Microsoft confirms DirectX 11.2 is a Windows 8.1, Xbox One exclusive
DirectX 11.2 will be exclusive to Windows 8.1 and the Xbox One, Microsoft has confirmed, and bring with it a new feature dubbed 'tiled resources.'
First introduced for Windows 95 as the Windows Games SDK, DirectX was not initially successful. The software's main use, to allow games developers device-independent access to game-related hardware, was hampered by the fact it would only run in Windows. At the time, most popular games were available exclusively for DOS due to the performance hit that resulted from running a game alongside Microsoft's graphical operating system.
The inclusion of DirectX as a default component of Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows NT 4.0 in 1996 helped increase its exposure, and heavy promotion by Microsoft - alongside its programme to encourage developers to make enhanced versions of their existing DOS games that would run exclusively under Windows - helped, but it wasn't until Direct3D was introduced as part of the DirectX bundle that consumer interest grew.
Microsoft had timed the launch of Direct3D well. Gamers were increasingly looking at using 3D accelerators to boost the graphical fidelity of their games, rather than relying on software-based renderers as had been common in the past. Direct3D allowed developers to offer hardware-accelerated 3D rendering regardless of the client hardware, so long as the graphics card manufacturer provided Direct3D support in its drivers. Many did exactly that, and DirectX was well on its way to being the de facto standard for Windows gaming.
At the BUILD conference running this week, Microsoft has confirmed that it is continuing to work on DirectX with plans to launch DirectX 11.2 in the near future - and promises of new technology to boot. During a keynote session at the conference, Microsoft's Antoine Leblond showed off a new feature to attendees that promises to increase the amount of detail that can be shown on-screen: tiled resources.
Designed to allow a game to use both system RAM and graphics RAM to store textures, Leblond claimed that tiled resources will enable DirectX 11.2 games to vastly improve the resolution of textures displayed in-game. By way of proof, Leblond showed off a demonstration that used a claimed 9GB of texture data - the majority of which was held in system RAM, rather than graphics RAM.
It's a clever trick, and one that could help boost the quality of future PC games - but it's one that will require those who have yet to take the plunge to upgrade their operating systems. Leblond confirmed that Direct3D 11.2 will be the first version of the API to support tiled resources, and that it will be exclusive to Windows 8.1 on the PC as well as featuring in Microsoft's next-generation Xbox One console.
That Microsoft is using an updated version of DirectX as a carrot to encourage those still on Windows 7 or earlier to upgrade should come as no surprise: its predecessor, DirectX 11.1, is a Windows 8 exclusive. The only real surprise is that DirectX 11.2 won't be coming to Windows 8, either, with Microsoft reserving the update for its bleeding-edge Windows 8.1 release due in the autumn.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyAs for DX11.2....lol, the only reason this blackmail came about in the first place was the promise of Halo 2 being a Vista DX10 only game back in 2007, and look how well that worked.
And not a single **** was given.
Will there be hardware compliance above and beyond what is required already?
Asking the same question differently: Do I have to buy another GFX card?
That's only speculation on my part, though - Microsoft has yet to release any technical details about the system, and it's perfectly possible that resource tiling support will be dependent on special DirectX 11.2 graphics card drivers - in which case AMD and Nvidia may end up using the release to flog new graphics cards just as Microsoft is using it to flog Windows 8.1
Many of their customers, especially desktop and workstation users, just have had no reason to upgrade to Windows 8, and now they're talking about Windows 8.1, which is basically windows 8 with a start menu that doesn't function the way people are used to..
I'm not saying Metro is bad, nor am I saying no one needs it. On those small-screen convertible ultrabooks, metro is quite nice, especially if you like to have a tablet like experience. On a big non-touch display, it's awful, and trying to emulate touch gestures on such displays is mind-blowing.
DX 11.2 sounds like a minor upgrade to the original DX11 API and I'm not convinced this so called Tiling is much of a needed "technology" when we have 4GBs of ram on sub-$200 graphics cards nowadays.
I don't think it will cost much to add another 4GBs and just call it a day for "Tiling".
But this is good news for PC gamers... By allowing and promoting the use of this technology; and with the new consoles already being x86 - There's no reason for the delayed, crappy ports of yesteryear.
We have the same CPU architecture, can now mimic (to some extent) the console shared memory subsystem and have a fair bit more horespower in the PC form to make up for any anomalies...
We can hope, right?
In some ways, this smacks of desperation by Microsoft, at the same time it's adding fuel to the fire of discontent for the anti-Microsoft posse too.
