First Look at DirectX 12 Benchmark Results | IGN

IGN:
When Windows 10 launched on July 29th, it also heralded the arrival of DirectX 12. Microsoft, AMD and Nvidia have been touting the API's benefits for months now, saying it would be up to 20 percent faster and act like a free hardware upgrade for PC gamers. But is it truly faster than DirectX 11?

Today we can report on the results of one test that uses an actual real-world game engine: Stardock shared with IGN an alpha DX12 test build of its upcoming RTS game, Ashes of the Singularity. It supports both DirectX 12 and older versions of DirectX (depending on your hardware), which allowed IGN to test both DX11 and DX12 on the same system back-to-back.

[sammarshall102]

Jesus that's a big difference in draw calls

I can't wait to see full DX12 games on Xbox One

The graphics are already great but richer scenes with more objects on screen is welcomed

[Magicite]

Wont make much difference for X1, but I cant wait for DX12 games on PC.

[Eonjay]

@GreatenessWaits

Well, there is a game for DX12 on Xbox One called Fable Legends, but everyone acts like that game doesn't exist...

But yes this is Bradwell's game so if he wanted to put the debate to rest... that he pretty much started, I suppose he could just port this to Xbox One.

[Pandamobile]

That'd actually be really interesting if Wardell et al published an Xbox version of this running the same simulation. Then you'd have a pretty defacto answer of how the Xbox One actually stacks up against modern PC hardware.

[Yetter]

XB1 was built from the ground up to take advantage of DX12.

[otherZinc]

@Eonjay,

Also, it's interesting how IGN absolutely made zero mention of the XBOX ONE.

Especially, as they & everyone else that didn't watch Gamescon with their eyes closed tight, saw what Windows 10 & DirectX 12 will do for the XBOX ONE.

I mean they couldn't mention next year with Crackdown on the XBOX ONE, they're looking forward to it? C'Mon Man.

[voodoogts]

You mean Microsoft Windows 10? The same people that made the Xbox One?

[gfk342]

As Phil himself said, DX12 will not have a big impact on X1.

DX12 spreads the workloads evenly on the CPU cores, something that X1's API is doing from the inception.

If you didn't know, the purpose of DX12 (the first was Mantle before being bought by MS and re-named it as DX12), was to bring the console performance to PC.

So no, as Project Cars developer said, DX12 will bring to X1 a performance boost between 5-7%.

[Death]

Phil said it won't be a "massive change". We have no idea how much change will actually be seen. It will be interesting to see just how much Windows 10 and DX12 impacts the Xbox One.

[Grap]

"Mantle before being bought by MS and re-named it as DX12"
where did you pull that from your a**?
Mantel and DX12 is two different API there's no connection between them.

[darkequitus]

AMD donated Mantle to Kronos' Vulkan API

[Spid3r6]

I love that as soon as anything DX12 comes up ponies are quick to quote Phil on something that was mentioned a long time ago. So far everything is pointing at finally seeing what they had in mind when they were creating the Xbox One. We are seeing the fruit of their labor!

[BallsEye]

@gfk342 @Magicite

You must have missed most recent articles with devs saying it actually has bigger impact on XO rather than PC.

[juggulator]

Lolololololol@^ what do you think lighting and particle effects are? Then add more fully dynamic volumetric lighting and particles with full soft body particles with collision and bounced particles. Could that be......BETTER graphics?

[BallsEye]

@deadpoolio316

Apparently you know nothing about how hardware and software works. You can have crappiest looking graphics that will run at 15 FPS only on best hardware out there, if the code is not optimized well to use that chipset. DX11 was a bottleneck for XO. Now tide is turning.

[beans]

Deadpool,

Give it a year and your theory can be put to rest. There is plenty of crow to go around don't worry. First cloud wasn't possible and now this. When will you Sony guys learn. Lol

[Pandamobile]

It might in certain cases, but generally speaking, DX12 will provide a lot bigger of a change on Windows PC gaming. Draw calls have been a hugely limiting factor on PC games forever. Console hardware is pretty much specifically designed to mitigate that issue by using specialized circuitry.

I mean these benchmarks show pretty clearly that DX12 is hugely advantage for any game that might be limited by (draw calls and CPU latency in general) (open world games, games with heavy effects, dense worlds, massive amounts of on-screen AI, etc). So it's about time that we finally start get to put those 8-threaded, 3.4 GHz CPUs to work in games and free up that GPU to work at full tilt.

Vulkan too is hugely exciting because both MS and the open standard of computer graphics are both doing pretty much the same thing, so at the cusp of a huge paradigm shift.

[MRMagoo123]

This is nothing to do with xbone it's about pc, try and stay on topic instead of trying to bring up xbone in every pc dx12 article.

[sammarshall102]

Xbox One will be using DX12 so how is this unrelated Lol

[dreadz74]

This great news just the other day the dev from Caffeine said the same thing with his game and even more gains on XB1.DX12 will be Huge you have AMD/NVIDIA saying DX12 is huge advancement and A dev saying gains even larger on XB1 bring DX12 on !!!!!

