Is DX12 really only beneficial to AMD 3XX/Fury cards and does nothing for Nvidia's Maxwell? Do Current Generation Cards benefit from DX12?

[kenjigreat]

I don't really do much besides scour the internet.

 

People have been posting their benchmarks on Neogaf for Tomb Raider and the GTX 980Tis don't seem to have any real gains.

 

 

 Above is a Benchmark for GTX 980. Minor Improvement.

 

Same benchmark but for the AMD R9 390X lots of improvement.

 

Tomb Raider is the exception. Negative gains.

 

I've heard people claiming that AMD HBM cards have gains from DX12 but Nvidia doesn't.

 

 

 

But Ashes of Singularity tells a different story

 

Some Developers are partnering with AMD for DX12.

 

Here's my Questions.

 

People are saying that Drivers or NEW games that are built with DX12 in mind would allow for Cards to benefit.

Other people claim that Nvidia Drivers aren't enough to allow gains on Maxwell and Only Pascal will bring gains.

 

When will we see 'HUGE' gains from DX12

 

Can someone with some experience/insight/expertise comment?

[sapphirethunder]

The main gains come from the AMD's memory bandwidths and GCN architecture.

Because for years, AMD has been readying up for more hardware-level API. This is why PS4 and XBO, even with their weak hardware, can barely stay relevant.

It's because of an architecture that benefits from low-level API like DX12.

 

For some titles, mainly Ashes of the Singularity, the difference in performance comes from ACE. Async Compute Engine. Something which Maxwell doesn't have as hardware, but instead would have to emulate it. But even the emulation isn't yet included in drivers. And even if it was, it wouldn't be as efficient.

 

 

At least this is how I have understood it.

 

[kenjigreat]

1 minute ago, 167776_1454180910 said:

The main gains come from the AMD's memory bandwidths and GCN architecture.

Because for years, AMD has been readying up for more hardware-level API. This is why PS4 and XBO, even with their weak hardware, can barely stay relevant.

It's because of a architecture that benefits from low-level API like DX12.

 

For some titles, mainly Ashes of the Singularity, the difference in performance comes from ACE. Async Compute Engine. Something which Maxwell doesn't have as hardware, but instead would have to emulate it. But even the emulation isn't yet included in drivers. And even if it was, it wouldn't be as efficient.

 

 

So Maxwell is a waste of time once most games are DX12?

[sapphirethunder]

4 minutes ago, kenjigreat said:

So Maxwell is a waste of time once most games are DX12?

Not really. Maxwell is still in itself a powerful and efficient architecture. It just wasn't readied up for such a quick DX12 release and adaptation. After all, Maxwell was designed in 2013-2014. But DX12 didn't come until the release of Windows 10 at June 2015. About 1 year after the release of Maxwell 2.0. (1.5 years after the release of Maxwell 1.0 AKA GTX 750 and 750Ti)

 

It has just been a bad timing for Maxwell.

[Citadelen]

Maxwell has elements in it that can function as ACEs, they don't work with DX12 though. A best case for AMD is a worst case for Nvidia, and a best case for Nvidia is a worst case for AMD. (if using CUDA)

Pascal SHOULD, fix these issues, because it's a compute based architecture.

[don_svetlio]

14 minutes ago, 167776_1454180910 said:

Not really. Maxwell is still in itself a powerful and efficient architecture. It just wasn't readied up for such a quick DX12 release and adaptation. After all, Maxwell was designed in 2013-2014. But DX12 didn't come until the release of Windows 10 at June 2015. About 1 year after the release of Maxwell 2.0. (1.5 years after the release of Maxwell 1.0 AKA GTX 750 and 750Ti)

 

It has just been a bad timing for Maxwell.

Actually - DX12 came a lot earlier in 2013 with Mantle but Nvidia simply ignored it. Not to mention GCN 1.1 also came out in 2013 and was designed in 2012 yet is fantastic with DX12

 

17 minutes ago, kenjigreat said:

So Maxwell is a waste of time once most games are DX12?

Maxwell cannot do A-sync compute - the main reason AMD cards are getting a 30% increase

[don_svetlio]

6 minutes ago, Citadelen said:

Maxwell has elements in it that can function as ACEs, they don't work with DX12 though. A best case for AMD is a worst case for Nvidia, and a best case for Nvidia is a worst case for AMD. (if using CUDA)

Pascal SHOULD, fix these issues, because it's a compute based architecture.

More or less yes, it will but we're still seeing one thing - planned obsolescence.

[sapphirethunder]

1 minute ago, don_svetlio said:

Actually - DX12 came a lot earlier in 2013 with Mantle but Nvidia simply ignored it. Not to mention GCN 1.1 also came out in 2013 and was designed in 2012 yet is fantastic with DX12

 

Maxwell cannot do A-sync compute - the main reason AMD cards are getting a 30% increase

 

DX12 didn't come. It was only a low-level API that came, which is Mantle.

But it was poorly made, so even AMD scrapped it.

