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

Geeman1979 · 29 May 2015 at 14:56

LOL ^

Akagi · 29 May 2015 at 14:57

Everyone in the office is wondering why the database I'm working on is so funny.

Gregster · 29 May 2015 at 15:11

humbug · 29 May 2015 at 15:38

The PS4 has a more powerful more sophisticated GCN chip in it, Sony are slapping Microsoft about right now.

Microsoft need to find ways of doing more with their GCN Architecture thought DX, if Microsoft aren't working with AMD to do that they are idiots and Sony will go on crushing them.
Microsoft actually need AMD on side and sweet.

Nvidia are making a lot of noise about their relationship with Microsoft as if no one else has one, personally i think anyone who believes that sees the world though green tinted specs.

layte · 29 May 2015 at 15:52

Sony and MS both have their own low level API's. AMD got told to keep on walking when they came shopping their own solution. AMD have zero leverage here.

tommybhoy · 29 May 2015 at 15:58

Someone's forgetting MS's copypasta DX12 dev guide.

Silent_Scone · 29 May 2015 at 15:58

Microsoft will be working with AMD on a consultation basis on how to 'do more'.

Although this may come as a surprise to you but as far as the dev kits go, one company has vastly more experience than the other.

humbug · 29 May 2015 at 16:00

layte said:
Sony and MS both have their own low level API's. AMD got told to keep on walking when they came shopping their own solution. AMD have zero leverage here.

Which is why they released Mantle, that was supposed to be the low level API for the XB1 but MS refused to use it because AMD put conditions on it, that it would also be released for Desktop.

Microsoft refused and used a modified version of DX11 instead.

When AMD put Mantle out there thats when MS went on its DX12 campaign, they had to because Mantle is so much better and they would have lost their API monopoly, especially if AMD started handing the source code to others, which they did.

There is evidence that DX12 and Mantle are the same thing, at least at the core.

Sony do use their own API made with AMD's help, Microsoft are using DX12 made with AMD's help.

tommybhoy said:
Someone's forgetting MS's copypasta DX12 dev guide.

This ^^

Silent_Scone · 29 May 2015 at 16:02

What a load of rubbish, there is no truth in anything you just said at all.

humbug · 29 May 2015 at 16:06

Silent_Scone said:
What a load of rubbish, there is no truth in anything you just said at all.

Inconvenient to your argument is what it is.

layte · 29 May 2015 at 16:18

Whelp, it's bedtime stories with Humbug time again. Thread was good for a while.

Gregster · 29 May 2015 at 16:30

Posting fantasy as fact is a little silly.

SiDeards73 · 29 May 2015 at 16:32

Microsoft Devs have already stated they supply dx12 pc's to xbone developers to help them transmission to Dx12 for the xbone.

Effectively a lot of the game is developed on a PC then ported to the console. If anything this will help PC games developed for DX12 as the games built on a PC firstly before becoming optimised for the console.

It should therefore make for a lot less rubbish console ports hopefully.

This is also one of the reasons cross platform gaming between xbone and PC should be easier and more common as they are essentially the same platforms at heart

PieEater · 29 May 2015 at 17:01

Another bemused 780Ti owner here, wondering why all the published information states that my Kepler chip supports DX12 including the article in the original post, but people here are categorically stating it does not.

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.

As I understand it what DX12 has that is going to be most beneficial for most users are the performance enhancing aspects derived from being able to better utilise CPU resources as per Mantle. It's this aspect that I understand will be fully supported by the previous generations of chips mentioned including my 780Ti as long as users are running Windows 10.

Then like most other releases of DX there will be a number of graphical enhancements that will require hardware support. What the article appears to be suggesting is that only the latest version of Maxwell will include the necessary hardware to fully support these, and for earlier generations of chip there will be limited support via 11.3. I also understand that 11.3 will be available in earlier versions of Windows (Pre 10) but will not include the performance enhancing CPU utilisation aspects which will only be available in Windows 10.

