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  • Beno619 - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link

    Surprise of the year. This was completely unexpected.
  • blanarahul - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link

    This was expected. Frame-pacing delayed. Enduro delayed. And now, Mantle delayed too. NVIDIA couldn't be happier.
  • Flunk - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link

    Can't be that bad, AMDs cards are sold out everywhere.
  • DarkStryke - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link

    Only because they're not being used for games.
  • nathanddrews - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link

    Doesn't matter to shareholders.
  • moppop - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link

    They certainly will enjoy a nice quarter, but then tank as more ASICS configured for scrypt coins come to market in 2014.

    To LiteCoin miners: I hope you made your profit while you still can, and I have no problems picking up your used cards on E-bay when the profitability trap shuts leaving the late adopters scrambling to get some of their investments back.
  • JDG1980 - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link

    ASICs for Scrypt are hardly a foregone conclusion. Bitcoin (SHA-256) was easy to do on dedicated hardware because they just needed to put a bunch of hashing pipelines in parallel, which could be done with relatively simple logic gates. Scrypt, however, requires just over 128KB of RAM for each instance, and the speed of this memory is critical to good performance. This means either you have to waste a *lot* of die space on having RAM on-board, or you have to design a high-speed memory controller - not a trivial task.

    Currently, all of the talk about Scrypt ASICs is just that - talk. No one has a working prototype, or anything close to it. Alpha Technology, who claims to be near completion, has nothing on their site but a bunch of crude renderings, and no track record of success that would indicate they can actually deliver. I'll believe this when I see it, or when a big player with a history of delivering actual working products steps into the ring.

    The miners may sell off their cards eventually, but would you really want to buy a GPU that has been run 24/7 and possibly abused with out-of-spec clocks and/or voltage?
  • ultimatebob - Monday, January 6, 2014 - link

    This post seems eerily familiar... where did you copy and paste it from?
  • tuklap - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link

    Nah... some gpu's are underclocked so they are not like abused using furmark. as long as it is cooled great it is fine. you can even barter lower cost for mining used cards.

    again, about scrypt asic's. all are false pretense until a working prototype is available. pre orders? ahaha they'll just use your money. don't pre order until there are no prototypes. if you dont want your scrypt coin mining be the same as btc mining.
  • Regs - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link

    Was going to say, it seems like AMD needs to figure out the supply shortage first.
  • Morawka - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link

    AMD just needs to start making cards built for mining at increased prices. They have a full custom division so it shouldn't be that hard to do.
  • tuklap - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link

    No need. as long as amd cards are selling, they are good to go
  • Homeles - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link

    *Everywhere in the US
  • Wreckage - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link

    All 3 of them?
  • JlHADJOE - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link

    I would have been far more surprised if it actually launched on time. They don't call the company Advanced Micro Delays for nothing.
  • Alexvrb - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link

    It seems to be a case of DICE delaying their Mantle patch (since they're dedicating all their resources to general bugfixes), rather than AMD delaying Mantle. Their frame pacing is a bit behind schedule but it's coming along pretty well. The only thing they seem to really be dragging their feet on is Enduro fixes.
  • Arkive - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link

    Houston, sarcasm detection has gone offline. Switching to manual.
  • bwat47 - Saturday, January 11, 2014 - link

    The BF4 mantle update was only delayed because of EA/DICE's incompetent launch of BF4, not because of any issues or delays with the mantle API itself. And catalyst has had frame-pacing since like 13.8...
  • Cellar Door - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link

    So unexpected that they waited till the 30th, since there was still hope to launch tomorrow :D
  • TheJian - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link

    If this was true, we'd have a delayed until "jan 1st"...But we got, delayed until we un-delay it...ROFL.

