A couple of hours ago, we informed you about Mantle being exclusive to the PC. As Microsoft revealed on its blog, Mantle is not present on Xbox One. Not only that, but Microsoft has also detailed some new features that are being implemented in Direct3D 11 for Windows (kudos to our reader ‘Sid Spyker’ for spotting what passed under our radar).
As Microsoft pointed out, the new version of DX11 will offer improved performance when accessing memory shared between CPU and GPU when executing compute workloads. Though we are not sure whether this will make Direct3D 11 rival AMD’s Mantle in terms of performance, it’s great to see something like that coming from MS.
Here are the new features that will be coming to Direct3D 11:
-The introduction of Tiled Resources, a new hardware feature for efficiently managing enormous volumes of data on the GPU more efficiently, enabling unprecedented levels of detail as well as more immersive open-world gameplay without making gamers sit through annoying “level loads”.
-Excellent tools in Visual Studio for analyzing and debugging code built using Direct3D 11
-Improved performance when accessing memory shared between CPU and GPU when executing compute workloads.
-Programming model improvements, including advances in HLSL that enables developers to write more manageable shader code, and reduce runtime cycles spent on shader compilation.
-Improved performance and efficiency on mobile form factors by reducing presentation overhead and enabling hardware accelerated overlays & scalers. This enables better game performance on high-resolution displays, and improved rendering latency.
These features will most probably appear on DX11.2, so it will be interesting to see whether developers will start using this new iteration of this popular API, and whether current GPUs will be able to support these features.
Enjoy and stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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