AMD’s Mantle has been discussed, dissected and theorized about since it was first announced last year. Now, with the release of the Catalyst 14.1 Beta, we’re about to see the first Mantle libraries packaged into a beta driver alongside plenty of other improvements. It won’t be available to the public just yet but expect it to be live in the next few days.

In and of itself the inclusion of Mantle compatibility into a driver can’t be considered a drastic step forward since, up until today there simply weren't any applications which supported it. Without being able to experience AMD’s marketing claims first-hand, the real benefits of this new low-level API remained nothing more than wistful thinking. Unfortunately, that portion of the equation ran into countless delays with Mantle’s primary showcase, Battlefield 4, going through teething problems which ultimately destroyed a carefully crafted availability timeline.

This situation is about to change in a big way: Dice is rolling out their long awaited BF4 Mantle patch at 4AM today. At least that’s the plan right now but with the hiccups Origin is known for….you never know.