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DirectX 12

humbug said:
Thanks again guys ^^^ :)



I have a 2GB Tahiti LE, i can't see any change since the patch, its as good as ever.

'ever' also being that 2GB vRam isn't enough to run it on Ultra, at least not Ultra Texture Quality or any MSAA, the vRam soon hits the 2GB buffers and begins to stutter.

If you keep it at or below these settings its perfect, ordinarily with 2GB cards, like a Pitcairn 7870 / R9 270X you wouldn't want to run higher setting than that anyway if you want to maintain 60+ FPS.

http://i1056.photobucket.com/albums/t364/Hunbug76/Desktop18-03-201415-27-54-633_zpsd4c56f2c.png[/IM][/URL][/QUOTE]

A 270X in 1080p with the Ultra preset is ok.

Enable Mantle and it all falls apart.

Its the min fps thats the main culprit.
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stulid said:
A 270X in 1080p with the Ultra preset is ok.

Enable Mantle and it all falls apart.
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Yes you won't have enough vram to run those settings on that card. That would explain the performance you're seeing. The vram usage requirements are coming down, ive noticed that in the last two patches. Still work to be done though. My usage at 1440P has come down several hundred MB since that last couple of BF4 patches.
 
LtMatt said:
Yes you won't have enough vram to run those settings on that card. That would explain the performance you're seeing. The vram usage requirements are coming down, ive noticed that in the last two patches. Still work to be done though. My usage at 1440P has come down several hundred MB since that last couple of BF4 patches.
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But if DirectX is able to do it and keep the VRAM under wraps, why can't Mantle :p?

So, in Stulids context, it is indeed "Shot to bits"

Lowering IQ is not acceptable.

Again, I reiterate, I have absolutely nothing but a pleasant Mantle experience, but I don't only care about my hardware.
 
Martini1991 said:
But if DirectX is able to do it and keep the VRAM under wraps, why can't Mantle :p?

So, in Stulids context, it is indeed "Shot to bits"

Lowering IQ is not acceptable.

Again, I reiterate, I have absolutely nothing but a pleasant Mantle experience, but I don't only care about my hardware.
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Because DX11 is 8 years old (guesswork) and Mantle is a couple of months old. I suspect it will take time for the devs to fully optimize such things. The usage is coming down though and its something they're working on. As far as i know the high vram issue is just tied to BF4 as i don't think Thief has that problem.
 
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stulid said:
A 270X in 1080p with the Ultra preset is ok.

Enable Mantle and it all falls apart.

Its the min fps thats the main culprit.
Click to expand...

Trust me 2GB in Ultra Preset its not ok in Mantle which uses a lot more vRam than DX. :)

The low Min FPS i take it your talking about is as a result of the vRam getting overwhelmed, its not so noticeable that its a vRam problem since the last BF4 patch because they have smoothed out the stuttering thats as a result of that.

Copy the settings you see in my screen shot, but before you do add this to your user.cfg

PHP: 
Render.DrawScreenInfo 1
Perfoverlay.DrawGraph 1 
PerfOverlay.Enable 1
And whatch the vRam, it will start at about 1350mb, over about 5 minutes or so it will pass 2GB, if you have it on Ultra preset it could only be a handful of seconds before it hits the buffers, i have seen it hit 2.6GB, 600mb more than the GPU has.
 
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LtMatt said:
Because DX11 is 8 years old (guesswork) and Mantle is a couple of months old. I suspect it will take time for the devs to fully optimize such things. The usage is coming down though and its something they're working on. As far as i know the high vram issue is just tied to BF4 as i don't think Thief has that problem.
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DX11's debut was in Q4 2009 from what I recall (At least in game form)
First benchmark I believe was Heaven, which was either September or October 2009 :p
 
stulid said:
Thats what ive been saying.

DX is fine, Mantle is "shot to bits"

Same setting in BF4, 1080P, Ultra setting.
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Its something to do with the way Mantle manages textures, it pre-loads a lot more of it than DX, its a problem for 2GB cards, for me i'm not so much botherd as i'm happy to run lower textures, it hardly looks any different anyway.

AMD know about it and have said they will do some optimisation specifically for 2GB cards.
 
A bit like your 7 year old asking to have a go on the monkey bike as he thinks it's easy and promptly crashing through the fence. :D

I'm sure it won't be the same for all Mantle titles.
 
Taking it all the way to 12!
Microsoft has been developing DirectX for around 20 years now. Back in the 90s, the hardware and software scene for gaming was chaotic, at best. We had wonderful things like “SoundBlaster compatibility” and 3rd party graphics APIs such as Glide, S3G, PowerSGL, RRedline, and ATICIF. OpenGL was aimed more towards professional applications and it took John Carmack and iD, through GLQuake in 1996, to start the ball moving in that particular direction. There was a distinct need to provide standards across audio and 3D graphics that would de-fragment the industry and developers. DirectX was introduced with Windows 95, but the popularity of Direct3D did not really take off until DirectX 3.0 that was released in late 1996.

