AMD say their new GPU will “ridicule” Nvidia’s Titan, cites Battlefield 4 as proof

The gloves are coming off and the wagons are circling in the AMD / Nvidia GPU wars. As AMD is poised to release their latest R9 290X to compete with the GTX 780 and the GeForce GTX Titan, AMD’s Product Manager Devon Nekechuck has gone on record saying the new GPU, “will definitely compete with the GTX 780 and Titan” and went as far as saying, “with Battlefield 4 running with Mantel (AMD’s new graphics API), the card will be able to ‘ridicule’ the Titan in terms of performance.” For those not in the know, AMD’s Mantel is (in the simplest terms) a method of bypassing DirectX 11 and allowing games to talk directly to the GPU. We’ll be hearing more in November from AMD about Mantel, but for now let’s assume it might be a big deal…until Nvidia replies. Nekechuck went on to say the new AMD GPU will run Battlefield 4, “much faster than the Titan”, providing you use the new Mantel API which is set to release in December, this is even in light of the fact the R9 290X uses a 438 square mm die, which is significantly smaller than the Titan’s 550 sq. mm GK110. We’ve yet to see anything from Nvidia in response to the news that the new R9 290X is a “Titan killer”. However, Nvidia is never too far behind these releases, and with the GTX 790 (and even a GTX Titan Ultra) rumoured to be on the way, it’s likely that Nvidia will remain in the top spot for GPUs as always – they just need to let us know what’s next. The P.E. Perspective: I always laugh when people claim the AMD cards are better than Nvidia. While they might be slightly ahead in some aspects for a month or two, Nvidia has a fantastic support system setup, is constantly releasing Beta drivers for the latest game releases, and has some really nice user-end products like GeForce Experience (which optimizes your game settings automatically) and really nails the lid shut with things like PhysX and Surround Vision. Sure, AMD might have sold a bunch of cards for next-gen consoles, but in the PC arena, just about everyone I know is running a 600 or 700 series Nvidia GPU.