Wow that's amazing. I'm guessing the DLC is very CPU heavy, perhaps deliberately to show off the benefits of Mantle.
Thief won't be shipping with Mantle, planned patch in March. TrueAudio support to come in same patch as Mantle
Im not so sure its the dlc itself, since the release of Mantle, 3 patches have been released who have increase the performance. + this test is made with 4x MSAA + 16HQ at 1080p. ( so basically what a majoritiy of player use when playing it ).. personally i see a jump in performance with 2x 7970 @ 2560x1440, it look like it benefit too CFX at higher resolution. ( not sure for single gpu )...
( I7 4930K@4.5ghz + 16GB 2133mmhz in quadchannel ofc )
What is really still surprising me, is i cant tell if i use Mantle or Directx based on graphism.. the game, graphic wise, look absolutely the same.. ( i dont speak about performance or anything, just the graphism ). I need to go check in the setting if i use Mantle or DirectX ..
New expans.....DLC..can i say mantle-wow
http://cdn.overclock.net/5/57/900x9...field_4_Second_Assault_Benchmarks_02-pcgh.png
I like to hear the story behind this test...
The Catalyst 14.2 Beta v1.3 will release later the day:
IMPROVEMENTS TO MANTLE AND MORE
o Hangs and stuttering resolved for the Mantle codepath in Battlefield 4™; users are now encouraged to try mGPU
o Multi-GPU frame pacing in Battlefield 3™ and Battlefield 4™ is now enabled for non-XDMA configurations running resolutions >1600p.
Downloading nowFeature Highlights of The AMD Catalyst™ 14.2 Beta V1.3 Driver for Windows®
- Thief: Crossfire Profile update and performance improvements for single GPU configurations
- Mantle: Multi-GPU configurations (up to 4 GPUs) running Battlefield 4 are now supported
- Frame Pacing for Dual Graphics and non-XDMA configurations above 2560x1600 are now supported with Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4
- Dual graphics DirectX 9 application issues have been resolved
- Minecraft: Missing textures have been resolved
- 3D applications no longer see intermittent hangs or application crashes
- Resolves corruption issues seen in X-plane
DX and OGL will offer low level access to reduce draw overhead, excerpts from a presentation that will take place in GDC2014.]
In other news, Oxide games (the maker of StarSwarm demo) is partnering with NVIDIA in a GDC presentation to talk about modern multi-core CPUs and GPUs role in designing games.
http://www.dsogaming.com/news/oxide...-engine-and-the-future-of-real-time-graphics/
Expected, but not so soon.
Little more info
Direct3D Futures - Come learn how future changes to Direct3D will enable next generation games to run faster than ever before! In this session we will discuss future improvements in Direct3D that will allow developers an unprecedented level of hardware control and reduced CPU rendering overhead across a broad ecosystem of hardware.
http://schedule.gdconf.com/session-id/828181
Evolving Microsoft's Graphics Platform - For nearly 20 years, DirectX has been the platform used by game developers to create the fastest, most visually impressive games on the planet. However, you asked us to do more. You asked us to bring you even closer to the metal and to do so on an unparalleled assortment of hardware. You also asked us for better tools so that you can squeeze every last drop of performance out of your PC, tablet, phone and console.
http://schedule.gdconf.com/session-id/828184
Approaching Zero Driver Overhead in OpenGL - Driver overhead has been a frustrating reality for game developers for the entire life of the PC game industry. On desktop systems, driver overhead can decrease frame rate, while on mobile devices driver overhead is more insidious--robbing both battery life and frame rate. In this unprecedented sponsored session, Graham Sellers (AMD), Tim Foley (Intel), Cass Everitt (NVIDIA) and John McDonald (NVIDIA) will present high-level concepts available in today's OpenGL implementations that radically reduce driver overhead--by up to 10x or more.
http://schedule.gdconf.com/session-id/828316
The first two pertain to Microsoft's APIs directly, but seem to deal with a future time frame and plans.
Granted, any time frame within this decade is sufficient to make further investment in Mantle dubious, unless AMD's decision to leverage Direct3D elements like HLSL means it will share enough DNA to let it be treated as a 0.x version of the future direction of the API.
In which case, it might have some amount of utility as an interim solution.