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  • mooninite - Thursday, March 19, 2020 - link

    *yawn* Microsoft lost. They should have built the new XBox on Vulkan. Maybe the next XBox will switch.
  • lilkwarrior - Thursday, March 19, 2020 - link

    How did Microsoft lost? This is the *FIRST* console launch either have their core biggest features viable for the top consoles to actually make either actually relevant for most games & PC hardware to benefit from them now that console ports can actually be made to leverage either.

    Don't be a fanboy of APIs, that's perhaps one of the lamest things a developer or a professional should do.
  • lilkwarrior - Thursday, March 19, 2020 - link

    Now that Windows 7 is also dead, PC games alongside the console ports they are based off of will leverage DX12 & Vulkan to a meaningful, baseline level of their core features FINALLY.
  • StevoLincolnite - Thursday, March 19, 2020 - link

    Windows 7 has Direct X 12 and Vulkan.
  • mode_13h - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    Wasn't DX12 supported for just a handful of games, and only in Win7's dying days?
  • Kangal - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    Windows 7 was the era of DirectX 11. By the time Vulkan came, majority switched over. And the DirectX 12 that was back-ported isn't full, and was only made to help support a few Applications.

    Microsoft had a rough start with DirectX 12, especially when it came to the Xbox One and Windows10 Pro. Mantle/Vulkan was the right fix, at the right place and right time. However, DirectX 12 has had years to incubate, and its much more mature now. And finally they've added features for future titles... this feels like the "proper" API people expected since v12 debuted.

    In fact, I think the Xbox Series X actually has a better SDK and the advantage over the PS5 this time around. On top of their hardware advantage of +20%, I think overall the XSX is about 30% faster. However we won't actually notice this in games. Here's why! Developers are going to target the PS5 and build their games to have HDR and RayTracing, and they're going run at a locked 60fps, with 4K resolution. The Xbox? It will do the same, but it will have more objects, more effects, and greater draw distances. That will be the de facto for games. For a few/niche games, they will have an unlocked mode to try and push for 8K Resolution, or to reach 120fps. In those cases, the Xbox is going to consistently have a lead.

    ...but none of that matters if Sony releases some awesome exclusives, and Xbox has a barren library
  • PaulHoule - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link

    It's funny.

    I am into the kind of games that come out on the Playstation (JRPGs and other culturally Japanese games.) I would up getting an Xbox One S however because Plex works (almost) perfectly on the Xbox and the PS4 version had problems.

    Most of the games I like now come out on Steam, and I have a laptop with a good graphics card, so I am happy.

    Sometimes I think about picking up a PS4 Pro but my game backlog is so long that it's not a priority.
  • lilkwarrior - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    Windows 7 has a subset of both; DX12 has features incompatible w/ Windows 7; Vulkan has mGPU capabilities impossible on Windows 7 w/o WDDM 2.0 which is Windows 10 only.
  • lilkwarrior - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    Another thing to point out: Windows 7 doesn't have WDDM 2.0 that both DX12 & Vulkan needs for features and modern hardware utilization that's order of magnitudes faster.
  • eddman - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    No, it doesn't support DirectX 12 natively. It is done on a game-by-game basis by the developers through D3D12On7, which is sort of like a wrapper. It requires extra work. It also doesn't support all the D3D12 features that is available on windows 10.

    A D3D12on7 implementation written for windows 7 is not directly compatible with windows 10, meaning the devs have to code two separate implementations, one for 7 and one for 10.

    The only reason they are bothering with this is to cover as many customers as possible, hence higher sales. Once windows 7 users' number falls below a certain threshold, I doubt you'd see any more DX12 games on 7.
  • Spunjji - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link

    I'm looking forwards to this, too.
  • Ozwel - Thursday, March 19, 2020 - link

    +1, don't feed teenage trolls though.
  • jeremyshaw - Thursday, March 19, 2020 - link

    That doesn't work with Anandtech's dated comments system. FIRST always wins.
  • mode_13h - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    The name mooninite suggests someone at least in their 20's.
  • BenHur - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    @mode_13h: indeed. I'm close to 100 and my name proves it.
  • Spunjji - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link

    proper lol for that
  • mode_13h - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    Although I don't follow @mooninite's case, either for declaring their loss or why they should now embrace Vulkan, it's not fanboyism to prefer open APIs.

    If more people cared about open APIs, then maybe Apple wouldn't have gotten away with relegating Vulkan support to the less-efficient MoltenVK thunk. The benefit would be better portability of software and apps, which would ultimately benefit consumers. So, it's not a moot point.
  • lilkwarrior - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    @mooninite didn't say they preferred Vulkan for being open; also sometimes open APIs need a kick in their rear end or new thinking explored by someone else first prior to being open (pun intended) to a more standard way of doing the same thing eventually.

