Thursday, March 20th 2014
AMD Demonstrates Full Support for DirectX 12 at Game Developer Conference
Today, AMD announced support for Microsoft and its revamped graphics application programming interface, DirectX 12, a new "console-like" version of the graphics API that has inspired PC gaming for nearly two decades. During the Microsoft-sponsored panel, DirectX: Evolving Microsoft's Graphics Platform, AMD revealed that it will support DirectX 12 on all AMD Radeon GPUs that feature the Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture.
AMD will support and collaborate with Microsoft on the development of the generational advancement of the API, to continue to improve the experience for both developers and end users.
"AMD strongly believes in the benefits gamers and game developers can realize from lower-overhead API development," said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager, Graphics Business Unit, AMD. "With the Mantle API, AMD has shown the world our commitment to incredible performance, and we look forward to enabling the same performance gains by supporting the industry-standard DirectX 12."
DirectX 12 will offer tantalizing opportunities for game developers to extract new performance from PC graphics cards with a newly-streamlined language that reduces API overhead. DirectX 12 will be the first generational leap for the platform since DirectX 11 made its debut in 2008.
"AMD has always been an essential partner in the development of DirectX," said Anuj Gosalia, Development Manager, Windows Graphics, Microsoft. "As we start the next chapter for our historic API, we look forward to continued great collaboration with AMD to bring gamers the best possible performance on AMD hardware."
A DirectX 12 support schedule for AMD Radeon GPUs will be published at a later date.
AMD will support and collaborate with Microsoft on the development of the generational advancement of the API, to continue to improve the experience for both developers and end users.
DirectX 12 will offer tantalizing opportunities for game developers to extract new performance from PC graphics cards with a newly-streamlined language that reduces API overhead. DirectX 12 will be the first generational leap for the platform since DirectX 11 made its debut in 2008.
"AMD has always been an essential partner in the development of DirectX," said Anuj Gosalia, Development Manager, Windows Graphics, Microsoft. "As we start the next chapter for our historic API, we look forward to continued great collaboration with AMD to bring gamers the best possible performance on AMD hardware."
A DirectX 12 support schedule for AMD Radeon GPUs will be published at a later date.
54 Comments on AMD Demonstrates Full Support for DirectX 12 at Game Developer Conference
Nv just tricks again, they need only Dx12 sticker, DX12 has a lot switchable effect, NV does not support either, AMD GCN does.
NV again just mislead, every DX11 gpu will support DX12, but many special effects won't be supported, Microsoft held DX12 criterion very low...
NVIDIA, AMD, Intel Explain How OpenGL Can Unlock 15x Performance Gains
What was running on nVdia silicon was a DEMO. Not DirectX 12. "Microsoft tells us the PC Forza demo "was simply a rendering tech demo to showcase the power and ease of development for DX12. We have no plans to release Forza Motorsport 5, or any other Microsoft Studios Xbox One title on PC." When asked about specific enhancements for Xbox One, Microsoft confirmed that DX12 was on the roadmap for the console, but "beyond that, we have nothing more to share."
www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-directx-12-revealed-coming-to-xbox-one
So put your troll away and lets not jump off the ledge yet okay?
I wants a feature list of 12 also though.
1. AMD Mantle is mainly a CPU Optimization addon for AMD Graphic Processing. It's API-software used in an AMD Video Driver. Software that is suppose to push out more frames because of the cpu bottleneck that occurs when any user is playing a PC Game, and they experience a large amount of overhead. The boon for AMD Mantle was to redirect Frame Instructions to the other cores on the CPU. Thus, the result would be a higher Frame Rate Output in real time. Instead of sending Video Instructions through one batch command (the first core mainly), Mantle was suppose to push Ram and Video Commands through other cores (batch commands) because there was a significantly lower latency, or time to process those commands.
2. DX12 is the same thing, essentially, as AMD Mantle, but where AMD Mantle is restricted to the Video Driver for those users, DX12 is just D3D9 + D3D10 +D3D11.0 + D3D11.1 (currently full support only for AMD) + D3D11.2 (currently full support only for AMD) + D3D12.0 in the upcoming Win9 OS. So it's apart of the API in the OS, and this is where it won't be restricted like AMD Mantle to just a video driver. NVidia will use it because it still uses the D3D API. Laptops, consoles, and others can use it as well.
3. This includes AMD Users because, they don't have to settle for using AMD Mantle. AMD Mantle is a low level API that acts as a substitute for D3D in certain games. i.e. Star Citizens, BF4, etc... You have the choice to choose the API, set it to Mantle or D3D in the games video options.
Other things to consider:
A. With Project Denver and Seattle coming, would it really matter if DX12 or AMD Mantle are really that significant. Think about it. If "Full" Maxwell and future R9-300/400 Graphic Cards (2015 generation) are coming out with CPU-like ARM cores, with the GPU on the video card's PCB, and it's main purpose is to redirect frame instructions to that CPU on the video card instead of the CPU on your motherboard, for the most part, could you honestly say that the API-software hype would really be a big boon to the industry. Right now, yes. In the future, it will be just another bunch of APIs that will be dwarfed by the output of the hardware.
B. This is M$'s attempt to milk some revenue returns from both AMD and NVidia for the use of a better, improved Mantle-copycat.
"DX and GL are years behind in API design compared to what is possible on GCN. For instance there is no need for the CPU to do any binding for a traditional material system with unique shaders/textures/samplers/buffers associated with geometry. Going to the metal on GCN, it would be trivial to pass a 32-bit index from the vertex shader to the pixel shader, then use the 32-bit index and S_BUFFER_LOAD_DWORDX16 to get constants, samplers, textures, buffers, and shaders associated with the material. Do a S_SETPC to branch to the proper shader"
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S_SETPC instruction is from the scalar processor within each GCN's CU and shows it doesn't need an ARM CPU.AMD has claimed "FULL DirectX 12 compatibility" for their current GCNs.
Source: https://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/amd-demonstrates-2014mar20.aspx
"Full DirectX 12 compatibility promised for the award-winning Graphics Core Next architecture"
NVIDIA has yet to claim "FULL DirectX 12 compatibility".
DX12 = CPU overhead reduction optional
Mantle = CPU overhead reduction Included
In 2015-2016 we could be seeing DX12 games act no different with CPU overhead since its optional. :ohwell:
Probably due to cost saving.
^Might be another distinction from those that include Mantle support.
I wonder why this hasn't posted yet?
Thief at 1080p/max details/SSAA/Mantle/Windows 8.1 X64/Cat 14.3 driver on my R9-290X+4770K at 4.2Ghz scored 73.2 average fps.