Tomshardware has reported an interesting rumor that – if it’s proven to be legit – may change everything we know about multi-GPU configurations. Similarly to AMD’s Mantle, DX12 may offer support for SFR; a technique via which developers will be able to manually, or automatically, divide the texture and geometry data between the GPUs, and all of the GPUs can then work together to work on each frame. In short, it will also let developers take full advantage of the available VRAM found in multi-GPU setups. And while this is great, it’s not what really excited it us about this latest DX12 rumor.
As Tomshardware suggested, DX12 will support multiple GPU architectures, meaning that PC users will be able to setup multi-GPU systems with both NVIDIA and AMD cards.
“If you like Nvidia’s GeForce Experience software and 3D Vision, but you want to use AMD’s TrueAudio and FreeSync, chances are you’ll be able to do that when DirectX 12 comes around. What will likely happen is that one card will operate as the master card, while the other will be used for additional power.”
Moreover – and as Tomshardware noted – developers will have to dive deep and write specific code in order to take advantage of DX12’s new features. Therefore, it remains to be seen how friendly Microsoft’s API will be to developers, and whether or not they will support its most advanced features.
Now this is really exciting news, though we have to wonder whether NVIDIA and AMD will let Microsoft do such a thing. From a consumer’s perspective, this is an amazing feature but from NVIDIA’s/AMD’s perspective, this is a feature that may very well backfire and have a huge impact on their sales.
DX12 will be fully unveiled in a couple of days at GDC 2015. And for the time being, take everything you read in this article with a grain of salt.
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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