Items tagged with DirectX 12
Since the early 2000s, the DirectX API has been the primary go-between for game engines on the Windows platform and the hardware that drives them. With a new DirectX update announced earlier today, Microsoft has seemingly outed feature-level support for the RDNA2-based line of GPUs from AMD, Xe-HPG discrete GPUs from Intel, as well as future-generation Snapdragon mobile platform GPU engines from Qualcomm. Feature level support is a bit of a confusing thing, so let's break that down before we dive in too deep here. With DirectX, there are standard feature sets and feature levels, which help streamline coding for games and provide developers with an idea of what a particular...
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Unless you've been living under a rock for quite a while, you know that 2020 is going to be a big year for gaming. AMD is set to launch its second-generation Navi-based RDNA 2 graphics cards, and it's hopeful that NVIDIA will launch its GeForce RTX 3000 Series based on next-generation Ampere GPU architecture. On the console front, both Sony and Microsoft are on track to deliver their PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X respectively in time for the Holiday 2020 shopping season. Given that consoles are becoming more and more like PCs – for example, the Xbox Series X uses an 8-core/16-thread AMD Zen 2 CPU and RDNA 2 graphics -- Microsoft is looking to consolidate...
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Epic Games has announced that fans of Fortnite will get the opportunity to use DirectX 12 in v11.20 of the game. The game will still require a graphics card that runs DX11, but the option of using newer tech in DX12 will become available with this latest release. Epic says that PC gamers with high-end GPUs that support DX12 may experience higher and steadier frame rates during gameplay, which is always welcome news. DX12 can offer higher and steadier frame rates by delivering better CPU performance that allows for the rendering chores to be distributed across multiple cores. Epic says that in the future, it will add features to Fortnite that are only made possible with DX12. The game developers...
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Earlier this week Microsoft and NVIDIA announced some major advances in real-time ray tracing using high-end gaming hardware. When Microsoft talked up its tech, the company noted that some of the major game engines out there would be integrating ray tracing, and that the new tech would be coming to video games. At the time of the announcement, all that Microsoft offered up was a single image from EA's Seed to give us an idea what games might look like. We now have a video to showcase the photorealism that future games using ray tracing tech will offer. The demo video is from Epic and ILMxLab, and it is based on Star Wars. The video almost looks like a trailer for a live-action Star Wars movie...
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Microsoft says that 3D gaming today is a lie. While the techniques game designers use can make games on your screen look like they're 3D, the rasterization process used ultimately only operates in two dimensions with 3D primitives mapped onto it via transformation matrices. Things are changing with the introduction today of a DirectX 12 technique that aims to bridge the gap between rasterization techniques used today and the full 3D effects of tomorrow. The new feature that will do this is called DirectX Raytracing (DXR). DXR allows current techniques like screen-space reflections (SSR) to "naturally and efficiently" fill gaps left by rasterization. Microsoft says that DXR adds four new...
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Futuremark has released a new segment of its popular 3DMark graphics testing suite called "API Overhead". The goal is simple: establish which CPU+GPU+API combination offers the best possible performance. Whether it's DirectX 12 or Vulkan, one thing the test can prove is that most other APIs, such as DirectX 11, are slugs in comparison. Futuremark's API Overhead test features a simple scene of blocks that get built to create the illusion of buildings. More of these buildings will be built in the time allotted depending on overall performance. The test is capped at 30 FPS for this reason: framerate doesn't matter as much as the number of draw calls. It's a very different kind of benchmark,...
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While much of the emphasis involving game development these days seems to revolve around DirectX 12, the competing Vulkan API has been lurking in the shadows, ready to strike at a moment's notice. Up to this point, there hasn't been a deluge of Vulkan-powered titles available, with DOOM, Dota 2, and The Talos Principle being the the most high-profile offerings. Soon, a massive addition is going join that list by way of Cloud Imperium Games' Star Citizen. This case is a bit different than most, though, because CIG doesn't just plan to support Vulkan, it plans to only support Vulkan. DX12? Get out of here! These plans were revealed by Star Citizen's lead graphics designer, Ali Brown....
