NEW YORK: The US-based graphics card specialist AMD is pulling up optimizations for its PC gaming API Mantle, for current and future GPUs. The firm will continue its Mantle API support for the cards at the driver level, but will not release any performance optimizations in the future.
Mantle was launched in 2013 with the aim to provide developers with increased number of draw-calls that can be parsed by an AMD GPU. This would result in freeing up more system resources, ultimately offering a significant performance boost over Microsoft’s DirectX 11.
While the API did bring some of the AAA PC games such as Battlefield 4, Thief, Sniper Elite III, and Star Citizen on board, things haven’t really worked out as planned. The gains Mantle achieved over DirectX weren’t as significant as AMD had hoped for. Further, the effects will become almost non-existent once DirectX 12 arrives this year.
So the chipmaker has now decided to withdraw Mantle and throw all of its weight on DirectX 12 and Vulkan. It is encouraging developers to use those APIs and not Mantle, for future games.
DirectX 12 is said to have huge increases in draw-calls over its predecessor, along with bringing a number of potential performance tweaks. The new API will reportedly make its official debut with Windows 10, later this month.
As for AMD, it will continue working on Mantle as an “innovation base” for its upcoming tech, such as LiquidVR.
