Nvidia Releases First Driver With Full Microsoft Directx 12 Ultimate Support!

[Orcblood]

 

Dx12 Officially launched alongside Windows 10 on July 29, 2015. Almost 5 years later we get first full driver support to what's the biggest version update of DX12 released yet. DX12 Ultimate. That's right. Today Nvidia released Full Support for DX12 Ultimate! The first company to do so!

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New DX12 Ultimate Game Ready and Studio drivers are now available to the general public (preview drivers were previously available to those with a developer account), and these enable full feature support that makes NVIDIA GPUs the “first and only with hardware and software support for full Microsoft DirectX 12 Ultimate feature stack and hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling” according to the company.

 

What does this bring? Well that's probably said best bellow:

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“DirectX 12 Ultimate codifies GeForce RTX’s many innovative technologies as the standard for multi-platform, next-generation games. It is defined as a set of DirectX 12 features that represents a new graphics standard shared between PC and console and includes: DirectX Raytracing (DXR) tier 1.1, Variable Rate Shading (VRS) tier 2, Mesh Shaders, and Sampler Feedback.”

 

 

Additional features brought about this driver release:

 

Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling:

 

Also there is a support for a new feature called "Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling" which is an API independent feature that allows the GPU to manage it's own VRAM meaning less CPU communication overhead. This brings about better low and average FPS in games as well as reduced latency according to Microsoft. This should also mean better handling of multiple monitors with varying refresh rates.

 

 

Added Games To Geforce Experience One-Click Optimal Settings:

 

Specific to Nvidia and this driver is the addition of additional (hehe) support for GEFORCE EXPERIENCE ONE-CLICK OPTIMAL SETTINGS which include 12 games. Age of Empires III is listed and at the top no-less! I love this old RTS game yet it's strange it would get some love. Probably has something to do with the DE version (Definitive Version) coming out soon. The 12 games added are listed bellow:

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GEFORCE EXPERIENCE ONE-CLICK OPTIMAL SETTINGS

Finally, NVIDIA’s one-click optimal settings (OPS) in GeForce Experience, which “enable you to instantly configure game options for your system’s hardware, giving you smooth, optimized gameplay”, has added support for a dozen additional games:

• Age of Empires III: Complete Collection
• Command & Conquer Remastered Collection
• Deadside
• Gears Tactics
• Mafia II: Definitive Edition
• Monster Train
• ONE PIECE: PIRATE WARRIORS 4
• Outer Wilds
• Roblox
• Shop Titans
• Streets of Rage 4
• Total Tank Simulator

 

 

More Gsync Compatible Monitors:

 

And lastly more Gsync Compatible monitors bring the Total to 98! Added monitors include:

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• AOC AG273F1G8R3
• ASUS VG27AQL1A
• Dell S2421HGF
• Lenovo G24-10
• LG 27GN950
• LG 32GN50T/32GN500
• Samsung 2020 Odyssey G9
• Samsung 2020 Odyssey G7 27″
• Samsung 2020 Odyssey G7 32″

 

Conclusion:

So over-all I am greatly thrilled by this release! It marks the finish of a standard DirectX Raytracing foundation which game developers will build upon for years to come. This means we re much closer to more innovative, realistic, and immersive raytraced games and get to enjoy currently better performance in existing games (Ray-Traced or Not)! 

 

Now hoping AMD gets a similar driver release soon as I am currently rocking a 5700xt! Which has been going swimmingly lately for me anyway

 

 

News Source: https://pcper.com/2020/06/nvidia-releases-drivers-with-full-microsoft-directx-12-ultimate-support/

(Edit) - Nvidia Article with More Details for Your Pleasure: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/directx-12-ultimate-game-ready-driver/

Nvidia Drive Page: https://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx

[Orcblood]

Also just want to state, seemed to random to put in post, that it's awesome to see no feature fracture between PC and Console. As a developer myself I like to see cross platform and eco system API cohesion. Makes things much easier for developers and encourages the devs to implement more cool new features

 

 - I'm not a game developer. Just applications dev but my point should stand

[nick name]

It's here!

[GoodBytes]

It must be noted the followings:

• If you have a Nvidia Optimus, to specify which application uses which GPU, it now done via Windows 10 Settings panel, and no longer in the Nvidia Control Panel.
  
