Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

DirectX 12 Performance Tested In Ashes of the Singularity

Posted by samzenpus on from the how's-it-look dept.

Vigile writes: The future of graphics APIs lies in DirectX 12 and Vulkan, both built to target GPU hardware at a lower level than previously available. The advantages are better performance, better efficiency on all hardware and more control for the developer that is willing to put in the time and effort to understand the hardware in question. Until today we have only heard or seen theoretical "peak" performance claims of DX12 compared to DX11. PC Perspective just posted an article that uses a pre-beta version of Ashes of the Singularity, an upcoming RTS utilizing the Oxide Games Nitrous engine, to evaluate and compare DX12's performance claims and gains against DX11. In the story we find five different processor platforms tested with two different GPUs and two different resolutions. Results are interesting and show that DX12 levels the playing field for AMD, with its R9 390X gaining enough ground in DX12 to overcome a significant performance deficit that exists using DX11 to the GTX 980.

96 comments

  1. GAY NIGGERS from OUTER SPACE rendered in DX12! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1
    Ass ramming felching cum licking and all out butt fucking rendered in DX12. ALL OUT GAY NIGGER extravaganza!

    GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which
    gathers GAY NIGGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being GAY NIGGERS.

    Are you GAY ?
    Are you a NIGGER ?
    Are you a GAY NIGGER ?

    If you answered "Yes" to any of the above questions, then GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) might be exactly what you've been looking for!
    Join GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) today, and enjoy all the benefits of being a full-time GNAA member.
    GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the fastest-growing GAY NIGGER community with THOUSANDS of members all over United States of America. You, too, can be a part of GNAA if you join today!

    Why not? It's quick and easy - only 3 simple steps!

    First, you have to obtain a copy of GAY NIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE THE MOVIE and watch it.

    You can watch GAY NIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE on Youtube.

    Second, you need to succeed in posting a GNAA "first post" on slashdot.org , a popular "news for trolls" website

    Third, you need to join the official GNAA irc channel #GNAA on EFNet, and apply for membership.
    Talk to one of the ops or any of the other members in the channel to sign up today!

    If you are having trouble locating #GNAA, the official GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA irc channel, you might be on a wrong irc network. The correct network is EFNet, and you can connect to irc.secsup.org or irc.easynews.com as one of the EFNet servers.
    If you do not have an IRC client handy, you are free to use the GNAA Java IRC client by clicking here.

    If you have mod points and would like to support GNAA, please moderate this post up.

    This post brought to you by Penisbird , a proud member of the GNAA

    G_____________________________________naann_______ ________G
    N_____________________________nnnaa__nanaaa_______ ________A
    A____________________aanana__nannaa_nna_an________ ________Y
    A_____________annna_nnnnnan_aan_aa__na__aa________ ________*
    G____________nnaana_nnn__nn_aa__nn__na_anaann_MERI CA______N
    N___________ana__nn_an___an_aa_anaaannnanaa_______ ________I
    A___________aa__ana_nn___nn_nnnnaa___ana__________ ________G
    A__________nna__an__na___nn__nnn___SSOCIATION_of__ ________G
    G__________ana_naa__an___nnn______________________ ________E
    N__________ananan___nn___aan_IGGER________________ ________R
    A__________nnna____naa____________________________ ________S
    A________nnaa_____anan____________________________ ________*
    G________anaannana________________________________ ________A
    N________ananaannn_AY_____________________________ ________S
    A________ana____nn_________IRC-EFNET-#GNAA________ ________S
    A_______nn_____na_________________________________ ________O
    *_______aaaan_____________________________________ ________C
     Gary Niger gary_niger@gnaa.us GNAA Corporate Headquarters 143 Rolloffle Avenue Tarzana, California 91356
    Enid Al-Punjabi enid_al_punjabi@gnaa.us GNAA World Headquarters No.33 Kyutei Bld. 2F, Shinjuku 2-11-7, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan ????????2??11-6
    Copyright (c) 2003-2015 Gay Nigger Association of America

    Ich Binda

    1. Re:GAY NIGGERS from OUTER SPACE rendered in DX12! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      This stuff is just crazy.

  2. DirectX is for COWS! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    You're all a bunch of Microsoft-milked DirectX COWS! MOOO, you cows, MOOOO, MOOOOOO!!1!

  3. Yawn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    So as an Nvidia user, this pathetic performance improvement is even more of a reason to stick with Windows 8.1. I guess AMD users might want to accept the spyware and ads of Windows 10 for the DX12 boost, but it would be better if AMD just made better drivers.

  4. Not terribly surprising by blankinthefill · · Score: -1, Troll

    It's pretty damn well known that AMD is bad at drivers, so removing most of the driver from the equation would of course benefit them more. I wouldn't be surprised if nVidia were to spin off their own middleman program that specialized in providing support between the barebones of DX12 and what most game builders actually need to build things out. Seems like an opportunity for them, to be honest, to penetrate areas that AMD hardware is being used.

    1. Re:Not terribly surprising by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      penetrate areas

      That's what she said.

    2. Re:Not terribly surprising by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      NVIDIA is just as terrible for drivers. Just have to see the massive failure for the Windows 10 launch.

    3. Re:Not terribly surprising by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      NVIDIA is just as terrible for drivers. Just have to see the massive failure for the Windows 10 launch.

