Battlefield 4 Mantle update now live -- do you get better performance?

DICE has released an update for Battlefield 4 on the PC that enables support for AMD's Mantle API, which could offer increased performance on AMD-equipped machines.

"Mantle is a new low-level graphics API that we've been working very closely with AMD on over the last 2 years, and it is a major change and improvement to how we are able to program and use modern GPUs in order to get the most out of them," said DICE technical director Johan Andersson.

"Battlefield 4 on PC is already quite heavily optimized using DirectX 11 and DirectX 11.1, but with Mantle we are able to go even further: we've significantly reduced CPU cost in our rendering, efficiently parallelized it over multiple CPU cores and reduced overhead in many areas."

To run Battlefield 4 with the Mantle API, users will require the 14.1 Catalyst Beta drivers--which are due to go live today--a Radeon GPU with Graphics Core Next, and a 64-bit version of Windows 7 or later.

Three various performance tests showed improvements of 14, 25, and 58 percent in various circumstances and hardware configurations.

The Mantle update for Battlefield 4 was originally due to go live in December.

The January 30 Battlefield 4 PC patch, which is primarily designed to prepare the game for the launch of the Second Assault DLC on PC, also includes increased damage for all DMRs, specifically at long range. The patch also reduces the duration of black screen when spawning, and adds a headshot icon to the killcard so players will know when they were actually supposed to die in one shot.

You can read more about the update on DICE's site.