Caporegime
Quite an old thread but does clear up some misconceptions about DX12 compatibility. I read a lot of posts stating this and that about DX12 but appears that only Maxwell is fully DX12 compliant.
http://www.extremetech.com/computin...is-the-first-gpu-with-full-directx-12-support
Well worth a read if you are unsure of your GPU being DX12 capable or not
In addition to Nvidia’s new Maxwell GPU having top-of-the-line performance and power efficiency, it has another feature that will probably make a lot more difference in the real world: It’s the first GPU to offer full support for Microsoft’s upcoming DirectX 12 and Direct3D 12 graphics APIs. According to Microsoft, it has worked with Nvidia engineers in a “zero-latency environment” for several months to get DX12 support baked into Maxwell and graphics drivers. Even more importantly, Microsoft then worked with Epic to get DirectX 12 support baked into Unreal Engine 4, and to build a tech demo of Fable Legends that uses DX12.
All of this comes at a time when the future of AMD’s next-gen GPU and accompanying low-level API efforts are somewhat uncertain. UE4 support for DX12 is a huge deal; hundreds of games for the PC, Xbox One, and PS4 will be developed with UE4 over the next few years. Will this force AMD to fully support DX12 with its next-gen GPU, or will it stick to the Mantle party line? And conversely, if Mantle wins out over DX12, where does that leave Nvidia, Microsoft, Epic, and anyone else who jumped on the DX12 train?
The video below is what happened to Fable Legends when Lionhead applied some DX12 tweaks and ran it on some Maxwell hardware.
And here are the Elemental and Infiltrator demos, running in Unreal Engine 4. (These are old versions that were rendered on pre-Maxwell hardware — the newer versions, which were shown at a special event last week, aren’t yet public.)
Direct3D 11.3 and Direct3D 12
Back in March, when Microsoft officially unveiled DirectX 12 (and D3D 12), it surprised a lot of people by proclaiming that most modern Nvidia (Fermi, Kepler, and Maxwell) and AMD GPUs (all GCN-based cards) would be supported. Now, we’re sure this is still the case — your GCN-based AMD graphics card will still play DirectX 12 games — but Maxwell sounds like it’ll be the first GPU to have all of the necessary hardware blocks to fully support all of DX12’s new features. Microsoft doesn’t explicitly say that this is the case, but it’s strongly implied by today’s announcement of Direct3D 11.3.
Due to its status as the first GPU with full D3D 12 support, Microsoft took Maxwell’s release as a chance to go into more technical details about D3D12 — and to surprise everyone with the announcement of D3D11.3. We’ll look into D3D12 in more detail in a future — if you’re technically minded and want a sneak peak, check out this PowerPoint slide deck — but basically it sounds like it will be broken into feature levels, just like D3D11. If a GPU isn’t capable of full DX12 support, developers will be able to fall back to D3D11.3 — which offers many of the same features as D3D12, but at a higher level of abstraction. (Because D3D12 is much closer to the actual metal, the GPU must have the necessary hardware blocks — otherwise, those hardware blocks must be abstracted/emulated in software. That’s where D3D11.3 comes in.)
In short, I suspect that Fermi, Kepler, and GCN are all ostensibly capable of D3D12 — but in most cases they will lack true hardware support for the new rendering features and fall back to D3D11.3. The PS4 and Xbox One, with their GCN-based GPUs, will almost certainly be the same.
All this is to say that Maxwell could have a significant advantage over other GPUs in DX12 games. It could even make Maxwell more power efficient (DX12 could reduce power consumption by 50%). AMD presumably has the option of implementing DX12 fully in its next-gen GPU (GCN 2.0?) — but a) it isn’t clear if AMD will side with Mantle or DX12, and b) GCN 2.0 might not arrive before DX12’s official release, which is scheduled for winter 2015. Of course, it also depends on which API developers choose as well — but UE4 picking up official DX12 support is definitely a big deal.
If you’re a developer, you can now sign up for DirectX 12 early access — and when you’re accepted, you’ll also have access to the DX12 version of Unreal Engine 4.
http://www.extremetech.com/computin...is-the-first-gpu-with-full-directx-12-support
Well worth a read if you are unsure of your GPU being DX12 capable or not
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