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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Archetype - Saturday, August 1, 2015 - link
They did not optimize the hell out of it for NVidia. They just added DX12 support. Originally it was just for DX11 on any card and Mantle supported by AMD. It is not a game - Its a tech demo.The 980 obviously has significant horse power. I am just unsure why they used a 290x and not the current flagship. But maybe the 290x is still supposed to be more powerful.
Freosan - Sunday, August 2, 2015 - link
Archetype. When this was published, the 290x WAS the current AMD flagship.Azix - Monday, August 3, 2015 - link
flagship was 295x2Archetype - Saturday, August 1, 2015 - link
They explained it quite clearly. Starswarm was written specifically to have zounds of draw calls and as such a high level API (layers and layers of API between the code that draws the scenes) will not be able to deal with it well. That was the whole point of Mantle and now DX12. To remove some of those layers of API and give software more direct access to underlying drivers and through them the hardware. You really need to get more informed.Flunk - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
That might annoy me more if they weren't giving everyone on Windows 7 and 8 an upgrade to 10 for nothing. I suppose not having to backport this to Windows 8 (as was originally announced) is probably saving a fair amount.dakishimesan - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
Sorry for my laziness, I was actually just pointing out a spelling mistake; I think it should say because DirectX 12… Etc.But for what it's worth I agree with you, with windows 10 being a free upgrade, and only enthusiast really caring about direct X 12 on their current high performance gear, I have no problem with Microsoft doing it this way.
Christopher1 - Monday, February 16, 2015 - link
Exactly. I understood why people were reticent to upgrade to Windows 7 and 8 because it was a paid upgrade, but with Windows 10 being a free upgrade if you have Windows 7 or 8? No reason not to upgrade.yuhong - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
Yea, the old DirectX redists are long dead.Wwhat - Saturday, February 7, 2015 - link
I'm highly suspicious about windows 10.There is a reason why they give it for free, as the saying goes "If You're Not Paying for It; You're the Product", which is generally true these days if it comes from a commercial outfit.
damianrobertjones - Saturday, February 7, 2015 - link
The more that people use the Windows store the more profit MS makes. Simple.