They then sold/gave the base code for the ones who made Vulkan.

 

But yes, Mantle is the reason why AMD gpus get their boost when using DX12.

[kenjigreat]

1 minute ago, don_svetlio said:

More or less yes, it will but we're still seeing one thing - planned obsolescence.

It seems that's what Nvidia is great at.

 

Even though I'm getting a Nvidia GPU again for my newest rig. Once the Titan/AMD Enthusiast versions of the next batch of cards come out in 2017. I'll probably go to AMD.

[Trav_X]

10 minutes ago, Citadelen said:

Maxwell has elements in it that can function as ACEs, they don't work with DX12 though. A best case for AMD is a worst case for Nvidia, and a best case for Nvidia is a worst case for AMD. (if using CUDA)

Pascal SHOULD, fix these issues, because it's a compute based architecture.

When Pascal comes to fix, the amount it would enhance with DX12 would be extreme right? My friends, as well as the web, have told me that Pascal is supposed to be like "10 times more powerful than Maxwell". Can you really just compare them side by side?  is it really that simple?

[Monkey Dust]

12 minutes ago, kenjigreat said:

So Maxwell is a waste of time once most games are DX12?

It will be a while before most games are DX12, Pascal will haven been out for sometime before DX12 takes over. But yes, looks that way for most who still owns a Maxwell card when DX12 takes off. A kind of half exception is the 980ti which still gives a solid performance in the DX12 benchmarks we've seen so far, though arguably not enough to justify it's current price.

 

 

[Citadelen]

3 minutes ago, 167776_1454180910 said:

-snip-

 

Mantle wasn't poorly made, when more cores are being used Mantle can pull out more draw calls than DX12. What leads you to believe it was poorly mad? AMD stopped developing it as an API to avoid market segmentation I believe, it lives on within the company as LiquidVR, which  is either a SDK or middleware like GmaeWorks, I can't remember which it is.

[kenjigreat]

1 minute ago, Trav_X said:

When Pascal comes to fix, the amount it would enhance with DX12 would be extreme right? My friends, as well as the web, have told me that Pascal is supposed to be like "10 times more powerful than Maxwell". Can you really just compare them side by side?  is it really that simple?

I highly doubt it will be 10x as powerful as Maxwell. Although playing the Witcher 3 at 4K 300FPS Ultra would make me cry tears of joy.

 

2 minutes ago, Monkey Dust said:

It will be a while before most games are DX12, Pascal will haven been out for sometime before DX12 takes over. But yes, looks that way for most who still owns a Maxwell card when DX12 takes off. A kind of half exception is the 980ti which still gives a solid performance in the DX12 benchmarks we've seen so far, though arguably not enough to justify it's current price.

 

 

My plan now is to get a 980Ti until the Enthusiast versions of the New Cards come out.

 

Plenty of people own Maxwell in the form of GTX 970s. You're right though I think maybe year end of 2017 is when we'll see the mass movement to DX12 at work.

[sapphirethunder]

5 minutes ago, Citadelen said:

Mantle wasn't poorly made, when more cores are being used Mantle can pull out more draw calls than DX12. What leads you to believe it was poorly mad? AMD stopped developing it as an API to avoid market segmentation I believe, it lives on within the company as LiquidVR, which  is either a SDK or middleware like GmaeWorks, I can't remember which it is.

Well, maybe saying that it was "poorly made" was wrong way to put it.

 

But it barely gave any better performance over DX11.

It just was greatly unfinished, early adaptation of low-level API.

[Citadelen]

6 minutes ago, Trav_X said:

-snip-

The 10x more powerful is from cherry picked examples of compute. Maxwell has very low SP performance, Pascal will Cal out at 12.6Tflops I believe. Personally, I expect AMDs top card to have more Tflops than that, as the Fury X already has 8.9Tflops of SP.

[Starelementpoke]

6 minutes ago, Citadelen said:

The 10x more powerful is from cherry picked examples of compute. Maxwell has very low SP performance, Pascal will Cal out at 12.6Tflops I believe. Personally, I expect AMDs top card to have more Tflops than that, as the Fury X already has 8.9Tflops of SP.

FuryX2 already beats it in compute. Then again, I´m pretty sure comparing the compute between 2 different architectures is similar to comparing clock speeds between AMD and Intel.(Might be wrong)

 

16 minutes ago, Trav_X said:

When Pascal comes to fix, the amount it would enhance with DX12 would be extreme right? My friends, as well as the web, have told me that Pascal is supposed to be like "10 times more powerful than Maxwell". Can you really just compare them side by side?  is it really that simple?

That´s in compute. And that´s not very hard, since Maxwell was not made for compute at all. In fact, the reason maxwell is so efficient is because they gimped it´s compute performance. The charts they showed for pascal compute they compared to a damn 7950 and I believe what was like a 7 year old intel cpu. 

