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  • dstockwell23 - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    Is q4 15 correct for dx12? Is it not expexted to launch with win 9? 1st half 2015???
  • Ryan Smith - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    Microsoft is targeting it so that the first games are released in Q4'15. It may technically come out sooner than that, but there's really no reason to pull it out of the oven before there are games.
  • UpSpin - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    I expect that AMD is the biggest beneficiaries to D12 and not Intel. AMD always had more but slower CPUs (poor single threading, good multi-threading), with a much more powerful GPU, compared to Intel.
    So while Intel CPU/GPU will gain some FPS, AMD should gain much much more.
  • nathanddrews - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    Thanks to Mantle, we already know what sort of improvements reduced CPU load does for AMD.
  • Krysto - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    Definitely. AMD chips will see a far bigger boost.
  • Klimax - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    So far it didn't really show.
  • Stuka87 - Sunday, August 17, 2014 - link

    Sure it does. AMD CPU's that fall way behind an Intel when matched with good GPU's show a huge boost. In some cases a game can go from being very CPU bound on an AMD chip, to being GPU bound because the CPU is no longer the bottleneck.
  • lilmoe - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    agreed
  • tomsworkshop - Monday, August 18, 2014 - link

    yes, with gpgpu and opencl become mature, we will no longer need the compute power from the beast like the i7, direct all computing to the gpu and the gpu will compute far better than the cpu, only leave the basic task to the cpu, a tiny little arm core or puma core with good gpu will done the job well.
  • haukionkannel - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    Of course the benefits are greatest with APUs. If you have fast CPU and fast discrete GPU the difference is much, much smaller. But still a good thing! Even 3-5% is better than nothing!
    Seems to be quite near the Mantle. The differences are that Mantle works in win7 and up and maybe in Linux, where DX12 is for win 8 and win 9 only.
  • Thermogenic - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    Good luck getting an AMD APU in something like the Surface Pro 3's form factor.
  • gdansk - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    Mullins is 4.5W TDP compared to Haswell's 15W TDP. There exist solutions, especially if Microsoft wanted to make a lower cost Surface again (this time without ARM). The ​AMD PRO A10-7350B can be set, by manufacturer, to 15W TDP (default is 19W).
  • Krysto - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    > If this carries over to when DirectX 12 games and applications launch in Q4 2015, it could help usher in a new era of mobile gaming and high end graphics.

    Is that a joke? The only place where DirectX12 would be is in $1,000 "mobile" devices like Surface Pro. But I hardly consider that to be part of the mobile market. Also, we're already being "ushered into a new era of mobile gaming", by stuff like Tegra K1 (and its Maxwell successor, which will give mobile gaming yet another huge boost in GPU performance), and Apple's Metal API in iOS devices. And then we'll get the similar OpenGL NG API for mobile, too.

    But really my point is, as far as the "mobile market" is concerned, DirectX12 has nothing to do with it. As Intel keeps stagnating in performance with its new CPU generations, and keeps pushing lower-end chips as its "main chips" that consumers should buy (such as Broadwell M), DirectX12 merely allows consumers to buy notebooks that don't have terrible gaming performance, because of Intel's aggressive push for reducing power consumption, at the cost of performance.
  • Metroid - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    Blame AMD to follow Intel footsteps and now seems Nvidia is walking the same road with Maxwell. All for performance per watt, ppw is here to stay whether we like or not.
  • B3an - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    Are you fucking stupid??

    First of all, the Surface Pro is part of the mobile market. Not debatable. STFU.

    Secondly, DX12 will be supported across all mobile areas including tablets and phones. ARM's Mali, Intels Atom, Nvidia's Tegra K1, Samsungs Exynos 5 all support DX11. Their future SoC's will obviously support DX12 too. Windows Phone and $300 (and under) Windows tablets support DX11. DX12 will VERY much be part of the mobile market.

    DirectX isn't something that only works on x86 PC's.
  • Alexey291 - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    You feeling ok there? Seen your shrink recently?