    This is the price you pay when you divert funds from your core projects (cpus/gpus) for consoles which are dying instead. We get a cpu race that ends (Intel won), a delayed enduro (AMD users are actually doing more work than AMD on this and AMD is incorporating their work...ROFL), eyefinity issues, frame pacing, driver delays even for FIXES, Mantle delay etc etc...We should not even be discussing PHASE 1 let alone a PHASE 2. How long before AMD gives up the GPU race? How much did consoles REALLY cost in the end? How much rep damage has AMD done with all the driver crap? How much did they damage their rep with a hot, noisy gpu that runs so close to max their own cooling solution couldn't get the job done?

    This really can't get much worse I guess. That should have been Ryan's "Silver Lining". But he loves AMD (so does anandtech, I see no NV portal yet...LOL), so his idea of a silver lining is one day it MIGHT work. If it was just QA (which EA doesn't know the meaning of, hence BF4 beta retail product) we would already be beta testing it just like the actual game itself...ROFL. Why would EA hold back from you beta testing Mantle just like the actual game? EA has shown they have no respect for customers and are more than happy to have you patch their stuff to death for ages.
  • tisho75 - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link

    Wow, so much comments about something that we will see within a month :) Suggestions only.. Why you are not commenting so actively (except imperial vs metric system) next article: http://anandtech.com/show/7601/sapphire-radeon-r9-... ? What about the performance, price, noise, overclocking? I remember that you said that this chip (R9) is a crap?
  • tisho75 - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link

    And Happy New Year!
  • owan - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link

    what the hell are you on about with regards to AMD? This is obviously out of their hands due to the fact that EA/DICE's inability to deliver a working game totally blew up the timeline. But yea, since their software partner had much bigger problems AMD should get out of the market and give up.

    Give it a rest already
  • HisDivineOrder - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link

    The Surprise of the year for me was people actually thinking Mantle was a good idea. Then coming to anandtech and finding an entire section dedicated to AMD marketing materials and an editorial that told us all how Mantle was going to be an Xbox API made for PC and that most likely Microsoft was going to be using Mantle and that Mantle games would be Xbox One games easily transferred from Xbone to PC.

    That bit of fantasy was the biggest surprise of the year for me regarding AMD. A close second was when AMD used the same fan/heatsink on the R9 290X as the reference board for the 6xxx series and the 7xxx series before it.

    Honorable mentions go to:

    1) AMD acknowledged they didn't know what was going wrong with the frame latency issues and had to have nVidia help them figure them out,

    2) AMD promised a frame latency driver in the June timeframe (with anandtech saying they were sure it was coming sooner rather than later since it's a priority) that turned into the July timeframe which became the August timeframe

    3) AMD blasted the web with an email telling everyone how R9 290/290X boards were all getting Battlefield 4 after a certain date and then retracted it by saying that the email was not by anyone important so it should have been ignored when it was by their big kahuna of marketing.

    4) AMD promised preorders of the R9 290X before they'd even announced a price point and then actually delayed for a month before even acknowledging price point or allowing preorders despite promises from the aforementioned big kahuna of marketing to the contrary.

    It's been an amazing year for AMD! Those are just the highlights. Can't wait to see what they do in 2014! I really hope they get better. I hate to imagine a world where Intel and nVidia can do whatever they want, but years like 2013 really don't do much to instill confidence.
  • SlyNine - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link

    No one ever said this was going to Xbox API on PC. What people were saying was it's going to be similar to BOTH consoles due to the similar hardware.

    I think this is a great Idea, of course people that hate AMD/ATI will continue to do so. But who cares what they think.
  • TheJian - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link

    Ryan Smith did in his Mantle lovefest article. That is what he is referring to here. You have to understand how much they love AMD here:
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/7371/understanding-a...
    " What’s not being said, but what becomes increasingly hinted at as we read through AMD’s material, is not just that Mantle is a low level API, but rather Mantle is the low level API. As in it’s either a direct copy or a very close derivative of the Xbox One’s low level graphics API. All of the pieces are there; AMD will tell you from the start that Mantle is designed to leverage the optimization work done for games on the next generation consoles, and furthermore Mantle can even use the Direct3D High Level Shader Language (HLSL), the high level shader language Xbox One shaders will be coded against in the first place.

