DirectX 12 and AMD 7970

[Coltaine]

So, for a laugh I decided to test if my old crotchety XFX 7970 GHz edition could reap any benefits from DirectX12. Now, from what I've been able to gather all GCN AMD GPUs should support DX12, even if AMD lists the 7000 series as "laptop" cards these days.

 

According to dxdiag DirectX12 is installed however it only shows my card functioning up to DX11.1, as such no games are drawing any frames on screen if DX12 is set as the renderer in game!(AKA just a black screen) I have no idea why this doesn't work, it should. It's worth mentioning that I am really bad at googling.

 

Anyway, here's a random video that apparently shows that dx12 is working on a 7970: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2gmLS8QLm4 the menus are in Cyrillic so I have no idea, but the performance number overlay says dx11 and dx12 so, I guess? Obviously not much of a performance increase, but I'd like to test for myself.

 

Is it simply a case of the card being so old that it doesn't support DX12 on a hardware level and that's why it's not showing in dxdiag properly? Could it be because I've messed too much with Win10 to minimise the level of big-brother going on? Should i just give up on my dreams of gaining maybe 0.5fps in some DX12 enabled games?

 

Anyway, system specs:

 

http://imgur.com/a/SQWlP

 

Pretty crusty and old, but still. Again GPU-Z tells me that DX12 is supported but has 11.1 in parenthesis.. So what the heck is going on? Why does it not work?

 

Thank you for your time and any replies!

 

P.S. Current ETA for planned new HW T-4 months.

[NicholasNicholasNicholas]

20 minutes ago, Coltaine said:

So, for a laugh I decided to test if my old crotchety XFX 7970 GHz edition could reap any benefits from DirectX12. Now, from what I've been able to gather all GCN AMD GPUs should support DX12, even if AMD lists the 7000 series as "laptop" cards these days.

 

According to dxdiag DirectX12 is installed however it only shows my card functioning up to DX11.1, as such no games are drawing any frames on screen if DX12 is set as the renderer in game!(AKA just a black screen) I have no idea why this doesn't work, it should. It's worth mentioning that I am really bad at googling.

 

Anyway, here's a random video that apparently shows that dx12 is working on a 7970: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2gmLS8QLm4 the menus are in Cyrillic so I have no idea, but the performance number overlay says dx11 and dx12 so, I guess? Obviously not much of a performance increase, but I'd like to test for myself.

 

Is it simply a case of the card being so old that it doesn't support DX12 on a hardware level and that's why it's not showing in dxdiag properly? Could it be because I've messed too much with Win10 to minimise the level of big-brother going on? Should i just give up on my dreams of gaining maybe 0.5fps in some DX12 enabled games?

 

Anyway, system specs:

 

http://imgur.com/a/SQWlP

 

Pretty crusty and old, but still. Again GPU-Z tells me that DX12 is supported but has 11.1 in parenthesis.. So what the heck is going on? Why does it not work?

 

Thank you for your time and any replies!

 

P.S. Current ETA for planned new HW T-4 months.

all gcn supports dx12. have you tried looking in your drivers?

[xAcid9]

16 minutes ago, Coltaine said:

Pretty crusty and old, but still. Again GPU-Z tells me that DX12 is supported but has 11.1 in parenthesis.. So what the heck is going on? Why does it not work?

 

Thank you for your time and any replies!

 

P.S. Current ETA for planned new HW T-4 months.

7970 support DX12 but with feature level 11_1 only.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_levels_in_Direct3D

 

Try use older driver.

[Coltaine]

Just now, xAcid9 said:

7970 support DX12 but with feature level 11_1 only.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_levels_in_Direct3D

 

Try use older driver.

That seems counter-intuitive. Shouldn't the more recent drivers have all the same support just with even more support on top of that?

2 minutes ago, Nickathom said:

all gcn supports dx12. have you tried looking in your drivers?

I have been looking at my driver and in the crimson software, couldn't find anything.

[xAcid9]

1 minute ago, Coltaine said:

That seems counter-intuitive. Shouldn't the more recent drivers have all the same support just with even more support on top of that?

I have been looking at my driver and in the crimson software, couldn't find anything.

I know, maybe bug or something? Try use Crimson 16.9.1 since the video also use that version.

[Cyracus]

6 minutes ago, Coltaine said:

That seems counter-intuitive. Shouldn't the more recent drivers have all the same support just with even more support on top of that?

not always, a new driver may fix certain things and break others accidentally

[Levent]

AMD drivers are always shit, I know for a fact that HD7XXX (gcn cards) series and confirm they support dx12 as I played few DX12 games with my 7850. Check your if your card supports DX12 with GPUZ.

EDIT: You might want to do a clean clean install with DDU.

[Coltaine]

3 minutes ago, Levent said:

AMD drivers are always shit, I know for a fact that HD7XXX (gcn cards) series and confirm they support dx12 as I played few DX12 games with my 7850. Check your if your card supports DX12 with GPUZ

I did, there's pictures of GPUZ...

 

AMDs drivers haven't been worse than Nvidias recently from what I've been able to tell, and AMDs drivers are far better at DX12 than Nvidias have been. Particular in the way the use the CPU. (Which opens a whole other can of worms regarding intel's lead in gaming because of stronger IPC, but that's another discussion for another time.)

46 minutes ago, xAcid9 said:

I know, maybe bug or something? Try use Crimson 16.9.1 since the video also use that version.

Yeah, I'd rather not have to mess around with re-installing drivers. I guess I'll just not bother since it'll only run in emulated mode anyway. Thanks for your time though.

41 minutes ago, Cyracus said:

not always, a new driver may fix certain things and break others accidentally

I think I've tried this before on older drivers and it didn't work then either, this was on DX:MD which did have many complaints about DX12 not working when I was actually playing it. But, again I think I'll just give up on this and just enjoy DX12 when I build my next rig instead.

[Levent]

Just now, Coltaine said:

I did, there's pictures of GPUZ...

 

AMDs drivers haven't been worse than Nvidias recently from what I've been able to tell, and AMDs drivers are far better at DX12 than Nvidias have been. Particular in the way the use the CPU. (Which opens a whole other can of worms regarding intel's lead in gaming because of stronger IPC, but that's another discussion for another time.)

Yeah, I'd rather not have to mess around with re-installing drivers. I guess I'll just not bother since it'll only run in emulated mode anyway. Thanks for your time though.

I think I've tried this before on older drivers and it didn't work then either, this was on DX:MD which did have many complaints about DX12 not working when I was actually playing it. But, again I think I'll just give up on this and just enjoy DX12 when I build my next rig instead.

you might want to do a complete AMD driver cleanup with DDU then reinstall the latest WHQL driver, if that doesnt work you gotta reinstall windows because your card supports DX12.

[Coltaine]

Just now, Levent said:

you might want to do a complete AMD driver cleanup with DDU then reinstall the latest WHQL driver, if that doesnt work you gotta reinstall windows because your card supports DX12.

I did do a complete DDU clean and fresh install of the GPU drivers when I installed the 17.7.1 drivers, finally caved and installed ReLive, it's been nagging at me for long enough. Anyway, as I mentioned to the other guys, I'll just not bother, it's an old card, it'll only run DX12 features emulated and it's not that long until this GPU is in the recycle bin.