Exploring DirectX 12: 3DMark API Overhead Feature Test
by Ryan Smith & Ian Cutress on March 27, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- Radeon
- Futuremark
- GeForce
- 3DMark
- DirectX 12
Integrated GPU Testing
Switching gears from high performance discrete GPUs, we have our integrated GPUs. From a high level overview the gains from DirectX 12 are not going to be quite as large here as they are with dGPUs due to the much lower GPU performance, but there is still ample opportunity benefit from increased draw call performance.
Here we have Intel’s Haswell CPUs, and AMD’s Kaveri APUs. We'll start off with the higher-end processors, the Intel Core i3/i5i7 and AMD A10/A8.
As expected, at the high-end the performance gains from DirectX 12 are not quite as great as they were with the dGPUs, but we’re still seeing significant gains. The largest gains of course are found with the AMD processors, thanks to their much stronger iGPUs. From DX11ST to DX12 we’re seeing a surprisingly large 6.8x increase in draw call performance, from 655K to 4,470K.
As to be expected, with a relatively weak CPU, AMD’s DX11 draw call performance isn’t very strong here relative to their strong GPU and of course our more powerful dGPUs. Still, it ends up being better than Intel (who otherwise has the stronger CPU), so we see AMD offering better draw call throughput at all levels. Ultimately what this amounts to is that AMD has quite a bit more potential under DX12.
Mantle meanwhile delivers a very slight edge over DX12 here, although for all practical purposes the two should be considered tied.
Meanwhile for the Intel CPUs, the gains from DX12 aren’t quite as large as with the AMD processors, but they’re still significant, and this is why Intel is happily backing DX12. All 3 processors share the same GT2 GPU and see similar gains. Starting from a baseline of 625K draw calls under DX11 – almost identical to AMD – the i7-4790K jumps up by 3.2x to 2,033K draw calls under DX12. The i5 and the i3 processors see 1,977K and 1,874K respectively, and after adjusting for clockspeeds it’s clear that we’re GPU command processor limited at all times here, hence why even a 2 core i3 can deliver similar gains.
Intel does end up seeing the smallest gains here, but again even in this sort of worst case scenario of a powerful CPU paired with a weak CPU, DX12 still improved draw call performance by over 3.2x. This means that in the long run even games that are targeting lower-performance PCs still stand to see a major increase in the number of draw calls they can use thanks to DirectX 12.
The story is much the same with our lower performance processors. AMD continues to see the largest gains and largest absolute performance under DirectX 12. With a 7x performance increase for the A8, even this weaker processor benefits greatly from the use of a low-level API.
The Intel processors see smaller gains as well, but they too are similarly significant. Even the Pentium with its basic GT1 processor and pair of relatively low clocked CPU sees a 2.7x increase in draw call performance from DirectX 12.
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jtrdfw - Monday, April 6, 2015 - link
Actually it comes from terminator 2 when arnold is dropped into the molten metal.Zepid - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link
Not all 8GB is addressable. Only 3.5 GB of memory on the PS4 is, with 500MB extra of virtual in the wing. The Xbox One has 4GB addressable by the GPU, but a much weaker GPU.PlayStationBSD consumes a considerable amount of overhead, more than the HyperV Windows OS on the Xbox One.
Source: Console development at EA.
Laststop311 - Saturday, March 28, 2015 - link
yea ur right 4GB max for xbox one and 4GB max for ps4 but only if they tap into the extra 500MB offeredSamus - Saturday, March 28, 2015 - link
DirectX is an API, ie, software. There is nothing stopping Microsoft ans Sony from enabling DX12 in their consoles ans updating the devkits.DERSS - Saturday, March 28, 2015 - link
Sony obviously can not have anything to do with DX12, but nor they have to in the first place -- AMD's Mantle transitions to OpenGL's Vulkan project, so all games that are OpenGL-bases will be able to use it. Before that, AMD can help with using pure Mantle on PS4 as standalone thing as it is their GPU in there anyway.Gigaplex - Monday, March 30, 2015 - link
Sony could, if they managed to licence the API. There is no technical limitation preventing them from porting the DirectX API.akamateau - Thursday, April 30, 2015 - link
Actually SOny would have some difficulty as they are not using a Windows kernal as Microsoft is doing.PS4 uses Orbis OS derived from FreeBSD. DX12 obviously will not run on that though I am sure that Sony has that issue solved.
akamateau - Thursday, April 30, 2015 - link
Nah....DX12 is going into XBOX probably by October.http://www.vrworld.com/2015/04/29/directx-12-on-xb...
Current XBOX games will see a performance boost but the greatest boost will happen when XBOX game developers start writing DX12 games.
imaheadcase - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link
You also deal with the terrible UI in games for console users. Many small things in games add up to major complains for PC users.Frenetic Pony - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link
This is somewhat accurate. With DX12/Vulcan games should actually be easier to port, as explicit memory control, tight thread controls, and cheap draw calls are all assumed to be there when writing for consoles, which is then code beaten repeatedly like an abused step child to get it to play nice with DX11, in most part because it's not known what exactly the API and card are actually doing together.The end result should actually be that minimum requirements to play games, which crept up a lot over the last generation as the consoles were better understood but the PC version had to be brute forced into getting the API to behave, should creep up a lot less. But considering both the CPU and GPU of a high end PC are far beyond both consoles already, I'm not sure how much benefit end users will directly see. Maybe there will be setting to stop culling out small objects with distance, that would be an easy abuse of all those extra draw calls. But otherwise I can see the low to mid end benefitting a lot more than someone running crossfire 390s or something.