AMD will “ridicule” Nvidia with R9 290X

AMD expects that their Mantle API will give them a leg up on the competition and “ridicule” the Geforce GTX Titan. This is according to Product Manager Devon Nekechuck, who sat down for an interview with Maximum PC.

Nekechuck is confident that even on DirectX the Radeon R9 290X will be competitive, but says that the performance boost Mantle brings is much more welcome.

“We’re definitely looking to be competitive with the GTX780 and the Titan, that’s one of our main goals and the benefit that we’re offering to our customers. But with Battlefield 4 running with Mantle, the R9 290X will be able to ridicule even the Titan in terms of performance,” Nekechuck claims.

When Maximum PC asked for further clarification, Nekechuck explained that Mantle would allow GCN-based graphics cards to do a lot more at the same time and the game will run, under the Mantle rendering path, “much quicker and faster than the Titan” when comparing the R9 290X.

Mantle benefits

The Radeon R9 290X will go on pre-order in a Battlefield 4 bundle tomorrow, 3 October, in the US, Canada and Europe and is expected to launch on 15 October. Its smaller siblings, the R9 280X, the R9 270X and the R7 260X will debut and become available for purchase on 8 October.

Battlefield 4 launches for the PC on 29 October and will be available to purchase on EA’s Origin client. The promised Mantle update will become available in December 2013 and will require a GCN-based GPU to run optimally. Battlefield 4 is powered by the Frostbite 3.0 engine which will natively support Mantle, and is slated to power a further fourteen AAA titles from Electronic Arts this year.