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Discussion DX12 Full Compatability chart

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In Depth
u5aCwAC.png

http://i.imgur.com/u5aCwAC.png

*Subject to change based on current Windows 10 drivers support cannot go down but some features may be added or emulated on future drivers.

It seems like Maxwell actually has better binding tiers than previously advertised but still inferior to GCN 1.0 even

tl;dr
  • Tier 1: INTEL Haswell e Broadwell, NVIDIA Fermi
  • Tier 2: NVIDIA Kepler, Maxwell 1.0 and Maxwell 2.0 (Maxwell 2.0 still ahead of Kepler), Nvidia Pascal
  • Tier 3: AMD GCN 1.0 & higher, Intel Skylake
  • Feature level 11.0: NVIDIA Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell 1.0
  • Feature level 11.1: AMD GCN 1.0, INTEL Haswell and Broadwell
  • Feature level 12.0: AMD GCN 1.1, GCN 1.2
  • Feature level 12.1: NVIDIA Maxwell 2.0, Nvidia Pascal, Intel Skylake & AMD GCN 1.4
DX12 Feature levels are not really relevant as long as 11.1 support or higher exists.
11.0 is most important, 11.1 is semi important but not much 12.0 not really anything and 12.1 is nothing. DX 12 feature level 11.0 is whats needed for the features we care about while all others are optional features rarely used by devs.

Wikipedia article has been getting updated decently quick
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct3D#Direct3D_12_levels


Up to date thread discussion on feature levels
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/direct3d-feature-levels-discussion.56575/page-13


If you are asking what cards support DX12 games that would be any 400 series or newer Nvidia card, Intel Haswell igpu's, AMD Radeon cards 7000 or newer. However many features will be limited on those cards they do gain most important benefits.
 
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12_1 definitely has some interesting features that could improve both efficiency and performance. The most notable is volume tiled-resources because it can reduce memory usage. NVIDIA could implement it into GameWorks and really capitalize on Fiji only having 4GB RAM. Conserative rasterization could also really help them with stuff like HairWorks, assuming it works well.
 
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12_1 definitely has some interesting features that could improve both efficiency and performance. The most notable is volume tiled-resources because it can reduce memory usage. NVIDIA could implement it into GameWorks and really capitalize on Fiji only having 4GB RAM. Conserative rasterization could also really help them with stuff like HairWorks, assuming it works well.

Tiled resources are not part of 12_1 you are thinking of 12_0.
But Tier 2 minimum Tiled resources are required in 12_0.

This is the only area Nvidia actually wins as Maxwell is Tier 3 (Full Heaps) Which actually seems like a huge win for 980 ti over the Titan X (good luck trying to use all that 12gb vram). Due to Nvidia bad GPU scaling probably not recommended to 980 TI SLI anyways so its not like 980 ti sli will be amazing due to tiled resources but will still be a beefy single card and more efficient memory usage means this 6gb is going to be way more than enough for anything.

GCN 1.0 has volume tiled resources and has had it for a long time even on DX11 games as have Nvidia.

Feature level 12_1 requirements are only Conservative Rasterization (which the old MS slide said GCN had but right now on w10 GCN does not) and Rasterizer order views which old MS slide said AMD had but right now on 10 GCN does not it is possible GCN does not have a full tier but only emulation of conservative rasterization but I am unsure on if Tasterization is supported or will be supported.

12_1 seems to be specifically targeted as a goal by Nvidia as they put bare minimum for each feature level and did not have extra features. Asynchronous shaders for example matters more to me than Conservative Rasterization but that is not on a DX12 feature level just as an optional AMD exclusive.

Binding tiers are more important as they are how well you can do something Tier 2 is pretty much recommended but Tier 1 is minimal so GCN 1.0 is going to have weaker Tiled Resources which is kinda fine as the 1.0 is only lower end cards which are not bottlenecked by vram unless you were someone who was hoping to have CF 280X run games at high resolution it won't affect as much. Resource binding tiers even on a 980 ti though will be hitting Nvidia hard compared to AMD's.

Resource Binding tier 2 is a huge disadvantage for Maxwell V2 yes its ahead of Skylake on Binding Tiers but its behind GCN 1.0 even.

You cannot benefit from Fiji only having 4gb ram because the compression benefits of 1.2 arch and high bandwidth that would still be far superior to 6gb (not to mention would destroy performance of 970/980 worse).

The 390X is having 8gb GDDR5 as well which is directly competing against the 980 it would be crazy to do so. And since the 390X is on 1.2 tessellation won't really do as much damage here. by time of Winter Isles & Pascal it won't really be possible for Nvidia to hurt AMD performance as both cards will have similar everything we already see it with Compute & Tesselation (Nvidia catching up on Compute, AMD has caught up on Pixel fill and is catching up on tessellation).
 
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Tiled resources are not part of 12_1 you are thinking of 12_0.
Yes, but 12_1 has volume tiled resources which adds a third dimension to standard TR.

You cannot benefit from Fiji only having 4gb ram because the compression benefits of 1.2 arch and high bandwidth that would still be far superior to 6gb
I'm not saying it's definitely going to happen, but it's a possibility. Right now, most games won't need a frame-buffer larger than 4GB. The issue is when higher resolution gaming starts to really take off and games start to really utilize the full capacity of available memory. Color compression and high bandwidth is great for performance, but the capacity still needs to be taken into account.