    That's been the case for things like G-Sync over the years; DX12 has done that for things like ray-tracing & so on.
  • Ozwel - Thursday, March 19, 2020 - link

    *yawn* still war console and war api on the internet in 2020 (Glide for the win btw)
  • PeachNCream - Thursday, March 19, 2020 - link

    I don't know why anyone would really care what API is used as long as the content looks nice and is efficient. Certainly developers should be concerned but people that consume that content are better off just relaxing and enjoying the fun.
  • mode_13h - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    Yeah I mean, if the game plays well, why should consumers care about the details of their CPU, GPU, or SSD? Right logic for the wrong site, Peach.

    Of course we care about APIs, here. APIs affect game portability and have implications for developers and hardware vendors that ultimately filter through to consumers.
  • PeachNCream - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    That would be why I said, "Certainly developers should be concerned..." As for the rest of us, let's all take a deep breath and try to stay calm about things that don't really matter much in the end.
  • mode_13h - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    You could say the same thing about the Deep Dive articles on this site. Almost none of us really needs to know what goes on inside of GPUs and CPUs, in such detail. Perhaps whether a PC has an AMD or Intel CPU matters about as much as whether a game uses DX12 or Vulkan. Should we all just "take a deep breath and try to stay calm about things that don't really matter much in the end" in those areas, too?
  • eddman - Saturday, March 21, 2020 - link

    For a consumer there is no difference between using D3D12 or vulkan, if the devs code their games properly.

    For indie devs that want to target as many platforms as possible, yes, vulkan probably makes more sense, but for a major big-budget game targeting only windows, xbox and PS, it actually is more beneficial to use DX12.

    Playstation 4 doesn't support vulkan (it only supports sony's own GNM and GNMX), neither does xbox. Developers would have to code for three paths if they chose vulkan.
  • Chaser - Thursday, March 19, 2020 - link

    "Clueless", the sequel.
  • Guspaz - Thursday, March 19, 2020 - link

    The vast majority of games still use DX12, so if losing is a majority market share, losing sounds a lot like winning.
  • damianrobertjones - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    How has Microsoft lost? Vulkan was basically FORCED onto my computer. I didn't ask for or want the thing.
  • ksec - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    A single sentence that sums up your knowledge on the subject.
  • Spunjji - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link

    It's nice when people can very succinctly communicate that they're not worthy of further interactions!
  • WaltC - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link

    The upcoming Xbox RDNA2 isn't "built on" an OS API...;) Rather, it's the reverse, the developers of the hardware, nV and AMD, decide on the features that they would like to support in their GPUs, and where those features coincide they get included in the API's eventually, and D3d12 & Vulkan are APIs written to support those features. GPU manufacturers write the drivers that interface with the Win10 APIs and their respective GPUs. Every one of the D3d12_2 API features that are supported in hardware (instead of the CPU) can be supported just as well by Vulkan. The case is just like it is with PC GPUs today--same hardware supports both APIs under Win10. What Microsoft should elect to do with the xBox console, however, is a different matter.
  • Unashamed_unoriginal_username_x86 - Thursday, March 19, 2020 - link

    Holding back a version or two
    (as some of us are want to do)
    means no DX12U for you.

    Very nice jingle/poem
  • wr3zzz - Thursday, March 19, 2020 - link

    Is 12 the end of the line numbering for DirectX like 10 is for Windows? In the past MS would have called what's used for Xbox SeX DirectX 13 and that it would be "exclusive" only in Windows 11.
  • GreenReaper - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link

    It's unlucky so they will add 12+2 -> 14.
  • ModEl4 - Thursday, March 19, 2020 - link

    Ryan, are you sure that Nvidia 16 series are compatible with DX12 Ultimate like you mention? How is this possible without the dedicated hardware raytracing features that RTX 20 series have?
  • Valantar - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    Yeah, Nvidia cards being compatible with 12_2 only applies to RTX cards - obviously, as RT is one of the key features here. I guess they could get by on a technicality and say they support RT on shaders, but if so that applies to Pascal as well... The only meaningful way of interpreting this is that it only applies to 20-series GPUs, with 16-series having partial support at best.
  • Yojimbo - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    The NVIDIA 16 series can do DXR, it's just not fully hardware accelerated. There is some hardware acceleration of DXR on Volta, even. So yes, the 16 series is compatible with DX12 Ultimate, but practically speaking 16 series cards are not going to be able to take advantage of ray tracing much.
  • ModEl4 - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    I am not sure that 1660 series support DXR 1.1 since in order to get the DXR certification in the first place, the CPU has to participate in many more stages since they don't have the series 20 dedicated raytracing hardware. Also if you go to Nvidia's website in the DX12 Ultimate page it has all the supported GPUs and they are only from RTX series...
  • Yojimbo - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    I haven't seen anything that says DXR 1.1 is only for hardware accelerated DXR. I wouldn't rely on NVIDIA's marketing decisions to decide whether something is compatible or not.

