AMD Mantle Vs. Direct X Battlefield 4 Multiplayer Benchmarks

[LtMatt]

Yeah there are way too many threads on this now, when you consider it's one game lol. I linked it in the BF4 benchmark thread an hour ago

It was posted 15 days ago...

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=25771448&postcount=4738

My bad. Wccftech made it sound like the results were brand new.

I want to know why old news is being regurgitated?

Tbh i had never seen this so must have missed it.

To be honest i think the results deserve their own discussion thread anyway. I can see the thread has blossomed since i posted it last night.

 

[Rusty0611]

I disagree

You can disagree but it just ain't.

Edit: talking Sandybridge onwards here, I didn't make that clear initially.

How much % increase do you get from overclocking your 780?

Not ze thread for that discussion but bearing in mind 780s are clocked low-ish at stock.

Anecdotal it may be but i agree with others, it feels more fluid. don't know how, it just does. you need to experience it.

Latency also seems to be better, i'm getting much better hit detection, more kills.

Mantle is better than DX. without a shadow of a doubt.

Yeah I get that. Sounds like AMD don't have good frame times / consistency in DX in BF4. Though that isn't necessarily a fault of DX and a benefit of Mantle because as I said before, for me my game can't be any smoother. But I have a different vendor GPU so perhaps Nvidia are better on this angle currently.

Anecdotal it is not, if it was-EVERY review out there is anecdotal.

'Every' review or not that's still anecdotal if it's just somebody saying it feels smoother. Irrespective of that as I have replied to humbug it seems like AMDs frame times / consistency wasn't completely stellar in DX so Mantle improving this will obviously yield benefits.

11% improvement at 1080p and 30% in 1600p crossfire both with 4xMSAA and 16xAF, damn that's not bad for free

Aye the crossfire improvements are mightily impressive. I think there's more there to give as well.

 

[Buckster]

I'm assuming the charts have been labelled incorrectly by the OP? one of the cross-fire marked ones is Single player ?

other than that - old news - thread may as well be closed

 

[LtMatt]

Yeah I get that. Sounds like AMD don't have good frame times / consistency in DX in BF4. Though that isn't necessarily a fault of DX and a benefit of Mantle because as I said before, for me my game can't be any smoother. But I have a different vendor GPU so perhaps Nvidia are better on this angle currently.

No. When i last looked AMD had better frame times than equivalent Nvidia cards. The point is with Mantle even near perfection can be improved upon. The link to HardOCP's findings has already been shown to you. Plenty of other sites out there have reported similar things, not to mention a ton of user feedback on this very forum. If you actually tried it yourself, you'd realise and feel the smoothness improvement. Its not something you can dismiss as oh well it must not be smooth for single card AMD users currently to come to that conclusion Rusty. If you could run Mantle on your 780, you'd be noticing a smoothness increase as well.






Look at your 780 Rusty. You'd get a nice smoothness increase with Mantle.

 

[Rusty0611]

That's not what I'm hearing though. People say DX is choppy and Mantle improves this.

My DX isn't choppy in the slightest and cannot be improved upon in that aspect so I don't know where this spooky phantom increase in smoothness is coming from. HardOCP said frame times but if the frame times were already OK then

Link to the graph? I thought we'd gotten past graph spam.

 

[LtMatt]

That's not what I'm hearing though. People say DX is choppy and Mantle improves this.

My DX isn't choppy in the slightest and cannot be improved upon in that aspect so I don't know where this spooky phantom increase in smoothness is coming from. HardOCP said frame times but if the frame times were already OK then

Well AMD cards have superior frame times in this title, so im afraid you can't write it off as well Nvidia cards must be smoother thus the Mantle smoothness benefit won't apply to me and my 780. You need to try it, then you'll see the difference. As you'll never get to try it, you'll never know and will just have to take our word for it. Trust me its better, its smoother and it would be smoother for you, if you had a supported card.

As someone who has the performance overlay running 24/7 while i play BF4 i notice these things. The rendering times for cpu+gpu are lower on Mantle. Hence you get a smoother gameplay experience.

 

[Rusty0611]

Well AMD cards have superior frame times in this title, so im afraid you can't write it off as well Nvidia cards must be smoother thus the Mantle smoothness benefit won't apply to me and my 780. You need to try it, then you'll see the difference. As you'll never get to try it, you'll never know and will just have to take our word for it. Trust me its better, its smoother and it would be smoother for you, if you had a supported card.

