Microsoft: DirectX 12 to deliver 20 percent overall performance boost

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 03/08/2015 08:58 AM | source: | 38 comment(s)

Sounds like a nice cheap graphics card upgrade to me ! Microsoft developers stated the upcoming DirectX 12 API could deliver an up-to 20 percent higher frame rate in games and a decrease in CPU utilization.As a PC gamers we think you guys will upgrade Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system real fast :)

During an Intel press conference at GDC Wednesday night, Bryan Langley, a principal program manager for graphics with Microsoft, put it into context.

"This is like getting free hardware," Langley said. "So if you're a gamer, and you upgrade to Windows 10, and you have that Iris Pro, it's like getting that extra kick. It may make your game go from not quite playable, to playable, from mediocre to awesome, from awesome to just out of this world."

That's a powerful argument for any PC gamer to upgrade to Windows 10. So far, Microsoft has given no indication whether or not DirectX 12 will also be made available for Windows 7, but it's unlikely. And with Microsoft providing Windows 10 as a free upgrade to Windows 7 and Windows 8 for a year after its release, it's hard to argue against upgrading.

McMullen said that Microsoft believes that Windows 10's DirectX 12 will run on about 50 percent of all gaming PCs today, and that it will "have two-thirds hardware coverage" by this Christmas.

McMullen used the same Intel "Asteroids" benchmark in his presentation Wednesday, but demonstrated that the frame rate increased a more modest 20 percent. But the CPU consumption also fell from 25 percent to 9 percent as DirectX 12 asked the GPU to shoulder more of the workload. The demonstration ran on an Intel Core i7 4770R (with Iris Pro graphics 5200 installed), but McMullen didn't indicate whether Nvidia cards, for example, would see a greater improvement than hardware for AMD.

DX11 ran the demo with 29FPS

Switching to DX12 - the framerate more then doubles @ 75FPS. CPU usage was increased.

Via bindless mode, DX12 can pre-bake all the textures used by the asteroids, thus offering a slight performance boost (79FPS). In case you’re not aware of, DX12’s “bindless resources” is a major efficiency improvement in how the GPU is running, making sure it’s not stalling waiting for the CPU to tell it about some of the changes that are needed.

Via Execute Indirect, Intel’s Asteroids demo ran with almost 90FPS. What’s really great here, however, is that the CPU usage was reduced significantly, meaning that more CPU intense scenarios will be possible via this rendering method.

Internal Intel benchmarks obviously are not real world representation of performance improvements to all PC configurations. But yeah, this is looking really good. The overall message was a simple one, however: if you're a gamer, you'll want to upgrade to Windows 10 and DirectX 12.

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LesserHellspawn
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#5025469 Posted on: 03/08/2015 09:03 AM

Games still have to support it, right ? I don't hold high hopes that old titles, MMOs particularly, will get an update.

FookDat
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Posts: 409
Joined: 2005-11-27

#5025470 Posted on: 03/08/2015 09:05 AM

Romulus_ut3
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Joined: 2013-09-18

#5025480 Posted on: 03/08/2015 09:37 AM

Will the existing DX11 titles be made to support the DX12 path through an update? Will the developers put the extra effort? Otherwise, the performance gains aren't gonna bring us anything to the table as a lot of the games people play are DX11.

bombardier
Senior Member

Posts: 227
Joined: 2004-07-18

#5025483 Posted on: 03/08/2015 10:10 AM

Maybe we will have a new generation of drivers from Nvidia.

thatguy91
Senior Member

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Joined: 2010-08-27

#5025484 Posted on: 03/08/2015 10:11 AM

I can vouch a for a nice improvement with windows 10 build 9926 so far.

My max overclock on my R9 280x is 1216/1866.

Windows 7 x64
1210/1800
Score: 8698
Graphics: 10003
Physics: 11040
Combined: 3788

*********************

Windows 10 Pro x64 Build 9926
AMD 14.11.2 Beta
PhysX Drivers 9.14.0702
MSI Afterburner 4.1.0
GPUZ 0.8.1

MSI R9-280X
1216 @1300mV
1866 @1700mV
+20

3DMARK
Fire Strike
Score: 8700
GPU:10131
Physx:10006
Combined:3859

GPU Idle: 39c
GPU Load: 62c

VRM Idle: 25c
VRM Load: 41c

Warframe - Stable
Battlefield 4 - Stable

Temps reduced almost 10 degrees on my GPU, and score went up.

That's got nothing to do with DirectX 12, that's just other improvements in Windows. Keep in mind though, the graphics score really only went up around 1 percent, so that is within error.

Keep in mind you are also running not the latest AMD driver, nor the latest Physx. The drop in the Physx score actually drags down the combined score.

When a proper Windows 10 driver is released, which will be much closer to the release date of Windows 10, the scores should be significantly better. There is little point them releasing a proper Windows 10 driver now, since the OS is still changing it would be wasted effort.

The drop in temperature is interesting though. It could be as simple as the ambient room temperature was lower, or the fans running at a higher speed in Windows 10.

