Nvidia Boasts New Driver Surpasses AMD's Mantle in Games

Leading up to Nvidia's GPU Technology Conference, the graphics company is making some noise about its own solution to compete against AMD's Mantle API. Instead of creating its own competing API, however, Nvidia's decided to see what it could do with its own drivers to speed up Direct3D.

An upcoming driver update promises some pretty substantial gains – in some cases even surpassing AMD's best performance with Mantle – if you'll believe Nvidia's own numbers. We'll have to do our own testing to be sure, of course, but for now we'll have to say that it sounds mighty impressive.

In Star Swarm, Nvidia claims that it has improved performance with double-digit gains, surpassing AMD's Mantle. To its credit, Nvidia did clarify that its new driver has a higher average frame rate, but still has more slow frames than Mantle – something that Nvidia will continue to chip away at. What's impressive is how much room there was for optimization out of the same hardware with just a driver update.

For Thief, which just got Mantle support, Nvidia's showing off its new gains from optimizing Direct3D, which is now faster than AMD's solution. The lead between Mantle and Nvidia's D3D driver is just a few frames, but the slow but steady gain from each new driver will be a nice sight for GeForce GTX 780 Ti owners.

Read more: Thief Patch Enables TrueAudio And Mantle: First Benchmarks

Nvidia used these two cases as proof that it didn't need to go with a special new API for great performance, choosing instead to optimize for existing standards – particularly in instances where an application is CPU-bound. Nvidia did, however, concede that there is a lot of room for efficiency improvements in DirectX 11, which is why the company is putting its weight behind DirectX 12.

The new driver will be released sometime in April.

Stay tuned for more from Nvidia GTC.

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
  • ferooxidan
    It is a proven fact that GTX780Ti is faster and better than R9-290X! Nvidia, who are you kidding? Still, with Mantle, AMD just need to do a driver update as well since it is still Beta anyway. Logic, Nvidia, logic please. DX12 may become your salvation since it is similar to Mantle from what I heard (hence they claim they don't need their own API), but still this article is a joke from Nvidia.
    Reply
  • MNichael4991
    Will this also help the rest of the 700 series and the last generation 600 series?
    Reply
  • tinmann
    AMD's drivers are the only joke here. Yon never see they term certified or the acronym WHQL when referring to Catalyst drivers because they are in a perpetual state of Beta.
    Reply
  • cinergy
    Nvidia's own false graphs again. Nvidia is scared of Mantle as they should be. Mantle support will continue spreading and soon no-one will be buying nvidia's inferior products.
    Reply
  • ikefu
    I don't buy it. The 780Ti is a faster and more expensive piece of hardware than a 290x so it has an advantage without drivers. Also, Mantle is new and not fully unlocked in its potential yet. More gains will come of it. I think this is Nvidia trying to dodge the fact that they are late to the low level API party which needs to happen. Hopefully DirectX12 can help them out there. PCs NEED low level APIs to unbottleneck the CPUs regardless of vendor preference.
    Reply
  • Mousemonkey
    12958822 said:
    Nvidia's own false graphs again. Nvidia is scared of Mantle as they should be. Mantle support will continue spreading and soon no-one will be buying nvidia's inferior products.

    Why would Nvidia be scared of something that a now ex AMD employee stated that nobody wants?

    “It’s not something most developers want,” he said. “If you held a vote among developers, they would go for DirectX or Open GL, because it’s a great platform.”

    http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/33723/AMD_Walks_Back_Comments_On_DirectX_Performance_Impact.php

    That was back in 2011 so it's kind of funny that the PR line a couple of years later is the exact opposite! :lol:
    Reply
  • blackjackedy
    Honestly I don't think this is any different to drivers which come out soon after games are released to squeeze a little more performance out. The system is clearly not cpu limited as it is running on a SB-E 6-core, so Mantle wouldn't be helping AMD very much in this situation.

    If they showed more games or benchmarks from a few years ago or in a situation which wasn't so clearly cpu limited I'd change my mind, but until then I'm not buying it as anything more than Nvidia marketing. Remember Bulldozer and Fermi, don't believe the hype

    EDIT: The Thief graph shows only a 4fps increase, which is nice from a driver but barely revolutionary
    Reply
  • elcentral
    This kinda matters little, if i understand mantles main goal it is so the game producers can optimize on there own game. ofc Dx can do the same resolute but can it be done without eny help or optimization from nvidia? i feel Nvidia missed the point or did i ?
    Reply
  • ZolaIII
    Mantle is open sourcing soon!It will be merged (as a similar solution): in OGL! The upcoming Nv SoCs GPU drivers will also be a open sourced with all Nvs help. DX as a property will lose against OGL & more develops will turn to OGL... Nv is probably right that they don't need to develop they one lo lv api. They will probably have a temporal disadvantage. As much as I like AMD the Nv still have the best driver division in the business, not glorious as it whose bat still the best.
    Reply
  • vaughn2k
    Apples to Apples and Orange to Orange please. Mantle is all about direct communication with the hardware, and removing CPU bottleneck, D3D is still with CPU bottleneck. But I got to admit those numbers are pretty impressive, though, but like nVidia said "Nvidia did clarify that its new driver has a higher average frame rate, but still has more slow frames than Mantle – something that Nvidia will continue to chip away at..." let us wait for Tom's review... to be fair...
    Reply