AMD Mantle Vs. Direct X Battlefield 4 Multiplayer Benchmarks

[Rusty0611]

Can I just ask a silly question... is DX really screwed in 14.1? Is it worth me going back to 13.12's then?

Only if you're having problems mate. If it's OK for you then leave it as it. People have noticed issues in DX in 14.1 is all and have rolled back.

 

[LtMatt]

Ahhhh the "suit my argument only debate". You deliberately picked the most CPU demanding part of the SP to demonstrate the CPU bottleneck to skew your results in your BF4 bench thread (another one that was started here). I don't care either way and the OP shows the possible gains but it isn't representative for all and another part of the game will show little to no improvement, so it is all relative.

frametimes are all well and good but like Rusty has stated and I have seen graphs of yours and other users that show AMD to have frametimes very similar to what we are seeing now, so placebo effect is indeed happening.

What argument?

I posted multi player benches in the OP. That was pretty clear. I think everyone here knows that's where you will see the biggest gains.

I benched the part Johan recommended as its the most demanding on cpu+gpu in the single player campaign. I don't see the point in benching a part that has no cpu usage requirement at all. What would be the point in that? You have to bench a demanding sequence to try and best replicate demanding online play.

Doing anything else is a waste. Its why it was no surprise to me that pcper did this.

Worst Case Scenario

Our standard level and section used for testing Battlefield 4 is the opening portions of the single player SP_Dam stage. As it turns out, this section is quite GPU limited (as we would normally want for our GPU testing...) but this doesn't fair well for AMD's Mantle out of the gate. Here are results with the Core i7-3960X and R9 290X at 2560x1600 with the Ultra preset.

Even in their worst case scenario look at the benefits Mantle offers over DX11. Worst case!!

Rusty will be disappointed to see excellent consistency on frame times, even on DX11. Thanks Greg for helping me find these, didn't realise they existed. So there goes Rusty's consistency argument out of the window. Although both gpu rendering lines are smooth, Mantle is marginally better on worst case scenario. You go online for a better case scenario, maybe even with lesser cpu hardware and those improvements will climb much higher.

 

[Neil79]

What's the usual time scale between each official driver release?

 

[Rusty0611]

Rusty will be disappointed to see excellent consistency on frame times, even on DX11. Thanks Greg for helping me find these, didn't realise they existed. So there goes Rusty's consistency argument out of the window. Although both gpu rendering lines are smooth, Mantle is marginally better on worst case scenario. You go online for a better case scenario, maybe even with lesser cpu hardware and those improvements will climb much higher.


http://i.imgur.com/yknq6Io.png[IMG]


[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/p3SJZ2U.png[IMG][/QUOTE]

Not really. I'm laughing because you're still attacking the straw man :D. I suggested frame times and frame consistency as a reason not the absolute reason. :D

I don't know why Mantle is appearing so much smoother over DX. HardOCP said frame times, not me. I just suggested this may be the reason.

But everyone knows you're not allowed to say anything other than glowing positivities about Mantle in this sub forum...

 

[Calin Banc]

You deliberately picked the most CPU demanding part of the SP to demonstrate the CPU bottleneck to skew your results in your BF4 bench thread

Well, that was the point when testing the performance on the CPU part, isn't it? It's not like you're testing GPUs on situations that put more emphasis on the CPU. I'll repeat this, as it seems not sink in: the purpose of this API is to relieve pressure from the CPU on the rendering part and in the future, innovate on computer graphics by doing stuff easier and in a way that was impossible under DX.

I too can get 0% gains if I want, but that's no real use, as I cannot play at those settings on a decent frame rate. Lower them and Mantle slowly kicks in.

But everyone knows you're not allowed to say anything other than glowing positivities about Mantle in this sub forum...

Base them on facts and take into consideration the idea that you may be wrong. No one will argue with that.

 

[humbug]

Its not frame times, frame times are very good, compared to Nvidia or not, the frame times don't actually improve, i don't think they can from what they are in DX, its something else.

That line graph in BF4, its pencil line straight in Mantle.

 

[Final8y]

I would not have expected that.