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DirectX has had some notable successes, and some notable let downs, over the years. DX6 provided a much needed boost in 3D graphics, while DX8 introduced the world to programmable shading. DX9 was the most long-lived version, thanks to it being the basis for the Xbox 360 console with its extended lifespan. DX11 added in a bunch of features and made programming much simpler, all the while improving performance over DX10. The low points? DX10 was pretty dismal due to the performance penalty on hardware that supported some of the advanced rendering techniques. DirectX 7 was around a little more than a year before giving way to DX8. DX1 and DX2? Yeah, those were very unpopular and problematic, due to the myriad changes in a modern operating system (Win95) as compared to the DOS based world that game devs were used to.

Some four years ago, if going by what NVIDIA has said, initial talks were initiated to start pursuing the development of DirectX 12. DX11 was released in 2009 and has been an excellent foundation for PC games. It is not perfect, though. There is still a significant impact in potential performance due to a variety of factors, including a fairly inefficient hardware abstraction layer that relies more upon fast single threaded performance from a CPU rather than leveraging the power of a modern multi-core/multi-thread unit. This has the result of limiting how many objects can be represented on screen as well as different operations that would bottleneck even the fastest CPU threads.

Click here to read the rest of the article!

Since the release of DX11, there had been very little word from Microsoft about what the next generation DX would bring. In fact, there had been rumors that MS had put all development on the back burner for DirectX. The focus was making the new Xbox One as competent as possible with its own version of DX11. Now, I do not have any inside information about how the development of DX12 proceeded during these years, but I do think it is rather obvious that it was not a priority. DX11 was doing great, there was very good support for it from the PC side, and DX9c was available to most mobile devices.

Things do not always go as planned. The Xbox One has some performance issues as compared to the PS4. Promises that Microsoft made to developers about the capabilities of the XBOne seem to have been far too optimistic for what was actually delivered. It was likely during final development, with working silicon and the basic OS installed, that Microsoft realized they had some serious issues on their hands. The APU being used for that console contains eight cores running at lower speeds than even what a modern, low-end PC exhibits. With the single core/thread bias that DX11 exhibits, performance for the XBOne is not going to blow the doors off the competition. While MS and AMD have done quite a bit of optimizing at the OS level for the XBOne, there are still many improvements to be made. Consoles typically can be programmed for much closer to the metal than a PC, due to the hardware for that console being locked down and identical to every other XBOne out there. It is still a DirectX development platform though, and that means DX11 is the basis for what we see.

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3D Mark 2011 in DX11 mode shows the bias towards single thread usage. Other threads are utilized, but not greatly so.

The PS4 is in a slightly different scenario with its reliance on PSGL. PSGL is nearly identical to OpenGL, but custom tailored by Sony for the Playstation. Sony has been able to move a bit closer to the metal than what Microsoft has, because Sony is not constrained by a more general programming environment that Microsoft is with DirectX 11. We really can only make some general guesses as to what actual performance is on the PS4 vs. the XBOne, but the PS4 does have a far more robust implementation in terms of hardware than what Microsoft does. It will be interesting to see more concrete performance figures from these consoles once more cross-platform titles become common.

Next we need to ask ourselves where AMD’s Mantle comes in. With the launch of the R9 290X, AMD also introduced us to TrueAudio and Mantle. We do not know what Microsoft’s internal schedule was for DirectX 12, but the feeling around the industry was that the release of Mantle helped to accelerate work on that project. Undoubtedly, Microsoft learned of AMD’s work on Mantle by at least the Spring of 2013. At that point, Microsoft started to work earnestly with its partners to begin fleshing out DX12 and get some basic support for it in software and drivers to announce it at GDC this year.

So did Mantle motivate Microsoft to create DX12? No, that project has been in the works for quite some time, but I think that we can safely say that Mantle and the XBOne have helped to accelerate the process beyond what Microsoft had originally planned for. This is only speculation on my part, but my gut feeling is that Microsoft was planning to wait a few years before releasing DX12, and when they did then they could advertise a mid-life performance boost for the XBOne on titles developed for DX12 and that console in particular. The industry does not stand still, and AMD’s push with Mantle may have forced Microsoft’s hand more than they would have liked. Obviously AMD and NVIDIA were not pleased at what appears to be a glacial pace for DirectX development since the release of DX11, but AMD took it into their own hands to offer an alternative which would also accentuate their brand. Add in Microsoft’s challenges in the mobile market (Surface, Windows Phone) and it is clear that they needed more inertia to capture a larger portion of these growing spaces. DirectX 12 should help provide some of that inertia.

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3D Mark 2011 in DX12 mode shows much greater multi-thread awareness as well as utilizing that single thread less, and causing less CPU time to be used on that thread. Less time spent means more potential frames rendered when not GPU bound.

