Graphics technology has been stuck on the 28nm manufacturing process for a full three years now, but that doesn’t mean AMD and Nvidia have been sitting on their proverbial thumbs.
The hardware giants have each been feverishly releasing game-enhancing software over the past couple of years, and at its “Future of Compute” event in Singapore this morning, AMD announced that two major partners are embracing a pair of the company’s technologies: Capcom is on board with Mantle, AMD’s performance-enhancing API technology, while Samsung announced the first 4K monitors with AMD FreeSync support.
The story behind the story: Both Mantle and FreeSync promise to provide a superior gaming experience—at least on AMD hardware—but neither technology is going unchallenged. Microsoft announced the awfully similar DirectX 12 API shortly after Mantle rolled out, while Nvidia offers a competing G-Sync technology of its own for use with GeForce cards. Wooing Capcom and Samsung to Team Red is a big win for AMD.
Oh, and both Mantle and FreeSync require recent AMD Radeon graphics cards to work—of course.
More Mantle
Capcom is working the Mantle API into Panta-Rhei, the gaming engine it originally created for use with next-gen gaming consoles. The only “details” come courtesy of this canned statement by Masaru Ijuin, technical director at Capcom:
“Capcom is evaluating AMD’s Mantle technology to help improve the graphics pipeline, and integrate it into ‘Panta-Rhei’ to provide outstanding benefits and impressive performance for gamers as well as the gaming developers.”
Yawn.
But corporate speak aside, Capcom is the latest in a string of big-name publishers to fiddle with Mantle. Two PC gaming stalwart studios, DICE (maker of Battlefield) and Crytek (Crysis and Far Cry), have pledged support for Mantle in their respective Frostbite 3 and Crytek engines. You can already find Mantle support in Battlefield 4, Thief, Sniper Elite 3, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare, and the recently released gems Civilization: Beyond Earth and Dragon Age: Inquisition. Future games with Mantle support scheduled include Star Citizen, Star Wars: Battlefront, Mirror’s Edge 2, and Battlefield: Hardline, along with whatever Capcom’s brewing up.