The history of small, incremental DX patches usually mean 3 parts of Fanny Adams to most of us, if it was not for Microsoft restricting it's access by making exlcusise to xbone and it's newest OS, none of us would notice or even care.
Edit: Thanks mate
I can see the sharing of system RAM being a bigger thing when we get Wellsburg but i don't see 11.2 causing people to rush out and buy a copy of 8.1 before that.
I'm with you on the hunch... but you never know... there could be something else in there that is hardware dependant. Perhaps it won't be required of the GFX card, but a minimum RAM spec... ???
If you click on forums and go to the top category "Article Discussion" you can view your comments in the forum and do all the proper editing you'd expect from a forum.
Well at least this time there is unified gfx architecture in place.
EDIT: Found a little more information over on MSDN:
Interestingly, the code sample includes a step that checks to see if the hardware supports tiled resources - meaning, despite Leblond's claims, it will be dependent on driver support from AMD/Nvidia/Intel, and won't be compatible with all DirectX11 cards unless and until those companies decide to make it so.
I will however wait till 8.1 is officially released before I try it.
I think to me, 8 is as Vista/ME.
Like you, I'll try it, and if all goes well, I'll stick with it.
Actually, the PS4 does support DX11, part of the whole point of going x86 was to make it easier for developers to implement games on PC and console, doing that but not allowing DirectX support would negate that reasoning somewhat.
I believe Sony announced this at the GDC earlier this year. Wonder how much they're paying Microsoft to be able to use it with the Orbis OS.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/sony-dives-deep-into-the-ps4s-hardware-power-controller-features-at-gdc/
http://gematsu.com/2013/03/sony-shares-new-ps4-details-at-gdc
It will be 3-4 years before 11.2 games are around direct x 10 has bearly hit widespread let alone 11. Most games released still include a direct x 9 API and have done since along time, Theres very few windows 7 only games as your cutting off a large portion of your market by doing it. There will be even less windows 8.1 games unless a developer wants to go bankrupt. ( ignoring 95% of the market would be amounting to such a thing)
BF3 being the exception.
I'd hazard the DX9 thing was mainly because the GPU in the PS3 was not of the unified variety and required more tools to be made by Sony. I'm not educated on this though so these are useless ramblings...
P.s. I don't think they are going to waive any magic wands or anything; just flexibility seems to be on the agenda this time round.
As 8.1 is/will be a free upgrade 8 wont be outmoded in a few months, it will just be replaced.
Maybe best to think of Windows 8 as a public beta and 8.1 as the way it should have been 8 months ago.
According to the Steam hardware survey 30.35% are DX10, 43.6% are DX11 and more and more games are being made that are not compatible with XP, games like BioShock Infinite, XCOM, Crysis 3 and this list is only going to grow over time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_DirectX_11_support#Upcoming_games
But i do agree it will be a long time for 11.2 to take off, if ever.
That's actually spot on.
About three months back (shortly after going SLI) I was in CEX one day and I saw NFS : Shift for £2. I thought hmm, not played that much (I tried it ages ago with 5770CFX but CFX was crap).
Any way, installed it and cranked on the settings and put on 8XMSAA. At the time I only had 4gb ram in my system (used to be a 6gb tri channel kit). Loaded up the game and the Nvidia drivers put a message across the screen in red writing saying something along the lines of "Not enough memory for your chosen aliasing setting. Please reduce your settings, your setting has not been applied".
That was the first time I had ever seen 4gb of memory fall short. I bought an 8gb kit and sure enough, message gone.
So yes, it seems that Nvidia cards at least can dip into your ram when needed. Which may also explain why 8XMSAA comes at such a huge performance hit.
Because alienating half your customer base is good for business, for real.
Still, not a single **** was given.
They'll do what they did with DX11 and back down. It was to be a 7 exclusive yet ended up on Vista any way.
Question is then, can the DirectX binaries from the PS4 be extracted and reverse engineered to run on Linux, giving Wine a huge performance and compatability boost. Theoretically a FreeBSD binary can run on Linux with a relatively small amount of emulation. As such if the DirectX implementation isn't combined directly with the driver, porting it may be possible.
Agree wtih AlienwareAndy ... they'll back down. And if they don't, none of us sticking with Win7 will notice a change in the games we're playing, or the games coming out.