 

[LtMatt]

Not really. I'm laughing because you're still attacking the straw man . I suggested frame times and frame consistency as a reason not the absolute reason.

I don't know why Mantle is appearing so much smoother over DX. HardOCP said frame times, not me. I just suggested this may be the reason.

But everyone knows you're not allowed to say anything other than glowing positivities about Mantle in this sub forum...

Laugh away my friend. I'm just explaining to you why Mantle will give improved smoothness. Mantle is appearing smoother than DX11 because the API is a bottleneck. Just because you have a 780 does not mean you're excluded from the drawbacks of the API itself. Mantle is smoother and faster than DX. A 290 on Mantle will show smoother performance (lower gpu+cpu render times) than a 780 on DX. A 290 is currently showing similar or better frame times than a 780 with similar or better frame variance.

I don't think anyone cares if people say bad things about Mantle. That's what the feedback thread is for. I've criticised the drivers for not having crossfire working, but thats the problem when you have a new beta api coupled with beta drivers.

Its not frame times, frame times are very good, compared to Nvidia or not, the frame times don't actually improve, i don't think they can from what they are in DX, its something else.

That line graph in BF4, its pencil line straight in Mantle.

Yes gpu render times are already very good on DX for both sides. However Mantle is more efficient so its gpu render times will still be lower than DX overall. In that worst case scenario above you can see that even then the Mantle line is considerably thinner which means time spent by the gpu rendering each frame.

 

[Gregster]

So are they testing DX on 14.1 or testing DX on 13.12?

Everyone knows that DX on 14.1 is gimped and frames look very low to me for a 290X? Another point you made a while ago Matt is MP is uesless, as there is so many variables that can take place, but these tests from Hardwareluxx look good so now it is ok?

 

[Rusty0611]

Its not frame times, frame times are very good, compared to Nvidia or not, the frame times don't actually improve, i don't think they can from what they are in DX, its something else.

That line graph in BF4, its pencil line straight in Mantle.

Yeah they look good there. Honestly though my DX experience in BF4 is flawless. It's probably my set up though which is fully GPU limited.

For anyone else: don't confuse that with me not thinking improvements aren't possible or that Mantle isn't doing the right things... I'm just sceptical about what benefits are being provided currently over a similar high end nVidia set up. I think that's largely the problem. We all know people can't understand somebody's point unless they're grouped in a red or green camp. The backwards and forwards defending is as a result of this mindset.

Laugh away my friend. I'm just explaining to you why Mantle will give improved smoothness. Mantle is appearing smoother than DX11 because the API is a bottleneck. Just because you have a 780 does not mean you're excluded from the drawbacks of the API itself. Mantle is smoother and faster than DX. A 290 on Mantle will show smoother performance (lower gpu+cpu render times) than a 780 on DX. A 290 is currently showing similar or better frame times than a 780 with similar or better frame variance.

I don't think anyone cares if people say bad things about Mantle. That's what the feedback thread is for. I've criticised the drivers for not having crossfire working, but thats the problem when you have a new beta api coupled with beta drivers.

You're right I'm not excluded but as we have seen the gains in a GPU limited scenario (of which I fall into) are tiny - say 5-10%? I've tried Mantle and for me there wasn't any perceivable difference between Mantle on AMD and DX on my 780. If I was splitting hairs the AMD set up was marginally smoother but I dunno that was me looking for some difference. I was quite disappointed tbh. But that was a different comparison point to most of you who are only seeing the AMD side of it so you don't need to graph spam me a load of DX vs Mantle AMD graphs again.

Again, I have no idea why the AMD DX side of things is not stellar compared to Mantle. I was only trying to offer an explanation but if the frame times and consistency is OK then fair enough.

 

[LtMatt]

So are they testing DX on 14.1 or testing DX on 13.12?

Everyone knows that DX on 14.1 is gimped and frames look very low to me for a 290X? Another point you made a while ago Matt is MP is uesless, as there is so many variables that can take place, but these tests from Hardwareluxx look good so now it is ok?

14.1 worked fine for me on DX. I went back to 13.12 WHQL though because crossfire did not work at all on 14.1.

