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AMD Previews DirectX 11 Gaming Performance
An anonymous reader writes "AMD invited 100 people up to their private suite in the hotel that Quakecon 2009 is being hosted at for a first look at gaming on one of their upcoming DirectX 11 graphics cards. This card has not been officially named yet, but it has the internal code name of 'Evergreen,' and was first shown to the media back at Computex over in Taiwan earlier this year. The guys from Legit Reviews were shown two different systems running DX11 hardware. One system was set up running a bunch of DX11 SDKs and the other was running a demo for the upcoming shooter Wolfenstein. The video card appears to be on schedule for its launch next month."
What?!? The standard always comes before the hardware, DX11 is an API and a (defacto) standard. We could go back to the OpenGL model with ARB extensions for new features that are implemented differently by each party until the standard catches up, but that was tough on everyone. It was tough on the hardware guys because they inevitably implemented features that didn't make it into the standard, it was hard on the standards body because they had to arbitrate between the different implementations to pick a winner, and it was hard on the software guys because they had to support the whole mess. It's a primary reason that DX won over OpenGL in the marketplace.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
>>Since when did we build hardware around APIs, rather than the other way around?
Always.
There's always a dialogue between software and hardware people on what needs to be implemented, and whether it should be done in hardware and software. The RISC/CISC days were full of stories like that in the CPU design world.
It also has a lot of awesome smaller features that make doing what are known as deferred shading/lighting pipelines more feasible. This is a good thing because it simplifies the amount of work needed in implementing game's material system while offering great performance at the cost of more GPU memory being used.
How about they fix their win7 drviers for not-so-old but still great performing cards like the X1800 ? Nvidia customers are having a great time with win7 atm, and even Intel integrated graphics are performing better, but I've got several friends with less than 2 year old ATI cards that perform great, but have no real driver support with trashy, even BSOD drivers from ATI for win7.
At some point during this process, Microsoft takes a selection of OpenGL extensions - often including ones that vendors have proposed but not yet implemented - and says that the next version of Direct3D will require these. Vendors then implement whichever ones they didn't provide in their next generation hardware and stick a DirectX n+1 label on it.
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Well I read TFA and besides the new capabilities of DirectX 11 (which look nice, but not exactly earth-shattering to me and also will need some time to get implemented into games anyway), what I found interesting was what ATI actually did with the display output connectors.
:)
The demo system they set up had one of those new DirectX 11 cards and that card is a dual-slot solution as all the highend graphics cards are now. But ATI did use the space from those two slots quite nicely by including dual DVI ports AND a HDMI AND a DisplayPort connector meaning you have all the different types of digital display connectors available on a single card, which would be a first, I think.
No word yet whether you can use all four ports simultaneously, but if you could, it looks like a nice new way of hooking up multiple displays
Since most you other fucks just make some sort of quip with no facts, (yeah yeah, i know it slashdot) here is the wikipedia entry for DX11.
"Microsoft unveiled Direct3D 11 at the Gamefest 08 event in Seattle, with the major scheduled features including GPGPU support, tessellation[11][12] support, and improved multi-threading support to assist video game developers in developing games that better utilize multi-core processors.[13] Direct3D 11 will run on Windows Vista, Windows 7, and all future Windows operating systems. Parts of the new API such as multi-threaded resource handling can be supported on Direct3D 9/10/10.1-class hardware. Hardware tessellation and Shader Model 5.0 will require Direct3D 11 supporting hardware.[14] Microsoft has since released the Direct3D 11 Technical Preview.[15] Direct3D 11 is a strict superset of Direct3D 10.1 - all hardware and API features of version 10.1 are retained, and new features are added only when necessary for exposing new functionality. Microsoft have stated that Direct3D 11 is scheduled to be released to manufacturing in July 2009,[16] with the retail release coming in October '09"
Seems pretty big to me. The thing I see being the biggest is the work on improving multithreading/multicore support, and the whole GPGPU thing. Not to mention that the API will be very compatiable with older cards (read: no real need to upgrade cards just yet)
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
Actually, it hasn't been this way since around 2003/2004. Essentially nVidia, ATI/AMD, Intel and a few other lesser known vendors sit down in league with Microsoft and decide what kind of features they will be able to implement in the next graphics hardware cycle. They then come up with the API and get feedback from the hardware vendors and work towards a final workable API. This is what we saw with Direct3D 9.0c, Direct3D 10, and Direct3D 11. OpenGL and the ARB has lagged way behind Microsoft and its partners, which is why the ARB was eventually disbanded and replaced by the Khronos Group. The Khronos Group kind of messed up OpenGL 3.0, they didn't implement half of the things they said they were going to do. As such, OpenGL 3.0 lagged quite a ways behind Direct3D 10. Fortunately, they've caught up, and OpenGL 3.2 is on par with Direct3D 10, but still a big step behind the new stuff in Direct3D 11. As such, Microsoft and it's partners are leading the pack here, and Khronos (and because most of Microsoft's Direct3D partners are also Khronos group members) is no playing the role of follower. You can be guaranteed that the next major revision to OpenGL to match Direct3D 11 almost exactly in features, as nVidia, ATI/AMD, et. al. don't want to deviate radically in their underlying hardware.
Most game developers are skipping Direct3D 10 because it's explicitly tied to Vista and it has poor market share compared to Windows XP/Direct3D 9.0c. The hope is that most current gamers on Windows XP will eventually move to Windows 7, and that Direct3D 11 enjoys the same long life span as Direct3D 9.0, ending up in the console from Microsoft.
I wouldn't be surprised if you were all Microsoft-paid trolls and marketers that are placing your twisted spin on things and making people continue to believe in your garbage.
The hardware manufacturer talks to Microsoft. Microsoft talks to the hardware manufacturer.
This - surprisingly enough - turns out to be mutually beneficial.
Well... We just are using DX9 yet, only two or three games (really) needs DX10... and now we go to DX11? When came a really good game using in fact DX10, we will go to DX14? Is too fast to me
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Maybe you should also mention in your rant that it doesn't matter whether OpenGL 3.x implements a feature, because every hardware developer can just add an extension to it to implement that feature. This means that new features usually get into the standard after they have been deployed in new hardware.
This is not possible in Direct3D, and so in this case the new versions have to be developed before the hardware for it gets deployed. That's why it always appears that OpenGL is lagging behind, when in reality it's actually moving faster. For example, OpenGL geometry shaders are supported in Windows XP, where no Direct3D 10 is available.
I was totally with you right up to the mention of IE6. :P
Just because Windows XP can't run Direct3D 10/11 doesn't mean that Direct3D never supported geometry-shaders before OpenGL. Direct3D 10 had geometry shader support back in 2006, and it's what spurred the development of actual hardware that supported that feature set. It's true that nVidia had their GL_EXT_geometry_shader4 extension working back in 2007, but ATI/AMD NEVER supported it. It wasn't until OpenGL 3.2 was announced in August of this year that we actually got standardized support for geometry shaders, but the OpenGL 3.2 drivers from nVidia and ATI are still in beta.