AMD Ceases Further Mantle Optimizations For Future Graphics Cards


With Vulkan and DX12 just around the corner, it appears that AMD has officially stopped working on its low-level API, Mantle. While the red team will not be dropping Mantle support for its GCN graphics cards, it has ceased all further Mantle optimizations for its future GPUs.

This information comes from Anandtech who claimed that AMD has confirmed its intentions to cease all further Mantle optimizations for all its graphics cards.

As Anandtech wrote:

“AMD has confirmed that while they are not outright dropping Mantle support, they have ceased all further Mantle optimization. Of particular note, the Mantle driver has not been optimized at all for GCN 1.2, which includes not just R9 Fury X, but R9 285, R9 380, and the Carrizo APU as well. Mantle titles will probably still work on these products.”

And to be honest, this was to be expected. Like it or not, this is exactly what NVIDIA claimed a few months ago, and that’s precisely why the green team did not support this API. Okay okay, NVIDIA would not support this API no matter what.

Still, it’s a bit disappointing that AMD decided to cease further Mantle optimizations for its future graphics cards.