them in a negative light. No real effort has been made to demonstrate Mantle's improvements, ie higher minimums, better threading, etc.

 

[3DVagabond]

It helps alleviate the current CPU bottleneck but if anything, I think DX12 games will USE that extra head-room and cram in more features, effects, to end up with a new bottleneck again. But with better visuals.

ie. Ashes of Singularity, thousands of units in an RTS fighting, instead of the current ones like SCII with hundreds. Scales goes up, but then you still need a fast CPU. Time to let the Q9550 retire in peace.

The CPU bottleneck we have now lies squarely at the feet of DX11. I think people will be surprised in the performance of older C2Q and Thuban processors.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Review sites only come up with outside the box testing for AMD when it shows them in a negative light. No real effort has been made to demonstrate Mantle's improvements, ie higher minimums, better threading, etc.

Most sites simply do not do normal testing with a slow cpu and powerful card, where Mantle shows the most benefit. They normally do their tests with a fast cpu, which minimizes the benefits of mantle. For instance, I have a relatively fast cpu and lower end gpu, and mantle showed absolutely no benefit to me in Dragon Age Inquisition.

 

[3DVagabond]

Most sites simply do not do normal testing with a slow cpu and powerful card, where Mantle shows the most benefit. They normally do their tests with a fast cpu, which minimizes the benefits of mantle. For instance, I have a relatively fast cpu and lower end gpu, and mantle showed absolutely no benefit to me in Dragon Age Inquisition.

There are still CPU bottlenecks with modern processors. They'll show it if they want to marginalize AMD's drivers, for example.

 

[Noctifer616]

There are still CPU bottlenecks with modern processors. They'll show it if they want to marginalize AMD's drivers, for example.

Not just AMD cards. If you play an MMO you are going to probably run into a CPU bottleneck even on a NVidia card. I think MMO games will benefit the most from the new API's early on when most games will be just ports from 11 to 12/Vulkan.

There is a ton of people that play WoW and have low end machines and suffer because the game actually requires a i5 at 4Ghz+ to run on actually 40+ fps on some raid encounters. Anyone still with an AMD CPU will see huge gains, even on low end cards like a 5770.

 

[monstercameron]

lets not go down this road. lets jut remember what it was.

 

[beginner99]

Ashes of Singularity, thousands of units in an RTS fighting, instead of the current ones like SCII with hundreds.

Off topic: Can you play SCII 4v4 with all maxed out or does it lag? I just remember that for SCI it took pretty long till that was possible. I think a P3 was needed (min. requirement was a P1 90 mhz afaik).

 

[Silverforce11]

Off topic: Can you play SCII 4v4 with all maxed out or does it lag? I just remember that for SCI it took pretty long till that was possible. I think a P3 was needed (min. requirement was a P1 90 mhz afaik).

Been awhile since I played it but back then it lagged on my i5 2500K in 4v4 big battles, really badly when its AI battles, and some lag when its online.

 

[Stuka87]

SC2 is only dual threaded, so you need a lot of IPC for big battles with lots of units.

BF4 for me was borderline unplayable with DX11 (30ish FPS) but with Mantle, I would average in the 50's. This was with my old Phenom II system, where with DX11 the GPU ran at around 50-60% utilization, and would hit 100% under Mantle.

 

[Headfoot]

On a single 290, 3x1080p on a 2500k @ 4.6, Mantle gives me smoother frame times and less hitches in BF4 at mixed high/ultra. No AA or resolution scale.

 

[Face2Face]

I have a Celeron G1610 setup with a HD 7790, and Mantle doesn't seem to help much when playing Plants VS Zombies: Garden warfare. If anything it's maybe a little bit worse vs. DX11 as far as freezes and stuttering goes, but I won't knock it since it's a really slow dual core on Frostbite 3. Both cores sit at 100% pretty much all of the time - When it's not freezing or stuttering, the FPS is very good @ medium settings @ 1080p. - DX11 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk34xZ_SSs0 - I'll do one for Mantle soon

 

[Red Hawk]

