With Thief, AMD now has a second game that gives its customers a significant performance boost. That’s great news for existing customers, particularly faithful users that have stuck by AMD for the past few years. Mantle could also play an interesting role in mobile gaming, particularly if it improves the performance of many of the multi-GPU systems that AMD’s OEM partners have sold in the past few years.
Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare looks like it’ll be the next title for Mantle and the first game to ship with the capability integrated “out of the box.” Other games, like Dragon Age: Inquisition, Star Citizen, and Mirror’s Edge 2 are rumored to support the standard, though this list hasn’t been confirmed. Hopefully we’ll see TrueAudio support added by other games as well, particularly as the Oculus Rift moves closer to shipping late in the year.
We’d still like to see Mantle offering a greater performance improvement for Intel users given that Intel accounts for the majority of CPU sales in the PC market, but Mantle does offer AMD customers a better experience in real-world scenarios. A 23% boost for the A10-7850K and R7 270 won’t blow the doors off, but it’s a markedly better experience.