I can because a) my DX experience is 100% smooth already as I average 100-110 FPS on ultra with 2x MSAA and b) frame times are only one angle; consistency is another factor which I stated in my first post.

A paltry 8% boost wouldn't let me run 4x with the same frame rates so it wouldn't apply to me unless you mean by diverting to a sub-par DX experience in order to see the 'benefits' of Mantle.

 

[LtMatt]

I can because a) my DX experience is 100% smooth already as I average 100-110 FPS on ultra with 2x MSAA and b) frame times are only one angle; consistency is another factor which I stated in my first post.

A paltry 8% boost wouldn't let me run 4x with the same frame rates so it wouldn't apply to me unless you mean by diverting to a sup-par DX experience in order to see the 'benefits' of Mantle.

I get more frames than that with a single card Rusty and as has been shown AMD cards have better frame times and are more consistent. If i can notice a difference, you will as well. The trouble is you seem to be willing to write it off as, its so smooth it can't get any smoother. Yeah, i thought the same, till i tried it.

I can see you've made your mind up that it wouldn't improve your experience despite myself and others showing you it will. I guess theres no hope for you. Ignorance is bliss.

 

[Silent_Scone]

"Depth Fog" is what you're looking for. Not draw distance. They're separate. Draw distance culls things that are too far away. Depth fog fades things into the fog color based on how far away they are-- the engine needs to render it before it can fade it away.

The fog values needs to be set for every map, several times in case of maps where the ambiance changes (like in Shanghai after you bring down the building). And they didn't bother before pushing the Mantle patch through.

As you can see from your screenshots, DirectX has fogging also.

This isn't to say that thick depth fog as in the Mantle screenshot can't be used to hide a shorter draw distance . But thicker depth fog doesn't do anything performance-wise by itself. It's just blending a color into pixels based on a depth test
I'm also experiencing a much smoother game. It's really responsive under Mantle.

I know it's not culling much but like I said its difficult to make out LOD. Begs the question why is it any different. Weird bug if you ask me. Check it out in some of the larger maps.

 

[Rusty0611]

I get more frames than that with a single card Rusty and as has been shown AMD cards have better frame times and are more consistent. If i can notice a difference, you will as well. The trouble is you seem to be willing to write it off as, its so smoother it can't get any smoother. Yeah, i thought the same, till i tried it.

Mate you said EVERY driver felt smoother back in the BF3 days . Placebo much? You haven't linked to the article you graph grabbed from either.

I'm just going with the majority who say that their DX experience isn't stellar and Mantle improved this.

I've got one thing up my sleeve too. I've USED Mantle on a friends PC. Side by side with my PC we couldn't tell much difference if anything other than the fogging and draw distance difference. DX versions we could though.

Edit: haven't really made much of it because it's anecdotal of course. He brought his gear round for me to fix it so thought I'd give it a whirl.

 

[Calin Banc]

That's all well and good Calin if you're only playing Mantle games, but new DirectX titles are gonna be coming for a while yet.

Sure, but there are also some games that are coming out using this, including my favorite one - Star Citizen. After all, "it's not about the money, it's about sending a message". DX needs an overhaul one way or another. Compatibility is pointless when GTA 4 refuses to start under win 8.1 and so is Stalker and a bunch of other games that didn't work anyway under win 7 as well.

ArmA would benefit great from this, but at the moment, developers said they've spoken with AMD and it's a no go, it looks like the red team is choosing who they let in on the fun. It's shaping up to be closed beta kind of stuff.

I am sure your [email protected] would be fine with a R9-290 or its successor in a mantle game or dx11 game.

Also, are you actually getting 50% improvements in game with mantle for your setup?

Not making an argument but that sounds an awful high gain considering your setup.

http://imgur.com/idv20MP
http://imgur.com/5OszVSU
http://imgur.com/UmODhlT

Well, I've posted this a few times before as well. On SoS map around B flag, on the street, I was getting around 45fps under dx (felt choppy and more like under 30) and close to 70 under mantle. To be fair, on one of the patches, performance was around 60fps on DX as well, however, that went away AND in mantle now I can enable SSAO and high on mesh quality, settings that were not usable (getting a stable 60fps+ most of the time, with no real pain when it dropped to 50s) under DX. Also, another big plus, v sync doesn't feel anymore like I'm ice skating while trying to run. Input lag is waaay lower and it feels butter smooth.

