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PC gamers looking for extra performance from Thief may be in luck thanks to the newly released AMD Catalyst drivers which implement Mantle rendering.
With the new beta driver and a compatible AMD graphics card you could gain upwards of 20 per cent more frames per second.
“In Thief, Mantle is utilised to improve the graphics performance of many common PC configurations at a resolution of 1080p,” explained Robert Hallock, PR manager for Gaming & Desktop Graphics at AMD.
Hallock adds: “First up, an entry-level gaming system based on the CPU in the new AMD A10-7700K APU (the on die GPU is disabled) and an AMD Radeon R7 260X graphics card. This is a sensible CPU/GPU combination that sees up to 23% more performance when Mantle is enabled in Thief. Even more importantly for these gamers, the High Quality graphics preset offers playable framerates with Mantle enabled! The data is clear: users with this class of system would have to opt for lower image quality if it weren’t for Mantle’s performance improvements.
“We even make the experience better for customers with an AMD Radeon-based Intel system. Below is another high-end gaming system based on the Intel Core i5-4670K and the AMD Radeon R9 290X Graphics. Gamers with a configuration like this could see up to 17% additional performance at 1080p!”
In addition, a Thief patch has been released which implements support for AMD TrueAudio and is utilised to calculate an effect called ‘convolution reverb’.
“Convolution reverb is a technique that mathematically simulates the echoes (i.e. reverberation) of a real-life location,” explains Hallock. “This effect is accomplished by recording an impulse response, which is a snapshot of the echo characteristics of a real-world location. That impulse response is fed back into software that can recreate that behaviour in a PC game.”
Source: AMD Blog
