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Microsoft to Talk DirectX 12 at GDC

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Microsoft will present its first paper on DirectX 12, its next-generation multimedia API, at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), on the 20th of March, 2013. The event could include presentations by NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm. It's not clear at this point if Microsoft will release developer tools and resources on that day, or simply outline the API to spur interest. If anything, it should gently nudge today's GPU manufacturers to make their future GPU designs ready for the API. There are currently no GPU families that we know of, which support DirectX 12. AMD's current Graphics CoreNext 2.0 GPUs, such as the Radeon R9 290X, support DirectX 11.2, while NVIDIA's "Maxwell" GPUs, such as the GeForce GTX 750 Ti, feature an identical API feature-level support to their "Kepler" predecessors.



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Finally DX12 Now that's good News
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There are currently no GPU families that we know of, which support DirectX 12. AMD's current Graphics CoreNext 2.0 GPUs, such as the Radeon R9 290X, support DirectX 11.2, while NVIDIA's "Maxwell" GPUs, such as the GeForce GTX 750 Ti, feature an identical API feature-level support to their "Kepler" predecessors.
I think it'd be good to point out what DX version NVIDIA supports as well? To me the sentence hints at either they do or don't support 11.2. That's just my opinion though.
 
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Thank you AMD for forcing Microsoft to be competitive

I'd argue that it was Microsoft's and Sony's console divisions that are responsible for this. Mantle was only officially announced about 6 months ago. Maybe Microsoft's DirectX people increased its development pace due to it, but it's hard to argue that this is a direct reaction to AMD. It likely has more to do with a way to differentiate PCs from video game consoles that finally are on feature parity with DirectX 11.

I think it'd be good to point out what DX version NVIDIA supports as well? To me the sentence hints at either they do or don't support 11.2. That's just my opinion though.

They only support DX 11.0, which makes me wonder they knew about DX12 long ago and the the plan was always to skip the point releases and dedicate resources toward DX12.
 
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They only support DX 11.0, which makes me wonder they knew about DX12 long ago and the the plan was always to skip the point releases and dedicate resources toward DX12.

Same can be said for any one of the companies Microsoft consulted during development. They all knew. Nvidia might just have been lazy or thought wide adaptation of DX11.1/11.2 wouldn't be worth it and could get by with software support of certain features until then.

As far as forcing it. I would be more incline to believe #1 Android and #2 Sony PS4 beating MS X-Box One in sales and performance has more to do with it. The fact that Qualcomm is there is a signal of the market MS wants to include in the future.
 
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I'm curious if they will focus mostly on removing the big overhead (compared to Mantle), or they will add also extra features? Maybe both?
 
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I'd argue that it was Microsoft's and Sony's console divisions that are responsible for this. Mantle was only officially announced about 6 months ago. Maybe Microsoft's DirectX people increased its development pace due to it, but it's hard to argue that this is a direct reaction to AMD. It likely has more to do with a way to differentiate PCs from video game consoles that finally are on feature parity with DirectX 11.
I think the OpenGL extensions Nvidia and AMD have been championing (which predate Mantle for the most part) may have more to do with it personally. John Carmack alluded the OpenGL extensions pretty much as soon as Mantle broke cover
They only support DX 11.0, which makes me wonder they knew about DX12 long ago and the the plan was always to skip the point releases and dedicate resources toward DX12.
Quite possible. Nvidia pretty unenthusiastic about DX10.1 also at the time. Bearing in mind the great deluge of DX11.2 games that aren't arriving, it's hard to get too excited about the whole thing.
 
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Quite possible. Nvidia pretty unenthusiastic about DX10.1 also at the time. Bearing in mind the great deluge of DX11.2 games that aren't arriving, it's hard to get too excited about the whole thing.

The side effect to that is if developers don't have the tools they cant develop such engines or games with such support & features. The absence of hardware then contributes to the delay in adaptation.
 
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A pity no game developers will use it for the first few months(sorry everyone, YEARS). How many games actually utilise DX11?(.0 or .2)
 
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A pity no game developers will use it for the first few months. How many games actually utilise DX11?(.0 or .2)

First few months ? That's being optimistic.

DX introduced 64bit in 2005 and we barely started seeing games being 64bit capable in the pass year almost a decade since its intro. People still complain about DX 9 compatibility with drivers that's 2002 WinXP.

Unless Microsoft pulls a Vista/DX10 and DX 12 is not backwards compatible game developers will do very little to take advantage of it.
 
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A pity no game developers will use it for the first few months. How many games actually utilise DX11?(.0 or .2)

Not sure if many developers will use it even after a few years. PS4 and XBONE may prevent the wide adoption of DX12. Just like what PS3 and 360 did to DX11.
 
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Unless Microsoft pulls a Vista/DX10 and DX 12 is not backwards compatible

You mean the exact same thing they did with Windows 8? Yeah, DX12 is only going to work for 8.2/9.
 
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"Hey buy this brand new $1000 GPU with DX 12 support even though no games support it or will barely support it !!!

Also, here is a coupon for some mediocrity to seal the deal."
 
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i hope it increase the speed more than DX11 did....Frame rate is more important than some effects like tesselation.
 