      A tiny minority of nVidia users had a crash bug, and a new driver was rolled out a day later. That doesn't sound like massive failure to me. Massive failure is when the GUI for your driver is larger, slower, and more bloated than Adobe Reader.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:Not terribly surprising by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      oh no. they're WELL BEYOND bad. Crapalyst is just shitastic at it's godawful bug ridden best.

      as to nvidia, I suspect that it's more likely that in dx12 that they're trying to do too much with their driver and hence hindering perf or IOW that haven't gotten to the dx12 mindset yet. ...or it could just bet that particular engine/game, as this is an insignificant sample set excepting for the ati fantards, but as winter is approaching I could do with an extra space heater... .... but no I just recalled what fun crapalyst is which more than offsets any use of the additional heating capacity...

      as to nvidia embedding engineers, it should end up being more important than ever, but to be competitive ati has to fix their shit drivers first and foremost, and amd needs to get their thumb out and crap out a decent cpu arch again. I'll take that even if they can only manage it at their insanely power hungry typical design levels.

      If they manage it, I might even build an opteron system rather than wait for skylake-e for the next desktop, assuming they can manage a beg enough leap in processing efficiency, and get some decent mobo chipsets instead of their half baked shit that they pawn off now.

  5. Wait a min, Direct X 12 needs what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Developer now must know MORE about the underlying hardware to make the best use of Direct X 12?

    This is a total step in the WRONG direction. So now having Direct X 12 hardware doesn't mean your game now just works, oh no. If you want the full experience you now must have the HARDWARE that your game was written for, or forget all this compatible Direct X stuff. How's this different from the game developer just coding directly to the video hardware of choice? That's what they do now, especially when they are funded by the video hardware guys in an effort to sell more hardware..

    For this Direct X thing to really be useful, it needs to isolate the developer from the hardware implementation. You need to abstract away the vendor specifics and make the programming agnostic to what hardware it's running on... Otherwise this is all going to just going to be what it has always been, vendor lock in for specific games and drive us towards only ONE video hardware chip maker....

    1. Re:Wait a min, Direct X 12 needs what? by GigaplexNZ · · Score: 2

      The Developer now must know MORE about the underlying hardware to make the best use of Direct X 12?

      Uh, yeah, that's what a lower level API means.

    2. Re:Wait a min, Direct X 12 needs what? by exomondo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'm not quite sure why you are modded down, this is a perfectly valid and legitimate concern.

      Part of the problem of PC gaming has always been that the choice of hardware has meant we have had to have abstraction layers and these introduced inefficiencies which have reached significant levels nowadays. You remember seeing every time a new console generation is released that PC gamers proclaim it is terrible because their PC hardware is theoretically more powerful? Well that is true however being more powerful is pointless if that power can not be efficiently utilized, it just goes to waste. Heavy abstractions and generic implementations mean a lot of that increased power is wasted. So it is about bringing APIs up to scratch with modern hardware and removing some of the legacy cruft. It means more responsibility on the part of the application developer in the same way that it did when we went from the fixed function pipeline to the programmable pipeline many years ago.

      For this Direct X thing to really be useful, it needs to isolate the developer from the hardware implementation. You need to abstract away the vendor specifics and make the programming agnostic to what hardware it's running on.

      Well it still is relatively hardware agnostic, the difference is that we have had many advances in hardware that are not reflected in modern APIs. Take resource binding for example, currently resources are bound to "slots" when you define a shader pipeline and are fixed at draw time so if you want to change the resources that this shader pipeline uses you need to bind those new resources to those slots and draw again. This was a great general view of hardware at the time and is forward-compatible. But modern hardware has long had the capability to index a table of resources rather than just whatever is currently bound to the resource slots though the APIs are not architected to allow this. So this is generally implemented on an application-specific basis in the driver when the driver author (usually the hardware manufacturer) works with the application developer to understand what they are trying to accomplish that the API doesn't provide and then create a kind of munging layer in the driver that converts the application's "bind->draw bound, rebind->draw bound" workflow into a "create table->draw all" workflow. This is partly why you see significant performance differences in applications between driver versions but also why an application on similarly capable hardware can perform so vastly different between vendors.

      That's just one example, I hope it's somewhat clear. Yes there is less of an abstraction in some areas but at the API level it doesn't do things like expose an AMD R9 -specific feature or an nVidia GTX980 -specific feature.

    3. Re:Wait a min, Direct X 12 needs what? by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No, don't worry. I haven't seen the DirectX 12 API yet myself (I'm still working in DX9-11 land), but I'm pretty sure all this is doing is making the abstraction layer more closely match the realities of the existing hardware designs. That is, it's not eliminating the abstraction altogether, but making it a much thinner layer, so as to avoid imposing unnecessary overhead.

      All the GPUs work in roughly the same manner, because they have to execute the same common shader micro-code. In order to be labeled as "DX11" or "DX12" compliant hardware, a GPU must be able to perform a minimum set of functionality. Moreover, the vast majority of this functionality is accessed via shader languages, and this doesn't change from GPU to GPU.

      I'd be surprised if there was any significant divergence at all between different types of GPUs in the code at all. DirectX 12 looks like it's going to be a very good thing, both for developers and for gamers.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    4. Re:Wait a min, Direct X 12 needs what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The Developer now must know MORE about the underlying hardware to make the best use of Direct X 12?

