Updates on AMD's progress integrating Mantle into the home PC were one of many news items expected during their CES press briefing last week, and on that score at least they delivered. During the briefing AMD claimed that both this and AMD TrueAudio runtime libraries would be available in the upcoming Catalyst 14.1 Beta due later this month.

Progress on bringing Mantle to the consumer has been slow chiefly due to troubles co-developer DICE is having with the API's flagship title, Battlefield 4. Bugs and glitches leading to game instability and a substandard experience have plagued the title since its October launch, leading to at least three law firm investigations and the suspension of development on other DICE titles until it's fixed. Nonetheless, Battlefield 4 performance improvements expected with Mantle are said to be significant.

TrueAudio's future will hopefully be rosier. Thief 4, developed by Eidos Montreal, is the first title to integrate the technology which makes use of the on-board DSP on AMD R9 290-series and R7 290X graphics cards; an early Beta should see TrueAudio ready for the game's mid-February launch.

Catalyst 14.1 will also improve UltraHD and Eyefinity frame pacing in pre-Hawaii GPUs, as well as further Linux distro support. The latter should help with long-term support for SteamOS.

Source: TechPowerUp