Stefan Mileschin

Hello PC gaming fans! With the recent announcement of widespread availability of the entire AMD Radeon™ R9 Series graphics lineup at original suggested list prices, there could hardly be a better time to get your game on with AMD. This week we're focusing on one of the AMD Radeon R9 Series graphics cards' most compelling attributes: Mantle API support. Mantle is already enjoying rapid industry adoption, but there are a few recent developments that are once again causing Mantle to make news in the media: On March 19 we announced a technology partnership that will add Mantle support to CRYENGINE® — the game engine behind blockbuster titles like Crysis and FarCry. On March 20 Microsoft announced DirectX® 12, the next major evolution of its own game API. This is terrific news because it really draws attention to the value of low-level programming and Mantle's leading contribution. With DirectX 12 games still over 18 months away and no alternatives in sight for Linux gamers, Mantle's future looks bright. On April 14 we announced that the upcoming release of Sid Meier's Civilization®: Beyond Earth will support Mantle. In case you're not familiar with the series, the current iteration is Civilization V, which, despite being nearly four years old, remains the sixth most played game according to Steam1. With Mantle in its arsenal, the next installment could be even bigger. On April 16 we published a Mantle whitepaper, giving developers and enthusiast gamers a deep, technical insight into the technology. Have a look to find out how Mantle delivers such dramatic performance increases. On May 1 we launched the Mantle SDK beta, which made Mantle available to a much greater number and variety of game developers. That should help accelerate the proliferation of Mantle-enabled game titles. On June 9 EA announced that three of its upcoming games would support Mantle: Battlefield Hardline, Dragon Age Inquisition and Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare. Each of these brings new features, maps and gameplay to already-popular franchises. If the results we saw with Mantle in Battlefield 4 are anything to go by, these games should absolutely fly on AMD Radeon™ hardware.

http://www.hardocp.com/news/2014/06/...es_are_on_way/