      If you think that is bad, you should see the shit developers have to do for current APIs. If you're not a AAA game, technically you can only use the standard APIs, but these is incredibly slow making lots of system calls are inherently slow. Want to know why driver updates list increased performance in certain games? Because they driver devs look at how those games are using the APIs, then detect these games and do black magic behind the scenes that is all a bunch of bandaids to work around the horrible performance limitations of the current APIs

      Indy devs come along and want to make a game, they need to reverse engineer these undocumented behind-the-scenes bandaids that could break at any time because they're not part of the standard. DX12 is an attempt to remove all of this driver crap that has been used for decades. Maybe someday we won't have 300MiB graphics drivers.

    5. Re:Wait a min, Direct X 12 needs what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I know slashdot usually does not read AC, but I reply none the less.

      Your post and grandparent is spot on, but I still do not think it is a problem. The ecosystem has changed a lot, "back then" basically every studio wrote their own engine, today we have three big engine makers (Epic with UE, Crytek with CryEngine, and Unity) on the market plus a few big in-house engines of the publishers that they do not license out.
      A few other larger projects make their own engines, but if we are down to half a dozen major ones and another half dozen big ones we are basically there.

      Small projects - and many AAA titles - just take one of the existing engines and do not bother.

      There also was a large change on the manufacturer side: there are not half a dozen big card makers anymore with a whole lineup of products, we are seeing two major makers for games + intel for everything else; their chips are also based on the very few actual designs and custom-building code for these two or five bases is possible - especially as we have big engine makers who do the heavy lifting.

      The heavy abstraction of old DirectX versions was the right thing to do - and the introduction of DirectX is actually one thing Microsoft did really right and we have to thank them for that. Does anyone remember the chaos in the DOS-days? - but now it is also the right thing to keep a common API but reduce the abstraction at the cost of big engine makers (putting 10s and 100s of millions in their products) and large publishers who in-house create an engine (Frostbite, for example) which fuels several AAA titles in the years to come.

    6. Re:Wait a min, Direct X 12 needs what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What's with all the paranoia about DX 12? Vulkan, Metal, Mantle are all broadly the same. They are an abstraction of the hardware. The only difference is that they're very, very efficient at talking to the driver.

  6. Driver Differences by nateman1352 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think what this benchmark really tells us is two things:

    1. nVidia has not optimized their driver stack for DX12 as much as AMD has optimized for DX12
    2. The performance difference between AMD and nVidia is likely a software issue, not a hardware issue (nVidia's driver has a more optimized DX11 implementation than AMD's). However, it is possible that nVidia's silicon architecture is designed to run DX11 workloads better than AMD's.

    Bullet #1 make sense, AMD has been developing Mantle for years now so they likely have a more mature stack for these low level APIs. Bullet #2 also makes sense, AMD/ATI's driver has been a known weak point for a long time now.

    1. Re:Driver Differences by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think what this benchmark really tells us is one thing:

      1. AMD has crappy drivers, so they get more of a boost by offloading to DX12.

    2. Re:Driver Differences by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Not really.

      It has been known for a long time that AMD has poor driver overhead in Windows. This removes that. Its also known that in terms of brute power, AMD cards are in the vicinity of 15% faster overall. I fully expect AMD to catch up and perhaps overtake in DX12 benchmarking.

    3. Re:Driver Differences by exomondo · · Score: 1

      I think what this benchmark really tells us is two things:

      1. nVidia has not optimized their driver stack for DX12 as much as AMD has optimized for DX12

      Maybe but the whole idea is that should have little impact. These new APIs are about reducing driver overhead by re-designing the API such that it is a more accurate representation of the underlying hardware requiring a lot less work from the driver in converting between what the application thinks the hardware looks like and what the hardware actually looks like.

    4. Re:Driver Differences by Narishma · · Score: 1

      They aren't offloading to DX12, since DX12 is a much smaller API that does a lot less than the previous ones. They are offloading to the game engine developers.

      --
      Mada mada dane.
  7. Again, linux out of the equation. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Are linux users ever going to get something that work properly? Is this shit going to be windows only?

    1. Re:Again, linux out of the equation. by GigaplexNZ · · Score: 1

      DirectX is a Microsoft API, so yes, it's pretty likely to be Windows only. For Linux, there's Vulkan.

  8. I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOOP by JustNiz · · Score: 0, Troll

    As a fairly hardcore gamer, DirectX 12 is the only reason I have (but its quite a big one) that i would switch to Windows 10, but reading over and over how badly Win 10 stomps all over users rights has me thinking even I can't justify selling out that much just for better graphics.

    After reading even more today about exactly how shitty Windows 10 is, I've decided when I get home tonight I'm just going to delete the free Win 10 update iso I've already downloaded, and stick with Windows 7/DX11 and Linux for gaming from now on.

    Microsofts greed and stupidity with Windows 10 has crossed the line, so there's even more of a reason now for the big PC game developers like Bethesda to finally get a clue and start making Linux versions of their games.

  9. Re:I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yep, no need to "upgrade" to Windows NSA Edition. DX11 beats out DX12 on Nvidia, except on low detail.

    DX12 is all hype.

  10. If it means I have to take Windows 10? by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'll pass, even though I have all AMD hardware. Its just not worth giving up my privacy and having Big Brother MSFT snoop through everything I do just to have DX12. I love gaming but not enough to let MSFT stick a webcam over my shoulder, thx anyway.

