DirectX 12 Performance Preview

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8962/the-directx-12-performance-preview-amd-nvidia-star-swarm

 

GTX 980, only card that is bottle-necked by 2 cores. Where is the TITAN Black, TITAN Z and 295x2?

C'mon Anandtech...

 

What the? How does it improve the frame rate that much?

EDIT: Nevermind, it's a demo designed specifically to showcase this sort of thing.

 

TL;DR

DX12 is Windows 10 exclusive.

Supported on Fermi and above, GCN 1.0 and above.

Huge performance gain in Star Swarm benchmark compared to DX11, similar to Mantle.

 

Until you look at the dx11 render path and find:

Sleep(rand() % 100);

 

What I found curious was how the GTX 980 was only about 10% more power efficient in this particular benchmark.

 

980-9schmatie!

...someone needs to test with the 980m.

 

Can users download DirectX 12? Do you need Windows 10?

 

DirectX12 was spotted with Windows 10
http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/DirectX-12-Preview-New-Windows-10-Build-No-Drivers-Yet

Anandtech explains

Maybe it just works with Star Swarm for some reason? I dont know

 

There were only 2 releases for W10, and the release 2 includes DX12. The driver has to be installed from Windows Update I believe.

 

I wonder if there's ways to extract and install on W7 with a bit of modification..

 

I don't get it. Isn't DX12 a hardware feature? How the hell it works on gtx980?

 

GTX 900 series support DirectX 12: http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-980/specifications

And even then, there's supposed to be benefits for cards without it.

 

You most likely can`t use DX12 anyway.
Few if any games support it, and Anandtech probably got a beta build from Star Swarm that enables it.

But this smells like DX11 vs DX12 from HTWinNut when it eventually arrives

 

I still wonder if a DX12 hack for Windows 7 could be made. Just really, really, really cannot stand the Metro stuff of Windows 10.

 

There's absolutely zero chance. As mentioned in the AnandTech article, DX12 is intrinsically tied to WDDM 2.0 is intrinsically tied to Windows 10. 2.0 is the biggest change to the Windows display driver model since Vista and WDDM 1.0. Backporting a component of the Windows kernel such as WDDM is highly problematic, as Microsoft found out firsthand when it tried to backport DX11.1 and WDDM 1.2 to Windows 7 (the infamous Windows 7 platform update), which they eventually ended up abandoning due to the widespread compatibility issues, which is why Windows 7 doesn't have full DX11.1 support. In comparison, a backport of DX12 would be a much bigger undertaking that fails cost-benefit analysis for Microsoft.

And of course, mainstream support for Windows 7 ended last month. So from now on, no more new features such as DirectX updates for the venerable OS, just the bare minimum monthly security updates until 2020.

 

Choices...

 

Whats so bad about Win10?

 

I just don't like the Metro UI, it's completely a personal thing for me.

 

Oh Mantle, we hardly knew ye.

 

It'll be at least a year until we see new games utilizing DX12, even then, people won't be jumping ship just to get it. The DX10-11 phase was a number of years. Curious to see if AMD's 3XX series cards actually end up being DX12. Would be a strong motivation to upgrade, along with their benchmarks.

 

Hehe no problem, I'll just keep playing Star Swarm benchmark over and over until somebody finally makes a DX12 game.

 

DX12 wouldn't be a thing if it weren't for Mantle. Neither would glNext. Or Metal.

Thank goodness for Mantle.

 

In games or benchmark that is not designed for DX12 I am pretty sure the gap will be much less significant though, still should provide some efficiency considering the idea is to access the hardware easier (right? I am not so sure about all details though)

@octiceps, well said, thanks to AMD we are getting DX12, as soon as Mantle became a real thing, Microsoft revealed DX12 development news.