[Rookie_Monster]

Right on..I remember that specific developer did say that but a few people were attacking him as a "no name" developer just talking non-sense but right here is actual prove that 20% increase is spot on for the PC. So maybe his claim for XB1 will exceed that 20% threshold due to it being a fixed platform might not be science fiction afterall. Interesting.

[juggulator]

For the sake of common sense this should be resolved to improvements according to the type of game/genre(surely a 2d side scroller and an open world rpg have to have different graphical targets), the programmers, and the optimizations done. At some point it should also be agreed upon that not every single dev will spend evey single minute of the dev cycle trying to squeeze every last bit of performance out of DX12 on XB1. Although i do expect it to eventually be the norm for the console exclusives.

[Docknoss]

The Light Turns on and the Cockroaches scatter. All the "Behold the Powa of the Cloud" Nay Sayers are dust in the wind at this point. Golf Clap for you MS

[arkard]

DX12 is the cloud now????

[Kribwalker]

That secret sauce :D

[user9950279]

DX12 will single handidly move continents and solve world hunger.

DX12 will reach to the heavens and punch the face of god.

[apostolis81]

What? PS4 does not have DX12?? Oh no.......

[kraenk12]

No, it has its own API which is even closer to the metal than Dx12.

[apostolis81]

DX 12 is king. Sony is not famous for its software, Microsoft is. :)

[Xbonewone32015]

But ps4 is the master race :(

[agame914]

You said it

[apostolis81]

3DMark API Overhead Test (Draw Calls/Second)

DirectX 11 Single-thread 1,451,281
DirectX 11 Multi-thread 2,676,439
DirectX 12 16,258,170

Numbers do not lie. XboxOne will also have an advantage, there is no question about it.

[Kiwi66]

But no doubt the armchair experts will still say it won't , but one can only live in hope that they will see that it will benefit the xb1 and not just pc

[apostolis81]

The ''armchair'' numbers tells the opposite. You are in denial. Do not worry when games implement DX12 in PC and XB you will eventually accept it. :)

[NeverHeavyMan]

I've actually heard plenty that have admitted that it will aid the X1, as well. Just not in the way that it will the PC (and that came straight from Phil Spencer). It shouldn't be compared to that degree, anyway. Simply, it should be applauded that the X1 may finally have an answer to its earlier issues.

[MeliMel]

Im with the X team. But to be fair when you go this much time with Phil Spencer saying it will have minimal impact on Xbox that what you roll with.

I love Phil tho. Things get hyped and he tempers expectations only to blow us away when it ready or revealed.

[Death]

It's amazing how many versions of what Phil said are out there. Here's the quote, "It will help developers on XBOX One. It’s not going to be a massive change but will unlock more capability for devs." Here's the source, http://www.dualshockers.com...

No where did Phil say it will be minimal, it simply won't be massive. It's not secret sauce and it won't make a night and day difference in the console's available power. It will open up resources that may not have been available to developers prior to it's release. It will also make porting between the Xbox One and PC much more attractive since they will use the same OS and toolsets.

[lemoncake]

Insane numbers, it's no small boost. Cannot wait for the DX12 games to start flowing, thankfully Microsoft saw the light and made windows 10 basically free so this should be big incentive for developers to support this quicker.

[showtimefolks]

tolis

I don't think anyone can deny that dx12 will help Xbox one, right now we just don't how big of a difference.

can dx12 be the difference between 900p and 1080 and or 30fps to 456 to 60 FPS

I am just talking in general. I think more people will become believers when they see it at work with a game.

one thing about both ps4 and Xbox one is the same, and that is that both will stay the same hardware wise. only software improvements can be made. on pc that's not the case at all

I have nothing against anyone who says for example I will hold my judgement till I see what dx12 can do for Xbox one software wise

[agame914]

Sorry won't make a huge difference on Xbox one

[agame914]

it just won't...you cannot change hardware In a console.

[Kribwalker]

It's not changing the hardware, the Xbox one was built for cloud and DX12, they just had to push it out before those two were ready. Soon we will see why MS designed it the way they did. I bet with cloud tech the Xbox one will be viable for 10+years the tech keeps growing

[Death]

Did you read the story? No where did they mention swapping hardware when they tested DX12. All they did was change the API from DX11 to DX12 to get the results. DX12 is more efficient at using the available hardware and unlocks tools that devs didn't previously have. That is where the performance boost comes from.

[Xbonewone32015]

The PS4 armchair devs know best.

If they say the xb1 can't benefit from dx12, then GODDAMMIT !!, IT CANT BENEFIT FROM DX12/!!!

[corroios]

Lol. Blind loyalty is just sad. The PC used here is powered by a Nvidia GTX 980 Ti GPU that can do 6.1 teraflops!!!!! thats like almost 5 or 6 times the power of the Xbox One

The CPU is not some average mobile CPU, is a Intel Core i7-4790K CPU is a beast... of course there is a vast space to improve...

