AMD's Mantle technology hit another bump in the road this past week as Eidos Montreal, developers of the rebooted THIEF franchise, announced that the title will not support it at launch. In a post to fans on their official blog it was stated that despite the hard work they and partners AMD have put in more needs to be done to provide the best experience with the Mantle API:
We’re extremely proud of the work we’ve done with AMD to make the PC version of THIEF a stand-out, definitive experience although we have a little more work to do to accommodate all of these new PC-specific features - we are busy working on a patch to support AMD’s Mantle and TrueAudio technologies that is scheduled for March. We’re confident this patch will ensure the best and fastest THIEF experience for AMD Radeon™ customers. We’re sorry we couldn’t bring this to you sooner – although we will use this time to bring you the very best experience possible and will let you know when the patch is ready.
The hiccup also extends to AMD TrueAudio support which was planned to debut on Thief. Equally as niche as Mantle, many enthusiasts had been waiting for a true hands-one experience with the tech for which only the R9 290-series and R7 260X is compatible. Thief will nonetheless still be one of the first titles to support Mantle, and will also support AMD CrossFire and Eyefinity technologies from the get-go.
Delays to Mantle and TrueAudio will be a blow to Eidos but especially so to AMD, who have staked much on Mantle's viability as a gaming technology (as well as building TrueAudio into their silicon). Battlefield 4 Mantle support is still patchy at best, and so they were no doubt hoping for a clear win with this latest release. Sadly that's not to be.
More generally, Thief's minimum and recommended specifications are modest, requiring at least an NVIDIA GTX 250 / AMD HD 4800 or equivalent on the graphics side and a relatively up-to-date dual-core or quad-core CPU. Those wishing to push the game at higher image quality settings will want to sport 8GB RAM and an NVIDIA GTX660 / AMD R9-series (HD7870 or greater). The PC version will also include a number of exclusive features, regardless of hardware:
Input & UI
Full mouse & keyboard integration for the user interface with customized context bar, all buttons are clickable and can be controlled with keyboard.
Custom designed weapons bar when playing with mouse & keyboard
Extensive Customization for Graphics & Display including the following options:
Display
o Toggle fullscreen
o Vsync
o Resolution adjustment
o Refresh rate
o For 3D: Stereo separation
o For 3D: Stereo depth
Graphics
o FOV sliders
o Texture quality & Texture filtering quality
o Shadow quality
o Screenspace reflection
o Depth of field quality
o Parallax occlusion mapping aka POM
o SSAA
o FXAA
o Contact Hardening Shadows
Benchmark mode
Mouse & Keyboard mapping
Xbox 360 controller support
Custom Save/Load system including auto save and manual saves, similar to what we did for Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Full mouse & keyboard integration for the user interface with customized context bar, all buttons are clickable and can be controlled with keyboard.
Custom designed weapons bar when playing with mouse & keyboard
Extensive Customization for Graphics & Display including the following options:
Display
o Toggle fullscreen
o Vsync
o Resolution adjustment
o Refresh rate
o For 3D: Stereo separation
o For 3D: Stereo depth
Graphics
o FOV sliders
o Texture quality & Texture filtering quality
o Shadow quality
o Screenspace reflection
o Depth of field quality
o Parallax occlusion mapping aka POM
o SSAA
o FXAA
o Contact Hardening Shadows
Benchmark mode
Mouse & Keyboard mapping
Xbox 360 controller support
Custom Save/Load system including auto save and manual saves, similar to what we did for Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Thief is released today in the US, the 27th in Australia and 28th in UK/Europe. It's available on Steam and other digital distribution platforms in both standard and Master Edition variants for £26.99 and £29.99 respectively.
Source: Eidos Montreal Community Blog