Bogeyx
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Posts: 69
Joined: 2013-12-03

#5025488 Posted on: 03/08/2015 10:58 AM

What is that last mode? "Execute Indirect"
8 more Fps and 1/3 the cpu usage? Enabled godmode?
Would be nice to know how much the load on the gpu increased.

Cryio
Senior Member

Posts: 103
Joined: 2011-09-01

#5025491 Posted on: 03/08/2015 11:16 AM

What is that last mode? "Execute Indirect"
8 more Fps and 1/3 the cpu usage? Enabled godmode?

Haha, so true.

Anyway, MMOs are going to have DX12 (an inneficient one anyway) patched in eventually and we're going to see performance improvements there, especially since CPU wise MMO performance is crap.

But DX12 is made for new games. Too bad games like Witcher 3, Arkham Knight and MGSV won't use DX12

. Here's hoping that Assassin's Creed Victory and Rise of the Tomb Raider do though.

DmitryKo
Senior Member

Posts: 267
Joined: 2011-08-08

#5025494 Posted on: 03/08/2015 11:28 AM

What is that last mode? "Execute Indirect"
8 more Fps and 1/3 the cpu usage? Enabled godmode?

ExecuteIndirect feeds the GPU with a pre-compiled command list - so once the CPU submits the draw call, it's executed by the GPU without any intervention from the CPU and doesn't take any CPU resources.

There is also a limited form of branching using predicates, so the GPU can control the execution of its own draw calls using shader code.

Would be nice to know how much the load on the gpu increased.

Math problems for engineering dummies, 1023rd edition.
Problem 12.0.
Framerate came up from 28 fps to 90 fps. How much the load on the GPU increased?

Kaladin
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Posts: 20
Joined: 2013-11-19

#5025497 Posted on: 03/08/2015 11:42 AM

Haha, so true.

Anyway, MMOs are going to have DX12 (an inneficient one anyway) patched in eventually and we're going to see performance improvements there, especially since CPU wise MMO performance is crap.

But DX12 is made for new games. Too bad games like Witcher 3, Arkham Knight and MGSV won't use DX12

. Here's hoping that Assassin's Creed Victory and Rise of the Tomb Raider do though.

Unlikely for Rise of the Tomb Raider, as it also ships on Xbox 360.
Anyway I agree, DX12 should be especially important in RTS and MMO games. I can't wait to finally have large scale battles without hitches!

Primey0
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#5025525 Posted on: 03/08/2015 01:28 PM

INSTG8R
Senior Member

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Joined: 2005-03-18

#5025565 Posted on: 03/08/2015 03:18 PM

When there are actual DX12 games that exist and furthermore I want to play THEN I will consider Win10. Heck DX11 has been out for 5 years now and it's taken the last 2 to finally see DX11 exclusive titles.

Dazz
Senior Member

Posts: 843
Joined: 2001-08-12

#5025571 Posted on: 03/08/2015 03:32 PM

I think you will still see a performance improvement just not as much as it's down to the way windows and DX communicates with the graphics card rather then just the features. There are a few games already show caseed in using DX12 already like UE4 engine and the ashes game, so they are already in development.

masterboy
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Posts: 70
Joined: 2013-12-04

#5025590 Posted on: 03/08/2015 04:13 PM

I would like free upgrade for windows7 pirated version too

SirJamesDTech
Junior Member

Posts: 17
Joined: 2014-10-30

#5025591 Posted on: 03/08/2015 04:23 PM

GAmes still have to support it, right ? I don't hold high hopes that old titles, MMOs particularly, will get an update.

Exactly my thoughts.
If this is the "game changer" for Microsoft, it'll take brave developers to blow away the PS4 when parity gives them so much more money. Not to mention the gulf between PC and consoles would widen.
That said, I can't wait to see what CDPR does with Cyberpunk 2077.

waltc3
Senior Member

Posts: 1013
Joined: 2014-07-22

#5025604 Posted on: 03/08/2015 04:58 PM

GAmes still have to support it, right ? I don't hold high hopes that old titles, MMOs particularly, will get an update.

Most definitely. But with the massive surge to Win10 that will happen later this year as Microsoft gives it away to all current Win7/win8 owners, D3d12 will probably hit the highest customer-adoption rate among D3d APIs in history...

Developers, however, will be lagging behind as it will take them time to get up to speed, and there will be some additional time as well for d3d12-compliant hardware to saturate the market. But given how Microsoft is doing it this should be the shortest transition in D3d's history, imo.

Older games won't benefit as such, but it is entirely possible that they will benefit indirectly in some ways to an at least measurable extent (if not perceivable.)

I would think that regards MMO's, it's the online structure of the beast that is the performance bottleneck--different players having different access speeds, etc.

Almost forgot: key will be nVidia's and AMD's D3d12 drivers...which will be critical. The ones used now in the Win10TP do not support any of the the new D3d12 features, yet...for obvious reasons--namely, D3d12 itself is far from fully baked.

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