    --
    ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    1. Re:If it means I have to take Windows 10? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you can turn that shit off, and if that's not good enough for you, well they are watching you in windows 7 so why the hell are you even using any windows for directX in the first place???

    2. Re:If it means I have to take Windows 10? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just turn your tinfoil up to 11 and block all that shit (if you really think it matters).

    3. Re:If it means I have to take Windows 10? by hairyfeet · · Score: 1

      Does everybody see NOW why ACs are worthless? they are apparently too fucking stupid to read headlines and certainly are too retarded to actually use a search engine because if they could do more than pick their own noses they would have seen that you can't turn off Windows 10 spying as the "privacy settings" are the equivalent of the button on a street light, something designed to make the user think he has control when its just bullshit.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    4. Re:If it means I have to take Windows 10? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Here's a clue for you: Microsoft doesn't give a shit about your little life. Stop being so fucking stupid and spreading this shit.

    5. Re:If it means I have to take Windows 10? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      If they didn't give a shit then why are they collecting data?

      Let me guess, you use the computer mommy and daddy bought for you purely for video games and Facebook, right? Of course *you* don't have privacy concerns, you have no responsibility nor any data worth harvesting.

    6. Re:If it means I have to take Windows 10? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      Yawn... so boring. Your anti-MS crap belongs in the 90s. You need to grow up and get over it. Find someplace worthwhile and positive to direct your energy. Good luck with that.

    7. Re:If it means I have to take Windows 10? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      Your child-like worldview is adorable. Try finishing grade school and taking on some fucking responsibility, junior.

    8. Re:If it means I have to take Windows 10? by Yunzil · · Score: 1

      Do you even know (or care) what it's sending back or did you just read the headlines and start freaking out about your privacy?

    9. Re:If it means I have to take Windows 10? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are several tools that turn off those settings, stop the services and blacklist the IPs they communicate with... sooo.. why are you complaining again?

    10. Re:If it means I have to take Windows 10? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You sound like a frog being boiled.

    11. Re:If it means I have to take Windows 10? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you even know (or care) what it's sending back

      Irrelevant. It should not be sending anything unless I explicitly tell it to. It's my PC running a PC operating system, not fucking CloudOS. There is absolutely no legitimate reason that Windows 10 needs to send any of that data.

  11. "Computronium" by danomatika · · Score: 1

    I'm more interested in the fact that the game used for benchmarking has the following in it's backstory: "Computronium became the ultimate currency."

  12. DX12 levels the playing field for AMD by JohnStock · · Score: 2

    No.. This engine's implementation *may* level the playing field for AMD but that does not mean that API does.

  13. These results don't make much sense by Kjella · · Score: 2

    It is widely known that DX12 will reduce draw call overhead, making weaker CPUs perform better relative to stronger CPUs. This is of course good for AMD, since they don't have high-end CPUs anymore though it's bit of a "scorched earth" result where gamers don't need expensive CPUs at all. But if you look at "Ashes (Heavy) DX11 to DX12 Scaling - Radeon R9 390X" and look at an extremely powerful CPU like the Core i7-6700 you're seeing 50-100% gains. If you're that severely bottle-necked by a 4+ GHz quad core then this is not a typical DX11 game.

    We can compare the "typical" difference between a R9 390X and GTX980 in Anandtech's bench, though I have to substitute for a R290X "Uber" so the differences should actually be even smaller. Normally these cards are almost head to head, the question is not why DX12 is closing the gap but why there's such a huge DX11 gap to begin with. And the only reason I can come up with is because they're pushing way, way more draw calls than normal. Which may be DX12 enabling developers to do things they wanted to, but couldn't before or it could be to make someone look good/bad.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    1. Re:These results don't make much sense by GigaplexNZ · · Score: 1

      If you're that severely bottle-necked by a 4+ GHz quad core then this is not a typical DX11 game.

      We already know this isn't a typical DX11 game. They're using way more draw calls than a typical DX11 game simply because DX12 allows them to make more. That's even stated in the article.

    2. Re:These results don't make much sense by loonycyborg · · Score: 1

      Anyway I have no idea what's up with this obsession with increasing the number of api calls. You don't need to do a lot of those if you design your rendering pipeline right. One glDrawElements would accomplish a lot of work, especially if you're using vertex and pixel shaders.

    3. Re:These results don't make much sense by Fragnet · · Score: 1

      It's not just the number of API calls, it's all the things that go on in the driver. Things like shader recompiles to match new hardware state, mutexes and blocks on resource use, resource use tracking to make sure the next call doesn't interfere with the previous one and so on. There's a huge amount of bloat in drivers at the moment and it all contributes to the relative lack of efficiency. There's a fantastic post here at gamedev on the subject

  14. Re:I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    I've decided when I get home tonight I'm just going to delete the free Win 10 update iso I've already downloaded, and stick with Windows 7/DX11 and Linux for gaming from now on.

