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
First Thoughts
Bringing our preview of DirectX 12 to a close, what we’re seeing today is both a promising sign of what has been accomplished so far and a reminder of what is left to do. As it stands much of DirectX 12’s story remains to be told – features, feature levels, developer support, and more will only finally be unveiled by Microsoft next month at GDC 2015. So today’s preview is much more of a beginning than an end when it comes to sizing up the future of DirectX.
But for the time being we’re finally at a point where we can say the pieces are coming together, and we can finally see parts of the bigger picture. Drivers, APIs, and applications are starting to arrive, giving us our first look at DirectX 12’s performance. And we have to say we like what we’ve seen so far.
With DirectX 12 Microsoft and its partners set out to create a cross-vendor but still low-level API, and while there was admittedly little doubt they could pull it off, there has always been the question of how well they could do it. What kind of improvements and performance could you truly wring out of a new API when it has to work across different products and can never entirely avoid abstraction? The answer as it turns out is that you can still enjoy all of the major benefits of a low-level API, not the least of which are the incredible improvements in CPU efficiency and multi-threading.
That said, any time we’re looking at an early preview it’s important to keep our expectations in check, and that is especially the case with DirectX 12. Star Swarm is a best case scenario and designed to be a best case scenario; it isn’t so much a measure of real world performance as it is technological potential.
But to that end, it’s clear that DirectX 12 has a lot of potential in the right hands and the right circumstances. It isn’t going to be easy to master, and I suspect it won’t be a quick transition, but I am very interested in seeing what developers can do with this API. With the reduced overhead, the better threading, and ultimately a vastly more efficient means of submitting draw calls, there’s a lot of potential waiting to be exploited.
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jeffkibuule - Saturday, February 7, 2015 - link
Right, it's a secret to the public, not so much to the engineers.Jumangi - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
MS is a much bigger company so the resources they have give a big edge. I also suspect while AMD publicly still supports Mantle they probably aren't doing much for the future as they are smart enough, or I hope they are smart enough, to realize DX 12 makes Mantle irrelevant.toffty - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
I wouldn't say Mantle is irrelevant since Directx12 is Windows 10 and Xbox One only. Mantle is for Window < 10, linux and OSX. It will be competing against OpenGL in that space, true, but if it's easier to port applications made with Mantle to Xbox One, Mantle will have a leg up on OpenGL. Mantle also needs to becomes open and nVidia supports it too.Penti - Saturday, February 7, 2015 - link
There is no mantle for anything else than Windows. PS4 uses it's own API's, Nintendo uses it's own API's, X1 doesn't straight up run the same runtime or API as DX on Windows and already have low-level features, D3D11.X is a superset of D3D/DX11. Games are normally DX/HLSL to begin with, so you don't need to mess around with shaders that much and converting formats. Converting GLSL to HLSL is practical though. Many engines also has their own shader languages and systems making stuff like Mantle's shading language similarities irrelevant. Most will design for something else as their first path than Mantle.Jumangi - Saturday, February 7, 2015 - link
Fanboys can get mad but Linux and OSX are irrelevant for mainstream gaming. So yes Mantle has no real future and will be forgotten about in a couple of years.bloodypulp - Sunday, February 8, 2015 - link
Keep on dreaming, Nvidia fangirl. Mantle is coming for SteamOS(Linux). Count on it.yannigr2 - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
Mantle was the catalyst to bring DX12 closer. No reason for AMD to spend much resources on Mantle now. Job is done.Notmyusualid - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
More or less my thinking too. Best to keep us all on the same page, so to speak.Respect to AMD, but let us all join the DX12 train together....
AnnonymousCoward - Saturday, February 7, 2015 - link
Not necessarily. How do you know it wasn't MS's idea even? Look at Khato's post above.tipoo - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
What's the support status of Intels chips which are going to get it? I think all Iris models will, and a few of the higher end HD Graphics series parts will. Are they currently supported?It would be interesting to see if this could push the Iris Pro 5200 any further. Though this is more for the flip situation of a weak CPU with a strong GPU, rather than this strong CPU with a modest GPU.