    Let’s be very clear here: AMD will not discuss the matter let alone confirm it, so this is speculation on our part. But it’s speculation that we believe is well grounded. Based on what we know thus far, we believe Mantle is the Xbox One’s low level API brought to the PC."

    He kept going with more, but you get the idea. He's saying it IS the xbox low level API. Note MS responded shortly after this saying nope, nadda, sorry "there will be no mantle on xbox1! PERIOD"...And the fantasy ended...Awww, shucks...

    HisDivineOrder isn't talking about "people". He's talking about Anandtech & Ryan Smith's article in particular. At this point they are practically an AMD shill. They have a whole section devoted to AMD. But not a think for Nvidia. If there are any among you who don't find this to be a conflict of interest, I submit you don't know what one actually is. A website reviewing two competing companies should not be putting out press releases and every piece of new in existence on ONE of those two companies. If you're going to do that you should have BOTH sides FULLY covered (like an NV portal for starters).
  • medi02 - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link

    What a pile of S.
    nVidia HELPED AMD fix frame pacing? Oh, god...
  • Wreckage - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link

    Always
    Mantle
    Delayed
  • SR81 - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link

    Always
    Missing
    Deadlines

    Are
    Monies
    Dwindling
  • Gunbuster - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link

    Was going to post but you beat me to it. It astounds me how AMD manages to make a solid graphics chip while at the same time being so tragically incompetent on software/drivers, heatsinks, and branding (ugly ass cards, cheap looking AMD/ATI red)
  • Mountainjoy - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link

    What it's not coming out tomorrow. My mind has been blown.
  • Bob Todd - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link

    A software related schedule miss involving AMD? Unfathomable! Whether it is AMD's resources or a 3rd party like in this case, they (product management) need to learn the art of under promising and over delivering. I hope AMD makes their (delayed) January commit for the Eyefinity frame pacing drivers, but I wouldn't bet on it.
  • Beno619 - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link

    In all fairness this ids most likely, EA's fault.
  • HisDivineOrder - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link

    The delay is EA's fault. The marketing around the delay and the constant overpromising and underdelivering is all squarely in AMD's hands. Thus, their fault.

    I agree with the above poster. AMD needs to learn to build in some, "Uh oh, we missed the deadline" time instead of throwing out whatever their absolute best case scenario timing is to make sales.

    One can't ignore the fact they waited until the next to last day in December to admit there was a delay, either, when they had to know once Christmas was here that, "Yeah, EA ain't gonna make it this month." Everyone knows the last two weeks are effective non-weeks for the month of December, but AMD figured remaining silent might sell a few more GPU's.
  • Kevin G - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link

    AMD is pretty bad on meeting deadlines. Though they're not quiet as bad as Valve in this matter.
  • Mountainjoy - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link

    I hope the Ultra HD remake of Half Life 2 uses Mantle when it comes out in 2018.
  • hero4hire - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link

    There's a joke in here somewhere. 2018 - 1080p + 4k display / remake variable = 3. Half life 3 confirmed guys!
  • Jumangi - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link

    Probably wasn't a good idea to be touting increased performance in a new patch when so much of the game play is still. broken
  • Mondozai - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link

    Will waiting one month make a huge difference? As Ryan wrote, this is most likely more due to EA's Q/A being tied up in bughunting so blaming it on AMD seems lazy.

    Either way, as someone who is getting a free copy of BF4 from a friend who isn't interested after getting a new AMD card, even with my Nvidia card I'd prefer BF4 to be less buggy. So I approve!
  • ericore - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link

    This is shame this doesn't happen with all the broken EA games; of which there is many.
  • TheJian - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link

    Considering you were totally wrong on consoles using Mantle at all, YMMV.