Single player is best for consistency yes of course. But in this case its better to try as best as possible to test multi player because thats where the biggest performance improvements are and that's what everyone plays the game for.

Yeah they look good there. Honestly though my DX experience in BF4 is flawless. It's probably my set up though which is fully GPU limited.

For anyone else: don't confuse that with me not thinking improvements aren't possible or that Mantle isn't doing the right things... I'm just sceptical about what benefits are being provided currently over a similar high end nVidia set up. I think that's largely the problem. We all know people can't understand somebody's point unless they're grouped in a red or green camp. The backwards and forwards defending is as a result of this mindset.

If i get gains and can notice a difference on a single card, you would as well Rusty.

 

[Calin Banc]

I'm just sceptical about what benefits are being provided currently over a similar high end nVidia set up.

More performance on a weaker platform, less on a stronger one. This has been proven already.

 

[Rusty0611]

More performance on a weaker platform, less on a stronger one. This has been proven already.

I've never said anything to the contrary . This is the problem when you don't read the posts being written .

8% gain at 1600p. Wonderful .

If i get gains and can notice a difference on a single card, you would as well Rusty.

Not being funny mate but again, you said every driver from about 12.3 onwards was smoother in BF3 so I'm just saying that it's important to let the hype down and analyse it objectively.

 

[shankly1985]

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.

The choppy that I speak of is when your frame rate takes a hit. On DirectX when the frame rate drops the game feels choppy, but in Mantle it don't it keeps feeling smooth.

 

[LtMatt]

Not being funny mate but again, you said every driver from about 12.3 onwards was smoother in BF3 so I'm just saying that it's important to let the hype down and analyse it objectively.

I have and ive looked at the gpu+cpu render times for my own outputs, so i know its smoother. Then i see these pcper graphs, i see the testing Dice did and published all over battlelog. The most important thing? I run the performance overlay 24/7. If i see a change in rendering behaviour and a smoothness/performance increase, i notice it immediately. This is not just being made up by everyone Rusty to counter your argument.

 

[Gregster]

So do people think those frame on ultra look good then for either DX or Mantle? Also, don't confuse my scepticism for wanting to see Mantle fail. I am all for seeing this being a success but would rather keep my feet on the ground before getting carried away. I have seen many results for Siege of Shanghai and they surpass those both easily with stock clocks on the GPU.

Lol so the moral of the story is, use the 13.12 WHQL drivers like LT has been saying since the start.

 

[Rusty0611]

The choppy that I speak of is when your frame rate takes a hit. On DirectX when the frame rate drops the game feels choppy, but in Mantle it don't it keeps feeling smooth.

Fair enough. Sounds like what Gsync is meant to do . Speaking of which what's the latest on that and Freesync? Wrong thread perhaps.

I have and ive looked at the gpu+cpu render times for my own outputs, so i know its smoother. Then i see these pcper graphs, i see the testing Dice did and published all over battlelog. The most important thing? I run the performance overlay 24/7. If i see a change in rendering behaviour and a smoothness/performance increase, i notice it immediately. This is not just being made up by everyone Rusty to counter your argument.

You're still attacking the straw man as you're arguing along the lines that I'm saying there's no improvement between AMD DX and AMD Mantle which I'm not. Dunno what else to say really.

 

[shankly1985]

Take look at this Ultra footage I recorded with Mantle. Note how smooth the GPU and CPU line is. Now you go and do the same recording on same map with DirectX and you watch your line will be all over the place. With higher Frame times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q4fR36ix04

Fair enough. Sounds like what Gsync is meant to do . Speaking of which what's the latest on that and Freesync? Wrong thread perhaps.

FreeSync will be a while yet, and as someone here who dont touch sync I have zero need for it

 

[Martini1991]

14.1 lowered my performance in all DirectX games that I was playing at the time (My Fifa went from 500 FPS to struggling to break 200, and it wasn't as smooth either, little stutters etc).
And I just installed AMD Drivers like I always do.

Had to do a reinstall of windows for it to fix, on 13.12 everything's fine, flawless in fact.

Mantle may be great, but I'm not going to ruin all my other games for it.

 

[Final8y]

Dunno what else to say really.

What a relief.