GCN can't support Conservative Rasterization or Rasterizer Ordered Views

[nvgpu]

https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/direct3d-feature-levels-discussion.56575/page-4#post-1833996

Hey gang, as some of you may know the first public beta of the Win10 SDK is out. As you'd imagine, it includes an updated copy of the dxcapsviewer. Unfortunately Win10 at this time still does not have definitions for FLs newer than 11_1, so it's not possible to nail down FLs through dxdiag or dxcapsviewer.

However the latest version of the caps viewer does include a few more feature flags than previous versions, including some tier listings. Since I already have a Win10 test bed spun up for something else, I quickly grabbed the caps viewer output for the major AMD and NVIDIA archs.

http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/dx12/fls/GTX980.png

http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/dx12/fls/290X.png
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/dx12/fls/285.png
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/dx12/fls/7970.png

That settles the matter and DX Caps Viewer is always right. DX Caps Viewer vindicated what I said, GCN can't support Direct3D12 fully.

Maxwell2 is Tier 3 Tiled Resources(GCN1.1/1.2 Tier 2 only and GCN 1.0 Tier 1 only) and fully supports Conservative Rasterization & Rasterizer Ordered Views.

 

[casiofx]

https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/direct3d-feature-levels-discussion.56575/page-4#post-1833996



That settles the matter and DX Caps Viewer is always right. DX Caps Viewer vindicated what I said, GCN can't support Direct3D12 fully.

Maxwell2 is Tier 3 Tiled Resources(GCN1.1/1.2 Tier 2 only and GCN 1.0 Tier 1 only) and fully supports Conservative Rasterization & Rasterizer Ordered Views.

So?

DirectX 12 games aren't even in the market yet.

AND you're comparing a card which is out on October 2013 vs a card that went out on september 2014.

 

[crisium]

Well, 290X is fast enough to last a while. Same with 295x2 which beats the Titan X when crossfire is working. Plus the rumours of rebadges for anything before 390. It's worth discussion.

 

[ShintaiDK]

So in short, GCN doesnt offer what some people kept claiming (CR could just be done in shader an DX would support it.). Not to mention the nonsense someone added to those photoshopped slides.

Not surprised at all.

 

[therealnickdanger]

I'm not sure what the big deal is. By the time fully-equipped DX12 games come out, who's going to want to use a "old and slow" DX11 card anyway? Let's not forget that game devs always find sneaky ways to work around rendering problems and GPU vendors are also pretty clever with drivers.

Until that Steam hardware survey swings dramatically toward DX12, I'm guessing this will impact very few actual gamers.

edit - the NV 1xxx-series and AMD 4xx-series will probably be the first full-DX12 series anyway.

 

[Keysplayr]

^ Agreed. What would real world impact be? If anything?
Do we even know what features of DX12 GNC1.2 would not be able to perform? Is it some obscure feature that no game deb would ever use anyway? All these need to be looked at before condemning GNC1.2 for DX12.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Was anyone expecting it would? If it would be able to do it we'd have seen it in the mantle games.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I'm not sure what the big deal is. By the time fully-equipped DX12 games come out, who's going to want to use a "old and slow" DX11 card anyway? Let's not forget that game devs always find sneaky ways to work around rendering problems and GPU vendors are also pretty clever with drivers.

Until that Steam hardware survey swings dramatically toward DX12, I'm guessing this will impact very few actual gamers.

edit - the NV 1xxx-series and AMD 4xx-series will probably be the first full-DX12 series anyway.

What new GPU uarchs (Not counting rebrands and recycled uarchs.) do you think will come before DX12 games?

 

[Silverforce11]

12.1 features were designed for Maxwell 2nd gen.

What about DX12 features such as:
Resource Binding
Tile Resources
Typed UAV

It seems to be missing in Kepler and 1st gen Maxwell!

So if games use DX12, what would that imply for those GPUs that fail to support it?
Likewise for games that specifically use DX12.1 features?

Edit: OP's statement is actually incorrect: "GCN can't support Direct3D12 fully." GCN does support DX12 fully. It does NOT support DX12.1. It seems Kepler doesn't even support DX12!

 

[Mondozei]

We won't see games with the full DX12 support until several years from now. We'll see what the 390X does and what the 400-series does.

Also worth remembering that 290X is just 15% below 980 after the Omega drivers at 1440p. Which is pretty shocking.

 

[destrekor]

What new GPU uarchs (Not counting rebrands and recycled uarchs.) do you think will come before DX12 games?