Mantle definitely helps give a boost of 10 FPS or so in Inquisition on my brother's PC with a 260X and a stock Q6600. The Q6600 is just too anemic at this point to run really smoothly in Inquisition though, even with Mantle. :\

 

[TheELF]

I have a Celeron G1610 setup with a HD 7790, and Mantle doesn't seem to help much when playing Plants VS Zombies: Garden warfare. If anything it's maybe a little bit worse vs. DX11 as far as freezes and stuttering goes, but I won't knock it since it's a really slow dual core on Frostbite 3. Both cores sit at 100% pretty much all of the time - When it's not freezing or stuttering, the FPS is very good @ medium settings @ 1080p. - DX11 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk34xZ_SSs0 - I'll do one for Mantle soon

Use dxtory or riva tuner that you already have to limit your FPS to 60 this will smooth things out because now you get stutter because the CPU has to slow down some threads to run others,if you run them a bit slower from the get go it will have some room to run unexpected threads or those that only need a lot of processor power some of the times.

You can still compare to mantle by looking at how much cpu and gpu,percent wise, is being used with each.

Also changing the priority of the game to idle makes a lot of difference when you are trying to multitask.

 

[Sabrewings]

Mantle definitely helps give a boost of 10 FPS or so in Inquisition on my brother's PC with a 260X and a stock Q6600. The Q6600 is just too anemic at this point to run really smoothly in Inquisition though, even with Mantle. :\

I haven't played DA:I, but I just upgraded from a Q6600 myself. For the most part I didn't have any issues but I did get some serious usage spikes and frame drops around stations in Elite: Dangerous. That CPU served me extremely well for a long time and it's sad to see it starting to decline. Luckily it'll pull wife duty for quite a while as we play Left 4 Dead 2 together.

OT Comment: The improvements Mantle offers gives a lot of hope to PC owners with older or mid range CPUs. I'm curious to see how DX12 follows it up with the system I mentioned above.

 

[ultimatebob]

I still don't get why someone would pay $300 for a high end AMD card and pair it with a low end processor.

Even if you're not a build it yourself kind of guy, you can get a system on sale from the likes of HP or Dell with higher end Core i5 or i7 processor for about $700.

I guess that Mantle made sense for the latest generation of game consoles (which are very CPU limited), but it doesn't help in most desktop PC use cases.

 

[railven]

I still don't get why someone would pay $300 for a high end AMD card and pair it with a low end processor.

Even if you're not a build it yourself kind of guy, you can get a system on sale from the likes of HP or Dell with higher end Core i5 or i7 processor for about $700.

I guess that Mantle made sense for the latest generation of game consoles (which are very CPU limited), but it doesn't help in most desktop PC use cases.

Kidding me, AMD's CPUs were getting creamed. Mantle and soon DX12 is gonna give that failed uarch a breath of life. Not sure if it will boost sales but it might at least plug some holes from people waiting to jump ship long enough for Zen to manifest.

 

[Red Hawk]

I still don't get why someone would pay $300 for a high end AMD card and pair it with a low end processor.

Even if you're not a build it yourself kind of guy, you can get a system on sale from the likes of HP or Dell with higher end Core i5 or i7 processor for about $700.

I guess that Mantle made sense for the latest generation of game consoles (which are very CPU limited), but it doesn't help in most desktop PC use cases.

Someone might have an older PC which can support a newer graphics card, but has an older CPU. Mantle is a boon to them, reducing the need to spend hundreds of dollars on things like a new motherboard, CPU, CPU cooler, and RAM. A CPU upgrade can be much more extensive and expensive than a GPU upgrade.

As I can tell, the use case scenarios for Mantle (and also DirectX 12 and Vulkan) are these:

--Multiplayer games and strategy games with high CPU loads that can tax even mid and high end processors (Battlefield 4 is an example of this, and the Oxide game engine is targeting this).
--Getting the most out of multi-core processors thanks to superior multithreading. This especially helps AMD processors.
--Bringing down the CPU requirements in games in general to help older systems run games without requiring an upgrade. IE my brother's Q6600 system.

 

[SolMiester]

There are still CPU bottlenecks with modern processors. They'll show it if they want to marginalize AMD's drivers, for example.