I'm not saying these differences are going to be significant. However, it seems like NVIDIA has a big focus on 12_1 and I would not be surprised if they leverage it in their APIs.
 
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Yes, but 12_1 has volume tiled resources which adds a third dimension to standard TR.


I'm not saying it's definitely going to happen, but it's a possibility. Right now, most games won't need a frame-buffer larger than 4GB. The issue is when higher resolution gaming starts to really take off and games start to really utilize the full capacity of available memory. Color compression and high bandwidth is great for performance, but the capacity still needs to be taken into account.

I'm not saying these differences are going to be significant. However, it seems like NVIDIA has a big focus on 12_1 and I would not be surprised if they leverage it in their APIs.

Volume Tiled resources is not part of 12_1

Its DX12 feature level but its DX11_3 not 12_1
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn914605(v=vs.85).aspx

AMD only supports Tier 2 of tiled resources so I am unsure how much of an advantage this could give to Nvidia however AMD's bandwidth increases on even GCN cards seems to be a bigger impact (The 970 has a pathetic 198 GB/s bandwidth tiled resources can save memory however it won't be helpful on low bandwidth cards.) I don't see Tier 3 tiled resources being a big impact except on cards which are limited by vram which we don't see the last cards really bottlenecked by vram but more in terms of bandwidth.

Most feature levels on DX11 never got used whats more important is how much resources they can allocate to them (Tier 3 is full heaps with no limits).

Resource binding not tier 3 is a huge downfall for Nvidia but DX12 probably won't take off until winter this year where they will already be announcing Pascal and saying f*** all you who bought Maxwell we just wanted to take your money Pascal will be the first Tier 3 DX12 card we release.
 
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Volume Tiled resources is not part of 12_1

Its DX12 feature level but its DX11_3 not 12_1
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn914605(v=vs.85).aspx
I think you are confusing versions and feature levels. DirectX 11.3 will have VTR due to it's use of the 11_1 feature level. VTR is also a feature seen in DX12 because of it's included in the 12_1 feature level. Since AMD won't be able to utilize 12_1 features, AMD cards won't be able to have DX12 with VTR. If you really wanted VTR on an AMD card, you would have to drop down to DX11. Of course, this would take away a lot of the awesome features in DX12, most notably the low-level API and resource management.

I don't see Tier 3 tiled resources being a big impact except on cards which are limited by vram which we don't see the last cards really bottlenecked by vram but more in terms of bandwidth.
Yeah, capacity doesn't seem to be an issue now. However, games like GTA V are starting to push the envelope of memory usage. I'm just saying capacity could become more relevant as games evolve. The real question is when this will start to happen and whether AMD will have support for 12_1 by that time (or if they have higher quantity HBM. I assume by the time NVIDIA releases Pascal we'll see higher capacity HBM).
 
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I think you are confusing versions and feature levels. DirectX 11.3 will have VTR due to it's use of the 11_1 feature level. VTR is also a feature seen in DX12 because of it's included in the 12_1 feature level. Since AMD won't be able to utilize 12_1 features, AMD cards won't be able to have DX12 with VTR. If you really wanted VTR on an AMD card, you would have to drop down to DX11. Of course, this would take away a lot of the awesome features in DX12, most notably the low-level API and resource management.


Yeah, capacity doesn't seem to be an issue now. However, games like GTA V are starting to push the envelope of memory usage. I'm just saying capacity could become more relevant as games evolve. The real question is when this will start to happen and whether AMD will have support for 12_1 by that time (or if they have higher quantity HBM. I assume by the time NVIDIA releases Pascal we'll see higher capacity HBM).

Not having a feature level doesn't mean you don't have any of the features in the feature level.
Kepler is only feature level 11_1 because it doesn't support proper UAV channels however it does have resource binding level of 11_1 so while its the same feature level as Fermi its still far ahead of Fermi on both features & tiers.

Volume Tiled Resources is not a feature of 12_1 but a separate thing Nvidia has due to tiled resources tier 3 vs AMD tier 2 it is unsure if AMD will support VTR (hardware or Emulated) but they will support Tier 2 Tiled Resources. You do not add a feature level in your game you add the features the feature levels are just developer marketing speech.

Some missing boxes may be added in future for some companies and some features may have emulation.

Right now it seems GCN 1.1 & GCN 1.2 are tied for best support of DX12 while Maxwell V2 has highest feature level of DX12 but neither comes close to having "full DX12 support"

Kepler is pretty weak on DX12 support.


Volume Tiled resources do not add a big benefit over regular 2d tiled resources compared to other features of DX12 sure you will have better memory management.

For Nvidia to bottleneck games based on tiled resources it would have to make things very intensive on memory bandwidth which would hurt the 970/980 more than it hurts AMD and many users have 8gb 290X.

Remember the 290X has 350gb/s bandwidth vs the 980's 220 & the 970's 198 limiting memory would hurt them more while its true the 980ti/titan x have 330gb/s they would have to kill 970/980 in order to give 980 ti a bigger edge over the GCN 1.1 and GCN 1.2 is having the 380/390 and fiji series released soon.

If you make games have insanely large uncompressed textures to bottleneck Vram limits you are going to be hurting your cards more than your competition. 
Thank god I have 2nd generation maxwell :biggrin:
GCN 1.1 has better DX12 support than 2nd gen maxwell :tongue:
 
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Updated thread with resource heap added.

Maxwell V2 still does not have 11_1 but has 11_0, 12_0, 12_1
 
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