I do like the idea of a future where the GPU simply taps into available system RAM more directly, and carves out a portion to be restricted for its own use. There's always the fear of performance hit that integrated graphics have, along with shared memory, on laptops without dedicated GPUs. But I think that if the physical architecture of the mobo / OS gets planned out properly, we won't have to spend $800 on high-end cards anymore, as those cards won't need 4GB GDDR5 or whatever. We can have a massive store of RAM to be used as necessary. And with the rise of SSDs taking over for standard storage, you don't see the RAM cache requirement like you used to.
So, 11.2 can be a good thing ... if MS doesn't d*ck it up.
-J
Also I think the point Sony is making is that they support the D3D 11.1 feature set, not that they support D3D. D3D is very much integrated into the windows sdk, and I doubt there has been a port made for bsd/ps4.
Iirc AMD allready support it in OGL
And it is a must as Xbox1 will have it, and most PC games are console ports. Oh and an 8-Core AMD CPU, seeing as new games will be developed for the AMD 8-core architecture, (both PS4 and Xbox1 are AMD based). Just thought I'd mention it. =)
Developers certainly wont be thinking about Intel PC users, when they're making games for PS4 and Xbox1, and will just knock them out to PC, and you will take your chances on how well they will run.
I know what platform I'm sticking with.
So they say, but will it be 100% support on current GPUs, as in every feature? I want to be certain before buying a new GPU, just in case.
Doesn't matter now of course, but next year everything changes.
What is the difference in bandwidth from GDDR5 to DDR3, assuming all modern GPU's use GDDR5.
When Wellsburg and DDR4 starts to appear according to this it will start at 2.4Gbps and eventually reaching 3.2Gbps
So how comparable is current gen GPU memory to next gen system memory ?
Be very surprised if sony actually had DX support - DX requires windows OS. They'll support all the graphics features in DX11 or whatever but almost certainly it'll be some version openGL they actually support.
So expect to buy a new GPU... too!
DX11 was soon hacked and running in XP so really, don't make a mountain out of a molehill.
They will highly likely relinquish their attitude as I mentioned before and release it on other OSes.
Possibly to Win 7, but I doubt it, and as for Nvidia and AMD, I expect they'll make a big issue of DX11.2 on their next graphics cards, like I said if there's money to be made expect us little people to be forced to cough up.
They will have to pry Windows 7 out of my cold dead hands and Direct X 11.2 will not change my mind.
Probably dumb to quote myself, but i found the answer.
GTX 670 = 6.0 GB/s
DDR4 = 3.2 GB/s
Compared to DDR 3 which caps out at 6.4gb/s for duel channel.
Onboard gpus will benifit hugely from this though as they use the same memory already anyway.
Nvidia lists the GTX 670,680,690 as 6.0 GB/s
http://www.geforce.co.uk/whats-new/articles/introducing-the-geforce-gtx-670-gpu
Only a GTX 770 list a higher memory speed at 7.0 GB/s
According to this DDR4 will start at 2.4Gbps and eventually reach 3.2Gbps
AFAIK DDR3 tops out around 1.7 GB/s
The point is even when the top speed DDR4 is released it will still be almost half the speed of dedicated graphics card GDDR, so i don't see DX11.2 making a huge difference to serious gamers, well anyone not relying on a IGP that is.
EDIT: or am i getting speed and/or/versus bandwidth mixed up :?
Because if i am a GTX 770 is 224.3 Gbps and DDR4 is up to 230 Gbps so does that mean DDR4 will be as quick as a dedicated graphics cards memory ?
It miight even make those who bought 16GB of ram for gaming pleased with their investment, if they can get around 8.1 easily
Unfortunately, nvidia are using the wrong measurement for memory speed. It should be 6GHz not GB/s. And the sysnopsys link should be quoting in MT/s or MHz. However that article does say that DDR4 will have a 230Gbps max bandwidth which should have the same throughput as GDDR5.
So in theory DX 11.2 should make a BIG difference for integrated GPU's in a few years.
Edit: Wait. Graphics cards have their memory bandwidth measured in GB/s not Gb/s. DDR4 will have a memory bandwidth 8 times lower than GDDR5. Not sure how I missed that first time through :o
M7 670 currently has 227.2GB/s, no worries there then.
I edited my post just before you posted. Missed the B vs b in the articles linked. DDR4 will have 28.75 GB/s bandwidth (230Gb/s around double what it currently is I think) compared to GDDR5 which runs at 8 times that number (1.8Tb/s). You really don't have any worries lol
I never have been able to get my head around b & B and all the different ways bandwidth is listed.
b = bits
B = bytes
A byte is bigger than a bit, so uses a bigger 'B'
:)
Either way, still won't use Windows 8.x