It doesn't make sense for R* to spend god knows how much adding Mantle when nobody owns an AMD laptop.
Because the whole point of Mantle is to improve AMD's own competitive standing,not Intel's? Plus most budget AMD non-Cat core laptops are more gaming orientated anyway and AMD has always been pushing that. Something like that A10 7300 has a 384 shader IGP and the R7 265M has a 384 shader IGP. Crossfire plus Mantle at £450ish mark would mean it would be much faster than probably many laptops in that price-range for gaming.
Plus I actually do know a reasonable of people who bought cheapish APU based laptops(mostly A10 ones) for light gaming or for LANs. All cost around the £350 to £450 mark.
Its the same with their desktop CPUs,the only way to make them look better than before and to reduce the gap with Intel CPUs is to push improved multi-threading. Intel CPUs gain from Mantle too,but AMD gains even more from it,since at most pricepoints they give you more threads when compared to the Intel competitors. Even in mobile their CPUs are closer to Intel competitors(Core i3 and Core i5 dual cores) in MT benchmarks than ST benchmarks.
FFS,even Steamroller mostly improved multi-threaded performance clock for clock over Piledriver. Plus its sweet spot is under 65W TDP,ie,for laptops.
Look at AMD Carrizzo - they are using the IPC,Turbo and process node improvements to drop TDP down to a maximum of 65W for desktops.
They are even making an SOC version to further drop power.
It also means that performance has started to stagnate somewhat too,just like with Intel on desktop,and they are starting at a lower performance profile than Intel has,especially in mobile.
Even look at servers - they are targetting microservers too,not the traditional type and these use lower TDP chips too. Their new ARM based one and future APUs will be used in them.
AMD has never has hidden what it is trying to do with Mantle. Its all in the bumpf they have put out for yonks. 2GHZ underclocked FX8350 and APUs,and so on. Yet,enthusiasts cannot even see what is even front of them,and have to construe it as something else. People forget AMD makes BOTH CPUs and graphics cards,and it is the CPU part which is dragging them down ATM.
It makes HUGE sense for them to push improved multi-threading.
Until they can come out with a better microarchitecture in 2016,they will be pushing Mantle as much as possible so their(now old) CPUs don't get totally slaughtered in all the gaming benchmarks.
So will need to agree to disagree for the reasons why AMD want to push Mantle and why it makes sense for them.
