AMD Catalyst 14.3 Beta 1.0 (13.350.1005 March 12)

Umm... just NO!

If you take a XEON and an i5/i7 that is from the same gen and has the same specs, they will perform exactly the same in games.

The fact that it is a XEON does not make it bad for games. Those 12 core CPUs are going to be running at a lot lower speed than a lower core count processor, and that is what is making the difference.

RAM speed also makes a difference as well.

 

I've been using 14.2 without problems, i play mainly BF4 and Titanfall. Should i upgrade ?

 

Ok so I'm at home finally i can test mantle in thief. My results is as follows

graphics settings

everything max 2560x1440 @ 120hz except for SSAA and FXAA 16x Anisitropic

Mantle

Min: 47
max: 84.6
avg: 59.8

Directx single card

Min: 40.4
max: 77.7
avg: 54.8

Directx crossfire

Min: 47
max: 117.1
avg: 73.1

In the last test directx crossfire my cpu usage is almost 100%. 90% max and without crossfire it's like 30-40% per core. so i think crossfire is demanding on the cpu that's why crossfire systems will benefit from this a lot.

 

I've just tested Thief in DirectX / Mantle mode, here are my results:
All Maxed include SSAA

DirectX
Min: 37.1
Max: 61.0
Avg: 47.8

Mantle
Min: 31.5
Max: 64.7
Avg: 42,7
+ I notice some frame skips...Stuttering. Unplayable for me, DirectX Smooth
Slowly lose strength as the mantle and catalyst drivers doesn't bring anything :bang:

BTW. Battlefield, now Thief. It's just magic that StarSwarm benchmark give me 30% boost in fps, without any problems

 

After reading all your posts, i think ill just pass on these. The 13.30's are still the best driver iv used. I was really hoping for Mantle optimizations on this release, but i guess ill have to wait for another release :/

 

I agree. you see more stutter with mantle. Guess what remember that demo they showed of at CES this year. They had stutter spikes as well. So maybe mantle is a complete flop. Reviewers don't state how it feel. you might get higher fps average but massive spike every now and then doesn't make it good.

 

What s your monitor?

 

There is no maybe. It is a lot smoother for a lot of people including myself. There is some issues with some users but that is to be expected with new tech.

 

Star Swarm has no Vram leak issue, that's the reason... it correctly uses the available Vram, you can evaluate yourself clickin on the left + in "Sandbox Mode"

you see more stutter 'cause your (and his and mine...) card is not yet optimized
here they clearly state this:
http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/Mantle-Known-Issues.aspx
no doubt

sure, you have 290... the most tested and proven card with Mantle, unfortunately they kept the others to the last...and we have to wait until April (maybe)

 

I had a strange problem with this driver. Today i started a video on youtube, when i tried to change the resolution to 720p, i had a black screen, then my pc showed a bsod with an error caused by atikmpag.sys
Can it be a driver related problem? i always make clean install after using DDU (last version), my hw it's not overclocked. Thanks

 

I'm having many "BSOD"/"drivers stop working" with these and I did a clean install. My cpu is overclocked but it's running smoothly since 2009.

 

Actually Freeman sees more issues than on DX with HD7870 2GB because he is running game on Ultra + SSAA which I do not do with all around better HW.

His performance even in DX is mediocre:
Min: 37.1
Max: 61.0
Avg: 47.8

I lowered few unnecessary things from Ultra to high and disabled SSAA, and even so my VRAM utlilization is over 2GB. You can guess how much in debt he is and that is main reason for issues.
Someone with 1GB vram must suffer even more if he does not know reason and want everything on ultra.

Mantle (My reasonable settings): Shooting Range Just after loading: 2090MB
After Driving to the C Flag without any other actions: 2448MB
Mantle Ultra + 4xMSAA: Shooting Range Just after loading: 2410MB
After Driving to the C Flag without any other actions: 2794MB
DirectX Ultra + 4xMSAA: Shooting Range Just after loading: 1312MB
After Driving to the C Flag without any other actions: 1833MB

And this is small map. On large maps and ultra + 4xMSAA with 2GB VRAM users are bound to run into similar issues as on Mantle but definitely not that severe.
- Now This is not a memory leak in Mantle. It's more like absence of proper texture compression or much higher precache because I can play with my regular settings on Mantle any map without introduction of slow downs or stutter and I really like to have fps as high as possible.
In fact I could play on Ultra too without stutter, but I opted for higher fps by reducing stuff which does not matter.

 

Urgh...why is it so hard...Mantle is working wonderfully for me on 7970 CrossFire... Just read this thread, see how many 7000 series users are already happy with Mantle from previous drivers...