    Sure Surface pro is a part of a mobile market. In the same way that a 3kg 3kUSD gaming laptop is. A niche device that has a really small market. (Especially now that MS has decided to sell MS office on ipads why would you buy a surface again eh?) So yeah its part of the market. The 0.01% of it.
  • menting - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    maybe not Surface RT, but the iPad can't hold a candle to the Surface Pro..If you think the performance and usability of the iPad is greater than the Surface Pro, you must be smoking something really heavy.
  • andrewaggb - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    Couple guys I work with have surface pros. One just ordered the sp3 i7. Another guy I worked with had the rt and my friend has the rt and a couple pros. I know that's nothing compared to iPads but its the only tablet I see at work.
  • Speedfriend - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    @Alexey291
    Why would you buy a Surface, well because as people around the world are discovering, an iPad is an expensive toy. Once Windows tablets reach the same size battery life, why would any corporate roll-out iPad except in situation where essentiually they are replacing a pen and paper, not a laptop. And in case you don't believe, check out Apples results - iPad revenue down in each of the last three quarters. Most people in the world can't afford a tablet and laptop, so if you want a tablet to entertain your kids - get a $200 Android one or if you want one as aproductivty device - get a windows one
  • Alexey291 - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    you mean get a windows ultrabook? Because if you had said that I'd be with you all the way.

    Pro is a gimped ultrabook or a stupidly expensive tablet. "Productivity" with a terrible touchpad and awful keyboard... yeah no thanks.
  • iLovefloss - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    Or a very nicely made Convertible. Which are getting popular.
  • iLovefloss - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    Wait, what? The Surface Pro line is most definitely part of the mobile market. It is a fucking tablet. It is mobile unlike transportable gaming machines. It's just on the high end. Implying that the Surface Pro isn't a mobile device is like implying that ultrabooks aren't laptops because they have a touch screen and are expensive or implying that the rMBP is too expensive to count as a laptop.

    Anyway, what's your point? DirectX 12 direct benefit is that it'll allow more power hungry CPUs in smaller form factors. A device that is known to suffer form thermal throttling can now run smoothly thanks to the efficiency of the new API. Why does it matter that the device that they tested it on has a relatively small market share? The test proves Intel's point sufficiently: DirectX 12 helps with battery life, thermals, and performance.
  • Alexey291 - Monday, August 18, 2014 - link

    Well that's a test show. I've seen one of those regarding every DX going back to 9 and beyond (was too young to care before 9 really) and every single one promised lowered overheads, higher efficiency etc etc. In reality we have the mess that we have. But yeah maybe this time they ACTUALLY did something good. Though I have doubts once more.

    And besides I'm all for greater efficiency. I just find the angry guy sweet. He seems so into this :)
  • B3an - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    You think an iPad with crippled Office is going to compare to a full PC Surface Pro? You think people the Surface Pro is aimed at would even consider an iPad? You're the one who needs a shrink you delusional moron.
  • Alexey291 - Monday, August 18, 2014 - link

    Well considering that most people who this device is aimed at (looking at MS marketing) already own either an ipad or an mba or both... Yeah I do seriously think they'd consider an ipad first or the newer mba when one comes out.

    Plus surfaces run windows. That's enough of a deterrent for A LOT of people. You might be surprised just how many people would rather never have to run antiviruses on their tablets.

    But do continue being angry. Its really cute.
  • lilmoe - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    You're not seriously comparing an iPad to Surface (any Surface!) are you?
  • Alexey291 - Monday, August 18, 2014 - link

    I'd seriously rather have ANYTHING than a surface rt. Nexus 2012 even rather than surface rt. What a waste of silicon that was....

    And well yeah the pro's? I'd rather have a good tablet at half the price (not necessarily an ipad even) or a decent ultrabook at a similar price. Because either of those would be better :)
  • Alexey291 - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    Sounds like the usual:

    1 year ahead "look at the performance benefits!"
    1 year after "look at how much slower the 1st generation of dx12 hardware runs with dx12 functions enabled!"
  • Metroid - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    This is big, no matter how you see, can't deny this is what most of us were expecting, dx12 will probably have the same effect for GPU's as Conroe had for CPU's, but we cant expect the same cause CPU's date back to old apps whereas games are dx related versions, so unless the game runs as dx12, we will not see any gain about that.
  • Alexey291 - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    this would be big if adoption would just SUDDENLY happen and would be "perfect".

    In reality though the majority of features will not be seen for years to come. I mean even now the list of DX11 games is actually quite small. And some (terrible) AAA titles still come out as DX9 only (I'm looking at you X:Rebirth).

    Most likely the consumers will never actually see any performance benefits per se. Instead the games will become more complex (graphically etc) and would look better. Leaving us with essentially more detail for the same performance. Which is arguably ISN'T what low power mobile devices would want.

    But obviously we shall see :)
  • iLovefloss - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    Did you even read the article before making such a comment? The main point of DirectX12 isn't about increasing GPU performance (it still does that of course); DirectX 12 was created to eliminate inefficiencies in the code and reduce CPU usage. Reducing CPU usage (and smarter use of multicore processors) has allowed up to a 50% decrease in power consumption. How, in the loving fuck, is that not something that low-power mobile devices would want?

