DirectX 12

Programmers access to hardware devices in a post-DOS environment and has gone on to serve as one of the most important elements of a PC game. In its simplest form, DirectX acts as a go-between for hardware and the operating system.

The API’s drive toward efficiency is promising to better utilize CPU and GPU hardware, resulting in improved performance and lower power consumption, which in turn suggests greater battery life on mobile devices such as LAPTOPS and smartphones.

‘Multiadapter’ a DX12 feature that allows developers to harness the power of two or more disparate GPUs to maximize performance.

The new DirectX’s most-talked-about innovation is the introduction of low-level programming APIs in Direct3D, the graphics interface and most commonly used component of DirectX.

Using key additions such as draw-call bundles and descriptor tables, Direct3D 12 is designed as a closer match for today’s hardware components, resulting in reduced driver overhead and far greater efficiency.

Previously Direct3D 11 is the way in which commands are sent from the CPU to the GPU. These have been issued one by one and processed sequentially.

DirectX 12 is able to bundle commands together as a command list, allowing for multiple commands to be processed in one go. Taking this a step further, ‘bundles’ have also been introduced as a means of repurposing command lists for repeated use.

DirectX 12, the new API is already supported by many existing GPUs from AMD, Intel and Nvidia.

The majority of modern-day consumer CPUs are equipped with an integrated graphics processor, and yet when a discrete GPU is added to the equation, the IGP is typically made redundant. That’s a terrible waste of processing power, and DX12 plans to prevent the Intel IGP’s exclusion by giving developers the ability to split rendering workloads across multiple GPUs.

The potential of DX12’s Multi adapter technology by demonstrating an Intel IGP and Nvidia GPU working in tandem to increase performance while rendering. Creating separable workloads will of course be dependent on developer implementation, however the concept holds real promise with workloads such as post processing, and the results are clear to see: Tapping into the otherwise-redundant IGP resulted in an FPS increase of around 10 per cent.