The cards ARE supported. Some of us have issues. Others don't.

 

IMO that's not a good point. Why?
in D3D crossfire & BF4 i can keep everything ULTRA and no major issues...
if in Mantle i can't do it, it becomes pointless. I can't compare. So what is it for? For nothing if i'm forced to reduce the graphics settings... at this point better to remain in D3D for image quality.
Definitely good if it uses more Vram, not good if this means to continously swap to system RAM... they need to better manage the Vram in Mantle, ATM it's not deallocated as it should, it's a coding mistake, no excuse. They can't force people to necessarily have more than 2GB at 1080p... 'cause D3D has no issues about that.
But the reason is, as already said, that they didn't test well other than 290s... BF4 needs update, also Thief needs update and they know it...so it won't be a behavior on purpose (fortunately)

"Mantle performance for the AMD Radeon™ HD 7000/HD 8000 Series GPUs and AMD Radeon™ R9 280X and R9 270X GPUs will be optimized for BattleField 4™ in future AMD Catalyst™ releases. These products will see limited gains in BattleField 4™ and AMD is currently investigating optimizations for them."

"Mantle performance for GPUs with 2GB framebuffers will receive additional optimization in a future application path for Thief™. These products may see limited gains in scenarios requiring large amount of video memory (such as high quality settings with SuperSampling Anti-Aliasing enabled).

clearer than that... ?

 

Qnix Qx2710

it's because you running i7. I'm getting a 3770K and will overclock it a bit to. Seems like bf4 is meant for 8 threaded cpu's. I'm getting the cpu next week as only then I will be a ble to pay the guy etc etc. So will have to wait and see. I bet an i7 will solve my issues or at least make it a lot better. someone here already said 30% increase performance so I suspect I will get about the same. maybe without drops anymore

 

On one side you read and understand that Mantle is vram hungry, good. AMD may address that soon. But on other hand, if you run BF4 DX11 all ultra + 4xMSAA like freeman, you are unknowingly degrading your performance too as that setting simply needs more than 2GB VRAM on larger maps. You are just brute forcing it with CF which he does not.

 

no, 'cause i always have 2GB, even with crossfire... crossfire D3D doesn't double the Vram... you should know it
even with single card you don't need (mandatory) more than 2GB of VRam ..more than enough @ 1080p ...different matter is the computing power of the card (sp processors, rops etc...)
maybe you can't try yourself, but if you had a 2GB card you could understand it... it never goes higher than your available Vram if the coder deallocates the Vram in efficient manner...
if you correctly deallocate the Vram, it doesn't swap at 1080p... and the normal behavior in some more complex scenes is (could be) a slowdown (called fps drops) ...not completely hangs or stuttering...
the stuttering ATM is caused by the bad Vram management and lack of optimization...

 

Brute forcing means use of horsepower to overcome lack of main requirement, which is VRAM for you.
Your statements implies that 1GB Vram is fine in DX too because code should magically free memory. That 512MB of Vram is fine with DX too.
Or is it some special rule that 1080p games simply can't use more than 2GB vram?

But reality is somewhat different, If I make game where Ultra Texture details means that scene will use 6GB of textures in every frame, then there is nothing to do. You will always see in GPUz that you run at max to 2GB vram utilization. But there is friend called Process Explorer which can tell you how much of VRAM uses each process and how much is full allocation (optimal vram amount should accommodate sum of all processes).

Do you realize that HD7970 as High End GCN is 25 months old and BF4 is 6 months old and as such Ultra settings are likely targeted to most available High end cards not mains'tream?
There were games which targeted Ultra settings for HW to come. High for High End available, And Normal to Mains'tream.

Believing that Ultra is fine for average HW is console gaming thinking. Lucky you, that you have CF as it has more horses than I do. But once you go over that VRAM limit, you are really taking yourself down.

 

Wrong. Mantle isn't supposed to run any better on R7/R9, AMD never stated such a thing. They did, however, say that Mantle would be more optimized on R7/R9 cards in the beginning and that the 7000 series would receive these optimizations in a future beta.

I'm disappointed because this is now the third beta (if I'm not mistaken) since Mantles introduction and they have yet to address the 7000 series Mantle problems in BF4. It's NOT that it doesn't work well, it's that it doesn't work AT ALL. That's the problem. Don't believe me? Go fire up a game of BF with CFX 7970's.

 

I am speaking for myself, and I know how to "manage" my system perfectly fine. Did you even read what I wrote? I have CROSSFIRE, and it doesn't work with crossfire at all in BF4. I've tried Mantle with a single GPU as well and I'm getting similar results. Many people are experiencing issues with Mantle and single GPU's running on GCN, it's not an isolated issue.