On a side note, AMD is probably heading towards releasing the pressure from it's CPUs more than anything. They are glad if something similar would be implemented as well, not just pushing Mantle like there's no tomorrow.

"After that phase is done, we do hope that Mantle becomes an industry standard. We'll be releasing a public SDK later this year, and hope that others adopt it. If they don't adopt it itself, then we hope they adopt APIs similar to it that become an industry standard for PC gaming."

PS: You guys were speaking about some fps drops in certain areas in on different maps. Try mantle vs. dx there.

 

[Silent_Scone]

Actually come to think of it, does it even fog in SP?

 

[LtMatt]

Mate you said EVERY driver felt smoother back in the BF3 days . Placebo much? You haven't linked to the article you graph grabbed from either.

I'm just going with the majority who say that their DX experience isn't stellar and Mantle improved this.

I've got one thing up my sleeve too. I've USED Mantle on a friends PC. Side by side with my PC we couldn't tell much difference if anything other than the fogging and draw distance difference. DX versions we could though.

Edit: haven't really made much of it because it's anecdotal of course. He brought his gear round for me to fix it so thought I'd give it a whirl.

This is not just me Rusty, this is everyone saying it.

As for your trial on Mantle, sounds like PEBKAC as you're on the minority there.

It simply comes down to AMD have better frame times on BF4, Mantle improves on cpu+gpu rendering times hence you get a thinner, more consistent rendering line hence you get smoother gameplay. When i play with a single card in DX11 the line is smooth and thin. When you use Mantle its smoother and thinner. You notice the difference. It is immediately noticeable. Everyone in our TS noticed it who owned 290 cards and numerous people notice it here, not to mention review sites. Seems like its only you and your mate, who don't, so its likely PEBKAC there.

 

[Rusty0611]

This is not just me Rusty, this is everyone saying it.

As for your trial on Mantle, sounds like PEBKAC as you're on the minority there.

It simply comes down to AMD have better frame times on BF4, Mantle improves on cpu+gpu rendering times hence you get a thinner, more consistent rendering line hence you get smoother gameplay. When i play with a single card in DX11 the line is smooth and thin. When you use Mantle its smoother and thinner. You notice the difference. It is immediately noticeable. Everyone in our TS noticed it who owned 290 cards and numerous people notice it here, not to mention review sites. Seems like its only you and your mate, who don't, so its likely PEBKAC there.

I'm not disputing that people are saying it's smoother. What I'm saying is that the majority are also saying that their DX experience wasn't stellar too. So the improvements are obvious.

So they've all compared AMD DX and Mantle next to Nvidia DX next to each other?

All you're doing is explaining the effects of what you're seeing on the graph so it's still anecdotal. As I said you said every driver was smoother a couple of years ago so... this was why I said let the hype die down and analyse it properly.

Still no graph link.

If I can get PEBKAC then I'd be amazed as it was a fresh install of Windows with only drivers installed. Not sure how I can get PEBKAC double clicking an install file but I suppose there's a first for everything .

 

[LtMatt]

I'm not disputing that people are saying it's smoother. What I'm saying is that the majority are also saying that their DX experience wasn't stellar too. So the improvements are obvious.

So they've all compared AMD DX and Mantle next to Nvidia DX next to each other?

All you're doing is explaining the effects of what you're seeing on the graph so it's still anecdotal. As I said you said every driver was smoother a couple of years ago so... this was why I said let the hype die down and analyse it properly.

Still no graph link.

If I can get PEBKAC then I'd be amazed as it was a fresh install of Windows with only drivers installed. Not sure how I can get PEBKAC double clicking an install file but I suppose there's a first for everything .

AMD have lower frame times Rusty, so if anything Mantle would potentially have more effect on lowering frame times on your 780 than it would on my 290 as AMD already have a slight lead in this area. That performance overlay, that measures the frame times of how long it takes the cpu and gpu to render the frames. When you have two cards, the gpu rendering time is doubled, hence it appears above the cpu line. So heres the thing, mantle decreases the rendering time significantly on the gpu and the cpu so its improving both (not just the gpu rendering) and that why is why everyone notices a smoothness improvement with both combined it makes for a superior experience.

