Report: AMD's Catalyst 14.1 Beta Driver to Carry Pack Patch

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Hopefully, we'll soon be re-benchmarking Battlefield 4 with AMD's Mantle API.

Reports all over the web indicate that AMD's next Catalyst driver, Catalyst 14.1 Beta, will carry the Mantle API. Based on the numbering of this driver, it is due for release sometime later this month. So far we've heard great things about Mantle, but never have seen it in action.

Mantle is an API that is intended to rival Direct3D and OpenGL, and while it's optimized for the Graphics Core Next architecture, it allows much more direct access to the hardware, allowing significant performance improvements. A recent slide leak shows that Battlefield 4 will have a performance improvement of up to 45 percent. The corner of the slide shows that this was observed on a system running with an AMD A10-7850K Kaveri APU along with an AMD Radeon R9 290X graphics card.

Are these reports accurate? We don't know, but we certainly can hope so!

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Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

32 Comments Comment from the forums
  • rolli59
    Hope we get a follow up with benchmarks as soon as released!
    Reply
  • Warsaw
    Interesting....I wonder if we'll start getting better CPU performance out of AMD's CPU's then when it's crossed between? Can't wait to see some benchmarks when fully released.
    Reply
  • ern88
    Hope this comes out before the end of this week!!!
    Reply
  • damric
    Needs mantle games for mantle to work. Hope we get some.
    Reply
  • salgado18
    If it is true then I'll be happy, as a 7970-owner, but if the A10 is somehow faster than an FX because of it's GPU/OpenCL/Wizardry, then I'll get really excited...If not, then why not use their top CPU?
    Reply
  • jimmysmitty
    I wonder if it means 45% better throughput or FPS. It seems like an insane claim and the truth is I would hope so but it is all about if the games jump onto it or if they leave it on the side.
    Reply
  • alextheblue
    Well... it will improve CPU performance in a manner of speaking, because it has less overhead than Direct3D or OpenGL. This will benefit Intel processors too (when equipped with GCN discrete graphics). However, it may actually help AMD more (as a percentage) since they tend to have lower IPC, and thus Mantle helps reduce per-thread CPU bottlenecks. I bet this will provide quite a large boost to GCN-equipped APU-only setups quite a bit (especially mobile), since it somewhat mitigates the need for faster CPU cores. How big of an impact this will have depends on how many engines support it. Frostbite is a really big win, however.
    Reply
  • iam2thecrowe
    dont really care about this for bf4, but will be interesting to see how well it works when the new thief game is released.With less cpu overhead i guess the greatest benefits will come to those with lower end cpu's.
    Reply
  • rishiswaz
    The new A10s are not faster than a 7970 on any 6 core or 8 core FX CPU, the 4 core ones will lag behind for sure but the thing is games are not optimized for hsa/huma. If AMD can work out a solution like Virtu MVP or something like that for the APUs, it would allow you to have a full graphics card running when you need it (games or heavy GPU acceleration) and have a very competent iGPU running for smaller things ( web browsing, productivity, web browser GPU acceleration, etc.). If they can get that to market with what the best they have now being the 95W TDP A10 with the iGPU included, they can really lower the TDP and keep the system cooler if the CPU was not running any graphics and a lot of potential in that for Mini-ITX and Steam Machine markets
    Reply
  • LtRoyalShrimp
    If this is with an A10, imagine the performance with a 4770k. Oogle.
    Reply