    Low-end devices will get more powerful over time as CPUs and GPU get better and better, so it really doesn't matter if DirectX 12 doesn't immediately increase performance relative to the graphics. A performance increase will be there. Compare what you could get for $200 in a phone or phablet form factor to what you could've gotten three years ago. Stuff is getting much more powerful especially the GPUs.

    But even if that wasn't the case, if you don't lock the framerate, you can benefit from the increased performance. Drastically increased performance for not a bit more power consumption will be a huge boon for the mobile gaming market.
  • garadante - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    Before bashing on him with such colorful language, pay attention to what he's saying. What he said is effectively that devs will increase the number of draw calls in their games with the reduced overhead, bringing up CPU power consumption to the same level as before DX12 but increasing the graphical quality of the game. This would work to reduce power consumption only if game developers don't use the newly unutilized CPU resources to introduce heavier features into game.
  • MikeMurphy - Sunday, August 17, 2014 - link

    I guess you've never heard of the Xbox One.
  • azazel1024 - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    I dunno, I'd consider my Asus T100 as part of the mobile market and I certianly wouldn't mind a good boost either in power on time or in frame rates in games from reduced CPU and/or GPU load for the same frame rate.

    Understandably, and sadly, I am sure the Bay Trail-T in there won't ever support Dx12, but I probably won't have the T100 when Dx12 hits the market anyway. I'd much prefer lower cost and lower power Atom based processor in my 10.1" tablet through the future anyway, no matter what Broadwell M and future low power Core based processors can deliver. Atom is likely to always be lower, but the performance delta between the two looks likely to shrink further and I won't mind that at all.
  • Speedfriend - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    @azazel1024
    Just bought a Asus T100, what a fantastic little machine, sure the screen isn't great, but its fast, has full office and a keyboard for half the price of an iPad, plus for $25 I added 64Gb of extra storage. Can't wait to see what the next version is like.
  • haukionkannel - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    Yep. T100 is a good device! And sequel will be really interesting to see!
  • SunnyNW - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    Seems like the perfect time for Microsoft to introduce a low-level api...They had no real motivation before... The PC market has matured and consumers are hanging on to older hardware, what do you do to...You want to include these people and make them a part of your consumer base...Games are only getting more demanding...
  • fteoath64 - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    AMD"s Mantle is a "wake up call to MS". Sure DX11 and DX12 are propreitary and subjected to MicroSoft's whims as to when and where they will deploy it. Why not go Open GL 4.4 instead ?. That is an open standard and scalable over multiple architectures and platforms too.
    The fact the Windows 9 will have DX12 is just an attractor to their product. "Games are going to scream!", they will claim.
    Oh, games already scream on consoles and high-end tablets, thank you!. The lowly PC really needs a mid-range video card costing half a tablet to be in on the games. I am sure consumers are changing the way they play and look at gaming in general.
  • lilmoe - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    "so to achieve such a reduction in consumption with software alone is a very significant result and a feather in Microsoft’s cap for Direct3D 12"

    Just tells you how much more room there is for software to improve.
  • c plus plus - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    thats my microsoft d3d12
  • Wolfpup - Monday, August 18, 2014 - link

    Wow, that's awesome! I wonder if that applies to EVERY DirectX game, like even older stuff? Only directX 11 games?

    At any rate, that's seriously impressive. I'm sure that's why this was picked, but still going from 19FPS to 33 is going from unplayable or marginal at best to probably playable.

    Man, I love the Surface too...I can't decide if I buy now or wait for Broadwell (only then do I wait for the next chip? LOL)
  • Gonemad - Tuesday, September 16, 2014 - link

    And I thought Microsoft would embrace open standards, like OpenGL. Pffft. Now, they want to prove DX12 is better, and are willing to put some work on it.

    Perfect Xanatos Gambit: they prove DX12 is better, and avoid embracing OpenGL altogether while keeping monopoly of the PC gaming market and other venues that rely on DirectX, of fail miserably, and start twisting OpenGL standards on its head so MS-created code works better (which will take much more time and effort), forcing everybody to embrace their code, and perhaps avoid losing monopoly once again. Win, may-win scenario for MSFT.

    Oh, yes, Microsoft loves to twist open protocols. They did it on HTML 4.0 with Internet Explorer using JavaScript, what makes you think they won't pull this card from their sleeves again.

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