DX12 news

joxer

joxer

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The section is tech help, but this feels like belonging here.

Someone got hold of DX12 and tested it with a game (one only!), compared to DX9 and Mantle.
The results? IMO impressive:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8962/the-directx-12-performance-preview-amd-nvidia-star-swarm/3

Couch would add here "grain of salt" - remember this is a test with only one piece of software where DX12 and Mantle drew almost identical output. Since win10 won't be released before Q4 this year, and since except some who-cares-for Fable game will be DX12 exclusive, months will pass till we see the actual effect with some musthave game.
Nevertheless, it does look promising.

For all who don't know yet, DX12 will not be patched inside win7 and win8, it's strictly win10 feature.
AMD GCN 1.0 (HD 7000 and higher) and Nvidia Fermi (400/500 and higher) will support DX12 so if you have such card already, there is no reason to buy a new one.
 
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Yeah - the results are never as Earth shattering as these benchmarks suggest, but DX12 is clear improvement. It'll become standard pretty quickly, I think, as it's compatible with existing cards, and is particularly good at getting performance out of low end gear.

The funny thing is that it's essentially a rip off of Mantle, and AMD has also worked with Kronos to use Mantle tech in the new GL-Next. Essentially, all the major APIs are becoming very similar.
 
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Yeah, I saw that article a few days ago. It certainly is interesting.

I wonder what determines which card actually displays the image or if you can choose.
 
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Zloth said:
Maybe you don't need to buy a new replacement card but maybe you want to buy a new additional card!

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/directx-12-can-combine-nvidia-and-amd-cards/1100-6425565/
Click to expand...

This has huge potential. Apart from allowing the combining of AMD and nvidia, this presumably also means that you no longer have to match chipsets when using the same vendor in SLI. For example, I've got an Nvidia 670, which still deals well with current games. With this new system, I could potentially add a 970, and rig the two in SLI for outstanding performance.
 
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Does it combine the speed of the 2 gpu's or is it like memory and you capped at the speed of the slower module.

For example, would a 970 and a 670 give you their combined output or would it give you the output of 2 670's in sli.
 
While dx12 will allow different vendors cards combo I don't think the reason was SLI of AMD and nVidia.
Honestly I believe it's aimed to laptops and smoother Intel HD/other GPU use.

Although, since I will buy win10 most definetly, I could add some R9 besides my GTX760 just to see how exactly will that perversion work. :D
 
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sakichop said:
Does it combine the speed of the 2 gpu's or is it like memory and you capped at the speed of the slower module.

For example, would a 970 and a 670 give you their combined output or would it give you the output of 2 670's in sli.
Click to expand...

It uses a new technique called Split Frame Rendering, which allows for independent control of each GPU to render different parts of the same frame. At the moment, SLI uses Alternate Frame Rendering, which would cap you at the speed of the lower model, since they take it in turns to render frames.

With SFR, using the proper techniques, the split rendering could be done efficiently - assigning different portions of each frame to a card, depending on its horsepower. This also allows for the VRAM of the two cards to be effectively combined, as each will using its memory to render only a percentage of the scene.

The catch is that SFR is not performed by the drivers - it's down to the developer to code the game with algorithms to split the rendering in the best way. This is probably very challenging, and would hopefully become a feature of the major game engines.

I'm getting a bit ahead of myself with the example that it could be a realistic solution for my 670 card - it's probably a way off, with some hurdles to overcome.
 
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Thanks for the explanation Ripper.

I haven't been following desktop hardware or software as much as I have in the past mainly because there's not much to follow since I'm not into the mobile craze or the recent turn my PC in to a console so I can play it in the living room with a controller craze.

DX12 sounds promising though.
 
Bumpity bump - Square Enix and nVidia presented a short tech demo about DX12:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpDdOIZy-4k

The presentation was not named "graphics whores unite", but IMO it should have been.
It's amazing.
 
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I think the biggest improvement is the subsurface scattering, which gives the slight soft translucence to the skin, and makes her look so alive.
 
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Boooooring!

I'll take a pixel art game over this any day. Isometric, too. :)
 
Didn't you use to be a console gamer ? You did completely turn around.



Anyway, high-resolution pixel art (and textures) yes. No need to go back. The scenes above are of course fine-tuned and are relatively small scale. So meh.



I desperately await some revolutions in AI. And maybe real raytracing.
 
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The WITCH scene and that stuff didn't look impressive to me. It looks like your typical 3D graphics, and then they zoom in to show pores on the face. Yeah, whatever.

I prefer advances in overall art style and direction, rather than the same old 3d graphics that so many games seem to use.

And yes, I used to be a console gamer. But even then I enjoyed console games that had charisma and charm to their graphical styles. Chrono Trigger, Tactics Ogre, etc. Always loved that stuff and as a PC gamer now I gravitate towards those styles.
 
Well from what I read this was just another CGI trailer, or tech demo. Some of what you watched in video might make into future video games, but not all of it.
 
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ilm said:
I desperately await some revolutions in AI. And maybe real raytracing.
Click to expand...

Yep - AI doesn't seem to come very far since the 90s. The AI in Half Life is pretty much as good as anything I've seen.

I'd also like to see combat physics take a leap forward. The approximations work pretty well in shooters, but I find anything that involves realtime melee combat is still very unconvincing and unsatisfying.
 
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Well, DX will keep being mostly about graphics I guess… for physics or AI, perhaps it'll be a new version of physX or such.

Anyway while it looks great, it appears like they still have some problems with the shadows and flickering. Then again Square always had trouble with those so it might be because they made it.
 
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Wow, it's amazing what we can do with 4 Titan X cards rendering a single 3D model.

What a load of crap!

Being able to use models with this much detail in a real game situation is still decades away and dx12 won't change that.
 
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