AMD Mantle API delayed again

The Mantle patch for Battlefield 4 was supposed to be released in December but was delayed to January because the game needed quite a lot of fixing in other areas first. As we're nearing the end of January, ExtremeTech claims the Mantle launch has been pushed back further, with a date set for "sometime next month".

The site spoke to AMD's Robert Hallock, who denied that the patch will drop in February but didn't discuss the matter any further. This could mean that Mantle may launch in the coming days or that it's pushed back even further than February.

When AMD announced its new Mantle graphics API last September, it promised that we’d see support for the new standard by December, courtesy of Dice’s Battlefield 4. Then BF4 launched in November as a colossal bug-fest with game-breaking problems. Initially, Dice and AMD promised that the update would ship on-time, before finally acknowledging that the API wouldn’t be ready until January. Now that date has been pushed back further, with a launch set for “sometime next month” (February).

Update: We’ve spoken to Robert Hallock of AMD who has categorically denied that the patch will drop in February. Since the rest of this post deals with the performance expectations around Mantle and background on the demos we’ve seen to date, we’ll leave it in its current form.