Update:
AMD have commented on the reason for delay, and have said “The cause of the delay is due to EA’s recent decision to halt game development in favor of bug stomping.” While disappointing, at least they’re delaying for a good cause.
Original Story:
AMD’s new API (Application Programming Interface) known as Mantle has been confirmed by AMD to have been delayed a month.
“After much consideration, the decision was made to delay the Mantle patch for Battlefield 4. AMD continues to support DICE on the public introduction of Mantle, and we are tremendously excited about the coming release for Battlefield 4! We are now targeting a January release and will have more information to share in the New Year.”
Why has the Battlefield 4 Mantle Patch been delayed
Unfortunately, you’ll notice that an exact release date is missing in this announcement, only that it’ll be released sometime during January. So, who and what is to blame for this delay? There’s likely more than one culprit here, despite the temptation to purely blame DICE and Battlefield. Firstly, DICE are trying to fix the bugs that are present in both the console and PC releases of Battlefield 4. They are slowly making their way through a list of glitches which cause everything from crashing, to issues with multiplayer games.
It’s fair to say that although AMD’s Mantle is important for performance, having a game which doesn’t crash is more important for the games long term future. This is likely not the only reasons as to the small delay however.
AMD have a lot of their own projects going right now, both in terms of software and hardware. Just a few days ago, I reported on their latest drivers to help fix the frame rate pacing for their crossfire graphics cards. The issue was quickly resolved for single GPU Radeon setups from AMD, but the problem has been considerably harder for AMD to tackle where multi GPU configurations are involved. I imagine that they are likely needing to change their own drivers a little to help facilitate Mantle, and likely are ensuring things go well with Mantle and CrossFire.
I admit that from the perspective of a customer, delays are frustrating, but it’s likely for the best. We want Mantle to dazzle and impress, and if neither AMD or DICE feel that it’s quite ready yet then it’s better to have a working and impressive product. We’re not quite sure of the performance improvement yet, but I’ve heard figures touted of at least 20 percent. Draw Calls and CPU overhead are the obvious issues which the Mantle API is going to tackle, but that’s certainly not the limit.
For much more info on what AMD’s Mantle API is and how it functions then please check out this link. Mantle will work with any GCN architecture card, including the Radeon HD 7000 series, and of course AMD’s new flagship the R9 290 and R9 290X.
Source is from AMD.