I don't see anything in the article that contradicts this but am happy to stand corrected.

David Bisset · 29 May 2015 at 17:06

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct3D#Direct3D_12_levels

Almost all published material suggests that the 780Ti does not support DX12, which is why we think it doesn't. I used wikipedia here but there are loads of other sources that agree.

That doesn't mean it doesn't support any direct x 12 features - just it doesn't support enough to reach level 12_0 which is the baseline for claiming to support DX12.

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

This is the key bit - they're not saying you can't run DX12 games, but they do seem to be saying you don't get all the new methods so either have to work around missing ones with less efficient mechanisms or not have some effects or whatever.

Silent_Scone · 29 May 2015 at 17:06

MS have been trying to escalate the XBONE tool integration priority in an attempt to provide developers with low level hooks to boost performance of the system for sometime. This has nothing what-so-ever to do with AMD (other than the occasional possible correspondence I mentioned above)

This has obviously caused a lot of developers to find time and resources in order to make large changes to their engine architectures in some respects both on PC and XBONE. The development kits were in large part the same as they were for PC in DX11.2 so I'm not sure what fantasy spin Humbug thinks he is tripping on. In the sense that developers could only really hint where they want all these resources to go.

Point is, I don't see where all this rubbish about intentional 'crippling' is coming from. Absolute nonsense.

PieEater · 29 May 2015 at 17:15

David Bisset said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct3D#Direct3D_12_levels

Almost all published material suggests that the 780Ti does not support DX12.

From the same source

"DirectX 12 API will be supported on all Fermi and later Nvidia GPUs, on AMD's GCN-based chips and on Intel's Haswell and later processors' graphics units."

I can link to Nvidia Blogs and numerous other informed articles that say this exact same thing.

/Edit: As per my post above I fully understand that the earlier GPU's will lack the hardware to fully implement any new graphical features that DX12 brings to the table but most of the discussion to date has been around the performance improvements of DX12 and Win 10 (as per Mantle) and in these discussions is where it has been stated that the earlier GPUs will support DX12.

gpuerrilla · 29 May 2015 at 17:19

Gregster said:
DX12 isn't ready yet. W10 is still running DX11 but June is supposed to be the launch of DX12 and December starts to see the first DX12 games launched. Expect a trickle of games to start but with the Xbox being DX12 also, expect games to come quicker than what happened with DX11/10

When mantle was in this position not many (nominally pro nvidia owners) were positive if I recall. Also to note, isn't maxwell a later release than AMD's GCN offerings giving it ample time to ready itself for DX12?

humbug · 29 May 2015 at 17:30

Silent_Scone said:
MS have been trying to escalate the XBONE tool integration priority in an attempt to provide developers with low level hooks to boost performance of the system for sometime. This has nothing what-so-ever to do with AMD (other than the occasional possible correspondence I mentioned above)

This has obviously caused a lot of developers to find time and resources in order to make large changes to their engine architectures in some respects both on PC and XBONE. The development kits were in large part the same as they were for PC in DX11.2 so I'm not sure what fantasy spin Humbug thinks he is tripping on. In the sense that developers could only really hint where they want all these resources to go.

Point is, I don't see where all this rubbish about intentional 'crippling' is coming from. Absolute nonsense.

Ofcorse it has everything to do with AMD, the system that you say "MS have been trying to escalate the XBONE tool integration priority in an attempt to provide developers with low level hooks to boost performance of the system for sometime" is an AMD system.

You just reinforced my point.

David Bisset · 29 May 2015 at 17:30

So when running direct x of a given version (say 12 because that's what we're talking about) there are a number of things a dev can ask the GPU to do. To be able to run some program that uses DX12 you need to support a minimum set of features which is in this case level 11_0. However, none of these features are DX12 features, they're just still part of the DX12 spec as DX is always at least a bit backwards compatible.

The DX 12 features are the things present at level 12_0 and above, and as the 780Ti doesn't support enough of these to get 12_0 support it's not viewed as having full DX12 support.