[Trav_X]

5 minutes ago, Citadelen said:

The 10x more powerful is from cherry picked examples of compute. Maxwell has very low SP performance, Pascal will Cal out at 12.6Tflops I believe. Personally, I expect AMDs top card to have more Tflops than that, as the Fury X already has 8.9Tflops of SP.

As someone who uses AMD cards (you), what can you say about their drivers and compatibility and stuff? I've only used NVIDIA, and if the Polaris series for AMD is good, I will consider making the switch. How are the drivers? The specs? Performance? I know that they are currently hot and hungry, but Polaris might be different. I just like GeForce Experience and how easy everything and how I don't have to troubleshoot almost ever because of NVIDIA's technology.

[Citadelen]

3 minutes ago, 167776_1454180910 said:

Well, maybe saying that it was "poorly made" was over-simplifying it.

 

But it barely gave any better performance over DX11.

It just was greatly unfinished.

It improves performance in drawcall bottlenecked scenarios, and balanced core load. If a game doesn't have a drawcall bottleneck you won't see a performance increase. In the Star Swarm benchmark Mantle shows up to 200-250%, I think it was, improvement in CPU bound scenarios over DX12. It did what it was meant do just fine.

[Starelementpoke]

1 minute ago, Trav_X said:

As someone who uses AMD cards (you), what can you say about their drivers and compatibility and stuff? I've only used NVIDIA, and if the Polaris series for AMD is good, I will consider making the switch. How are the drivers? The specs? Performance? I know that they are currently hot and hungry, but Polaris might be different. I just like GeForce Experience and how easy everything and

AMD drivers a pretty in par with Nivida IMO. And what exactly do you mean ¨ how I don't have to troubleshoot almost ever because of NVIDIA's technology.¨?

[Trav_X]

Just now, Starelementpoke said:

AMD drivers a pretty in par with Nivida IMO. And what exactly do you mean ¨ how I don't have to troubleshoot almost ever because of NVIDIA's technology.¨?

My friends have had AMD cards, and they say that there are constant problems. No display, games crashing, compatibility errors, and just general problems with the driver application and just general use experience. I have never had problems with my NVIDIA card, always had good drivers, no BSODs, and just generally nothing has happened bad, even with constant heavy use oftenly. My friends IRL just say that they have experienced many troubles with AMD cards, and they both recently got NVIDIA cards late late late last year.

[Starelementpoke]

22 minutes ago, kenjigreat said:

It seems that's what Nvidia is great at.

 

Even though I'm getting a Nvidia GPU again for my newest rig. Once the Titan/AMD Enthusiast versions of the next batch of cards come out in 2017. I'll probably go to AMD.

RIP Kelper, you shall be missed.

[Starelementpoke]

2 minutes ago, Trav_X said:

My friends have had AMD cards, and they say that there are constant problems. No display, games crashing, compatibility errors, and just general problems with the driver application and just general use experience. I have never had problems with my NVIDIA card, always had good drivers, no BSODs, and just generally nothing has happened bad, even with constant heavy use oftenly. My friends IRL just say that they have experienced many troubles with AMD cards, and they both recently got NVIDIA cards late late late last year.

I´ve got friends with AMD cards, and I have one myself. Literally not a single problem ever. Quite literally, you get lucky and sometimes you don´t. You happen to have friends that haven´t gotten lucky, I have. Nvidia´s technology has jack to do with it.

[sapphirethunder]

4 minutes ago, Trav_X said:

My friends have had AMD cards, and they say that there are constant problems. No display, games crashing, compatibility errors, and just general problems with the driver application and just general use experience. I have never had problems with my NVIDIA card, always had good drivers, no BSODs, and just generally nothing has happened bad, even with constant heavy use oftenly. My friends IRL just say that they have experienced many troubles with AMD cards, and they both recently got NVIDIA cards late late late last year.

It's true that many games, even latest games, have had/have their own share of problems on AMD cards, but NVidia cards work fine.

One example was Gears of Wars Ultimate Edition's absolutely poor performance and Just Cause 3's stuttering/screen tear.

While GoW was fixed, the JC3 still apparently has those annoying problems. They do not affect performance, but make the game annoying to play at some places.

[Starelementpoke]

Just now, 167776_1454180910 said:

It's true that many games, even latest games, have had/have their own share of problems on AMD cards, but NVidia cards work fine.

One example was Gears of Wars Ultimate Edition's absolutely poor performance and Just Cause 3's stuttering/screen tear.

While GoW was fixed, the JC3 still has those annoying problems. They do not affect performance, but make the game annoying to play at some places.

Thought that was Gameworks?

[Trav_X]

2 minutes ago, Starelementpoke said:

I´ve got friends with AMD cards, and I have one myself. Literally not a single problem ever. Quite literally, you get lucky and sometimes you don´t. You happen to have friends that haven´t gotten lucky, I have. Nvidia´s technology has jack to do with it.

Alright thanks  I'm gonna be getting a card around the time when the two new cards from each company come out, and I'm not gonna fanboy to NVIDIA, I'll be looking for the best card for my needs and my budget.