    Here is Microsoft's position on their developer's blog post: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/dxr-1-1/
    "Support

    None of these features specifically require new hardware. Existing DXR Tier 1.0 capable devices can support Tier 1.1 if the GPU vendor implements driver support."
  • mode_13h - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    > DirectX 12 Ultimate’s feature set ends up looking a whole heck of a lot like their Turing architecture’s graphics feature set.

    How do you know DXR 1.1 wasn't influenced by AMD or Intel?
  • Valantar - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    Nothing here says it wasn't, just that it ultimately aligns with what Nvidia implemented in Turing. This has likely been in the works for years after all.
  • mode_13h - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    If they want simple messaging for the end-consumer, why didn't they just call it DX13? Superstition?
  • mode_13h - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    Am I the only one who thinks VRS is kind of ironic?

    Seen as an answer to 4k gaming, it's kind of like GPU vendors saying: "no, we don't think you really need quite *that* much resolution". Rather than getting every pixel you paid for, they're being cheap and trying to cheat you out of some detail, where they think they can get away with it.

    Yeah, I know graphics is all just a bunch of hacks, but I do think it's interesting to see GPU vendors ratcheting down quality, while consumers continue to move in the opposite direction.
  • nevcairiel - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    Quality vs. Performance are always opposing goals. VRS just allows a much more fine-grained control, gaining performane with much less quality being given up.
  • edzieba - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link

    " but I do think it's interesting to see GPU vendors ratcheting down quality, while consumers continue to move in the opposite direction."

    On the contrary: everyone developing game engines is trying to increase render quality, but the problem is consumers who are stuck in the "bigger number means more better" mindset that digital cameras were stuck in (Moar Megapixels does not mean better quality).
  • Spunjji - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link

    Yup. Every demonstration I've seen of the technology working in practice has a net zero effect on visual quality in full-res screenshots, which means you're definitely seeing nothing in motion. That allows the resources to be used to turn up detail elsewhere and/or simply bump frame-rates (a highly relevant measure of visual quality in practice).
  • ModEl4 - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link

    I only expressed the question if 1660 series will get the DX12 Ultimate certification like Ryan said or if he was wrong in this report and it seems the he was wrong since according to Nvidia's website only RTX will get the support.on the other subject that is your focus regarding DXR, it seems to me after reading the link that 1660 series might not be compatible with 1.1 version for the reason of the level of the CPU participation that is needed but anyway this is a topic that is meaningles for me, i am not interested at all to deep dive into...
  • Yojimbo - Saturday, March 21, 2020 - link

    I wouldn't rely on NVIDIA's marketing decisions to decide whether something is compatible or not.

    Here is Microsoft's position on their developer's blog post: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/dxr-1-1/
    "Support

    None of these features specifically require new hardware. Existing DXR Tier 1.0 capable devices can support Tier 1.1 if the GPU vendor implements driver support."
  • Yojimbo - Saturday, March 21, 2020 - link

    Since you posted it elsewhere I didn't know if you saw the original reply.

    But if this was in reply to our thread I am confused. We were discussing compatibility. You asked if the series was compatible, not if it would get certification. How could Ryan or anyone else know if it will get certification, anyway? If it's compatible and NVIDIA chooses to pursue certification, insofar as there is a certification, it will get certification. The only question regarding DX12 Ultimate compatibility seems to be DXR 1.1 compatibility so of course I am focusing on that. All Turing cards seem clearly to support the other 3 features of the designation. I didn't bring up ray tracing. You yourself (rightly) brought up ray tracing as the issue in your original post.

    OK it's meaningless to you, so why ask and why reply again? Are you being passive-aggressive or what?
  • eastcoast_pete - Saturday, March 21, 2020 - link

    This as a out-of-left-field thought, but is it (in theory) possible to use the current Xbox X or (better) the upcoming Xbox as an external dGPU? I am asking as the specs suggest it'll have very robust graphics capability, and the cost of a TB3- attached Xbox is likely lower than an external dGPU of anywhere near that capacity. MS might also like that idea; keep customers in its eco system
  • Spunjji - Monday, March 23, 2020 - link

    In theory? Probably not.

    In practice? Absolutely not.

    Even if you could find a way to treat, say, the PCIe storage port as a Thunderbolt data path (unlikely to be possible) and somehow present the internal hardware to an external device (massive security risk for MS, so more than likely deliberately made impossible) you'd still need functioning drivers and some way to get your PC to treat what is effectively an entire second PC as a simple GPU.

    MS would no doubt wonder why you weren't just using the entire high-end custom PC you effectively just bought from them.
  • peevee - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link

    "Ultimately, this collaboration and timing means that there is already current-generation hardware out there that meets the requirements for 12_2 with NVIDIA’s GeForce 16 and 20 series (Turing) products."

    16 series does not support ray tracing, so it could not be at 12_2, right?
  • JACK4888 - Sunday, April 26, 2020 - link

    Can Direct 12 allow me to do 2d-3d rendering in addition to gaming with the same hardware? Or must I still have a gaming video card for gaming or a different card for rendering?

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