Battlefield 4 Mantle Update Delayed Until January
by Ryan Smith on December 30, 2013 4:00 PM EST
AMD and Electronic Arts send word this afternoon that the Mantle update for Battlefield 4 has been delayed until next month. The update was previously scheduled for late December, however any slippage on that schedule would push the release to January, which it appears is exactly what has happened. AMD and EA have released a short and highly sanitized statement on the matter.
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.
With that in mind, for Battlefield 4 players it’s well known that DICE is in the middle of a massive bug hunt due to a number of recurring (and sometimes severe) bugs in the game, which has led to DICE pausing most other development tasks in order to focus on fixing bugs. As such there’s been a lot of speculation over whether Mantle would be delayed as part of the bug hunt, and to minimal surprise this seems to be what has happened.
With that said, while Electronic Arts’ statement is unfortunately (but not unexpectedly) light on details, given the compartmentalized development of modern engines and the bugs facing Battlefield 4 we have good reason to believe that Mantle development itself has only been minimally impeded (if affected at all) since the bulk of BF4’s issues are not in the rendering engine. Instead it’s far more likely that DICE and EA’s QA teams are tied up finding bugs and testing fixes, which would require delaying the Mantle update due to a lack of resources to validate it. The silver lining on all of this being that if our assumption is right, it would at least mean the Frostbite rendering team would have more time to spend on the project while waiting for QA resources to be freed up.
As for the state of the Mantle API itself, we don’t expect that this will change anything. AMD is already working with other developers on Mantle and we’ve already seen Mantle on display at the 2013 AMD Developer Summit, so we know it’s up and running in development form. But as Battlefield 4 is still going to be AMD’s launch vehicle for Mantle, this means that AMD’s consumer Mantle plans are essentially delayed in lockstep with Battlefield 4.
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Morawka - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
AMD just needs to start making cards built for mining at increased prices. They have a full custom division so it shouldn't be that hard to do.tuklap - Wednesday, January 15, 2014 - link
No need. as long as amd cards are selling, they are good to goHomeles - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link
*Everywhere in the USWreckage - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link
All 3 of them?JlHADJOE - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link
I would have been far more surprised if it actually launched on time. They don't call the company Advanced Micro Delays for nothing.Alexvrb - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link
It seems to be a case of DICE delaying their Mantle patch (since they're dedicating all their resources to general bugfixes), rather than AMD delaying Mantle. Their frame pacing is a bit behind schedule but it's coming along pretty well. The only thing they seem to really be dragging their feet on is Enduro fixes.Arkive - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link
Houston, sarcasm detection has gone offline. Switching to manual.bwat47 - Saturday, January 11, 2014 - link
The BF4 mantle update was only delayed because of EA/DICE's incompetent launch of BF4, not because of any issues or delays with the mantle API itself. And catalyst has had frame-pacing since like 13.8...Cellar Door - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link
So unexpected that they waited till the 30th, since there was still hope to launch tomorrow :DTheJian - Wednesday, January 1, 2014 - link
If this was true, we'd have a delayed until "jan 1st"...But we got, delayed until we un-delay it...ROFL.This is the price you pay when you divert funds from your core projects (cpus/gpus) for consoles which are dying instead. We get a cpu race that ends (Intel won), a delayed enduro (AMD users are actually doing more work than AMD on this and AMD is incorporating their work...ROFL), eyefinity issues, frame pacing, driver delays even for FIXES, Mantle delay etc etc...We should not even be discussing PHASE 1 let alone a PHASE 2. How long before AMD gives up the GPU race? How much did consoles REALLY cost in the end? How much rep damage has AMD done with all the driver crap? How much did they damage their rep with a hot, noisy gpu that runs so close to max their own cooling solution couldn't get the job done?
This really can't get much worse I guess. That should have been Ryan's "Silver Lining". But he loves AMD (so does anandtech, I see no NV portal yet...LOL), so his idea of a silver lining is one day it MIGHT work. If it was just QA (which EA doesn't know the meaning of, hence BF4 beta retail product) we would already be beta testing it just like the actual game itself...ROFL. Why would EA hold back from you beta testing Mantle just like the actual game? EA has shown they have no respect for customers and are more than happy to have you patch their stuff to death for ages.