AMD to turn the tables on Intel in CPU race?

[Orangey]

Last night AMD held a presentation of their new Mantle API, which claims to provide amazing load-balancing across many cores and GPUs, among other things. There was a test game presented by Oxide Games wherein a FX8350 downclocked to 2GHz was being bottlenecked by a 290X.

Here are the tweets from someone in attendance:

https://twitter.com/ryanshrout

Key points:

- 8350 downclocked to 2GHz being GPU-bound by a 290X
- 8350 now on par with 4770K
- 100,000 drawcalls

Should Intel be worried?

 

[Orangey]

But but but... If CPUs are now being bottlenecked by the top end GPUs, what excuse will we have to upgrade?
Have AMD just negated the need for me to buy a CPU from them (or Intel) at any point in the near future?

Could this mean AMD CPUs will be a viable option for Guild Wars 2?
Or is Guild Wars 2 not going to support Mantle?
Does anyone still play GW2?

Should be interesting to see how much improved video encoding is with Mantle!
Although video encoding doesn't really use GPUs so I guess that wont be a bottleneck.
Guess it also means video encoders won't bother with Mantle.

Makes me think there may be more to computing than playing games. Maybe some of these other activities will still be poor on AMD CPUs compared to Intel ones.

So no, I don't think AMD have.

Wait, did I just fall foul of a troll thread...

The way hardware and software are intertwined, we will come to think of today's max settings and effects as mid-range. The extra grunt available will always be eyed hungrily by top developers. It won't happen overnight though, 3-4 years maybe. In the meantime the few games that make full use of Mantle might have some crazy low requirements comparitively, but don't panic, you will still need an i7.