DirectX 12 API Preview

Thanks! Yeah it was fun to show off DX12 on a tablet

Probably doesn't surprise you that I can't really speak to that. Sorry.

 

Tier 2 requires DX feature level 11_1 => GCN 1.0

http://beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1760037&postcount=6797

 

I believe that's inaccurate. Feature levels and tiled resource tiers are separate matters (yay for caps...sigh...). GCN 1.1 should be tier 2 and GCN 1.0 should be tier 1.

 

Great work, congratulations!

Finally more people will take note of power consumption aspect when speaking about low level API.
I've mentioned that at a time of Mantle Launch when everyone was looking at performance gains (understandably) but no one have investigated properly how it can affect power consumption in positive way when frame rate is locked or certain budget is assigned to CPU/GPU combo.

Glad that Intel with proper tools was able to demonstrate my old point http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost....nd3d.com/showpost.php?p=1824169&postcount=920

 

So the PC is dead DX12 running full speed on a tablet!!!!!
You should enjoy your work a lot.

We will enter on shock if you could speak about it, but asking is still free

 

I just hope all these improvements result in tangible benefits to games. Hardware and APIs have outrun game engines for as long as I can remember. Is there even a game out yet that can be considered a showcase title for the five year old DX11 API?

 

Crysis 3?

Apart from maybe nvidia jersey barriers.

 

Crysis 3 and Battlefield 4. I'm sure a few others I'm missing.

The problem here is that for most game companies they also needed easy portability to PS3/X360. Hence the stagnation even for the 2 I mentioned previously.

With PS4/XBO, there's going to be rapid evolution in 3D graphics rendering, IMO. I expect that due to that, DX 12 is going to have significantly faster takeup, at least with AAA games and especially multi-platform ones. DX 11.x will likely be a fall back. And anything prior to that will be cut off.

DX 10 and below will likely still survive for lower budget games. At least until game engines like Unity start to exploit DX 12 and make it easier for lower budget developers to use DX 12.

Regards,
SB

 

Since D3D12 will support all NVIDIA Fermi+ hardware and AMD GCN hardware, we should see it become the default API for pretty much all games in a couple years. The only thing stopping devs from using it will be ignorance or laziness, especially given that you can still do things D3D11 style in D3D12 if you don't know or care about the added flexibility provided by DX12.

This is assuming DX12 isn't restricted to Window 8 and 9.

 

The question is whether it's restricted to Win9 or is Win8 supported too, Win7 won't be for sure

 

Not supporting Win7 will be a problem. A very many gamers are still using it.

 

No support for Win7 will massively restrict it's presence in the market. At the same time it will probably be a big boost for Win8 and Win9. Now which does Microsoft care more about, supporting PC gaming or selling Windows? Yep, it will not support Win7.

I wouldn't be surprised if it supported 8 as well as 9 though. Afterall, anyone upgrading from 7 will naturally go to 9 anyway and it's likely most people who made the jump to 8 will be quite willing to move over to 9 too since they obviously want the latest Windows OS available regardless of how crap it is

Still the unfortunate truth is that DX12 may take a lot longer to penetrate the market than it ought to because MS will keep it exclusive to the newer OS's.

 

Then again, does anyone even want to have another WinXP-case in our hands with people sticking to OS even when it's support is about to end (Win7's mainstream support ends January 13 2015 (though security updates will go on 'till January 14 2020))

 

Back to Vista time.. More seriously, it was the same thing with DX10 restricted to Vista... they was not much games who was take use of DX10.. at the moment they had win7 + good DX11 games every gamers have move to Win7...

Basically if Windows9 is not too bad and DX12 games are coming, most gamers will switch... even if there's some little thing here or there they dislike ( like the start menu missing, and tiles screens ).

I think most dont feel the need to switch, upgrade their OS, DX12 for windows 9 could well and simply be THE thing who make the gamers switch and pass over some few negative aspect. You want the best quality for the game, and best performance for your hardware ? you know what you will need.

 

There's plenty of engineering and testing costs involved with upgrading your graphics API, or supported an additional path in your renderer. For larger developers the cost might be trivial, for smaller developers not so much.

 

Low level API is not for everyone.

 

Seems moot at this point if DX12 is Win8/9 exclusive. Nobody will develop exclusively for DX12 for many years.

DX12 will likely end up like DX10. Some high end devs will use it but it will largely go unnoticed for so long that the next major API will be released by the time it is economically feasible for the majority to move to it. Microsoft 101.

Sure most of us would move to Win8/9 for DX12, but we are the minority of the minority.

 

Possibly true but then we minority of the minority are the ones running high end CPU's anyway that don't really need DX12 so we can afford to wait for the masses

 

Nice interview:

www.brightsideofnews.com/2014/08/25/intel-directx-12s-big-day-intel-chats-intel-microsoft-api-partnership/

 

So basically DX12 gives developers more rope to hang themselves with and has more opportunities for bugs to appear. Excellent