Nvidia’s ace in the hole against AMD: Maxwell is the first GPU with full DirectX 12 support

Noctifer · 29 May 2015 at 12:51

Gregster said:
I know you have a chip on your shoulder but I have shown that Maxwell is fully DX12 compliant and you have shown nothing, so give it a rest. Unless you show something of value other than your AFAIK, I will be ignoring you

Maxwell 2. Maxwell 1 doesn't support all DX12 features.

Gregster · 29 May 2015 at 12:54

Noctifer said:
Maxwell 2. Maxwell 1 doesn't support all DX12 features.

What portion of DX12 doesn't Maxwell 1 support?

layte · 29 May 2015 at 12:56

shankly1985 said:
I'll be holding out waiting on the games tbh Yeah sure maybe Current AMD GPUs don't support 12.1 but like I said in another thread not all Devs even use other versions of DirectX we already have. 11.1 ?? 11.2 ?? 11.0 Yeah

11.2 has Tiled Textures something that is on paper sounding superb, but where is it?

Until the games on DX12 release I expect them to be running 12.0..
Not even AMD have released a statement on what there hardware can and can not do..

tommybhoy said:
Clears up hee haw nothing at all, out with loose statements of DX12 compliant, afaik both AMD and Nvidia haven't released confirmed finalised specs of who supports what yet.

TheRealDeal said:
+1

Luckily those crazy chaps over at the B3D forum have been doing the work for them. No 12_1 or higher for you GCN 1.x folks I'm afraid. Unless you think you know better than actual developers who are interrogating the hardware and software..

pete910 · 29 May 2015 at 12:56

Is the upcoming TI max 1 or 2 ?

David Bisset · 29 May 2015 at 12:56

On resource binding: all GCN cards support Tier 3 while nVidia are Tier 2 with Kepler & Maxwell

On feature level: 12_0 is covered by GCN 1.1 & 1.2, 12_1 is Maxwell 2 only (so not GM107 & 108, but is on GM204, 206 & 200) - most moderatley recent AMD cards get 11_1 support, while older nVidia cards are 11_0 at best (including 1st gen Maxwell)

So of the bits we know about neither side are 'complete' in their support. nVidia on a couple of cards are ahead on feature level but most of their stuff is behind, on resource binding they're almost totally behind but to be honest tier 2 is probably just as good as tier three for most real-world uses.

To claim DX12 support then feature level 12_0 is required - 12_1 is optional but desirable. It's unclear to me what resource binding tier is needed but I'm sure 2 is enough, so both sides can legitimately claim DX12 support and as the bits that are missing are not part of the base spec they can both legally use words like complete, though as consumers we'd disagree for both sides as optional parts are still part of the spec as far as we care.

Noctifer · 29 May 2015 at 12:57

Gregster said:
What portion of DX12 doesn't Maxwell 1 support?

Asynchronous Compute:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9124/amd-dives-deep-on-asynchronous-shading

On a side note, part of the reason for AMD's presentation is to explain their architectural advantages over NVIDIA, so we checked with NVIDIA on queues. Fermi/Kepler/Maxwell 1 can only use a single graphics queue or their complement of compute queues, but not both at once – early implementations of HyperQ cannot be used in conjunction with graphics. Meanwhile Maxwell 2 has 32 queues, composed of 1 graphics queue and 31 compute queues (or 32 compute queues total in pure compute mode). So pre-Maxwell 2 GPUs have to either execute in serial or pre-empt to move tasks ahead of each other, which would indeed give AMD an advantage..

Gregster · 29 May 2015 at 12:58

pete910 said:
Is the upcoming TI max 1 or 2 ?

It will be Maxwell 2.

shankly1985 · 29 May 2015 at 12:59

Gregster said:
What portion of DX12 doesn't Maxwell 1 support?

