4 replies to this topic

[GraphicX]

has any one been reading about it at all ?

from what i'm seeing it looks pretty exciting, not only for the PC, but for the xbox one as well.

i may have the wrong end of the stick with a lot of this stuff, but i'm just going to jot down notes on what i'm seeing/reading about it at this stage;

- can use multiple gpus of different brands (ie. your currently disabled onboard gpu can be called to action to help with boosting performance, a tech demo demonstrates this & provides a solid 10+% fps boost)

- can use all available VRAM of all gpus unlike crossfire or SLI (mate at work installed it on his laptop yesterday, it has 2gb dedicated VRAM, with win10 he now has 5.8gb of VRAM shared, system has 32gb)

- amd's mantle api will be defunct, but DX12 essentially provides the gains of mantle to every game with DX12 support, that's up to a 2000% performance boost on amd cards (not directly to FPS, but to other processing tasks), which even at 2000% only brings them on par with same spec nvidia cards anyway lol

- high chance many cores at lower clock speeds will outperform fewer cores at higher clock speeds, ie. amd cpus may actually become competitive instead of just garbage alongside the intel line up

- will probably be aaaaages before we see games fully utilising DX12, but high odds some high end current release games may receive DX12 updates (although for full benefits the entire game engine will need to be built around it)

[GasClown]

GraphicX, on 23 June 2015 - 12:32 AM, said:

has any one been reading about it at all ?

No.

[Axe99]

Read bits and bobs, it does look promising, particularly in terms of efficiently using hardware.  It seems PCs are finally moving away from a base in single-core coding (they've been moving away for ages, but DX12/Mantle look like watersheds in this approach, and I suspect the whole 'multi weak core' approach of consoles helped give them a wriggle along as well).

In terms of XB1 benefits, I haven't read much, but the impression I'd got (what I've heard is from Brad Wardell, from Stardock, who was originally very bullish on DX12, even for XB1, but later recanted), was that most XB1 code is low-level and does the kind of stuff that DX12 does already.  The difference is that DX12 will help PCs be far more efficient in their use of code, so it may enable PCs to provide similar levels of bang for buck as consoles, which would be great news for PC gaming (but the broader implementation of a multi-core approach to coding will also be great news for console game as well).  For software programmers, I suspect they'll be happy they're not trying to code for a bunch of systems with different approaches to hardware usage, which must have been a right pain last gen (X360 was different to PC was different to PS3 was different to Wii, although the PS3 was the most 'exotic').

[GasClown]

GraphicX, on 23 June 2015 - 12:32 AM, said:

- can use all available VRAM of all gpus unlike crossfire or SLI (mate at work installed it on his laptop yesterday, it has 2gb dedicated VRAM, with win10 he now has 5.8gb of VRAM shared, system has 32gb)

I'll be happy if I get the 8Gb VRAM (4Gb each card) plus the 16Gb system. You'd think that'd be enough to last quite some time.

From what I had read - XB1 won't benefit quite as much as PCs will.

[GraphicX]

in shadow of mordor, the top texture pack required a minimum of 12gb vram, so give it a couple of years & who knows what the demands will be if playing on highest settings.  lords of the fallen had a fairly hungry requirement too, i don't know exactly but i'd hazard at least 4gb vram.