When AMD announced its new graphics API, Mantle, it showcased Battlefield 4 as the first game to support the tech, with availability supposedly arriving in December. Now that’s been delayed — AMD sent out a public statement to journalists notifying them that the API is “now targeting a January release.” Given the state of BF4, this is scarcely surprising.

While the beta test went reasonably smoothly (I participated), the post-launch period made it clear that the game still suffered from an enormous number of bugs. One-hit kill bugs, incorrect matchmaking, loss of progress in the single-player campaign, and a number of other persistent problems led Dice to declare it was suspending all work on DLC and other projects to focus exclusively on stabilizing the game. Part of what complicates the situation is that many of these issues aren’t unique to a single platform, but each platform has its own system for patching the game. With five platforms to repair (PS4, PS3, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PC) it’s not surprising to see the Mantle deployment shifting into January.

Overall, it makes more sense to fix BF4 for everyone than to push out a GPU update that improves performance in a game people can’t or don’t want to play. AMD customers are just one part of the total number of Battlefield 4 players, and Dice has to prioritize improving the game for the greatest number of people first and foremost. When Mantle does drop, it’s expected to significantly improve performance across AMD’s entire APU and GPU product line thanks to a new, close-to-metal approach to GPU programming.

Mantle, in essence, strips out some of the abstraction that DX11 provides, in favor of emphasizing speed. It allows for far more draw calls and, according to AMD, will better leverage multi-core CPUs. Estimates on performance improvements have varied; the final results here will depend significantly on how the game engine is architected. Since DX11 games are built around the idea of limiting draw calls, supporting Mantle optimally will require some changes to the underlying structure of the game. Still, it seems reasonably to think Mantle could offer a 15-20% improvement in overall game performance — and that’s enough to make a meaningful difference for AMD’s gaming market.

BF4 is still expected to be the first shipping Mantle title. Thus far, Star Citizen, Thief, and Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare have all been explicitly confirmed as supporting Mantle. It’s been implied that Mantle support will ship natively with all Frostbite-powered titles, including Dragon Age: Inquisition, Star Wars, the Need for Speed series, and the upcoming Mass Effect game that’s still in development.

A quick look at the Battlefield 4 Control Room indicates that a number of the major problems have been fixed, though multiple issues are still listed as “Under investigation.” If Dice can finish patching the game by early this month, it should still be possible to roll Mantle out by the end of January.