 

I honestly think that DX12 might kill the entire laptop market if it forces us to run at 100% util and TDP. We're already low-TDP packages with our GPUs, and our largest single PSU is 330W, and only sold as default with three current laptops on the market, and ALL are SLI laptops. Seeing as how I managed to overdraw a 330W power brick with a slight OC just by livestreaming and playing Mass Effect 2 (of all games) with an unlocked FPS? I think this might be a problem for 180W bricks and 100W cards, etc. ESPECIALLY with how Maxwell's power optimizations pretty much require turning off parts of the cards that aren't really working, and how Maxwell itself is a very power hungry beast.

I'm... interested... to see how DX12 will affect the whole market. If Maxwell's power optimizations go down the toilet because of DX12, it could cause a real upset as that's a big selling point (their cool and frugal nature).

 

This Star Swamp really an test, for CPU frequency 800MHz gives more FPS than to 2400MHz locked;

 

That's all true. But it doesn't change the fact that Mantle is now going to fade away, into irrelevancy.

 

I understand, but from the videos I`ve seen of Win10, the customization is there to remove any things that resembles Metro if you prefer that.

Thats a bit bold to say. Microsoft began working on DX12 before AMD released Mantle. Not just for PC but also for Xbox.
Mantle maybe only got the release of DX12 out faster than previously was Microsoft`s goal. For that we should be thankful, but AMD isnt the only one that can "code to the metal" for GPUs.

What did you use to read clocks? If it was the program, maybe it was reading it wrong.
Great boost with Mantle btw

 

DX12 is as much a result of the failure of Windows 8 and Xbox One stumbling out of the gate as it is a response to Mantle. Both of those things happened after Mantle was already released. Microsoft wants to consign Windows 8 to history as fast as possible and needs gamers to drive the adoption of Windows 10. What better way to do it than to make DX12 a W10 exclusive feature. And DX12 is needed to close the performance gap with PS4, which already has an extremely low-level graphics API of its own called GNM. The timing of the DX12 announcement just seems a little too convenient given the events of late 2013 to early 2014 that you can't convince me DX12 wasn't influenced, at least in part, by Mantle. That and Mantle beating it to market by 2 whole years.

 

Some more DX12 claims. Take from it what you will (with a grain of salt): http://www.dsogaming.com/news/dx12-...00-performance-increase-achieved-on-amd-gpus/

 

I've locked CPU frequency with Throttlestop, so it was really running 800 and 2400MHz. Actually I was curious if using slower CPU Mantle makes bigger difference over DX11 or not. And I've got that ********.

 

Star Swarm is a non-deterministic benchmark. Running comparisons is a waste of time.

 

DX12 was announced after Mantle yes, but that doesnt mean it wasnt in development.
Microsoft themselves have said that they started working on it before Mantle. Wether its true or if they try to save face I have no idea. But thats what they say.

As for the rest in your post, thats purely speculation

 

Of course they'll say so. Just like it was with Android and iOS.

Am I the only one who thinks that Mantle is awesome because it is the only option to stick with W7 AND having the same if not better performance compared to DX12? At least for now. Of course you have to come to the dark side, as a quick glimpse in your signatures tells me that I'm among the few (this probably answers my question).

 

Having to pick what OS you want to use is undoubtly a perk with Mantle vs Win10 lock with DX12.
Question however is how many games will support DX12 and how many will continue with Mantle in the future. If more games are DX12 exclusive, there is no doubt people will upgrade to Win10 even if they hate it.

DX12 works for Intel/AMD/Nvidia, Mantle only for AMD, so DX12 will most likely be the victor here while Mantle slowly dies I think

 

Soon, Unity3d Engine is going to get DX12 support and i am going to release BallBench with DX12 support.
Theoretically i can use up to X10 more DrawCalles.
Then we will see your CPU's sweating.

Already bought Unity3d 5.x and ready to go.

 

10x more balls? Bring it on!

 

My Xeon with 36 threads is ready.











Jk, there is no Xeon...

 

More balls and a huge castle to destroy with balls.