    Smart choice. I am shocked how you even pulled a mod +1 on this. 5 of the current 14 or so comments are already -1, and they are all correct except the penisbird ascii one which is just LOL... still -1 though. Sense of humor on Microsoft spying/profits is -1 I guess. Slashdot seems to have more regedit fans with mod points nowadays than it used to. It's probably full time work keeping Microsoft from being dominated by Linux. Futile as well seeing that cyberspace is basically all Linux now. And so is your router. And so is your Android. And your Smart TV's. Name it. Windows can suck all the dicks.

    http://www.technobuffalo.com/2013/08/22/nsa-windows-8-exploit/
    http://www.technobuffalo.com/2013/07/11/microsoft-gave-the-nsa-direct-backdoor-access-to-outlook-skype/
    http://winsupersite.com/windows-10/how-stop-windows-10-upgrade-downloading-your-system
    http://www.extremetech.com/computing/195592-with-windows-10-microsoft-could-move-to-a-subscription-based-model
    http://www.extremetech.com/computing/205320-microsoft-windows-10-will-be-the-last-version-of-windows
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GU5uv28a3I
    http://techrights.org/2015/07/31/vista-10-anticompetitive/

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwRYyWn7BEo

    http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7814945&cid=50277265

    Also, I updated KDE yesterday on a PC-BSD install. Sofa king awesome. I came across this post while looking for the solution to KDE missing from the desktop manager.

    https://forums.pcbsd.org/thread-20102.html

    I agree. Also, the solution was to boot into the updated environment. I actually updated to 2 different patch sets and it was putting me in the older of the 2.
    eg. http://wiki.pcbsd.org/index.php/Boot_Manager/10.1.1

    Took a few minutes but when I realized and booted into it, whoa. KDE won everything. Best desktop ever.

    If anybody reading this is coming from Windows world, Linux will be very easy. BSD is not as easy unless you have sharp internet search skills. Both are great. If you are adept on a Mac, Linux and BSD will both be easy.

  15. Its the threading model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Direct3D 11 introduced the capability to render with multiple threads via deferred contexts. NVidia chose to support that feature, AMD did not. Direct3D 12 mandates multithreaded rendering.

    1. Re:Its the threading model by Fragnet · · Score: 1

      Gains from threaded rendering with D3D 11 were marginal to non-existent because of the way the driver worked. With D3D12 (and Vulkan), threading is a 1st class citizen. You'll be able to call into the driver without a blocking penalty, so it will genuinely be faster (all else being equal). D3D12 doesn't "mandate" MT rendering by the way. You can still do everything on a single thread if you want.

    2. Re:Its the threading model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      D3D12 API requires that the hardware must deal with the instructions in a compatible way that supports MT.

  16. DirectX is *NOT* the "future of graphics" by BringMyShuttle · · Score: -1, Troll

    > The future of graphics APIs lies in DirectX 12 and Vulkan,

    Well that's a marketing statement if I ever heard one.

    Vulcan (sic), maybe. It's open platform. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    DirectX 12, as if!!! Microsoft screwed up terribly tying DirectX to Vista where they denied DirectX upgrades to customers who wouldn't "upgrade" to Vista -- nearly everyone! And their Windows 8 disaster chased developers off the Windows platform and onto mobile devices where OpenGL rules supreme. DirectX still has its place for the Xbox and Windows PC games only (( developers also targeting the Mac will use cross platform OpenGL )) -- but DirectX is definitely *not* "the future of graphics" despite OP's claim

    PS Nice way to fumble the ball at kickoff on Windows 10, Microsoft. Your peeping tom privacy policy for Windows 10 is a great reason not to upgrade. Look: "Microsoft's Windows 10 privacy headache extends into gaming" http://www.theverge.com/2015/8...

    1. Re:DirectX is *NOT* the "future of graphics" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Vulcan (sic), maybe. It's open platform.

      OpenGL has existed, and has been open, for longer than Direct3D itself has. Direct3D still exists. Direct3D isn't even the current most popular graphics API if you consider mobile devices, but if you're just looking at high-end PC games, it still hasn't been dethroned and doesn't show any particular signs of being dethroned anytime soon.

      DirectX 12, as if!!! Microsoft screwed up terribly tying DirectX to Vista where they denied DirectX upgrades to customers who wouldn't "upgrade" to Vista -- nearly everyone!

      Uptake of DX10/DX11 is currently over 97% amongst Steam users. As if!

      And their Windows 8 disaster chased developers off the Windows platform and onto mobile devices where OpenGL rules supreme.

      PC game sales did not take a noticeable dip after Windows 8. Go ahead, show me a some sort of supporting evidence of any sort and prove me wrong. You're making the claims here.

      Look: "Microsoft's Windows 10 privacy headache extends into gaming"

      Privacy shittyness is something to be concerned about with Windows 10, for sure. But, did you read the article you just cited, or were you taken in by its clickbaity title and stopped reading there? If you'd read it, you'd notice the entire article hinges on this EULA snippet that apparently applies to Skype and Xbox Live:

      We may automatically check your version of the software and download software updates or configuration changes, including those that prevent you from accessing the Services, playing counterfeit games, or using unauthorized hardware peripheral devices.

      Can you tell me the last time you bought a AAA game that doesn't have similar wording in its own EULA? Oh no, they're going to... possibly update the game's DRM to prevent you from pirating it or accessing XBL with a pirated copy? How terrible?

    2. Re: DirectX is *NOT* the "future of graphics" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If developers left the industry a few years ago to work on mobile games, it's probably because smartphones represent a significantly more profitable platform for successful games than the PC. Windows 8 might have nudged a few people, but the ease of multi platform development in Unity and the accessibility of smartphone development for small studios, in terms of skills and costs, are far more compelling reasons to switch.

