Its not like Mantle is for the 290X + high end cpu, unless your cpu is lacking or you have crossfire. In that case Mantle really shines.

This right here, I have no doubt mantle influenced nvidia`s decision to put out the performance drivers but the performance drivers cover all games and dx11 cards not a very select few games and vga`s.

I get the impression that you talk about those drivers like some kind of miracle.Those drivers gave nice boosts to many games and added some profiles to games. That s it. It is not like a new API or left the competition in the dust. Both companies have good drivers and run as fast as their hardware allow. I think Mantle just hasn't taken off. BF4 was just an horrible game to showcase the technology. Dragon Age I. will really show if Mantle is meh or not.

I get the impression that you talk about those drivers like some kind of miracle.Those drivers gave nice boosts to many games and added some profiles to games. That s it. It is not like a new API or left the competition in the dust. Both companies have good drivers and run as fast as their hardware allow. I think Mantle just hasn't taken off. BF4 was just an horrible game to showcase the technology. Dragon Age I. will really show if Mantle is meh or not.

Miracle? No.... An awesome human achievement by Nvidia? Yeah. The gains WERE that great. I had a huge turn around with my GTX 780 SLI, and this single GTX 980 is proving great also.

I'm gonna be called a fanboy, I'm certain. But because of stuff like this I'm less and less tempted to buy AMD. And I cannot find any benchmark that shows the 290x on top. Anyone care to share with me please?

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Civilization-Beyond-Earth-Performance-Maxwell-vs-Hawaii-DX11-vs-Mantle Here you go sir. =) From that benchmark, in 1440p Mantle is very impressive.

This right here, I have no doubt mantle influenced nvidia`s decision to put out the performance drivers but the performance drivers cover all games and dx11 cards not a very select few games and vga`s.

Or it's simply the case that it takes a long time to create "performance drivers", and Mantle had no impact on it. Nvidia has always released performance drivers for their cards. If Nvidia had had those drivers ready two years ago, they would have released them back then. That would have given Nvidia an even bigger advantage to AMD. Nvidia didn't withhold these drivers in waiting for AMD.

Most interessant is maybe how Mantle could allow implementation of SFR in CFX. AFR will stay faster, but SFR is more stable in question of frametimes and smoothness. SFR is not really new, but it need for be really usefull to be implemented directly by developpers.

I created a Frame Time Analyzer for Beyond Earth for parsing and graphing those log files. ByteMeDev.com/CIV:BE - FTA Download CIV:BE - FTA (x64) v0.0.2!