    At most according to one dev you'll get 20% from this which can be had with a simple gpu refresh, driver updates etc. There is no point in a dev spending on this without AMD refunding whatever they spend. Mantle gets a dev ZERO extra dollars from a game. You are better off making a BETTER game with that time that will get higher ratings and thus MORE SALES. Mantle gets you a few extra happy AMD users (by few I mean only a portion of AMD's cards can do it and most are going to miners paying dumb pricing).

    A simple driver update can net half of what this does easily. We see 10%+ on many driver updates across many games per update. Also note AMD said "we wouldn't bother for 5%". With a dev saying 20% isn't "unreasonable" I don't expect 20% very often. With AMD not saying "we wouldn't bother for 10%" you can expect 10% a lot with no dev claiming more than 20% and ONLY ONE claiming even that as a MAYBE case. It isn't exactly a glowing comment saying "not unreasonable". If it was to be expected to be the norm you'd say something more like "expect this a lot". I understand why AMD likes a proprietary tech (It's proprietary until its is RUNNING on something other than AMD no matter what they claim - NV will never make a GCN core and we have no proof it runs on anything else), but have no idea why a dev would waste time on it given it make no extra cash from doing it. IF they could charge an extra $10 to AMD users, ok maybe it was worth the dev time/resources spent. But that isn't the case. So why bother with what can be had with a driver update or two, and at worst the next refresh of vid cards? In one rev of cards you get EVERYONE more perf and ask devs to do nothing to get it. This Mantle way, every time they have to squash bugs etc Mantle will go back burner. Instead of Mantle, AMD should have been working on a Gsync tech that requires nothing from devs. I think the same of trueaudio. What a waste.

    I can't even believe you thought Mantle would be in consoles. MS will not allow competition for DirectX on purpose...ROFL. Too much AMD fantasy and speculation on this site these days. Your mantle article was 3 parts fantasy fanboy dreams and 1 part reality.

    Remember people, engine support means nothing. A dev still has to USE that part of the engine. You don't have to use physx just because unreal engine 3 supports it and with consoles blocking Mantle, you have less of a chance of success than physx which IS in consoles. Top that with Mantle's launch vehicles being in the hands of the worst company on the planet for the last 2 years (maybe a 3rd win this year with a BF4 lawsuit now from shareholders, surely BF4 owners will follow soon in their own suit), and you have a recipe for disaster that we see now. Then add to that EA foisting Frostbite on all their games (even where it doesn't belong), and well, you should expect some bad games coming soon.

    Clearly EA is planning on maximizing the Mantle optimizing or they're just getting even dumber than the last 2 years. A one size fits all engine is not a recipe for success or happy customers. There's a reason you make say, the Infinity Engine for an RPG but don't use it for your racing games. EA can't go bankrupt soon enough for me (and replaced by 100 mini-devs who make GREAT GAME PLAY games, instead of 10hr or less PRETTY games). Between EA, MS and a few others they destroyed most of my LOVED companies of the 80's and forward (Origin, Bullfrog, Interplay etc etc the list is long that these people have slaughtered). Gobble up awesome company X, force out a turd before it's done (like BF4) for users to beta test for a year, then patch it to death for another year with updates and DLC culminating in a ULTIMATE or GOTY edition that should have been the ORIGINAL release for $40 or less and lasts twice as long or more. I get no printed manual, no disc, no returns and $60 for the main game + $20-40 for DLC and even more if microtransactions are included. Just say no to $60 games you can finish on Saturday. I remember when they said no manual/disc/box would SAVE me money. Of course I didn't believe it.

    Also, I think this will wind up being one of AMD's biggest mistakes. Creating Mantle without the market clout to push it, or the money to pay to get it used (30% vs. 65% for nv in market share), merely caused a response from NV that actually CAN be funded with 2.7B in the bank and no debt.