Time to change the record!

 

[SPBHM]

Mantle will shine with something like a Core 2 Quad or Phenom II x4/x6 for sure, and most reviews focused on overclocked i7s, also Mantle was mostly ignored after BF4 (which was also a difficult game to show the advantage, since SP is less CPU limited and MP difficult to test properly)

It helps alleviate the current CPU bottleneck but if anything, I think DX12 games will USE that extra head-room and cram in more features, effects, to end up with a new bottleneck again. But with better visuals.

ie. Ashes of Singularity, thousands of units in an RTS fighting, instead of the current ones like SCII with hundreds. Scales goes up, but then you still need a fast CPU. Time to let the Q9550 retire in peace.

yes, to a point they can increase the demands on PC exclusives if they are not targeting a larger audience (check steam and it's obvious that a lot of people game with dual core laptops), but also, games are still primarily made for consoles with weak CPUs, and the new API is a lot closer to what the consoles are using, so I think the base/console experience should be less CPU demanding from now on... unless they don't allow you to match the console settings on the PC, like Dying Light even with 0% "view distance" on the PC it was still a little higher than the consoles version.

I still don't get why someone would pay $300 for a high end AMD card and pair it with a low end processor.

Even if you're not a build it yourself kind of guy, you can get a system on sale from the likes of HP or Dell with higher end Core i5 or i7 processor for about $700.

I guess that Mantle made sense for the latest generation of game consoles (which are very CPU limited), but it doesn't help in most desktop PC use cases.

also a valid point, most of the C2Q machines are also stuck with slow/old VGAs and investing a lot in GPU, while upgrading the rest is also not that expensive may not be a good choice, but if all games where using mantle it could be a valid thing to do...

 

[Dribble]

I recently picked up Dragon Age Inquisition and have been running it on the system in my sig (only the Q9550 is at stock settings thanks to being stuck on a g41 back-up board that I never got around to replacing). With the DX 11 renderer the game is perfectly playable at high settings but a little choppy in heavily populated areas.

I decided to give the mantle renderer a shot, and WOW, the game runs smooth as butter everywhere at high settings.

Tbh this says as much about AMD's DX11 driver as it does about mantle.

 

[Face2Face]

Use dxtory or riva tuner that you already have to limit your FPS to 60 this will smooth things out because now you get stutter because the CPU has to slow down some threads to run others,if you run them a bit slower from the get go it will have some room to run unexpected threads or those that only need a lot of processor power some of the times.

You can still compare to mantle by looking at how much cpu and gpu,percent wise, is being used with each.

Also changing the priority of the game to idle makes a lot of difference when you are trying to multitask.

I used the FPS limiter within RTSS, and separately used VSYNC. Regardless of either used, the pauses and stuttering were still prevalent. Good point on tracking GPU usage though. Even though the CPU usage using both API's will be pegged, the GPU usage could end up being higher on Mantle. I wish I could use the RTSS OSD with Mantle, as it would be nice to track usage with an OSD. I guess I'll do some polling with AB.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Mantle was amazing for BF4 in my usage.

Low settings, maximum FPS. I received like a 40-60fps boost to my minimums if I remember correctly. I would go from dips into the 50's and 60's in dx11 to constantly 120 fps on demanding maps. With an ancient 2500k and a r9 290. I posted pictures back in the mantle thread when it came out. I've always been chasing high fps for competitive advantages. This is where Mantle shines.

Unfortunately, the random hitches in Mantle became far too annoying for me to deal with.

 

[Headfoot]

Mantle was amazing for BF4 in my usage.

Low settings, maximum FPS. I received like a 40-60fps boost to my minimums if I remember correctly. I would go from dips into the 50's and 60's in dx11 to constantly 120 fps on demanding maps. With an ancient 2500k and a r9 290. I posted pictures back in the mantle thread when it came out. I've always been chasing high fps for competitive advantages. This is where Mantle shines.

Unfortunately, the random hitches in Mantle became far too annoying for me to deal with.

They did eventually fix those, at least on my 290/2500k combo in BF4. Right when Mantle dropped though those random hitches were awful