I just wanted people to read this as it's the most interesting article I can find on the effect of Mantle on BF4:
http://pclab.pl/art55953-4.html
Looking at the results and comparing the three graphs, I can see AMD were not joking when they said it helps lower end CPU's keep up with the GPU. A 4770k at 4.5ghz is only 7 frames faster than a i3-4330. And this is for a 290X! never mind your lower end 7000 and r7/r9 series cards.
I think this pretty much confirms AMD will only make APU's from now on for PC market. A £85 dual core i3-4130 at 65 watts is about the same at gaming in BF4 Multiplayer as a 125w 8 core FX-8350 at £140. Pretty easy choice for the Intel there.
If Mantle becomes standard, will there be much reason for gaming with anything more than an i3?
Looking at this I think AMD needs to pull out a APU with a much better GPU than the current Kaveri (PS4 APU and better) If it wants to sell ANY more CPU chips EVER to the enthusiast gamer. That's if we see similar results across other games of course.
Agree with many statements.
Now think if it were standard. An i3 would love it for the time being... But a need for more is apparent everywhere.
Until developers use more assets and CPU time for various other things, Mantle allows not just a performance gain, but extra CPU driven details and assets within scenes at the same performance level of lesser CPU driven detailed DX11 scenes.
Less overhead, more to work with in the same performance bracket. Mantle Extreme and Mantle light :)
You're forgetting the new Kaveri APU's GPU cores are not only meant for gaming. They're to be used as extra "compute cores" for certain tasks that can be performed much faster with GPU cores. HSA and all that jazz.
The other things is; look at the jump on the A10-7850k (stock clocks). It went from 32fps to 59fps. That's nearly double the frame rate. It's the difference between barely playable to almost perfectly smooth. I know the 7850k is pricey for an APU, but I bet we'd see very similar results with the more affordable A10-7700k and A8-7600k.
I don't know why people are so interested in the improvements on the high-end components (ie: R9-290x/GTX 780 etc.). You won't SEE the difference anyways because it can already run the game at or over 60fps.
What I'd really like to see is the improvements on the lower-end to mid range, budget-oriented CPU and GPU's (ie: Athlon X4 750/760k, Haswell Pentiums and low-end i3's, + R7 and low-end R9 series cards etc.)
Most of the improvement, as you'll notice, was on the low-mid range parts. This is very good new for those building budget gaming rigs.
Of course it effects cpu choice. Do you want a kaveri and be stuck on medium settings while being 100% cpu bound or do you want to play on ultra 4xx with a playable frame rate with an i7-4970? Don't assume that since the performance gains are larger on quad cpus that all of a sudden people aren't gonna spend money for a better cpu. You also have to take into account that not all developers are gonna be on board with mantle. The industry itself has 5 or 6 things going on to port their software to. Thats a giant clusterfuck and developers have to spend even more time supporting everyones idea of what the customer wants. Hopefully the industry just decides on one platform and stick with whatever the fuck they pick. I'd rather have 30+ hour games than be saddled with 15-20 hour games because everyone wants the game to work on every platform.
First off, I can only work with the data given, i'd like more budget card tests too (7870 owner here) but that's all available here. Two, i'm not questioning Kaveri's purpose for existence, just saying it does not apply to the gaming PC bracket really. But yes it would be nice to see how low you can go on the cpu on mantle before it bottlenecks an r9 270, maybe we will find out in the coming days. I'm guessing (hoping) that something like a Pentium g3420 at under £50 may well be enough to not bottleneck say a 270x/7950 under these conditions
And yes good news for the wallet.
Mantle is about moving forward and making significant improvements. It's not about just putting out another option for devs to choose from.
The performance gains are larger (or rather more significant) on the lower-end, mid-range parts. IMO, going from 30 to 60fps is a far greater improvement than going from 70 to 90fps because it's the difference between a barely playable experience to a butter-smooth experience. That means people don't need to go out and spend more on higher-end CPU's. That's one of the main benefits of mantle's optimizations.