Currently only known thing is that Maxwell Gen 2. supports DX12 / Feature Level 12_1
Fermi, Kepler and Maxwell Gen 1 supports DX12 with unknown Feature Level. It's known they support minimum of 11_0, as that's what they do on DX11 too. It's unlikely they could support 12_1 because they can't support 11_1 either. Also they're lacking on the UAV department (which is also one of the reasons they can't do 11_1)

pete910 · 29 May 2015 at 13:00

Gregster said:
It will be Maxwell 2.

Cheers

Gerard · 29 May 2015 at 13:00

And as said by the time proper dx12 games come out instead of ones with dx12 tacked on features, fiji and maxwell will be getting dug up as historical artifacts and put in museums.

shankly1985 · 29 May 2015 at 13:01

Gregster said:
It will be Maxwell 2.

What is TitanX Maxwell 1 or 2 ??

Simon Belmont · 29 May 2015 at 13:01

Gregster said:
It will be Maxwell 2.

So Titan X is maxwell 2?

layte · 29 May 2015 at 13:03

David Bisset said:
On resource binding: all GCN cards support Tier 3 while nVidia are Tier 2 with Kepler & Maxwell

On feature level: 12_0 is covered by GCN 1.1 & 1.2, 12_1 is Maxwell 2 only (so not GM107 & 108, but is on GM204, 206 & 200) - most moderatley recent AMD cards get 11_1 support, while older nVidia cards are 11_0 at best (including 1st gen Maxwell)

So of the bits we know about neither side are 'complete' in their support. nVidia on a couple of cards are ahead on feature level but most of their stuff is behind, on resource binding they're almost totally behind but to be honest tier 2 is probably just as good as tier three for most real-world uses.

Yea, you may want to check into that. https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1834054/

TheRealDeal · 29 May 2015 at 13:03

The 980/70/60 and Titan X are all Maxwell 2.

shankly1985 · 29 May 2015 at 13:04

I be shcked if TitanX didn't support the full feature set. Least Tier 2 should be supported.

New AMD GPUs are ment to support Tier 3

tommybhoy · 29 May 2015 at 13:05

Gregster said:
I know you have a chip on your shoulder but I have shown that Maxwell is fully DX12 compliant and you have shown nothing, so give it a rest. Unless you show something of value other than your AFAIK, I will be ignoring you

All you have shown is self discredit in the above post, don't even have to explain anything as others have already corrected you.

Gregster · 29 May 2015 at 13:06

Noctifer said:
Asynchronous Compute:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9124/amd-dives-deep-on-asynchronous-shading

AMD does have an advantage in that pre-Maxwell 2 but Maxwell 1 and below can still execute in serial or pre-empt the tasks and then move them. It isn't ideal but still means they are capable.

David Bisset · 29 May 2015 at 13:14

layte said:
Yea, you may want to check into that. https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1834054/

Umm? You realise that it agrees with what I said? On feature level: Maxwell 2 is 12_1, GCN 1.1 & 1.2 are 12_0, GCN 1.0 is 11_1, Maxwell 1, Fermi & Kepler are 11_0. On resource binding: it says it's not sure and that above tier 2 doesn't matter anyway (basically what I said) and then declines to look into it beyond that all GCN & Maxwell 2 support Tier 2 while Maxwell 1, Fermi & Kepler don't.

Edit: I do apologise, I'd given nVidia higher ratings in resource binding than your source did, thought Maxwell 1 & Kepler were tier 2.

r7slayer · 29 May 2015 at 13:20

Guys who the hell cares if current cards have full feature levels or not? By the time Dx12 hits our pcs with Windows 10 and we start seeing game using Dx12 we will be waiting on cards after 390x and 980Ti anyways. And im sure 390X and 980Ti will both deffo have full feature access.

Also current cards that have demoed DX12 from AMD and nVidia have shown a good performance boost with 290x being better at higher resolution more noticeably. So who cares which features are supported or not. I'm just happy we get to use DX12 on current cards.

Akagi · 29 May 2015 at 13:21

So my 780TI will or wont support it? There are very mixed messages in here, I wasn't confused before I came into the thread, but I am now!

I thought it didn't support it?