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In addition to having just launched the fastest gaming graphics card ever, in the form of the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, NVIDIA has also dropped a new driver that's useful for all GeForce owners. Performance is the biggest name of game with the GeForce 378.78 drivers, but that's not all that's bundled. Those who have been craving for improved DirectX 12 performance will no doubt be pleased: there are gains to be seen all over the place. In Ashes of the Singularity, NVIDIA states that this driver brings a 9% performance boost, and in Hitman, that grows to a staggering 23%. Not all boosts are quite so grandiose, but they are worthwhile nonetheless. Overall, NVIDIA averages the DX12 gains to be around...
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Microsoft has some good news for game developers, and especially those who are taking advantage of its DirectX 12 API. The Redmond outfit announced that PIX, its premier performance tuning and debugging tool for Xbox, is now available for free on Windows 10. The standalone tool for Windows 10 is built on the Xbox version, so developers targeting both platforms can get started optimizing their Windows titles, too. "It has become increasingly clear that, with low-level APIs such as DirectX 12, attaining the best performance requires deep insight into every step of the rendering process. On Xbox, we have a long running history of providing some of the most in-depth graphics analysis tools in the...
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Rumor surrounding AMD's next high-end GPU, tentatively called the Radeon RX 490, have been floating around for a while. Admittedly, it's been extremely difficult to get a real gauge on what to expect. Some say that the RX 490 won't even match NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1070, but now, we have a benchmark that shows us that it might be just as fast as the GTX 1080. Stardock's Ashes of the Singularity became a de facto benchmark out-of-the-gate due to its use of DirectX 12, and not to mention its built-in benchmark. At the start of the month, a user named Ceaj uploaded a rather peculiar result, featuring a GPU ID'd 687F:C1. AotS can ID released graphics cards, so the fact that this comes up without a...
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If you're a fan of having multiple graphics cards powering your gaming PC, you should be looking forward to what's possible with DirectX 12 and its intrinsic multi-GPU features. In essence, multi-GPU should work beautifully, without any of the caveats we've seen with certain configurations in the past. To give us some insight on what to expect from DX12's implementation of multi-GPU, AMD's Scott Wasson, Senior Manager, Product Marketing at AMD, offers a video walk-through of the technology, putting it in simple terms we can all understand. It's well worth a watch if you are able to afford five minutes of aural and visual distraction. Frame pacing comes to DirectX 12 for AMD through...
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DirectX 12 is gaining momentum with both game developers and hardware manufacturers, and as a result, gamers as well. The Windows 10 enabled, low-level API is being adopted in more and more titles, with both legacy and cutting-edge game engines now taking advantage of it. Using an ASUS STRIX Radeon R9 Fury graphics card, along with a few other more mid-range GPUs, we cooked up a performance analysis shootout of sorts. Here, we'll pit DX12 against DX11, using a variety of today's popular game titles that leverage the new API, so we can see what performance looks like and if there are significant, tangible gains. This isn't intended to show which GPU manufacturer or GPU architectures have a performance...
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There's been a lot of chatter about DirectX 12, the low-level graphics API built into Windows 10, and what effect it will have on PC gaming. Developers will more fully embrace DX12 as time goes on, but in the meantime, is your rig up to snuff? Futuremark will help you answer that question with Time Spy, a new DX12 benchmark test it added to 3DMark, which is now available on Steam. Source: Futuremark The new Time Spy test processes more objects, textures, and effects than any of 3DMark's other benchmarking tests, and by a large degree. That's because DX12 supports a host of new API features, things such as asynchronous compute, explicit multi-adapter, and multi-threading. Time Spy sports a pure...
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Electronic Arts and Dice are busy putting the final touches on Battlefield 1 in preparation for its release on October 21, but it's not the only Battlefield title receiving attention. There's a new user interface in the works, one that's currently rolling out in beta form to a small audience playing Battlefield 4 before being made available to Battlefield 1 and Battlefield Hardline as well. The new UI is supposed to make playing with friends easier. You'll be able to create a squad before you even enter a game, along with have the ability to switch between Battlefield titles. The revamped UI will also help ensure that you're able to spawn on your buddies as soon as you're in game, saving you...
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Do you think Microsoft might be a little stoked about DirectX 12? You better believe it. Microsoft's excitement over its next-generation API spilled over into a short video demo comparing the visual effects of DX12 to that of DX11, while also explaining some of the benefits, like reduced latency and smoother frame rates. "DirectX 12 is a ground-breaking Microsoft technology that gives game developers the ability to harness the full capabilities of a PC’s GPU(s) and raise the bar on graphic fidelity and immersive gameplay," Microsoft explains in the video's description. The neat thing about DX12 is that it's a low level API, like Vulkan. What that means is that developers have deeper access to...
