Microsoft Announces DirectX 12 at GDC
It’s day two of GDC in San Francisco and, as promised, Microsoft has announced the newest version of its DirectX gaming API. A sponsored GDC session dubbed "DirectX: Evolving Microsoft's Graphics Platform" was revealed earlier this month and Microsoft showed off DirectX 12 this morning alongside partners including Nvidia and AMD.
With DirectX 12 comes a new version of the Direct3D API. Microsoft promises it’s faster and more efficient than ever and is calling this ‘the API [we’ve] been waiting for.’ With support for PCs, laptops, Windows Phone devices, and Microsoft’s own Xbox One console (of course), Direct3D 12 boasts a lower level of hardware abstraction for improved multithread scaling and CPU utilization. There’s also reduced GPU overhead and a set of new rendering pipeline features that improve algorithm efficiency. Microsoft offered verification of performance improvements via 3DMark. That showed a 50 percent improvement in CPU utilization as well as improved distribution of work among threads.
Nvidia says it will support the DX12 API on all the DX11-class GPUs shipped so far, including those belonging to the Fermi, Kepler and Maxwell architectural families. Though DX12 will compete with AMD’s own Mantle API, AMD was at Microsoft’s session and Raja Kadouri did confirm DirectX 12 support for AMD’s GCN hardware.
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ajcroteau Well, I'm sure Mantle was nice while it lasted... I'm glad to see however DirectX 12 will be supported on all DirectX 11 cards... I just barely bought my GTX 770 not too long ago :)Reply -
Treynolds416 Well, I'm sure Mantle was nice while it lasted... I'm glad to see however DirectX 12 will be supported on all DirectX 11 cards... I just barely bought my GTX 770 not too long ago :)
Even if Mantle dies sometime soon (unlikely, imo), it will always be "nice" because it's arguably the catalyst for dx12. I'm pretty sure that even if MS was already working on it before they heard of Mantle, they would have taken development at a much slower pace and just sat on it for months or even years. Regardless of how well Mantle actually does against the other APIs, without it Kronos and MS wouldn't have bothered to update theirs. The winner in this API race is the consumer, and that wouldn't have been guaranteed without Mantle. -
Jack Bauer Mantle won't go anywhere.Both Thief and BF4 are not build with Mantle in mind and they still provided lot of performance improvements. Also by the time DX12 is released and game with DX12 Mantle will have 2 year heads up.Considering that already is supported by Frostbyte,Unreal and Cryengine its only going to improve.Who knows , maybe in 2 years we see Mantle 2.0 ?Reply -
ocilfa @rad666: For real. I saw on a different site that reported that Microsoft is on the fence with Windows 7 and that was it. Anyone feel like starting a petition?Reply -
skit75 If Microsoft wants to not support Dx12 in Windows 7 hoping gamers would buy Windows 8, they have another thing coming. I would rather buy an AMD GPU and become a Mantle fanboy.Reply -
chuckydb Compatible on dx11 gpu... I really didn't expect that!!! But since it is on xbox one, I can understand why MS wants to push it, and so did Nvidia to counter Mantle.Reply -
godfather666 Fascinating announcement. AMD, Intel, NVidia and Qualcomm in one room?Anyway, about Win 7, it'll be 6 years old and 2 generations behind by the time DirectX 12 is released. So I don't expect it to include it. But hopefully Windows 9 will have been a step in the right direction, so it's all good.Reply -
knowom DirectX 12 will probably be Windows 9 only just to troll PC gamers into buying their new OS. Ideally developers will support Steam OS along with OpenGL's new low level hardware API instead. It's time we move away from Microsoft's OS tea tax tyranny and revolt!Reply