    3. Re:DirectX is *NOT* the "future of graphics" by Fragnet · · Score: 1

      Privacy is something to be concerned about not just on Windows but everywhere. I don't know why people focus on Microsoft when Apple and Google do similar things.

    4. Re:DirectX is *NOT* the "future of graphics" by drinkypoo · · Score: 0

      OpenGL has existed, and has been open, for longer than Direct3D itself has. Direct3D still exists. Direct3D isn't even the current most popular graphics API if you consider mobile devices, but if you're just looking at high-end PC games, it still hasn't been dethroned and doesn't show any particular signs of being dethroned anytime soon.

      Indeed, the only reason that Direct3D even exists is that 3dfx decided to create their own interface (GLIDE) instead of just using OpenGL. They later brought out a "MiniGL" driver which provided a reasonable subset of OpenGL, but by then the damage had been done and Microsoft had already done Direct3D. If they had just gone with OpenGL to start with, Microsoft would likely have followed suit. Microsoft never has an original idea, they only copy people. They copied 3dfx and the rest is the present, and unfortunate.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    5. Re:DirectX is *NOT* the "future of graphics" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People don't only focus on Microsoft. You're either reading the wrong forums or you've got a mental block for everything but Microsoft criticism.

      Windows 10 is a joke. It's filled with spyware, advertisements and they take user control away. At the same time, I don't really have anything against previous versions of Windows.

      Apple is an extremely controlled, walled garden intended for non-technical people and I would never use anything made by them.

      Google harvests massive amounts of data and makes horrible design changes "just because" and I don't use their services because of that. I do use an Android phone, but it's running custom firmware without any of the Google stuff.

      What it comes down to is that the operating systems on my PCs are all general purpose, LOCAL operating systems. Windows 10 is trying to take a step backwards to thin client territory. If I wanted my fucking OS in the cloud, I'd be using Azure.

    6. Re:DirectX is *NOT* the "future of graphics" by BringMyShuttle · · Score: 1

      Safe to say the Troll(-1) mods downvoting this this aren't genuine but really Disagree(-1) or Shill(-1).

  17. What it actually shows by phizi0n · · Score: 1

    All that these results show is that AMD has higher draw call overhead than nVidia does on DX11 but DX11 and older games were not designed to make massive amounts of draw calls so it doesn't matter all that much when playing games designed for these older API's. DX12 was designed to minimize the API overhead to allow games to start drawing way more stuff and games that are designed to take advantage of this are going to suck on older API's when they support it. If developers were to write support for DX12 in their current games that don't draw much stuff then you wouldn't see nearly as much of a performance gain.

  18. Star Swarm style marketing continues by Luckyo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Those who haven't clued in yet: this is the same engine that was used for "unreleased game turned DX 12 synthetic benchmark" star swarm. All same caveats apply:
    1. Unknown engine not available to public with unknown performance. We have no idea how DX11 implementation is made, or why DX12 is so much faster than anywhere else seen so far.
    2. Is in pre-alpha, meaning performance is all over the place and a complete black box, it could render faster in DX11 in next build for all we know.

    We've been there with mantle already. Specialized tech demos showing massive performance boost from using mantle over DX11. Then release, frostbite et al start supporting it and we see minimal to no performance boost outside really low end CPUs bundled with really high end GPUs.

    Show me this kinds of numbers on a known engine that has a polished DX11 implementation like unreal 4 engine, and I'll actually believe you. Until then, all I see is more marketing BS.

    1. Re:Star Swarm style marketing continues by Fragnet · · Score: 2

      We do know why DX12 is a lot faster. For example here's one of a thousand articles about it. Also please see NVIDIA's SIGGRAPH 2015 presentation on Vulkan (same kind of technology as D3D 12).

    2. Re:Star Swarm style marketing continues by Kaitiff · · Score: 1

      There's a problem with your argument there chief... this is a game that is about to release. I'ts not an alpha.. from the video I just watched the company is about to release 'Ashes' for purchase.

      DX11 is dead tree man. Might as well use that same argument a few years ago with DX9.. when M$ moves on with it's API, you either get onboard or you're left in the dust. I've been hoping for years and years that someone could make the push for OpenGL to become competitive again but that's not gonna happen. At least with DX12 being based off of Mantle, you will have the Vulkan equivalent that is almost code identical so games can work as well off of Win10 as on it. I want to see Linux and Mac games released at the same time as windows games and running just as fast. Thats what will open up the field to everyone finally.

      The other thing that is glaringly obvious is that the fastest AMD chips are suck for gaming with this API. I had hoped that Mantle would really bolster up the AMD cpu performance in gaming, but that was almost embarrassing to look at; the I3 is faster than AMD's flagship processor in this game. Ouch.

      --
      If I sound stupid, it's not me talking....
    3. Re:Star Swarm style marketing continues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Modern games still support DX9 so DX11 will be around for a very long time. Vulkan has already been adopted by all of the major corporations that matter, so no problems there. DX12 and its single platform support is already dead out of the gate.

    4. Re:Star Swarm style marketing continues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OpenGL will be competitive again, indeed have a big advantage (cross platform) when Vulkan is released.

    5. Re:Star Swarm style marketing continues by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      the I3 is faster than AMD's flagship processor in this game. Ouch.