   
• And Nvidia notes: "support for the simultaneous recording and broadcasting of gameplay is not supported" in this release. Nvidia is working on it. So if you use this feature, you best wait this one out.
   
• Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling is disabled by default. To enable it, go to Settings > Display > 'Graphic settings' link at the bottom of the page, and in there you'll have the option. If you don't have the option, then your system doesn't support it. If you believe that your system should support it, ensure that your Windows 10 is fully updated to Windows 10 version 2004, and that you have these new Nvidia drivers installed. Note: You need to restart your system once you toggle Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling to see affect.
  

 

 

[Orcblood]

Just now, nick name said:

It's here!

 

 

Woot woot!

[Orcblood]

Just now, huilun02 said:

So is this snake oil or does it actually improve performance?

And I mean improved performance as in benchmarked, not hypothetical

This ^ I want to see benchmarks badly.

[D13H4RD]

Installed on my RTX 2070S.

[GoodBytes]

19 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

So is this snake oil or does it actually improve performance?

And I mean improved performance as in benchmarked, not hypothetical

Nvidia says:

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This new feature can potentially improve performance and reduce latency by allowing the video card to directly manage its own memory.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/directx-12-ultimate-game-ready-driver/

 

So in other words, it opens door for Nvidia to do game specific optimizations. Did they do anything at this point in time? We don't know. They might have only replicated Windows behavior to get started, only. I think it will take time before Nvidia comes up with algorithms to do things that will run some games better or have game specific behaviors that will help boost performance.

[nick name]

17 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

- snip -

Darn, I have a laptop with a 860M and it isn't presenting a hardware accelerated option.  

[GoodBytes]

1 minute ago, nick name said:

Darn, I have a laptop with a 860M and it isn't presenting a hardware accelerated option.  

Well, if it makes you feel better, I have 680 in my desktop. Legends says that it used to run games. 

 

[porina]

4 minutes ago, nick name said:

Darn, I have a laptop with a 860M and it isn't presenting a hardware accelerated option.  

Have to wonder if it is due to needing a certain hardware level. I just installed the driver on my 1080Ti system, and I get the setting. I'll try a few gaming benches with it off and on and see if it makes a difference. I don't understand what it does (yet), so my gut instinct is not to expect anything significant if at all. It sounds like this is more of a feature that will help with future scaling, rather than something that makes current hardware/software run much better. If it does give an improvement, I certainly wont complain! 

[GoodBytes]

3 minutes ago, porina said:

Have to wonder if it is due to needing a certain hardware level. I just installed the driver on my 1080Ti system, and I get the setting. I'll try a few gaming benches with it off and on and see if it makes a difference. I don't understand what it does (yet), so my gut instinct is not to expect anything significant if at all. It sounds like this is more of a feature that will help with future scaling, rather than something that makes current hardware/software run much better. If it does give an improvement, I certainly wont complain! 

Yup I agree. While I don't have the hardware to try this feature. I also expect that it will be far more intresting in 1 year from now.

Now, if the game already run at 300fps, I don't expect any improvements visible. But if the game is actually demanding, it will help to some degree running the game better.

[BuckGup]

Cool I guess. I still like to tune things myself. Also Nvidia also promised DirectX12 support for Fermi and never delivered. DirectX12 also has a ton of cool feature like VRAM stacking and SLI/CF configs that was never utilized by developers 

[D13H4RD]

5 minutes ago, porina said:

Have to wonder if it is due to needing a certain hardware level. I just installed the driver on my 1080Ti system, and I get the setting. I'll try a few gaming benches with it off and on and see if it makes a difference. I don't understand what it does (yet), so my gut instinct is not to expect anything significant if at all. It sounds like this is more of a feature that will help with future scaling, rather than something that makes current hardware/software run much better. If it does give an improvement, I certainly wont complain! 

I assume this will only really come into play in titles where your FPS tends to jitter and/or your 1% lows are already pretty low.

 

If you're already getting well over 60++, let alone over 100, I doubt you'll notice.

[porina]

Just installing the driver on various systems that are already running. I guess it is obvious looking back, but the new setting only appears on system running Win10 2004, not the ones still on 1909. Still benching.