From Nvidia: Pascal
From AMD: whatever they have in the works for 14nm

 

[dacostafilipe]

You accidentally sneaky missed something when quoting Ryan

(These are beta drivers on a not even beta OS, so as usual the standard disclaimers about results being subject to change do apply. Especially if not all features are currently being exposed in these drivers)

PS: I'm not saying that it's not true, just that it's an important point.

 

[Udgnim]

my interest in DX12 is really just focused around the CPU improvements

some of the best looking games are based around modded DX9 games

GTA 4, Crysis, Skyrim

DX12 feature support is just epeen swinging fodder for fan boys right now

 

[ShintaiDK]

 

[monstercameron]

my interest in DX12 is really just focused around the CPU improvements

some of the best looking games are based around modded DX9 games

GTA 4, Crysis, Skyrim

DX12 feature support is just epeen swinging fodder for fan boys right now

I dont think so, new algorithms and techniques will make games look and perform even better.

 

[AntonioHG]

my interest in DX12 is really just focused around the CPU improvements

some of the best looking games are based around modded DX9 games

GTA 4, Crysis, Skyrim

DX12 feature support is just epeen swinging fodder for fan boys right now

I have to say Skryim and GTA4 are looking pretty dated these days, no matter how much modding's been done.

The stuff coming down is far better looking than any of those games mentioned.

 

[Mindtaker]

Where is Thatbuzzkiller now? And I was the troll for him..

 

[3DVagabond]

^ Agreed. What would real world impact be? If anything?
Do we even know what features of DX12 GNC1.2 would not be able to perform? Is it some obscure feature that no game deb would ever use anyway? All these need to be looked at before condemning GNC1.2 for DX12.

FWIU, there are features that were put in that were added by nVidia and they are specific to their architecture, at the moment.

Edit: I see that Solverforce11 explained it netter.

 

[boozzer]

wow, the smear campaign is in full motion. right on.

 

[Cloudfire777]

Can anyone do a ELI5 about this?

 

[alcoholbob]

In a few years 390X and Titan X will barely be able to handle DX12 games on medium details so it's largely irrelevant.

 

[SPBHM]

it's funny, but I've been playing 3 games released this month, 2 are DX9 only, 1 I had to force DX9 mode because it was crashing in DX11 mode lol

in any case, I would expect Maxwell (the 900 series version) to have higher compatibility with DX12 than old GCN cards, the more interesting question is about future GCN GPUs to be released this year.

 

[ViRGE]

12.1 features were designed for Maxwell 2nd gen.

What about DX12 features such as:
Resource Binding
Tile Resources
Typed UAV

It seems to be missing in Kepler and 1st gen Maxwell!

So if games use DX12, what would that imply for those GPUs that fail to support it?
Likewise for games that specifically use DX12.1 features?

Edit: OP's statement is actually incorrect: "GCN can't support Direct3D12 fully." GCN does support DX12 fully. It does NOT support DX12.1. It seems Kepler doesn't even support DX12!

You guys are confusing DirectX and Feature Levels again.

Fermi/Kepler/Maxwell1/Maxwell2 all support DX12. As does GCN1.0/1.1/1.2 and Intel Gen7.5/Gen8.

To support DirectX 12, all you need to be able to do is to support the features required to use the low-level API (these involve command buffers, memory access modes, etc). Which is why even Fermi supports DX12.

However to support Feature Level 12_0 you need to support certain capabilities with tiled resources and resource bindings, etc. And to support FL 12_1 you need to add CR and ROVs to the list.

There is no DX12.1. There is only DX12. And DX12 supports many feature levels.

 

[StereoPixel]

The DX12 slide from brazilian source. Is it fake? Or what?

 

[Red Hawk]

So GCN doesn't support DirectX 12 to the full extent that Maxwell does. Is anyone actually surprised by this? It's a GPU architecture that debuted 3 years ago, whose latest iteration is over a year old, vs a GPU architecture that's less than a year old. Anyone who was expecting or advocating that GCN would fully support DirectX 12 was being either unreasonable or had wishful thinking, respectively.

And it's not a huge deal. We're a ways off from seeing DirectX 12 games hit the market. Plenty of time for AMD to come out with products that fully support DX12. AMD has said that its hardware will support DirectX 12, which is still true to an extent, as a lot of the improvements DX 12 brings to the table will be usable by GCN.

In short, not something worth getting your knickers in a twist over.