Yup that's right folks DirectX 11.2 has been announced, and guess what? It's restricted to windows 8.1 and nextgen consoles. One of the new features is called 'tiled resources' (I'll include a video about that below) and it allows the video card to use system ram to improve textures which is really something great for PC gamers.
Tiled resources video:
Run down of features:
- HLSL shader linking
- Inbox HLSL compiler
- GPU overlay support
- DirectX tiled resources
- Direct3D low-latency presentation API
- DXGI Trim API and map default buffer
- Frame buffer scaling
- Multithreading with SurfaceImageSource
- Interactive Microsoft DirectX composition of XAML visual elements
- Direct2D batching with SurfaceImageSource
Now back to my article, I'm focusing on the tiled resources part here, the great news about it for PC gamers is that it'll finally allow some of that extra ram you have to be actually be put to good use. I am not saying to go out and buy a ridiculous amount of ram as games will have to support DirectX 11.2 anyways. As far as nextgen consoles go it'll do the same for them but since you can't upgrade the ram on those consoles there is only so much it'll be able to do. It'll mainly help out the PC gamers like myself that have some extra ram that's never getting used.
The other benefit is that how much memory your GPU has won't be as big a factor because again if you've got extra ram it can compensate for it (I am not recommending you go out and buy some cheap GPU instead). Now how all of this will translate to actual games remains to be seen but it should be interesting to watch this unfold as Microsoft is trying to change the playing field yet again.
Oh and Mac users won't be able to benefit from this, but hey if you're gaming you shouldn't be using a Mac anyway
Thoughts and opinions? Leave them below
