AMD video cards do not support all features DirectX 12 – update
Current AMD video cards do not support all the features of DirectX 12, a chief executive of the company confirms to the Computer Base site. It is mainly about support for better effects. Nvidia’s 900 series does have this support on board, but lacks other features.
An AMD CEO confirms to the German site Computer Base that the current Radeon video cards do not support all the features of DirectX 12. Cards from the 900 series from Nvidia do have support on board for the functionality of the new graphics API that AMD still lacks, but those cards lack other features. AMD lacks support for the so-called feature level 12_1. the Radeon cards get stuck at feature level 12_0. Level 12_1 mainly provides functions that allow for nicer effects. DirectX 12’s major announced enhancement, the ability to drive graphics hardware more efficiently, is available on all graphics cards that support DirectX 12.
DirectX 12 is divided into feature levels, levels with a number of prescribed functions that must be supported by hardware. The lowest level, feature level 11_0, mainly contains performance improvements compared to the DirectX 11 API. The higher feature levels 11_1 and 12_0 require support for additional performance-enhancing features. Feature level 12_1, the highest level, also requires support for Volume Tiled Resources and Conservative Raster, among others. The former could speed up smoke and fluid simulations, while Conservative Raster enables accurate ray-traced shadows.
The highest feature level is currently only supported by Nvidia cards from the Geforce 900 series. AMD cards based on the second-generation Graphics Core Next architecture, such as the R9 290X, R9 290 and R9 285, can handle feature level 12_0. First-generation GCN cards like the R9 280 and older Nvidia cards from the 400 series onwards are stuck at feature level 11_1 and 11_0, respectively. The difference in support is in lower resource limits for the older Nvidia cards; their AMD counterparts are more flexible in memory addressing. The 900 series is also less flexible in this respect than GCN cards, so that technically they are not fully DirectX 12 compliant.
AMD will soon release new cards, but according to rumors, a large part of that lineup consists of rebrands of current models. Therefore, it seems likely that a large part of the 300 series will not support the highest feature level either. The new top model, the R9 390X, is expected to receive a newly developed chip. AMD has not yet said anything about the DirectX 12 functions that the upcoming card will support.
Whether Nvidia will gain much from the full support of DirectX 12 features in its cards remains to be seen. Game developers generally try to develop for the largest possible audience; given the limited number of cards with full DirectX 12 support, it may not be interesting yet to spend a lot of development time on features that few people can use. In addition, the Xbox One and Playstation 4, both equipped with GPUs based on a GCN-1.0 design, also have no hardware support on board for the features that are part of feature level 12_1. Perhaps Nvidia could interest game developers through its Gameworks program to make use of the additional functionality.
Update 15:59: Following a post in CJ’s Radeon Info & News Discussion topic, as mentioned in the comments, a nuance has been added that clarifies the DirectX 12 support of Nvidia cards.
Update 2, 18.25: Further clarifies that the Nvidia cards also lack support for features.