    I doubt NV would have made Gameworks if AMD hadn't pushed their own proprietary game tech. NV can spend on 10 engines for every engine AMD can afford and still make money. AMD on the other hand has to make 200mil+ just to cover interest on their own huge DEBT before any investing in future tech can happen (or you just run red for life I guess). They have owed fines to GF yearly for years. This years is 200mil due TODAY Dec 31. Get ready for another AMD "one time every year charge". I'm confused by a charge that is ONE time happening YEARLY...ROFL. With consoles chips NOT being made at GF (rather TSMC) there is no chance AMD will avoid another fine for next year. Take or pay sucks and you should be fired for signing up for this crap. Verizon/AMD should be examples of what NOT to do in Business 101 class next year :) This same type of agreement may cost Verizon 14Billion due to lacking iphone sales. Apple can't just let this ride, or everyone else will say "but wait a minute"...Even if they let 1/2 of that slide, how many other companies (which are coming up short on iphone sales all over the globe) will be asking for half of their contracts to be forgiven? Even if Apple (or GF for AMD) wanted to let stuff slide they really can't risk the domino effect that will come seconds later.
  • siliconwars - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link

    I've read a lot of shit in these comments in my life, but this is on another level. 10%? Lol you have...oh dear you have absolutely zero clue.
  • HisDivineOrder - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link

    You realize that draw calls aren't always the limiting factor with regards to graphics performance, right?

    From what I read, most developers did think 20% was optimistically the high end and that lower performance improvements were considerably more likely. Then you have Tim Sweeney and Carmack, both coding greats in their own right, that look at this technology and seem completely against it.

    Carmack may have retired, but Tim Sweeney's still coding the most pervasive gaming engine out there for the games we care about and it's important what he thinks.

    Odd how most of the developers who say Mantle is going to net them that any gain in performance (20% or less) are all ones with some kind of partnership with AMD. It's almost like AMD promised them money and/or technical support to use Mantle. As if Mantle by itself is not enough incentive by itself.

    I'd say the same of PhysX, btw. It's not compelling enough without nVidia's promise of extra technical support to get it in there.

    Except PhysX defaults to CPU mode for non-nVidia GPU's, which means the API actually works for people with AMD cards or Intel integrated GPU's. Mantle's all AMD right now and it doesn't look like that's going to change anytime soon, either. Nor has AMD made a formal attempt to make it an open standard that they don't fully control.

    So yeah. Sorry.
  • SlyNine - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link

    No he's right, you don't have a clue.
  • TheJian - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link

    It was at AMD's APU show not long ago that a SINGLE dev said it wasn't unreasonable to get 20%. Nobody else has said a single thing from ANY developer. AMD themselves say they wouldn't do Mantle for 5%...IF it was a lot higher that you were expecting to get why not shoot higher than 5%? Why not say "we wouldn't bother with Mantle for 15%"? Ahhh, right, because most of the time you'll be between 5-20%?

    Links to developers saying ANY number over 20% please. I can't find ANY from a dev. Only the guy on stage at AMD APU 2013 recently. Nobody else has said anything, and there are no benchmarks etc. It would seem hisdivineorder knows exactly what I know, which is the only thing they've said...LOL. Which pretty much sounds like, if you pray to god, do some voodoo, sacrifice a chicken etc, well...It's not unreasonable to get lucky and have 20% gains. WOW. Don't expect 20% much. One driver update almost makes that pointless. Never mind yearly refreshes of vid cards that allow everyone the 20% (far more?) with no dev doing a think except sitting back and waiting for the next driver update or two, or a card refresh. Why code more?

