DirectX 12: The future of it within the console gaming space (specifically the XB1)

No its not exclusive, however they do have an api hitting production in a few months...

 

Given how long ago Mantle was announced, Sony would have to be pretty monumentally stupid not to be working on an API that can incorporate the new paradigm and to end up with a legacy platform that can't keep up with PC and XB1. Of course, sometimes Sony are monumentally stupid...

 

One thing for sure, they're monumentally quiet on the subject!

 

Microsoft have also had a closer to the metal API available on the Xbox One too. Probably a variation of DX12 that's being introduced to PC.

 

Yes, you are right. The main benefit of DirectX 12 is that it is utilizing multiple cpu cores, not so much "coding to the metal". All you have to do is look at those charts for pcper and pcworld and see that as they disabled and then re-enabled cores on the cpu the number of draw calls increased dramatically. Basically no. of cores had more of an impact than clock speed. Interesting to think about seeing as the Xbox One has an 8 core cpu (i think 7 cores are available for games).

 

If you watch the GDC vids for DX12, there's more to it than just lowering overhead and improving CPU utilization.

 

I hope PS4 does get it. You want to see games progress. And having PS4 stuck on legacy would slow advancements down. DX9 lasted too long. I've been talking to Mosen about how DX12 has been marketed.
It's really drawn out.
It's really tries to be controversial and always in the spotlight.

Whatever the press is, they want everyone to know what dx12 is so that you upgrade. Upgrade to windows10, a new CPU or GPU, a new tablet or a new console. The fact that they still have 1 final large reveal is like proof to me that they are purposefully milking this.

 

Mantle began life as an effort to bring a console style low level api patterned after libgcm/gnm to the PC space. It is PC and Xbox that are catching up to the new paradigm that exists on PS4, not the other way around.

 

I think you're right with this; it is very much a marketing exercise. They want people to upgrade to Windows 10 or buy their Xbox. Microsoft are getting a ton of free advertising for their products by simply providing benchmarks of an API. I really hope it provides a decent shift in quality over what came before because there's going to be a lot of disappointed people otherwise. I also hope it can be accurately measured with games that are already released, otherwise it's an awful lot of hot air.

You say there's one "final large reveal", I've not hard anything about this. Do you have any links? I'd also be interested to hear what you think it is.

 

So you're suggesting that the ps4, today, already runs a mantle like api? i.e. parallelised draw calls across multiple CPU cores. That's the first I've heard of that...

 

Well we don't about parallelised drawcalls, or even whether it's necessary, but we know the following from the Metro devs:

"Oles Shishkovstov: Let's put it that way - we have seen scenarios where a single CPU core was fully loaded just by issuing draw-calls on Xbox One (and that's surely on the 'mono' driver with several fast-path calls utilised). Then, the same scenario on PS4, it was actually difficult to find those draw-calls in the profile graphs, because they are using almost no time and are barely visible as a result."

 

I think this was what the developer interviewed here is referring to. It appears that, in his eyes at least, dx12 is such an enabler of new visual effects etc that devs will have to think carefully about using it, either needing to split the visual pipeline, one for pc/xb1 and a seperate one for ps4, allowing a toned down version of the title to run on ps4 or forget the ps4 all together. And that's a very big call with 20million of them in the wild. So I think that you are right, we will probably see mainly exclusives making full use of dx12. Shame.

 

Bizarre statement. Surely you'd have to do the same with a DX11 game and converting it to PS4, or converting a GNM/GNMX game to DX11/12. I don't see what changes, you're converting from one API to another in all cases.

 

Is the inference that so much more performance can be extracted using dx12 that it won't be possible to achieve even close to parity on systems using older non-mantle style apis?

 

AMD's latest DX12 slides at least had "TBA" on third big point of DX12, 1st being CPU performance, 2nd GPU performance

 

I don't see an API causing a dramatic increase in a hardware's ability. Not unless the original API was completely awful. I seriously doubt that DX11 is all that bad.

We know that they're fixing issues with it though. Where drawcalls were a problem for Xbox before, they're not now.

We also know that a to-the-metal API has been available sometime early-mid 2014 on the Xbox One. Is that a precursor to DX12? I'd guess it's pretty similar.

 

PS4 GNM API is a little like Mantle from DICE. An API will never go further than hardware can do. DX12 is not magic...

PS3/360 API were more advanced than Direct X 9, even better than Direct X11 for drawcall.

Xbox One has a slighly better CPU and a better bandwith for some operation.

PS4 has more ALU, more texel rate and fill rate. Kaveri architecture with bus Onion +, volatile bits and 8 ACE...

 

GNMX is not very performant it is DX11 style API. GNM is to "the metal" API and probably go further than Mantle. You need a little abstraction on PC side.

 

I do not know why many posts here state that DX12 is some magical API that no one can surpass.

Maybe GNM is already better than Mantle, Vulkan and DX12?
Dice said “PS4 graphics API is good as well, we don’t need Mantle on PS4.” https://twitter.com/repi/status/445327492937560064

 

DirectX 12 is not magic? WTF Microsoft!?!?