Is DirectX 12 Worth the Trouble?

[tommybhoy]

Running specific DX11/12 titles:

Nvidia finely tuned DX11/crap DX12-they won't fully back an API that makes the other side look good.

AMD crap DX11/finely tuned DX12, and market their hardware as being superior but at the same time neglecting their DX11 path in said titles.

DX12 won't really take off until both vendors hardware have decent gains and actually capable of concurrent compute tasks instead of insisting they can do it but in reality only 'capable' when there is free space in the pipeline.

Think if everyones honest for once they'll conclude that if they are running AMD DX12/Vulkan is great, Nvidia users will say it's a waste of time, leaving this topic as always-split.

 

[shankly1985]

I firmly believe DX12 will become much better in the long run once game devs start using it correctly.

 

[tommybhoy]

When Nvidia put out true DX12 hardware and start bankrolling DX12 titles, it'll be much better, it'll hit amazeball status.

DX 12 is a rinse repeat of Dx10/11 launch.

Nv said ~'DX11 isn't needed, everything can be done in DX10' when they weren't hardware capable but changed their tune when the 4 series launched with ~'look at our DX11 power'.

 

[shankly1985]

very true

 

[JediFragger]

Yup, the market will move with them

 

[D.P.]

I thought the whole idea of dx was to make game development easier, I think dx12 is a step backward In that regard.

Oh no, it makes things far harder. It goes in the complete opposite direction of everything else in the software world.

 

[shankly1985]

I wouldn't say harder! it might do at first but in the long run it can speed up the process or porting from console to console and PC because the code can be used more effectively between platforms.
This is what DX12 and Vulkan APIs are trying to do bring gaming development closer AMD has spoke a lot about this.

 

[Rroff]

I firmly believe DX12 will become much better in the long run once game devs start using it correctly.

Problem is to fully get the benefits of DX12 type APIs you need to put a lot of time and effort into basically reinventing the wheel specific to your product - any other application like future wrapping of functionality to make things quicker will negate a large amount of that benefit in many cases to the point the developer might as well have used DX11.

Its a mistake that developers wanted (to work with) low level access - the majority of developers just wanted to be able to drop beneath the hood here and there to fine tune things that high level APIs just don't expose - I've only heard one developer that bemoans the lack of ability to fine tune at a completely low level to gain microseconds - John Carmack - and a couple of developers from Epic who wanted to be able to hand optimise certain types of usage so as to better conserve memory usage, etc.

I wouldn't say harder! it might do at first but in the long run it can speed up the process or porting from console to console and PC because the code can be used more effectively between platforms.
This is what DX12 and Vulkan APIs are trying to do bring gaming development closer AMD has spoke a lot about this.

This is an argument that is often banded about but it isn't really true - maybe with next gen consoles maybe - there are just too many differences in approach for it to be useful you still end up having to rethink a lot of stuff or reimplement using PC standards.

 

[shankly1985]

Problem is to fully get the benefits of DX12 type APIs you need to put a lot of time and effort into basically reinventing the wheel specific to your product - any other application like future wrapping of functionality to make things quicker will negate a large amount of that benefit in many cases to the point the developer might as well have used DX11.

Its a mistake that developers wanted (to work with) low level access - the majority of developers just wanted to be able to drop beneath the hood here and there to fine tune things that high level APIs just don't expose - I've only heard one developer that bemoans the lack of ability to fine tune at a completely low level to gain microseconds - John Carmack - and a couple of developers from Epic who wanted to be able to hand optimise certain types of usage so as to better conserve memory usage, etc.



This is an argument that is often banded about but it isn't really true - maybe with next gen consoles maybe - there are just too many differences in approach for it to be useful you still end up having to rethink a lot of stuff or reimplement using PC standards.

But what about games that are ported from PC to console? How much does that speed up the process after already using DX12/Vulkan.... I agree maybe its not already happening yet and is something that will in the long run. I still stand by what I have said that in theory DX12 will speed up game development rather than slow it down.