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I think it'd be good to point out what DX version NVIDIA supports as well? To me the sentence hints at either they do or don't support 11.2. That's just my opinion though.

GTX Titan Black supports the D3D11.2 API. Probably for the soul purpose of selling a cheaper Graphic Accelerator/Gaming Cards that didn't need the full 12 GB frame-buffer like the K40 Tesla. Anything before that doesn't support it. If you ask me, NVidia was hesitant to pay royalties for it in the GTX 780 Ti and it's predecessors. AMD's 7000 Series has had support on a hardware level for both D3D11.1 and 11.2. It eventually had full support from the software side through a driver update with the Win8 OS. NVidia mainly had support on a software level, but not the hardware level. Sadly, this is what you pay for your "premium price" in the past year with NVidia.


I'd argue that it was Microsoft's and Sony's console divisions that are responsible for this. Mantle was only officially announced about 6 months ago. Maybe Microsoft's DirectX people increased its development pace due to it, but it's hard to argue that this is a direct reaction to AMD. It likely has more to do with a way to differentiate PCs from video game consoles that finally are on feature parity with DirectX 11.

One, sounds to me like you wouldn't give AMD any credit for trying, and two pushing D3D12.0 now, or in a few years, won't force developers to suddenly shell out extra captia to upgrade tools to produce D3D12.0 Titles. Especially, it's not going to happen over night with the current situation in the US Economy--just looking at it in a situation where the US is the only ones developing future games that uses the new API, and people aren't being encouraged to invest in tomorrow's future. That being said, the most likely case would be the Consoles will have a shelf life of 5 to 7 years using DX11.2. MS and Sony will milk the situation with the consoles. After that, DX12.0 will probably emerge followed by DX12.1 and DX12.2. Unless DX12.0 is MS's attempt to be in competition with AMD Mantle because they have something to fear--I highly doubt it seeing as how AMD isn't pushing non-beta version of Mantle with great haste. I think this is probably MS's way of future-proofing the next generation of gaming for more revenue returns in 5 to 10 years. Making an announcement that MS is producing said API version. In addition, maybe this is MS's attempt to increase the value of MS Stock. Realistically, this is to give NVidia and AMD some time to see how to code with the new API before they actually start paying royalties to MS.

Sony will milk the console situation, but on the side, they will continue to push out 4K TVs, and may even provide some competition with Oculus Rift on the VR spectrum of the market. I know Sony will have a refresh version of it's VR headset. It will probably be released in a few months besides 4k TVs at 60p versus the current 30p. Competition will escalate when Oculus Rift starts coming out with non-developer version of their VR headset, and maybe even 4K versions of it. You know since Sony is the main company that's pushing 4K TV, they will eventually push a 4K VR headset when they can refine it... Sony's VR headset does 1080p, 24p true. For $1,000 a pop, it's not bad. I happen to have one, and even though it doesn't have head tracking like the Oculus Rift Developer's version, picture quality and fluidity is worth the premium price. Played some Planetside 2 with. It's pretty sweet, but it would be nice to have head-motion tracking in it when I am flying a VS Scythe. Oculus Rift will probably get even more popular when Star Citizens is released in 2015. Sony will probably invest in that area in some way.

MS will most likely talk about D3D12.0, and push refresh of all it's other, new, revised products (Office, Access, Visio, etc...). Since XBone seems to have issues over the PS4, this is probably MS's way of mis-directing attention away from XBone's performance on the market.


They only support DX 11.0, which makes me wonder they knew about DX12 long ago and the the plan was always to skip the point releases and dedicate resources toward DX12.

If NVidia knew about it, AMD probably knews about it too... If Intel continuous venturing in to the SOC market, they probably knew about it too... AMD has been pushing for DX11.1 and 11.2 APIs in two generations... In addition, they've been pushing DP and mini-DP usage besides the HDMI and DVI outlets. All your old 600 series NVidia cards weren't using DP. NVidia is now using Directcompute in it's 700 series Cards. A feature that's been known in the AMD cards for the past few generations.
 
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Battlefield 4 utilizes DX11.1, NVIDIA already supports all of it's features that matters to games (in software and hardware) and so they are able to gain fps under windows 8 in that game.
 
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Everyone's forgetting the biggest reason why Microsoft is moving DX12 closer to metal. While consoles and AMD's Mantle may have had some influence, the biggest contributing factor is mobile.

If Microsoft has a graphics API that is lower to metal, that gives their Windows Phones (due to being so tightly hardware controlled) a gaming advantage over their Android and iPhone competitors who are still just using OpenGL ES. It allows Microsoft to squeeze more performance out of less hardware - the exact thing every mobile phone maker is trying to do.
 
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If DX12 improves the performance, 20nm Maxwell lives up to its hype, and 4k monitors become affordable, we will be playing smoothly at 4K. :toast:While our console peasants will be stuck at 1080p (or 900p/720p for xbone :laugh:).

And don't forget the Oculus Rift. Good times ahead.:rockout:
 
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All these comments and no one notices it says 20th of March 2013, lol please fix.
 
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I made a damn good call not buying another 7850 XD.

However, I have a feeling this has something to do with AMD Mantle
 
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