Is DirectX 12 Worth the Trouble?

TheRealDeal · 18 Mar 2017 at 01:19

Kaapstad said:
Are you serious?

I have got 4 of AMDs fastest card which do support quadfire and now run pretty good now they have finally sorted out the drivers.

The funny part about it is that NVidia only support 2 way SLI yet 4 way SLI does run very well - AMD support 4 way Quadfire and up until recently it has been awful since the introduction of the Fiji cards, fortunately they have finally got it running properly.

My problem with DX12 is it is a new API that should give better results with hardware going forward, something that is not happening at the moment as there is too much extra work for the game devs. A new API should not be judged by what it can with old hardware as this is a journey to nowhere.

So your problem ain't with DX12. It's with the game Devs. The same Devs who some off were begging for dx12 yet won't use it properly. Full of BS they are. Saying that it does take them a good while to utilise a new API usually. Dice especially should be using it to better effect as they were also behind Mantle and pushing low level.

Dicehunter · 18 Mar 2017 at 01:27

DX12 is definitely worth the hassle.

With 1 x 1080 Ti at 1440P max settings in The Division I get a 22FPS increase using DX12 over DX11.

DX11

DX12

tommybhoy · 18 Mar 2017 at 01:54

Wow Dice, +~26%, bet you that's a kick in the baws for Tiago Rodrigues, 3D programmer at Ubisoft Montreal!

Dicehunter · 18 Mar 2017 at 01:57

tommybhoy said:
Wow Dice, +~26%, bet you that's a kick in the baws for Tiago Rodrigues, 3D programmer at Ubisoft Montreal!

The Division is a good example of DX12 properly implemented, I have to give Ubisoft that, They did a great job, I only hope other devs follow their example on this API

chrcoluk · 18 Mar 2017 at 02:03

the issue with DX12 is that games are not built from the ground up to use, instead older DX is ported to it, so only a subset of its features are used.

Developers are not going to make a game DX12 only (except microsoft who wants people to move to windows 10 so has a vested interest) as they restricting their market doing that.

66% of games made in 2016 were DX9 and that is way older than DX11.

Vulkan is a different story as its platform neutral, but the problem with vulkan is when you have developers who are using to working with directx then would need to learn a new API. There is also likely some kind of financial incentive from Microsoft to the large publishers to promote directx.

Kaapstad · 18 Mar 2017 at 02:27

Nexus18 said:
Except once again, you are ignoring that it does give better performance on cards that HAVE the support for it (even with newer/better CPUs partnered with AMD cards).... Don't blame the API just because nvidia can't make proper use of it.

And also, I'm pretty sure the main point of dx 12 (at least for performance wise) has always been to help the older/weaker CPUs partnered with newer/higher end GPUs.

Regarding dx 12, multi-gpu etc. you more or less said it yourself here:

I see you are moving the goalposts now I have pointed out I am not biased, being an owner of 4 RX480s, 4 290Xs and 4 FuryXs.

EDIT:

Also 4 way SLI/crossfire is working great for you? Well that is surprising considering everyone who only has 2 GPUs (which "should" be far better supported than the incredibly niche 4 way...) always complain about flickering, stuttering or/and poor scaling or just down right doesn't work for months, if at all...

I must admit you are 50% right on this last point, up until recently 4 way support with my FuryXs and to a lesser extent 480Xs was absolutely terrible with system crashes, black screens, spontaneous reboots and Wattman, what a nightmare with 4 cards. NVidia on the other hand although they don't officially support 4 way SLI have been very reliable. Fortunately the AMD drivers have been a lot better in the last few months.

Almost forgot as to poor mGPU scaling in games these days well that's mostly down to err DX12 lol.

Kaapstad · 18 Mar 2017 at 02:29

tommybhoy said:
@Kaapstad although you don't get the gains on your halo system, doesn't equate to it's crap in general, as way, way more people are getting DX12 gains on lesser hardware and that's one of the main reasons for DX12.

It is true that you do get gains on older hardware but this was never the main point of DX12, it was supposed to be a modern API going forwards not looking back.

Kaapstad · 18 Mar 2017 at 02:32

TheRealDeal said:
So your problem ain't with DX12. It's with the game Devs. The same Devs who some off were begging for dx12 yet won't use it properly. Full of BS they are. Saying that it does take them a good while to utilise a new API usually. Dice especially should be using it to better effect as they were also behind Mantle and pushing low level.

Unfortunately game devs are in a business and if it not dead easy to use they won't expend time and money trying.

Dicehunter · 18 Mar 2017 at 02:41

Kaapstad said:
Almost forgot as to poor mGPU scaling in games these days well that's mostly down to err DX12 lol.