 

[Rroff]

With current architectures there are still too many differences - even with a Vulkan like API for instance consoles use either a completely pooled GDDR5 memory system or some hybrid of EDRAM caching and so on (plus in some cases software memory segregation in a specific manner to the console) compared to the split DDR system memory and GDDR VRAM on the PC which also has things like the PCI-e bus in the equation in a completely different way to moving data around on the console which is going to mean you might have to completely rethink things for performance reasons.

 

[Nexus18]

Didn't read it then I take it?

snip

haha good post

Must admit that I didn't read it as I thought it was just going to be another PR piece about how dx 12 is crap and the industry doesn't need to move on from dx 11...

When Nvidia put out true DX12 hardware and start bankrolling DX12 titles, it'll be much better, it'll hit amazeball status.

DX 12 is a rinse repeat of Dx10/11 launch.

Nv said ~'DX11 isn't needed, everything can be done in DX10' when they weren't hardware capable but changed their tune when the 4 series launched with ~'look at our DX11 power'.

Bookmarking this post for future reference

 

[Brazo]

Dx12 simply hasn't happened.

There are 3 games that run true DX12 (Forza/GOW/Halo) not ones you often hear about!

All other games have some form of shoddy DX12 implementation patched in which rides shotgun over the dx11 engine. This is why 'DX12' benchmarks vary so much as they are largely dependant on how well the devs have piggy backed it on.

This is why I cringe every time I hear 'buy x card it has better DX12 support!

If and when DX12 ever becomes a reality cards bought today simply won't be up to the job!

 

[Kaapstad]

Didn't read it then I take it?

Most definitely did read it.

The bottom line is there is a whole load of stuff that does not work or the game devs won't use.

Oh and what ever happened to the fantastic image improvements we were supposed to get with DX12, that did not happen did it.

 

[Ian Evey]

Glad i did not upgrade to windows 10 as imo its dx11 with added features no devs have used yet.

 

[Rroff]

Glad i did not upgrade to windows 10 as imo its dx11 with added features no devs have used yet.

From a programming perspective it is nothing like DX11 - you pretty much have to spend quite a lot of time working with how you are going to manage memory before doing anything remotely like you would with older graphics APIs heh. Feature wise it is capable of doing things older API can't get close to but the amount of work and experience to get there just doesn't make it worth while for most developers and even for those more focused on engine programming rather than game implementation.

 

[drunkenmaster]

Most definitely did read it.

The bottom line is there is a whole load of stuff that does not work or the game devs won't use.

Oh and what ever happened to the fantastic image improvements we were supposed to get with DX12, that did not happen did it.

A whole load of stuff that does not work? ONE thing that developer mentioned, ONE thing, that was stacked memory, and only complete idiots were saying it was going to be a big deal. I specifically and repeatedly said it won't happen. It's non viable to access memory with which you need 200GB/s speed access across a 16GB/s bus which is already in use.

So the bottom line is, after reading it, you made up a bunch of things that don't work, when they didn't say that at all.

We weren't supposed to get fantastic image improvements either, once again you just made that up. Though it's worth noting that several game reviews have showed superior quality shadows and things under DX12 than 11.

DX9, DX10, DX11, DX12, Vulkan and Mantle do not offer superior image quality than the last, they offer superior performance, and more tools to ENABLE devs to add higher quality graphics if they choose.

If your game runs at 60fps in DX11 and 70fps in DX12, then you might not add a graphical effect that costs 10fps to the DX11 game, but you might choose to add it under DX12, in fact it might only cost 5fps to add it under DX12, thus if your target was 60fps in that game on specific hardware, you can meet it in DX12 but not 11.

There is not much you can do in a new API that you can't do in an old API without work arounds or higher performance cost. It's interesting that throughout your attacks on DX12(and anything AMD) it's always stuff like this, just random stuff you say with no proof.

You posted an article in which a dev specifically stated multiple ways in which DX12 was a direct improvement and had features that were the future of programming games.... then followed it by saying it was a white whale, ie, it's worthless. Anyone that can post an article with a dev stating DX12 is a direct improvement, but claims to read it's worthless, did not read the article or has an agenda to misrepresent the article.

 

[Nexus18]

Dx12 simply hasn't happened.