[eeeee1]

wish they optimized anything else other than roblox. wasted effort. pretty cool other than that.

[PlayStation 2]

Gonna be honest, when DirectX 12 itself is barely being utilized, what is DX12 Ultimate gonna change that Vulkan hasn’t?

[NumLock21]

Just installed it on my 2070 with hardware accelerated gpu scheduling enable. I've noticed when scrolling through a webpage (say this topic), there is a lag. The text is constantly being refreshed as you scroll the page. In Edge does it too, but it's not as noticeable. With GPU scheduling disable, the problem goes away.

[porina]

Good news: I've seen a possible performance increase

Bad new: I have a problem I didn't have before

 

SOTTR demo, built in benchmark on my gaming system listed in sig. In short, 1080Ti, 8086k. Running 1440p exclusive fullscreen, vsync off, "highest". Got 83 fps average on two runs with setting off. 85fps on the one run that completed with setting on.

 

Above is the crash I get. I saw it the first time I tried to run SOTTR after enabling the setting. It worked normally when I tried again, but when I tried to run the benchmark run a 2nd time, I got the error again. I have never seen the error before today.

 

I'm still doing another bench, will soon find out of it is limited to SOTTR, or a wider problem. Also testing my laptop with slightly different set of hardware.

[RejZoR]

Noice. Been seeing this setings panel in Windows 10 2004 preview screenshots and then didn't get it on any of my systems. Then I found info it's because drivers don't have support. Oh well. Will try this today to see how Killing Floor 2 runs. The game is older but very performance sensitive.

[porina]

Ok, results for FFXIV:Shadowbringers stand alone benchmark. I ran this at 1440p high(desktop) preset. This uses DX11.

 

Average fps:

Two runs with setting off: 122.8, 123.0

Two runs with setting on: 123.8, 124.2
 

Roughly 1fps improvement, or less than 1%. I didn't get any crashes during this testing.

 

I would be interested if anyone else gets the error I saw with SOTTR, or any other games.

 

[NumLock21]

Just now, porina said:

Ok, results for FFXIV:Shadowbringers stand alone benchmark. I ran this at 1440p high(desktop) preset. This uses DX11.

 

Two runs with setting off: 122.8, 123.0

Two runs with setting on: 123.8, 124.2
 

Roughly 1fps improvement, or less than 1%. I didn't get any crashes during this testing.

 

I would be interested if anyone else gets the error I saw with SOTTR, or any other games.

 

So it only improves by 1 FPS.

[D13H4RD]

I didn't do nearly as in-depth testing but I did try it while I was playing NFS Heat.

 

There isn't any much improvement just by looking at FPS numbers. It's roughly identical to what I had gotten before. However, perhaps the frametimes has improved? This could all just be placebo though.

 

Don't expect a significant gain in FPS though. I feel that we'll mostly see better frametime consistency and slightly better 1% lows due to better management of the GPU's resources.

 

46 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

Just installed it on my 2070 with hardware accelerated gpu scheduling enable. I've noticed when scrolling through a webpage (say this topic), there is a lag. The text is constantly being refreshed as you scroll the page. In Edge does it too, but it's not as noticeable. With GPU scheduling disable, the problem goes away.

I haven't gotten the same as you on my 2070S. However, I have noticed that there is sometimes a small hitch during very fast scrolls.

[porina]

10 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

So it only improves by 1 FPS.

For that game, with those settings. I'll let the regular reviewers do the wider testing.

 

I wasn't expecting much difference, and this basically doesn't matter, for now. Again, I see it as potentially enabling better things to be done in future once support is wider.

 

On the other comment, I haven't noticed any difference on desktop usage.

 

8 minutes ago, D13H4RD said:

However, perhaps the frametimes has improved? This could all just be placebo though.

Again this is something for the more serious reviewers to test out, but in case it is of interest in below spoiler are the screenshots of the results I got on SOTTR.

 

Spoiler

The (slightly) better run of two with setting off.

 

The run with setting on that completed.

 

[D13H4RD]

11 minutes ago, porina said:

Snip

Interesting. Looks like "CPU Game" had a slight bump along with the GPU whilst "CPU Render" saw a slight dip.