With DirectX 9 and 11, there’s a global state (or context). Like every application, graphics APIs like DirectX also feature a primary thread that keeps track of the internal API state (resources, their allocation, and availability). How DirectX 12 Improves Performance by Optimizing Hardware UtilizationĪgain, there are a few main API advances that facilitate this gain: Per-Call API Context

Luckily, third-party engines like Unreal, CryEngine, and Unity do this for them and they only have to focus on designing. This is a double-edged sword as there are multiple GPU architectures out in the wild and for indie devs, it’s impossible to optimize their game for all of them. They have closer to metal access, meaning that most of the rendering responsibilities and resource allocation are handled by the game engines with some help from the graphics drivers. Earlier this was more abstract and was mostly taken care of by the drivers and the API (although some engines like Frostbyte and Unreal provided low-level tools as well). Closer to Metal SupportĪnother major advantage of DirectX 12 is that developers have more control over how their game utilizes the hardware. This makes poor driver support a less pressing concern. DirectX 12 adds many technologies to improve utilization such as asynchronous compute which allows multiple stages of the pipeline to be executed simultaneously ( read: Compute and Graphics). Traditionally, NVIDIA has had much better driver support while AMD hardware has always suffered from the lack thereof. Many of you might have noticed that in the beginning, AMD GPUs favored DirectX 12 titles more than rival NVIDIA parts. The load is more evenly distributed across all cores, making multi-core CPUs more relevant for gamers. Traditionally with DirectX 9 and 11 based games, most games only used 2-4 cores for the various mechanics: Physics, AI, draw-calls, etc. One of the core advantages of low-level APIs like DirectX 12 and Vulkan is improved CPU utilization. There are three main advantages of the DirectX 12 API for PC gamers: Better Scaling with Multi-Core CPUs CPU overhead with DX11 and 12 (lower is better) DirectX 11 vs DirectX 12: What Does it Mean for PC Gamers

With DX12 Ultimate, MS is basically integrating the two platforms. It will be used on both Windows as well as the next-gen Xbox Series X. DirectX 12 Ultimate is the first graphics API that breaks that rule.

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