Why DirectX 12 is a game-changer for PC enthusiasts

Digital Foundry:
There's a palpable air of excitement surrounding the arrival of Windows 10 and DirectX 12 - a sense that the PC will finally shrug off the shackles holding it back and that the cutting-edge components released by AMD, Nvidia and Intel will finally reach something approaching their full potential. We experimented with Windows 10 this week and came to a highly satisfying conclusion - DX12 offers huge advantages to virtually all PC owners, but it will be a boon to AMD in particular, perhaps restoring some degree of plurality to the PC hardware market.

[Walker]

what about xbone ? i hope dx12 be a game changer on bone as well :)

[SniperControl]

Sigh.......rolls eyes.

[SpaceRanger]

Before this page even loaded, I already knew someone was going to try and squeeze Xbox one into this topic in a "hey maybe Xbox too!" fashion...

Looks like I was right lol

[Khajiit86]

@Space

Xbox Too!! Great idea, that is their next console.

[Peace_Love_and_FPS]

Yeeeeees let me run a Nvidia and an AMD in one setuuuup :D got the 970, just need a 290 or a 295x2 (if I'm wrong on terminology my mistake, new to PC)

[FlyingFoxy]

I wouldn't bother, multi gpu gives a worse experience than single gpu most of the time. Go look on techreport at the r9 295x2 review. Basically higher reported fps isn't accurate to the actual viewing experience. You need to look at frame time latency tests. Overall SLI/CF is very hit and miss, mostly miss.

Frame drops, micro stutter and hitches happen in most games, they recommend a single gpu for smooth performance.

[Peace_Love_and_FPS]

http://wccftech.com/dx12-nv...

This with one free-sync monitor, one gsync monitor (both curved), would be pretty cool I think. Having special effects on any game is the biggest advantage, and I can avoid the fanboy BS

[Anonagrog]

That's because modern multi-gpu usage relies on buffering more frames the more gpus are used - thus increasing latency - along with duplicating resources over each gpu for driver enabled alternate frame rendering or similar. However, with D3D12 developer's will be able to choose which resources and commands to use across different gpus, and so allow for more tailored solutions rather than merely using each additional gpu in near-complete isolation to each other.

The most recent example given by Max McMullen at Build2015 would be to offload some post-processing to the secondary gpu whilst starting execution of the next frame on the first gpu. As post-processing operations tend to rely on just screen-space info this is a relatively good example of how even minor changes at a high-level can provide some great benefits that may boost overall throughput and serve to lower latency. With time more tailored solutions would be developed that seek to increase utilization further whilst improving quality.

[SniperControl]

I am not holding my breath on this one, MS are kings of hype but yet delivering nothing.

However, i am willing to eat my words if DX12 proves to be a great leap for PC as MS say it is, i would love for my my 970 SLI setup to be used 100% instead of the 60% on DX11, but i just dont see it doing anything substantial TBH.

[NoctisPendragon]

DX12 will deliver i have seen the whole build conference (and understood it ) and i can say that DX12 is more than promosing , basicaly the PC will "almost" become like a consol to me (in general , it is harder since every PC are different ) .

[Bigpappy]

LOL. This is Eurogamer doing the test. So if you think it is smoke and mirrors, then your lack of trust should be aimed at them. M$ had nothing to do with these test.

On topic : People are seeing great results on games the were not patched for DX12, let alone being designed around the features. So you have seen anything yet.

[kstuffs]

It's actually the total opposite. MS has been intentionally underhyping all the DX12 stuffs. The performance gains MS have been quoting is up to 20-40% more while benchmarks show excess of 100-600% gains. It's Brad Wardell who has been hyping DX12. He even questioned why MS told developers to underhype and why MS hasn't mentioned anything about the new eSRAM APIs. MS isn't going to talk until they have something to show.

[rainslacker]

DX12 is a pretty significant leap over current graphics API's. It also has a lot of other features which should have been implemented 10 years ago. I work with the API daily, and I've been impressed with the kinds of things it can squeeze out of existing hardware. There's a lot of excitement among the development community for it, because in the past, most of them had to write their own API's to get some of these features, and on PC that can be a pain due to the hugely different hardware set ups the dev would have to support.

DX was originally made to remove the need for that type of coding, but didn't really advance as fast as PC's or graphics cards did.

[Destiny1080]

they managed to get one character on screen with four titan xs. I am impressed

[DevilOgreFish]

It was 60 million polygons, 1 whole village, 8k textures presumably at @4k resolution @ unknown pperformance.

[NoctisPendragon]

It was 4K and they said they could do it with 2 Titan x , 4 was to show off .

[DevilOgreFish]

Right, The 4 titan setup was not the requirements to the demo. What they were instead showing was that the luminous engine supports quad GPUs and Dx12.

The same level and characters that they were showing in 2013, was running off a gtx680.

Agni's was running at 1080p 60fps on a gtx680. https://youtu.be/BiFvCeXmr4...

[NoctisPendragon]

@DevilOgreFish

Yeah 4 Titan X was the best way to prove all the DX12 multithreading , frame spliting and memory sharing freatures .

Thx for the info , FF XV on PC will bear extremly near the 2012 tech demo of Luminous Engine ( src : http://sqex.info/ffxv-lumin... ) .

So it took them only 3/4 years to make the demo true , i remenber everyone saying "this is CGI i don't believe " .

[Rookie_Monster]

Oh yes, MS always deliver the goods in API. not just PC but XB1 will benefit as well.

[ninsigma]

Looking forward to see what improvements this will bring to my rig. Seems like Windows 10 and DX12 are a good coupling. Windows 10 looks great as well so I can't wait to be running that either :D

[edqe]

Vulkan is way to go.

Vulkan Summary:
• Vulkan is very low overhead
• Cross platform, cross vendor
- Not tied to single OS (or OS version)
- Not tied to single GPU family or vendor
- Not tied to single architecture

• Open, extensible
- Khronos is an open standards body
- Collaboration from a wide cross section of industry, IHVs + ISVs, games, CAD, AAA + casual
- Full support for extensions, layering, debuggers, tools

https://www.khronos.org/ass...

[poor_cus_of_games]

Everyone knows that but vulkan is not cool lol. Says all of the sheep.

[DevilOgreFish]

It's an other good source for great performance, like mantle, but i think DX12 is going to be the API That's commonly supported. All the big game engines Will be supporting it, which great for everyone.

[NuggetsOfGod]

No.

Vulkan is great for windows and linux gamers.

It's actually is great for everyone lol

Directx is an exclusive api made to make sure windows is useful for gaming.

Pc gaming doesn't need dx12 it needs an open api on an open platform.

Makes sense?

Also vulkan unlike dx12 is a marrage of graphics api and gpgpu api.
Mantel + openCl = vulkcan.

Only if sony supported vulkan it would give it a boost do to ps4 being the dominant console platform. Smh.

Also with hbm and dx12/vulkan coming I find it funny when xbox gamers have high hopes for an old apu.

[ScorpiusX]

I don't think it's going to do a significant amount things based on the hardware inside xbox one, but the quick ports of PC games to Xbox one will be a boost , the games made w/ DX12 will boost certain game appearance on Xbox one by a small margin . Combine all this with W10 and Xbox one will have something but nothing to outlandish proportion. JM2C