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Sometimes I wonder if we should cook up a TMZ-style column explicitly for reporting on all the drama that transpires between AMD and NVIDIA. Today we’ve witnessed one of the first shots fired from one of those camps, on what’s poised to be a very heated battleground over the next several years: DirectX 12. Over the weekend press was handed access to one of the world’s first DirectX 12 benchmarks courtesy of Oxide’s Ashes of the Singularity. This isn’t a synthetic test like 3DMark’s API overhead feature test, but rather a true real-world benchmark using a pre-Beta version of the upcoming game. And we’ve all been salivating over a way to measure real-world performance improvements from DirectX...
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Computer generated graphics have come a long way in the past several years and are starting to blur the line between animation and real actors. One of the more difficult tasks for CG artists is to recreate human emotions, especially crying, though you wouldn't know it after watching a tech demo that Square Enix showed off at the Microsoft BUILD Developer Conference. The real-time tech demo is called Witch Chapter 0 [cry] and is part of a research project that studies various next generation technologies. For this particular demo, Square Enix put a lot of research into real-time CG technology utilizing DirectX 12 in collaboration with Microsoft and NVIDIA, the company said. It's an ongoing project...
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The short life of AMD’s Mantle graphics API is nearly over, thanks to Windows 10 and DirectX 12. AMD announced that developers should begin concentrating on DirectX 12 while promising full support for games that are already heavily invested in Mantle, like EA and Visceral Games’ Battlefield Hardline. The announcement comes as AMD attends the Game Developers Conference (GDC 15) in San Francisco, California. “Proud moments also call for reflection, and today we are especially thoughtful about Mantle’s future,” AMD’s vice president of visual and perceptual computing, Raja Koduri, said in a statement. “In the approaching era of DirectX 12 and the Next-Generation OpenGL Initiative, AMD is helping...
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It looks like Microsoft is really hoping to entice people over to Windows 10 considering that Windows 8 has failed to take off. With its latest announcement that DirectX 12 will be included with Windows 10, Microsoft is targeting game developers and gamers. On its DirectX developer blog, Microsoft revealed additional incentives for game developers who would join its Windows Insider program. Those who sign up and are accepted, will receive everything they might need to help jumpstart their DirectX 12 development. This includes updated runtime, API headers, samples, drivers, and documentations. Microsoft also revealed that it has worked with Epic Games so that Unreal Engine 4.4 will support DX12....
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Buried in the details of Microsoft's technical preview for Windows 10 (look for our own discussion in short order), is a bit of a footnote concerning the operating system's requirements. I say footnote because this news -- that Windows 10 will have exactly the same requirements as Windows 8.1, which had the same requirements as Windows 8, which stuck to Windows 7, which was the same as Windows Vista -- is something we take for granted these days. As the years roll by, I can't help wondering what we're actually giving up in exchange for holding the minimum system spec at a single-core 1GHz, 32-bit chip with just 1GB of RAM. Back when Windows Vista was in development, those specifications made...
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One of the most anticipated announcements of GDC this year has been Microsoft's unveiling of DirectX 12. The event today was light on some details, but didn't disappoint -- DirectX 12 looks like a huge step forward for gaming. The problem DX12 wants to solve is the same issue that drove Mantle. DirectX 11 isn't very good at allocating resources efficiently, the API's performance is often choked by single-threaded CPU performance. GPUs are already far faster than CPUs (as shown below), so limiting the graphics card's performance by choking it with a single-threaded CPU is a major problem. What's New In DX12 Microsoft and Nvidia have both posted blog posts talking about the new features of the...
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Earlier this month, Microsoft acknowledged that it would debut DirectX 12 at GDC this year, with promises that it would offer many of the same features as AMD's Mantle. Fast on the heels of that announcement came news that the API would also be deployed on the Xbox One, presumably as part of a future update. Now, a report from SemiAccurate claims that "Microsoft has adopted AMD’s Mantle but are now calling it DX12. The way they did it manages to pull stupidity from the jaws of defeat by breaking compatibility in the name of lock-in." Meanwhile, other reports across the 'Net are claiming that because the Xbox One has a real-time operating system, it won't benefit from the new API and that...
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