The DirectX 12 Performance Preview: AMD, NVIDIA, & Star Swarm
by Ryan Smith on February 6, 2015 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Microsoft
- NVIDIA
- DirectX 12
About a year and a half ago AMD kicked off the public half of a race to improve the state of graphics APIs. Dubbed "Mantle", AMD’s in-house API for their Radeon cards stripped away the abstraction and inefficiencies of traditional high-level APIs like DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4, and instead gave developers a means to access the GPU in a low-level, game console-like manner. The impetus: with a low-level API, engine developers could achieve better performance than with a high-level API, sometimes vastly exceeding what DirectX and OpenGL could offer.
While AMD was the first such company to publicly announce their low-level API, they were not the last. 2014 saw the announcement of APIs such as DirectX 12, OpenGL Next, and Apple’s Metal, all of which would implement similar ideas for similar performance reasons. It was a renaissance in the graphics API space after many years of slow progress, and one desperately needed to keep pace with the progress of both GPUs and CPUs.
In the PC graphics space we’ve already seen how early versions of Mantle perform, with Mantle offering some substantial boosts in performance, especially in CPU-bound scenarios. As awesome as Mantle is though, it is currently a de-facto proprietary AMD API, which means it can only be used with AMD GPUs; what about NVIDIA and Intel GPUs? For that we turn towards DirectX, Microsoft’s traditional cross-vendor API that will be making the same jump as Mantle, but using a common API for the benefit of every vendor in the Windows ecosystem.
DirectX 12 was first announced at GDC 2014, where Microsoft unveiled the existence of the new API along with their planned goals, a brief demonstration of very early code, and limited technical details about how the API would work. Since then Microsoft has been hard at work on DirectX 12 as part of the larger Windows 10 development effort, culminating in the release of the latest Windows 10 Technical Preview, Build 9926, which is shipping with an early preview version of DirectX 12.
GDC 2014 - DirectX 12 Unveiled: 3DMark 2011 CPU Time: Direct3D 11 vs. Direct3D 12
With the various pieces of Microsoft’s latest API finally coming together, today we will be taking our first look at the performance future of DirectX. The API is stabilizing, video card drivers are improving, and the first DirectX 12 application has been written; Microsoft and their partners are finally ready to show off DirectX 12. To that end, today we’ll looking at DirectX 12 through Oxide Games’ Star Swarm benchmark, our first DirectX 12 application and a true API efficiency torture test.
Does DirectX 12 bring the same kind of performance benefits we saw with Mantle? Can it resolve the CPU bottlenecking that DirectX 11 struggles with? How well does the concept of a low-level API work for a common API with disparate hardware? Let’s find out!
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OrphanageExplosion - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
Sony already has its low-level API, GNM, plus its DX11-a-like GNMX, for those who need faster results, easier debugging, handling of state etc.Gigaplex - Monday, February 9, 2015 - link
The consoles already use bare metal APIs. This will have minimal impact for consoles.Bill McGann - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
D3D11.x is garbage compared to GNM (plus the XbOne HW is garbage compared to the PS4). The sad fact is that the XbOne desperately needs D3D12(.x) in order to catch up to the PS4.Notmyusualid - Monday, February 9, 2015 - link
Hello all... couldn't find any MULTI-GPU results...So here are mine:
System: M18x R2 3920XM (16GB RAM 1866MHz CAS10), Crossfire 7970Ms.
Test: Star Swarm Perf demo RTS, all Extreme setting.
Ambient temp 31C, skype idling in background, and with CPU ALL at stock settings:
Mantle: fps max 99.03 min 9.65 AVG 26.5
DX11: fps max 141.56 min 3.26 AVG 11.6
CPU at 4.4GHz x 4 cores, fans 100%, skype in background again:
Mantle: fps max 51.03 min 7.26 AVG 26.2 - max temp 94C
DX11: fps max 229.06 min 3.6 AVG 12.3 - max temp 104C + thus cpu throtteled at 23%.
So I guess there are good things coming to PC gamers with multi-gpu's then. Alas, being a mere mortal, I've no access to DX12 to play with...
Anyone care to offer some SLI results in return?
lamebot - Monday, February 9, 2015 - link
I have been reading this article page by page over the weekend, giving myself time to take it in. The frame times from each vendor under DX11 is very interesting. Thank you for a great, in depth article! This is what keeps me coming back.ChristTheGreat - Monday, February 9, 2015 - link
Can it be only a WIndows 10 Driver problem or optimisation for these result with the R9 290/X? On windows 8.1, 4770k 4.3ghz and R9 290 1100/1400, I do 40avg D3D11 and 66avg Mantle.. Scenario: follow, Detail: extreme...ChristTheGreat - Monday, February 9, 2015 - link
Oh well, I saw that you guys use the Asus PQ321, so running in 3 840 x 2 160?Wolfpup - Monday, February 9, 2015 - link
Good, can Mantle go away now? The idea of moving BACK to proprietary APIs is a terrible one, unless the only point of it was to push Microsoft to make these fixes in Direct X."Stardock is using the Nitrous engine for their forthcoming Star Control game"
I didn't know! This is freaking awesome news. I love love love Star Control 2 on the 3DO. Liked 1 on the Genesis too, but SC2 on the 3DO (which I think is better than the PC version) is not unlike Starflight-and somewhat like Mass Effect.
Wolfpup - Monday, February 9, 2015 - link
Forgot to mention... I also think AMD needs to worry about making sure their DirectX/Open GL drivers are flawless across years of hardware before wasting time on a proprietary API too...lordken - Monday, February 9, 2015 - link
Sorry but are you just amd hater or something?imho AMD did great thing with mantle and possibly pushed M$ to come with DX12 (or not we will never know). But that aside how about you think about some advantages mantle has?
I think that when they bring it to linux (they said they would, not sure about current status) that will be nice advantage as I guess native api would work better than wine etc. With more recent games (thanks to new engines) comming to linux would probably benefit more if they would run on mantle.
And nonetheless how about ppl that wont move to Win10 (for whatever reason)? Mantle on Win7/8 would still be huge benefit for such ppl. Not to mention that there will be probably more games with mantle than with DX12 in very close feature.
Plus if they work out console & pc mantle aspect it could bring better console ports to PC, even if game devs would be lazy to do proper optimalization mantle should pretty much eliminate this aspect (though only for amd gpu).
But either way I dont see much reason why should mantle go. I mean once it is included in all/most bigger engines (already in cryengine,frostbite,unreal) and it works what reason would be to trash something that is usefull?
btw funny how "M$ would need to do huge kernel rework to bring DX12 to Win7/8" while mantle, which does similar thing, is easily capable to be "OS version independent" (sure it is amd specific but still)
PS:What about amd drivers? They are fine imho, never had problem in last years. (you see personal experience is not a valid argument)