A massive reduction in CPU dependent situations, which to be fair is almost never on a gaming rig. Still, even less reasons to buy an i7 for gaming now, at least until games with a lot more simulation come out.

Slight average fps improvements at GPU limited scenaries might not tell the whole story. Mantle is supposed to reduce lag spikes and micro-stuttering due to improved sheduling, e.g. no random shader recompilation lags. I look forward to seeing FCAT frame times (from techreport or otherwise).

Edit: And DICE showed exactly that: (frame times in ms, lower/less variation is better)


low: AMD A10-7850K (‘Kaveri’ APU), 4 cores @ 3.7 GHz



mid: AMD FX-8350, 8 cores @ 4 GHz, AMD Radeon 7970 3 GB



multi-GPU: Intel Core i7-3970x Extreme, 12 logical cores @ 3.5 GHz, 2x AMD Radeon R9 290x 4 GB

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=98939900&postcount=28


Those were pulled from Single player. The gains in multiplayer will be twice that, maybe more.

EDIT

Heres your techspot link as well

http://www.techspot.com/review/762-gigabyte-radeon-r9-290-oc/page3.html

 

[Gregster]

Mate you said EVERY driver felt smoother back in the BF3 days . Placebo much? You haven't linked to the article you graph grabbed from either.

Apart from this thread being a repost (surprised the mods have allowed it to remain in honesty?), that is pretty much spot on.

Time and time again, I read "These new AMD drivers make BF3 feel so smooth" from many users, so for me, they were shockingly bad and improved frame times or they improved frame rates and this made the game feel smoother.

2 weeks with Mantle now and reading around the internet, I have a good understanding of what Mantle is like and for the masses, it is ok but have gone back to 13.12 or even 13.11 and DX has been gimped on 14.1. The hardcore AMD crews are adamant that Mantle is fantastic and what the industry needed and the guys who appear unbiased say it gives a tiny boost to BF4 but more interested in it in future games, as BF4 is a mess.

 

[Silent_Scone]

That is what you call flogging a dead horse.


Give it time, and wind down the fanaticism

 

[Rusty0611]

AMD have lower frame times Rusty, so if anything Mantle would potentially have more effect on lowering frame times on your 780 than it would on my 290 as AMD already have a slight lead in this area. That performance overlay, that measures the frame times of how long it takes the cpu and gpu to render the frames. When you have two cards, the gpu rendering time is doubled, hence it appears above the cpu line. So heres the thing, mantle decreases the rendering time significantly on the gpu and the cpu so its improving both (not just the gpu rendering) and that why is why everyone notices a smoothness improvement with both combined it makes for a superior experience.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=98939900&postcount=28


Those were pulled from Single player. The gains in multiplayer will be twice that, maybe more.

EDIT

Heres your techspot link as well

http://www.techspot.com/review/762-gigabyte-radeon-r9-290-oc/page3.html

I think you're not getting my point or you're purposefully arguing a straw man because everything you're linking is AMD DX vs Mantle or multi-GPU or both. I'm not saying AMD haven't improved the situation. What I'm saying is that the place they have improved it to, to me, was not noticeably different from nvidia's DX version. Whereas we could tell a difference between AMD Mantle and AMD DX they (AMD Mantle and Nvidia DX) were roughly equally as smooth at 100-110 FPS (ish). We don't have multi GPU to test that angle hence no comment on it. The gains there look impressive.

Thanks for the link at last . The graph at 1080p (what I was looking at myself as only noobs play at 60 Hz ) is more interesting to me.

They all have low frame times but anyway this isn't the 14.1 driver so it's not a correct comparison point.

Not sure why they're suddenly a touch higher at higher res, no comments to explain.

Anyway these graphs aren't showing frame consistency just 99th percentile which is different. Also the difference at 1080p is a couple of ms so not that noticeable a difference.

 

[Besty]

Argh another mantle graph thread. Noooooooooo

 

[Rusty0611]

RTM a mod and get it merged? It has already been reported in the BF4 thread. Not Matt's fault as the original author has had their work republished on the site in the OP.