Well mGPU isn't really important, People who run more than 1 GPU are maybe 1000th of a percent, And I'm being generous with that figure

, Compared to users running just 1 x GPU hence mGPU generally gets no love from devs.

Kaapstad · 18 Mar 2017 at 02:46

Dicehunter said:
Well mGPU isn't really important, People who run more than 1 GPU are maybe 1000th of a percent, And I'm being generous with that figure , Compared to users running just 1 x GPU hence mGPU generally gets no love from devs.

mGPU will be the next big thing come virtual reality !!!

Dicehunter · 18 Mar 2017 at 02:47

Kaapstad said:
mGPU will be the next big thing come virtual reality !!!

Which will be like 10 users

Kaapstad · 18 Mar 2017 at 02:53

Dicehunter said:
Which will be like 10 users

From all the talk in this forum I think VR is going to be quite popular.

Dicehunter · 18 Mar 2017 at 02:55

Kaapstad said:
From all the talk in this forum I think VR is going to be quite popular.

I played Alien Isolation extensively on thee DK2, REALLY immersive and heart pumping experience, The price of them does need to come down though as many aren't going to shell out close to a grand for something which has so little in the way of games.

r7slayer · 18 Mar 2017 at 06:55

Kaapstad said:
It is true that you do get gains on older hardware but this was never the main point of DX12, it was supposed to be a modern API going forwards not looking back.

It is a modern API. It does give performance boosts. It allows for more draw calls. It alleviates cpu bottlenecks. Things which was holding DX11 back. I don't get why your so hung up on DX12 being a failure and DX11 being better.
It's just like driving in your own city, you know it well but when it comes to driving in another city even though they may have a better driving system in that city you'll hate it because you don't know it.

Kaapstad · 18 Mar 2017 at 07:22

r7slayer said:
It is a modern API. It does give performance boosts. It allows for more draw calls. It alleviates cpu bottlenecks. Things which was holding DX11 back. I don't get why your so hung up on DX12 being a failure and DX11 being better.
It's just like driving in your own city, you know it well but when it comes to driving in another city even though they may have a better driving system in that city you'll hate it because you don't know it.

If the games devs won't use it's features then it's a failure.

It does not matter how much potential it has got.

DarrenM343 · 18 Mar 2017 at 07:51

Kaapstad said:
If the games devs won't use it's features then it's a failure.

It does not matter how much potential it has got.

I wouldn't call it a failure though. It takes a lot of time to put an API to best use. What's the average time to build a game these days? It'll take at least that long before developers even think about using DX12 from the ground up. There's also bound to be some kind of learning curve involved and especially to optimise the code. Also, games are probably never built from the ground up for even longer because even with new engines, they'll probably still also re-use existing code too and it'll take a while to cycle out that code.
Another 2-4 years from now it'll have been worth it

, even it if means DX13 is out then, but at least a lot of the new features DX12 brought will be in common use.

chrcoluk said:
66% of games made in 2016 were DX9 and that is way older than DX11.

What does that actually mean though? Games that still support DX9 (but where main focus is likely to be DX11) or budget games that are DX9 only?
THe games I've bought for years now have all been DX11. Sure they'll support DX9 too but that's just backwards compatibility - not built for DX9.

Ayahuasca · 18 Mar 2017 at 08:05

Dicehunter said:
DX12 is definitely worth the hassle.

With 1 x 1080 Ti at 1440P max settings in The Division I get a 22FPS increase using DX12 over DX11.

DX11

DX12

I get similar results in the benchmark but in game DX12 fps is all over the place and it's noticeable.

r7slayer · 18 Mar 2017 at 08:34

Ayahuasca said:
I get similar results in the benchmark but in game DX12 fps is all over the place and it's noticeable.

Then cap the FPS to your average FPS? So it's not bouncing all over. If you get on averge 80 FPS in DX11 then cap it to that. obviously you will hit 90 - 100 in areas.
In dx12 your average is 100 fps then cap it to that? Yea once again youll go over this with your max fps. Just keeps things more smooth.

It's what i do in games where it seems the FPS jumps.

Ayahuasca · 18 Mar 2017 at 08:39

That wouldn't fix it at all really, it bounces from like 100 at times down to 40, appears to be some kind of weird CPU utilisation going on, I'd rather just play the game in DX11 where it feels smooth and I don't get the drops.

r7slayer · 18 Mar 2017 at 09:08

Ayahuasca said:
That wouldn't fix it at all really, it bounces from like 100 at times down to 40, appears to be some kind of weird CPU utilisation going on, I'd rather just play the game in DX11 where it feels smooth and I don't get the drops.

weird ive never experienced those sort of drops with my 980ti.