What it Means for Gamers

Free performance boosts are always welcome when it comes to gaming. Showcased by Microsoft at the Game Developers' Conference 2015, DirectX 12 aims to bring exactly that.

DirectX 12 brings with it Direct3D 12, which will allow for richer scenes, more objects and maximum utilisation of modern graphics cards. Fortunately, this doesn't apply only for the uber-modern gaming rigs—Direct3D 12 will be functional across all Microsoft devices, namely phones, tablets, laptops, desktops and even the gaming console, Xbox One. So all applications and games running on these devices will benefit from the implementation of DirectX 12.

The most welcomed advantage of DirectX 12 is the low level hardware access it provides compared to its previous iterations. This will allow for significant improvement in multithreaded scaling in games and will allow all DirectX 12 applications to utilise the available CPU power to a higher potential than before. The implications of this is more dramatic than it seems – it will mean that CPU bottlenecks will be harder to hit, and that a higher number of older CPUs will be powerful enough to play the latest games and to power top of the line graphics cards. This will essentially result in cost-cutting in two ways – sufficiency of inexpensive CPUs will reduce the initial cost of a computer, and current CPUs getting a new lease on life will postpone a much feared upgrade.

DirectX 12 will increase utilisation of GPU power as well. This means that games will see a boost in performance even if the graphics card is the bottleneck. To back this claim, Microsoft has revealed performance numbers of Fable Legends when ran on both DirectX 12 and DirectX 11. According to them, DirectX 12 provides a whopping 20% increase in performance (53FPS vs 44.5FPS in the same test) versus DirectX 11. This will, very similarly to CPU scenario, reduce expenses on the graphics card side of things.

Another laudable feat of DirectX 12 is enabling console level efficiency on PC. Till now, there has been a major discrepancy between utilisation of the potential of the hardware of a console and that of a PC. This meant that consoles required much less hardware power than a PC to run a game at the same settings. With the introduction of efficient low-level APIs as on consoles, the advent of DirectX 12 hopes to change that situation. 

Stuck with an old graphics card? Fear not, because you are in luck. Nvidia will allow support for DirectX 12 on all of its DirectX 11 graphics cards, going as back as its 400 series of graphics cards. All these perks are not too far away, given the fact that games based on DirectX 12 are currently aimed for a holiday '15 launch.