The power is there and not somewhere else and with better optimization the games will run much better.

I just wish that both console had half the power the PC used here got!!! because games would run so much better. Everything else is just another PR talk about gain of 5 or 6 frames...

[Death]

I'm a PC gamer too. The main difference between consoles and PC's is the PC is made to do many more things at once than a console is. All that power we have between our CPU's and GPU's is being used for various things other than gaming. If we took the APU's from either console and stuffed them in a modern gaming PC the system would be rubbish. The reason for this is we have much more going on and games are made for a variety of hardware. By using dedicated hardware and limiting the amount of background apps, consoles can do much more with much less than PC's can. These mid-range PC's hiding out in console boxes are performing on a much higher level and give many gaming rigs a run for their money as far as performance goes.

[Krew_92]

Pretty sure this is a PC benchmark of DX12. Why anyone here is mentioning the Xbox One is beyond me.

[Death]

Xbox One is getting Windows 10 and DX12 in the next couple months. Brad Wardell is the CEO of Stardock which is the developer behind Ashes of Singularity. Ashes is the game being benchmarked in the IGN story we are all commenting on. If you've been keeping up, Brad has had some pretty interesting observations/theories on DX12 and Xbox One. You can almost say he has been championing the API the loudest in the development community.

[MRMagoo123]

And ? All it does is turn this into some me too for xbone owners that are all off topic.

[MRMagoo123]

They have to butt in on the pc articles because there is no proof for the benefits on xbone. Kinda annoying because it's like this in every article about pc mentioning dx12, even more so when xbone is not mentioned even once yet they put an xbone tag in the tags.

[beans]

Want a tissue?

[Death]

The article is about Ashes of Singularity and DX12 performance gains on PC. The CEO of the company said this about Xbox One and DX12, http://acutegaming.net/brad...

I'm not sure why it upsets you so much that DX12 will help improve game performance on the Xbox One. Sorry it makes you sad. :(

@Sync,

Feel free to check out the link so you can see who is insecure and delusional.

[Father__Merrin]

RE: X1 increase i cant wait for ppl to be proven wrong.....

[Ark_]

As we can see again: DX12 will help when the CPU is the bottleneck - aka in very stressfull conditions (espescially for a 4790K they used). Then the higher rate of drawcalls will make the GPU work at full potential. If you have a weak GPU from the start - it will do null. NULL!

Basically: low to medium range CPUs will benefit most, if they are combined with a stong graficscard. If you have a very weak graficscard or a top notch processor, that isn't stressed by the application - there will be only minimal changes. It's the same pattern we saw with Mantle.

As for X1. It will help as long as the CPU is a limiting factor. Doesn't make the build in GPU any stronger. So don't exspect miracles.

[kstuffs]

WRONG! DX12 can improve fps even though it was GPU bound in DX1. Fable Legends prove that: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dir...

"20% performance improvements in GPU bound games
One question that has been asked is “I know DirectX 12 provides great CPU and power efficiency, but what if my game is GPU bound? Can DirectX 12 still help me get performance improvements?” Our answer to that is “Yes, absolutely!”

We worked closely with Lionhead Studio’s to show this in action with their new AAA title, Fable Legends. Below, we have screenshots of an in-game scene; only the first image is rendering using DirectX 11 and the second image DirectX 12. We also have an FPS overlay to show the difference in performance."

[kstuffs]

LOL disagree with proved fact by the designer of DX12 themselves while the post by Ark is false and has no supporting info got more agrees than disagrees. I should know better at n4g.

[Ark_]

Dude. Calm down.
What I said is based on my own experience with Mantle and research I did, when I tried to improve my fps in BF4. If you check out the benchmarks of Mantle across a wide variety of hardware, you will see that it had only good impact on low to midrange multicore cpus, when they were bottlenecking the performance for stronger GPUs. Yes there are gains (but also losses) in other environments, but they are really not that big.

Concerning Fable Legends: it will be really interesting to see under which conditions these improvments are made: testing with different grafic options and hardware will be shed more light on what DX12 is really capable to provide. For now it's just hearsay.

I am really curious about the impact DX12 will make and happy that Microsoft finally moved their arses. Was long overdue. But I am also a realist. And in my experience and trusting the benchmarks I read for Mantle - I would not exspect any miracoulous boost ... espescially when the GPU is a limiting factor. The final verdict of course can only be made in a year or two, when DX12 is widley used by diffrent applications.

Just google Mantle benchmarks, if you are really interested in it.

[cabinotier]

DX12 on Xbone will have kinda impact to small indie studio.
but it will not for others.

[kstuffs]

DX12 should have more impact by AAA developers not indie. DX12 removes the hardware control from the drivers and let the developers handle it themselves, hence it's more difficult to use. Indie should stick with DX11.X, which still does a lot more handholding.