    If he has no clue, at the very least you have no proof he has no clue as you've provided none to refute his statements or mine. So with no proof to the contrary, I guess he still has the same clue he had before you posted ;) It appears he watched both shows like I did. He is entirely correct about carmack and sweeney (clearly didn't like it verbally on stage, even Andersson (dice) had a hard time defending it), they are unimpressed with Mantle and hope NV doesn't respond in kind. But I think they already are starting to with GameWorks libraries etc. AMD shouldn't have woken the sleeping giant until they could afford to. :(
  • yannigr - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link

    Performance with Mantle could vary much more than that 5-20%. It could be from that 5% when only the cpu was getting a boost, in a way, by having much less to do, and that 5% could be also on a system with Nvidia gpu, up to much higher than 20% if the complexity of what you where seeing on screen was huge, much more than what you see in PC games today. Think it like PhysX. With PhysX, maybe we see more visual fx than what we would see from any physics engine made to run on cpu. The same could happen with Mantle. Choosing "Ultra settings" in a future game that supports both Mantle and DirectX could be something much more different than what we see today going from High to Ultra. It could mean so much more complex and detailed graphics on screen that will be impossible to run the game with DirectX and anything less than an 8-12 thread Intel processor.
  • Th-z - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link

    "Links to developers saying ANY number over 20% please."

    Second last slide:
    http://www.hardware.fr/news/13450/apu13-oxide-fait...

    "they are unimpressed with Mantle"

    Johan Andersson has repeatedly said publicly that he is exciting about Mantle. Do you know him personally and he told you otherwise in private? As for Sweeney in that NVIDIA-held event, he was curious about Mantle and acknowledged that there are a lot of overheads in DX. He didn't say a low level API was not needed, just didn't want all the hardware vendors to have their own API. Carmack was less enthusiastic about it but he did say "there would be days where it would be extremely tempting", and there is difference between "unimpressed" and "not doing it right now" given he is busy with Oculus Rift.

    So I am curious where do you (and HisDivineOrder) get that they are unimpressed?

    "they already are starting to with GameWorks libraries"

    So you don't seem to have problem with NVIDIA's close implementation that wants developers to use to make their own hardware performs better. Even if it's only 5%~20% gain? So why do you have problem with AMD wants developers to use Mantle? Is this really about fanboyism?
  • hero4hire - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link

    It's like arguing with my ex. Some facts sprinkled with crazy and a ton of conjecture in an overwhelming negative opinion. To me it's an api for devs to take or leave. If they take, with or without AMD funding, and I get 1% increase, then yay for me. I don't care about either companies bottom line, business plan, or debt rating when I buy a video card. It's for fun! Not a 10year prospectus.

    If AMD goes out of business and all there employees never work again after 2015, will that crush me and my $200 fun time hobby that I bought to see flashing triangles dance about?
  • bwat47 - Saturday, January 11, 2014 - link

    All of these numbers you are quoting are completely wild speculation. When we have some game using mantle, there will be proper benchmarks and comparison. Until then, we just have moronic flame-wars between nvidia and amd fanboys both spouting nonsense numbers out of their backsides.
  • jardows2 - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the game developers ask for someone to do something like Mantle? And AMD was the only company interested?
  • AMDisDead - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link

    Developers asked for this but AMD payed 8 million $ to use it. Not sure if serious. Anyway as expected Mantle is just PR crap. After so called "Mantle patch" you can expect FPS drop on Nvidia cards but same FPS on AMD. AMD will call it Mantle, AMD lunatics will call it Mantle but everyone will know that's dirty AMD tricks.
  • SlyNine - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link

    lol, I'm sure you're impartial AMDisDead. lol
  • silverblue - Sunday, January 5, 2014 - link

    Why would a different setup perform worse using a completely different codepath? Any such behaviour would either be a result of actual changes to the engine itself, or a change in a map to improve graphical quality at the expense of performance.
  • HisDivineOrder - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link

    AMD said that "developers" asked for it, but then clarified that the DICE guy showed up in their office and suggested something like it. I believe this happened just after AMD paid 8 million dollars for some BF4 copies, which compelled the DICE guy to show up and "request" the very technology that AMD paid 8 million dollars for EA to show off.

    "It'd be great if you guys went ahead and asked for this for us. We'll be so pleased."

    "Yeah, pleased. Eight million dollar pleased, right?"

    "Yah."

    "Fine. I formally request you make another API in addition to DirectX and OpenGL, which already really are enough if they'd just get some improvements."