AMD does not want to have to curate an API. That is quite honestly a waste of resources for AMD in the long term. Well defined industry standards allow these IHVs to focus on their products rather than gather support for a home-built API. However, with the original timeline for DX12, AMD saw an opportunity to push these features as an exclusive for their hardware, thereby potentially increasing sales and support before the standardized DX12 is released. This also has the added advantage for AMD of exposing developers to a more low level, close to the metal API that will benefit both the developer and AMD. In the short term, these developers gain experience in programming that will reap benefits once DX12 is released. In the meantime, AMD gets a nice checkbox on their products for exclusive support of Mantle.
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What We Know about DX12 So Far
Unfortunately, we know relatively little about DX12. There was an initial assumption that DX12 would not require new hardware, as it would not have new features that relied on new hardware. So any current DX11 compliant part will be DX12 compliant. Well, part of this is true, and the rest is not. Most current DX11 parts can take advantage of the low level efficiencies gained from DX12 programming (AMD GCN, NVIDIA Fermi and above, and Intel’s 4000 series and above), but Microsoft has yet to detail the other changes that WILL require new hardware to be fully DX12 compliant. Throughout the next year and a half, we will get bits and pieces of what DX12 offers over DX11, other than the low level programming differences between the APIs.

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A more granular look at what the driver overhead of DX11 does to performance and how it compares to what Microsoft is introducing with DX12.

Matt Sandy of Microsoft put up a nice little blog post that quickly details three major functions that DX12 will encompass. These are pipeline state objects, command lists and bundles, and descriptor heaps and tables. Matt describes these in a cursory, but effective manner. I am afraid that I cannot compress the information any more than what he has done in his blog. For a more detailed description, definitely look at his post.

I can try to summarize what Microsoft is aiming at with DX12, however. Essentially the rendering pipeline in DirectX did a lot of the work for engines and applications, but did not exactly do so efficiently. This high level abstraction of operations allowed for great portability because DX handles a lot of the low level work. Unfortunately, one of the big issues is that the device driver has to wait for certain operations and state changes to occur before it can complete the current operation and submit more work. The big hit comes with draw calls, which are negatively impacted by the relatively inefficient abstraction layer and driver interactions. IHVs, like NVIDIA and AMD, work around this on a case by case basis, as is seen by the very frequent driver updates which improve performance (sometimes dramatically) for individual applications that have been recently released.

DirectX 12 will allow for some interesting work to go on in the background. It will permit a much more low level of control of the hardware device from applications. The really smart guys who design engines (Andersson, Sweeney, Yerli, etc.) can really optimize their engines to extract the greatest (or nearly greatest) amount of performance out of any hardware configuration. They can control memory addresses for data assets directly, rather than having to ask DirectX to translate these addresses and handle all memory transactions. This results in a lot of extra performance, but it is very intensive in terms of programming prowess and manpower. Not every game developer has programmers that can handle that type of workload, and so they rely on engine level optimizations to achieve good performance.

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What exactly a lower level API such as DX12 (and theoretically mantle) will provide for developers and IHVs.

Even if a game developer does not institute lower level hardware control, the lower driver overhead and increased multi-thread aware software stack in DX12 will still allow for greater overall performance than what was seen in DX11. A licensed engine which is developed for DX12 will still institute many low level operations that will take advantage of the much slimmer abstraction layer separating software from the driver/hardware.

Almost all DX11-compliant hardware will work in DX12 (the Radeon HD 5000 and 6000 series excepted). These performance advantages will be applicable to current hardware, so users do not have to upgrade to see the benefits. Unfortunately, they will still miss out on all the other features, requiring new hardware that will be designed specifically for DX12. Considering that the first DX12 titles are not expected out until the Holiday season of 2015, there will be plenty of chances (and reasons) to upgrade before that time.

So what will become of Mantle? AMD’s competitors believe that most development and porting engines over to Mantle will stop due to the (not so) impending release of DX12. Personally, I think that quite the opposite will happen. I believe we will see a few more developers start nosing around Mantle, not only for what performance advantages they can see from that API, but also to get their programmers experienced in going that close to the metal. Porting from Mantle to DX12 should be relatively straight forward, due to the similar ways these APIs address hardware. They certainly are not identical but, according to what we are hearing from developers, they are similar. For AMD, Mantle allows them to more adequately tune drivers so that, when DX12 finally hits, they also have that experience under their belt. Driver development for DX12 also takes a load off of the IHVs. While performance improvements will continue through time, the onus of providing much of that performance through specialized drivers will be taken away from the IHVs.

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Microsoft hinted a few more upcoming features for DX12 that will not see the light of day until 2015. IHVs are likely quite pleased, as they can offer new and improved hardware to encompass these features.

DirectX 12 is a much needed improvement to the line. It has been four years since DX11 was released with two minor iterations in that time. We have seen the rise of extreme programmability and parallelism that requires new thinking on the software side in order to harness that type of horsepower. My guess is that DirectX 12 will improve general computing in GPUs and APUs to a great degree as compared to what we have seen with DX11 and DirectCompute. The ball has been rolling for some time, but now that the industry has seen the advances that DX12 brings to the table, I am sure it will lead to some interesting developments on both the hardware and software sides. Good times await enthusiasts of this industry.
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http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Editor...hts-Industry-Moving-Forward/What-We-Know-abou

A good read for those interested. Pretty much covers what we know already but all summed up pretty well.
 
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