The Mantle-powered framerates may have Nvidia users eating crow. Or they might not. Who knows.
It’s difficult to locate the primary source this story, but both PC Gamer and PC World are reporting that Thief will get the much-touted (at least prior to the game’s release) AMD Mantle support in an update planned for 18 March. AMD’s TrueAudio is also said to be coming in the same patch. PC World attributes this news to “an AMD spokeswoman” while PC Gamer don’t bother sourcing at all.
There’s no word of this happening on AMD’s own site, or through their twitter account. Not much sign of it from the Eidos Montreal side of things either. It’s possible this declaration was made at Game Developers Conference (GDC) which is ongoing at the moment in San Francisco.
Anyway, if this update does emerge tomorrow, chances are that means a new beta set of AMD Catalyst drivers too (14.3, one would assume.)
The Mantle update should be compatible with all AMD graphics cards that support the Application Programming Interface (API,) so that’s the R7, R9 and HD 7000 series.
Thief is not the first game to get Mantle support, as Battlefield 4 has had it for a few weeks now. However, it will be the first title to support the alternative to DirectX (almost) from launch and to therefore be designed with Mantle support in mind to some extent.
Likewise, TrueAudio will work with any compatible AMD graphics card (that’s the R7 and R9 series.) Unfortunately, Thief’s audio was somewhat broken on launch and is still in need of a general patch. With that in mind, it’s unclear how much of a showcase for TrueAudio it will really be.