    "We accept your request for Mantle and are going to tell everyone about it."

    "Yeah, yeah. I'll go along, I guess, since Mama EA wants me to, but your check better clear."

    "It will, it will. We just laid off another driver team to ensure it does."

    "Your priorities seem off, Mr. Reed."

    "How so?"

    "Are you really reducing your driver staff at a time when you're promising to support now a third API that none of your competition is going to waste time on?"

    "Yes. Yes, I am."
  • SlyNine - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link

    So this is why you believe what you do. You make up fake conversations and convince yourself these are facts.
  • TheJian - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link

    Note that same guy (andersson) said on stage he hoped it causes Dx/OpenGL etc to improve, but you could tell he really doesn't care if Mantle itself survives. He even said (IIRC) we don't need 5 API's to write for etc etc. It was kind of comic watching him try to defend Mantle. I really was. Not for carmack or sweeny, though, Carmack just said he'd ignore it. Ok then...Dead to him.

    How is his statement any different than Ryan's "mantle is in xbox1" fantasy? Which should be impossible for anyone to believe as MS won't allow competition for DirectX in any case if avoidable. Did you comment on that article that Ryan was living in a fantasy?

    If a dev really wanted to use something, would AMD have to pay them $8mil to use it? The only person that has said devs requested it were AMD people. Many game devs have been on stage to claim they asked for it specifically if they did. I've seen nobody do that but AMD people.
  • beginner99 - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link

    Instead of firing technical staff AMD should fire their PMs. Given their history all of them are very, very bad. I mean that BF4 has issues was known for like what? 2 month? They could have easily said mantle will be here in January already in October. I don't get optimistic release plans. Being earlier than communicated is always better than being late even if the actual release date is the same.
  • silverblue - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link

    How is this AMD's fault? BF4 is facing a huge bug blitz, so why add in Mantle support when the game is as broken as it currently appears to be?

    It's unfortunate that Mantle support is delayed, but you'll thank them for it. Once DICE gets its act together, that is.
  • andrewaggb - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link

    I'm looking forward to trying mantle out. Whether it's good or bad for the industry... that's hard to say. It would certainly have been better if intel and nvidia were also onboard.

    As for BF4, I've been playing it a lot the last month or so and it doesn't crash for me anymore. That's huge progress versus when I first got the game. I still see a flickering texture occasionally.

    There's probably still some bugs, but the main issues were fixed a couple weeks ago. It's a great game, though not that much better than BF3 all told. Levolution was over-hyped, map changing events etc, not so much, but a lot of the world can be blown open/apart (and a lot more can't be).
  • CrimsonFury - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link

    All the replies seem to be assuming this delay was caused by AMD. I wouldn't be surprised if it was more the fault of Dice\EA and the ongoing problems with BF4. The game launched with a ton of bugs and the devs are still trying to patch it across 5 different platforms, so they're not exactly in the best postion to be taking on additional development work.
  • medi02 - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link

    EA released BF4 which is full of bugs.
    Mantle API is not supposed to change, but BF4 Mantle is delayed.

    Yet... AMD is to blame. (and coincidentally there are lots of dubious comments from nicks like ÄMDisDe).

    Way to go...
  • dwade123 - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link

    It'll arrive when Maxwell comes out. LOL. Old grannies on steroids vs real next-gen GPU. Good luck AMD.
  • 56tb - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link

    Will Mantle work on APU's ? Obviously they aren't going to be plying BF4 very well, but in general, would the Trinity and Richland APU's be supported ?
  • silverblue - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link

    No; only Kaveri as the others utilise the VLIW4 architecture.
  • Apocalypsy - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link

    If you want to see the API in action I've got a link for you!
    http://www.pcgamesn.com/view-warface-pc-developmen...
  • Mbrix - Wednesday, January 8, 2014 - link

    Looks to me like AMD might not be happy with the performance difference just yet.

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