There are 3 games that run true DX12 (Forza/GOW/Halo) not ones you often hear about!

All other games have some form of shoddy DX12 implementation patched in which rides shotgun over the dx11 engine. This is why 'DX12' benchmarks vary so much as they are largely dependant on how well the devs have piggy backed it on.

This is why I cringe every time I hear 'buy x card it has better DX12 support!

If and when DX12 ever becomes a reality cards bought today simply won't be up to the job!

Why does it matter if dx 12 is patched in? Ok, it may be a shoddy implementation (although you can't say this for certainty as no one on this forum wbut that doesn't change the fact that they have provided a very nice boost for many people (well mainly AMD users anyway...) especially myself, you can go look in said threads and you will see my PC getting a huge boost in min and average FPS and we aren't just talking about 1-10FPS but 15+ FPS, which is a big difference when below 60 fps.

You still seem to think that dx 12 will die... Even though dx 9, 10, 11 had a slower pick up and the exact same thing was said when they released too yet look at all the games, which came in the end...I also don't recall of many/any (?) developers going back to patch the new dx versions into their games, if dx 12 was such a failure then why have developers wasted their time, money and resources on it when they could be putting said effort into their new games or dlc? Who knows, maybe there is a conspiracy theory here that microsoft have paid them to do that...

Yup that may be the case but I know for myself, I would much rather buy a card knowing that it will at least gain some of the advantages of a new API rather than buying a card that has zero support and will get left behind in the dust in the future.

Oh and what ever happened to the fantastic image improvements we were supposed to get with DX12, that did not happen did it.

Well you could argue that since dx 12 significantly improves performance/min fps for certain people, it allows them to increase graphic settings therefore you are in some ways getting better IQ.

 

[Rroff]

You still seem to think that dx 12 will die... Even though dx 9, 10, 11 had a slower pick up and the exact same thing was said when they released too

While some developers were resistant to change with regard to progression of older APIs the problem with DX12 is different and that despite the rhetoric pushed by some quarters it actually isn't what most developers have been asking for and at best a misunderstanding of what they've been asking for. A small number do want to work close to the metal but they are largely a very small minority.

Personally I'm fairly convinced that DX12 will fall by the wayside and replaced by something else before it becomes adopted to the level DX9 and DX11 have been and Vulkan will likely go through some metamorphosis.

 

[Nexus18]

While some developers were resistant to change the problem with DX12 is that despite the rhetoric pushed by some quarter it actually isn't what most developers have been asking for and at best a misunderstanding of what they've been asking for. A small number do want to work close to the metal but they are largely a very small minority.

Personally I'm fairly convinced that DX12 will fall by the wayside and replaced by something else before it becomes adopted to the level DX9 and DX11 have been and Vulkan will likely go through some metamorphosis.

Developers still complain that dx 11 is too restrictive etc. yet they still use it (granted not exactly much other choice for them). From what I can see and what the original article says, it just comes across like the developers aren't familiar with dx 12 and that they need more time/practise to be comfortable working with it in order to get the best from it and given how hard developers are pushed to meet deadlines already and as a result not even being able to finish the game for release resulting in day 1 patches and many other patches throughout the first month or so, this means that they can't get to proper grips with it.

Maybe, for all we know, we could see a dx 12.1 or even dx 13 before there are any real dx 12 titles but I be willing to bet that whatever the next version is, it will just be an improved version of dx 12 as I can't see microsoft releasing something completely different to dx 12 so soon.

 

[KillBoY_UK]

Personally I'm fairly convinced that DX12 will fall by the wayside and replaced by something else before it becomes adopted to the level DX9 and DX11 have been and Vulkan will likely go through some metamorphosis.

I don't think it will go away just never fully replace DX12. I know a couple of graphics programmers one who works at a AAA PC studio and one that does not anymore but did on there opinon. I got the impression that in short DX12 is nice but most studios don't have or unwilling to put in the massive amounts of extra resource on getting it right, "cost benefit ratio".

As someone mentioned earlier Forza/GOW4 are great examples of DX12 working well but that's with god knows how many Microsoft programmers man hours and resources behind them.