      Right now for non-power users the sweet spot is Haswell i5, it is relatively cheap and is more powerful than anything AMD has to offer. However, it will cost you at least a couple hundred bucks more than the AMD solution when you factor in the motherboard as well, and it doesn't get you significantly better maximum frame rates. What it does get you is notable better minimum rates. What that suggests to me is that AMD's cores are just as fast as Intel's, but they can't shovel data into them as quickly. That's a bit ironic considering that was one of the big benefits of the K7, with its on-die memory controller... Everyone has one of those now, obviously.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    6. Re:Star Swarm style marketing continues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OpenGL's relevance was thanks to Apple's reliance on it for OSX in the early 2000's.
      With Microsoft staying the course with DirectX, and when Apple switches to all Metal, OpenGL will only be utilized by those few who want to roll their own engine and not utilize one that has fast-paths targeting specific platforms.

    7. Re:Star Swarm style marketing continues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mantel seems to be an improvement over DirectX:
      http://www.hardwarepal.com/civ...

    8. Re:Star Swarm style marketing continues by Fragnet · · Score: 1

      It doesn't say which version of DirectX it's comparing against. As he's using Windows 8.1 it certainly wasn't D3D 12.

    9. Re:Star Swarm style marketing continues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually OpenGL's relevance is thanks to John Carmack and possibly 3dfx's Glide.

    10. Re:Star Swarm style marketing continues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Three facts about DX12 1) Scales linearly with threads. At least linear with a few factors of the number of cores we care about on desktops. 2) Is about 100x faster for draw calls than other pre-mantle APIs 3) Parts of games bottlenecked by draw calls

      DX12's main benefits are better thread scaling and increased details from more draw calls. Performance won't increase as much as detail will be able to increase. Throughput vs latency. May not make frames much faster, but you can make much nicer looking frames.

    11. Re:Star Swarm style marketing continues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      3dfx's Glide is an API that competed with OpenGL; not seeing how it helped it.
      John Carmack's adoption of OpenGL in the mid 1990s definitely was a boost, but by 1999 DirectX 7 was out, and very quickly the majority of the game industry made DX the primary API of dev with OpenGl being tacked on. (Didn't hurt that most developers were using Microsoft's Visual Studio C++ compiler for making their games.)

    12. Re:Star Swarm style marketing continues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      3dfx's Glide was much more popular and due to being a subset also popularized OpenGL. Game developers wanted their stuff to run well on 3dfx hardware first and foremost, which meant an OpenGL renderer was much easier to implement.

  19. Re:I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOO by Fragnet · · Score: 1

    You can switch most if not all of Windows 10 "chatter" off. But if you're determined on this point just wait until 4th quarter or early next year for Vulkan, which will run on 7 (and XP) and obviously Linux. Valve have done a lot of work on this.

  20. Re:I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You're an idiot reading material written by other idiots.

  21. Re:I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOO by sexconker · · Score: 0

    Many settings you can't control, a couple of settings require the Enterprise version of Windows 10 to be effective, and Windows doesn't actually respect all of those settings anyway. This has all been discussed recently, even on Slashdot. Windows 10 is a no-go for me because of it.

  22. The word you're looking for is "on"... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "using DX11 to the GTX 980."

    WTF? Americans...

    "using DX11 ON the GTX 980". How difficult is that? How can you not understand what the words "to" and "on" mean?

    1. Re:The word you're looking for is "on"... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Times of changed...

  23. Re:I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No you can't. Didn't you see the recent proof that none of the "privacy settings" do jack shit and it still sends everything to Microsoft?

  24. Re:I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOO by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

    You shouldn't be in a hurry but upgrade to Windows 8.1 will be worth it eventually, with EOL in 2023 rather that 2020 and an update from WDDM 1.1 to WDDM 1.3.

  25. Weird. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Back in the DX7-9 days, OpenGL was "crap" because it has so many vendor extensions that an OGL game had to be written for a specific graphics card.

    Now that DX is doing it, this is a GOOD thing.

    How did that happen?

    1. Re:Weird. by Fragnet · · Score: 1

      There are two factors to consider when it comes to vendor specific extensions or minimum sets of functionality. The first is that you want to design for the minimum if your goal is to reach the broadest possible audience. If you want to do something "cool" with extended functionality for specific classes of hardware or even a specific instance, then I don't see why a good API would prevent that. The second point is that being visible outside of a D3D, Vulkan or OpenGL API update cycle allows hardware innovation to proceed outside of it too.

      You can imagine a situation where hardware vendors invent feature X and then push for feature X to be part of the API. When the API is released nobody uses feature X. All it did was contribute to API bloat. If you allow the extension to be used outside of the API cycle, at least someone is going to try it out and see if it's of any value. Then you're in a better position to know whether it belongs in the next minimum set of functionality or not.

    2. Re:Weird. by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 1

      No, it's not weird. You just seem to be confused by the description of "lower level hardware access".

      These aren't vendor-specific extensions. This is simply a redesigned API that eliminates a lot of the software bottlenecks, allowing developers to get a bit closer to the hardware in a GPU-independent manner. You're still programming to a common API. It's just that the API better reflects what a 2015-era GPU can do, rather than impose a lot of software overhead that isn't really needed.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  26. For my new PC by Roodvlees · · Score: 1

    I'm hoping it'll
    - Make good use of DX12
    - Have a stable and performing Windows 10
    - Have the new Intel processor
    - Be super quiet

    --
    Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
  27. Re:I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOO by Fragnet · · Score: 1

    No. You didn't link this proof either.