 

Truly brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "balls to the wall"

 

This step in the GPU scene was inevitable. MS could have done it before with DX11 too but they prefered upping the scale on platform uniformity with Win10. And what best moment than when you have a new adaptive OS, a new API to compare to and some big (marketing) hype to ride on. MS is a corporation in the end
Let's just say that what will benefit the most from DX12 are new cards built on smaller lithography (14/16nm and lower where the real power reduction is). Current cards can be locked at 60/120fps and still benefit from DX12s improved performance jump, this way all the extra processing power isn't going to waste on framerates higher than a monitor can display (not all Compute Units used to reach 60fps as the ones used work more efficiently).
I don't know about the CPU though. All 4 cores used most of the time could put a stress (in power/heat terms) to some systems.
These are my thoughts.
Correct me if I'm wrong

 

I'd love to include this bench in my suite of benchmarks.

 

GOD SAVE US ALL!!!

 

lol that gotta be too good to be true. What are they comparing here? i3 with R9 295X2 and DX12 vs overclocked i7 8-core with 295X2 and DX11?

 

^^^
Listen, this is one of the greatest achievements in the evolution of gaming.
I am waiting for it like a child waiting to open the pile of boxes under the Christmas Tree.

It opens up an ocean of new game mechanics and complexity.

 

Well, that's true if Mantle was proprietary, but it's not. It's nVIDIA that is playing butt-hurt and didn't take the opportunity... which made Mantle more or less proprietary, since no one but AMD is using it. It could've been win-win, but as I love to say - that's nVIDIA for you.

To not be completely off - I hope that they'll bring the Aero back, I'll try to live with the other drawbacks, because DX12 is the one to stay. Pity, pity.

 

It's more-or-less a moot point whether Mantle is proprietary or not until AMD releases the public SDK, which has not happened yet to my knowledge.

 

QFT. I recall reading some time last year that Intel had expressed an interest in using Mantle on their iGPUs, but nothing has come of that (publicly, at least). At this point it appears to be primarily AMD being slow at releasing the SDK that is keeping it AMD-only.

The StarSwarm preview is interesting, even keeping in mind it's a best-case scenario. The real question is what the in-practice improvement will be, but it proves the potential. I suppose the fact that it came in just slightly slower than Mantle (about 5%) in most of the benchmarks indicates that it probably will also come in just slightly slower than Mantle in practice - but with a much less wide gulf between DX11 on one hand, and DX12/Mantle on the other than in Star Swarm. Which would still be a nice upgrade.

Basically zero chance. It's too fundamentally tied to the Windows Display Driver Model, and thus to Windows 10. I tried some of the DX10-on-XP hacks back in 2008 with my DX10-capable GPU. The reliability was awful, and I'm not sure I ever got a single game to take advantage of them (granted, I didn't have many DX10-capable games then, mostly just the Crysis demo). DX12 on Windows 7 would be equally challenging. And I doubt there'd be substantially more motivation for someone to try it with DX12/Win10 than there was with DX10/Vista.

But Mantle on Windows 7 ought to work. And that's where Mantle's niche might be, particularly if AMD does release Linux and OS X versions as well. DX12 would require Windows 10, but if you had a recent AMD card, you could use Mantle on 7, 8, OS X, or Linux, and get the same performance benefit for games that supported Mantle. It would be a nice edge, if AMD could convince developers to continue (or start) supporting Mantle.

 

AMD has a chance here with Mantle though.
It's been accessible for what... almost 2 years (could be less) before DX12?

Seeing how we don't know what the adoption rates for Windows 10 will actually be and how a lot of people 'might' want to opt to remain with Windows 7 for some time, Matle could easily flourish in this particular segment (considering that it works fine on 7).

 

You are right, I haven't came across any news about them releasing the SDK as well, but I do remember the Intel interest. Still think that it's because nVIDIA. We all like performance, the more the better, but it matters even more in the APUs. So Intel's interest maybe wasn't what AMD was hoping for. After all Intel has better CPUs, that's no secret, combine their average iGP with Mantle and they would demolish AMD entirely. That's why I think that the interest didn't came from the right side. Just thinking out loud.