I see a lot of users complaining that their AMD gpu does not support Mantle, or does not work properly with Battlefield 4 + Mantle and that only the 290 series have proper Mantle support. These AMD gpu's are typically GCN 1.0 gpu's. The Tahiti, PitCairns and Cape Verde's of this world or as most better know them the 7000/280/270/260 series.
As you will all know I'm passionate about Mantle. I post about it enough here, however i cannot support these complaints. These complaints are not true and I've discovered what the problem is. It's not Mantles fault and It's not AMD's fault. The problem lies with Mantle’s implementation in the Frostbite engine. Who is responsible for this engine implementation? That would be Johan Andersson/Dice.
The problem is Mantle uses a lot of vram and it keeps going up the longer you play. This is a big problem for people with memory lower than 3gb per card and it even affects some 3gb users too. This is not a Mantle problem, this does not occur on Thief or Starswarm. This is an application issue and the responsibility to fix it lies solely at the feet of Johan Andersson/Dice/EA.
I have spent time testing Battlefield 4, Battlefield Hardline and Plants Vs Zombies on a 290 4GB crossfire setup and a HD7770 1GB setup. Everything runs perfectly on the 290 setup, but on the 7770 setup i find myself running out of vram on every title unless i use low-medium settings. Even on low settings i sometimes exceed the limit and this results in performance dropping off a cliff as system memory is used for texture fetching. It also appears that after each round is over, Frostbites Mantle implementation does not empty the vram unlike DX.
My message to Johan Andersson/Dice/EA is as follows. You've done a truly wonderful thing implementing the Mantle renderer into the Frostbite engine. For the large part it runs unbelievable well, to the point that sometimes I'm not even sure if im playing the same game i played previously under DX11. However your job is not finished, there is still work to be done. You absolutely must redesign the memory management. It's the achilles heel of the best API I've ever used. I see a slide here where you say you're considering doing this, what happened to this? Have you given up with a job part done? Why not smooth off the edges of your masterpiece?
I'm interested to hear from AMD Mantle users and what they think. Do you have any data that highlights the vram issues under the Frostbite Mantle implementation? Do you think this should be fixed? Do you think it's acceptable that the one problem Mantle has under the Frostbite engine has not been addressed yet? Post your support here and lets see if we can get something done about this to benefit AMD users with lower specced gpu's who use Mantle under the Frostbite engine.
As you will all know I'm passionate about Mantle. I post about it enough here, however i cannot support these complaints. These complaints are not true and I've discovered what the problem is. It's not Mantles fault and It's not AMD's fault. The problem lies with Mantle’s implementation in the Frostbite engine. Who is responsible for this engine implementation? That would be Johan Andersson/Dice.
The problem is Mantle uses a lot of vram and it keeps going up the longer you play. This is a big problem for people with memory lower than 3gb per card and it even affects some 3gb users too. This is not a Mantle problem, this does not occur on Thief or Starswarm. This is an application issue and the responsibility to fix it lies solely at the feet of Johan Andersson/Dice/EA.
I have spent time testing Battlefield 4, Battlefield Hardline and Plants Vs Zombies on a 290 4GB crossfire setup and a HD7770 1GB setup. Everything runs perfectly on the 290 setup, but on the 7770 setup i find myself running out of vram on every title unless i use low-medium settings. Even on low settings i sometimes exceed the limit and this results in performance dropping off a cliff as system memory is used for texture fetching. It also appears that after each round is over, Frostbites Mantle implementation does not empty the vram unlike DX.
My message to Johan Andersson/Dice/EA is as follows. You've done a truly wonderful thing implementing the Mantle renderer into the Frostbite engine. For the large part it runs unbelievable well, to the point that sometimes I'm not even sure if im playing the same game i played previously under DX11. However your job is not finished, there is still work to be done. You absolutely must redesign the memory management. It's the achilles heel of the best API I've ever used. I see a slide here where you say you're considering doing this, what happened to this? Have you given up with a job part done? Why not smooth off the edges of your masterpiece?
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