  28. NOT ALL AC's, hairyfeet... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: "Yours truly" is FAR from that general statement, but you're right about these pricks attacking you here now though...

    APK

    P.S.=> You did rightfully cite WHY I'm personally NOT GOING FOR Windows 10, in a nutshell - the "advertising & tracking trend" MS is on has turned me away (& yes - I was offered the FREE COPY of Windows 10 too... I don't want it for those reasons most of all)... apk

  29. Re:I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOO by JustNiz · · Score: 1

    I REALLY don't like the UI of Windows 8.1. I think its completely unworkable.
    I use Linux for anything other than gaming, so I also don't care about Win7 EOL since it doesn't seem to stop you actually using the OS, just no more annoying alerts about ambiguous security patches that ususally don't actually anything relevant/significant anyway.

    Would there be any noticeable benefit of WDDM1.3 over WDDM 1.1 if when just using Windows for gaming?

  30. Re:I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOO by JustNiz · · Score: 1

    >> DX12 is all hype.

    Not according to this:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    The big issue seems to be whether the benchmark is synthetic/representative or not, but since it is really just an early version of a real game that will be released next year I tend towards believing it is legit.

  31. Re:I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOO by JustNiz · · Score: 1

    I'm VERY interested in Vulkan but my fear is that all the AAA developers other than Valve will just keep assuming DirectX-only even for new games development, mostly through an incorrect belief that they're not loosing sales by failing to support Linux.

    I find it very frustrating that Bethesda especially keep plodding along on their own tired old windows-only engine instead of switching to, say UT4. Apart from the Linux-support-for-free that would bring, judging from what they showed at IGN the upcoming Fallout 4 would have looked graphically a whole lot better, instead of like a DLC pack for Fallout 3 (from 2008).

  32. Re:I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOO by Fragnet · · Score: 1

    I'm guessing Bethesda have a lot of money invested in their engine and the bean counters just don't see the benefit of going cross-platform. This will be easier (cheaper) with Vulkan, assuming they're going to use a next-gen API with their next release. And I've got a sneaking suspicion that when developers look at the new API landscape, Vulkan will be a no-brainer. It won't be superior to D3D 12, it'll just be installed on more machines.

  33. Re:I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOO by JustNiz · · Score: 1

    what about putting
    127.0.0.1 microsoft.com
    in your hosts file? Would that work?

  34. Re:I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Whoever told you the hosts file is appropriate for _anything_ is a complete fuckup.

    With that entry you're blocking a _single_ host called microsoft.com, not www.microsoft.com, not spycentral.microsoft.com, just _one_ host. You need an entry for _every possible_ host under microsoft.com and you still can't catch them all algorithmically without having a terabyte hosts file.

    Blackholing a complete domain in a DNS resolver is a single config line and catches _everything_. Also, you're not redirecting anything to semantically dubious addresses like 127.0.0.1 or 0.0.0.0 with DNS blocking, you give a simple answer "host doesn't exist". That's not possible with the hosts file at all.

    This hosts bullshit needs to die along with every idiot propagating it.

  35. Re:I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    According to the article, Nvidia is faster under DX11 than DX12 at high detail. Maybe you should read it.

  36. Re:I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It won't because Microsoft has a built-in bypass for hosts in Windows 10 for anything that they want.

  37. Re:I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Normally I wouldn't bother because educating you isn't my job, but I'll link you this one time because you're a n00b to Slashdot and the internet, apparently.

    http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/08/14/1756220/windows-10-still-phones-home-with-data-in-spite-of-privacy-settings

    http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-when-told-not-to-windows-10-just-cant-stop-talking-to-microsoft

  38. Re:I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So use Classic Shell. You'll forget that you're using Windows 8 in five minutes.

  39. Re:I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOO by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

    Except for the ugly window borders and other pet things.
    I don't even like Windows 7 that much either, it's mostly fine but I hate the file manager.

  40. Re:I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Windows 8 borders look miles better than that gaudy, video gamey shit in Windows 7. Windows 8 also properly supports multiple displays.

    You also must have missed the fact that anyone can easily change the visual style of any version of Windows.

  41. Re:I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOO by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

    Windows 7 has the Home Basic version, install that and you only get the 2D desktop.

    Changing visual style? with Windows 8 they removed classic look, and with Windows 7 they removed the color schemes in clasic look.. I could use a very old third party tool but it didn't include the old styles only additional ugly ones.
    With Windows 8 you can get such train wreck of a theme http://kizo2703.deviantart.com...

    So with Windows the easy way I found is to install 7 Home Basic and leave it alone ("Aero Basic"). I don't put it on my PC though.

  42. Re:I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOO by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

    Some more efficient.. things.. the most easily understandable is better multitasking on the GPU.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
    And some.. things.. a wild guess is that it allows great performance in alt-tabbing out and in of a game. We all cordially hate Windows 8, but it is amazingly fast and smooth at showing you a Metro thing or the Charmed bar, whether you wanted it or not.

  43. Re:I'm not even torn any more. Windows 10 is a NOO by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There are lots of visual themes available for Windows 8 that look great and if you still don't like any of them, you can make your own.

    With Windows 7, you have to actually go and shut off all of the superfluous UI crap. With Windows 8 the default UI is minimalist and clean.