GTX 970M & DirectX 12

[topleya]

Hi,

Just ordered a new laptop with the GTX 970M in it. My question is about DirectX 12 and what I should expect from it.

From my limited understanding, when DX12 arrives with Windows 10, the GTX 970M will support DX12. Should I be expecting my current games to have an increase in FPS due to DX12?
Would the game have to support DX12 before it makes a difference?

 

[Spuff]

Drying myself off from the lower-level abstraction layer, it's unclear what DX12 will do for GPU performance. The stated benefit so far is better CPU efficiency, apparently up to 50% better, which may have a knock-on affect for GPUs.
I think a game would have to ask a GPU to do anything it could not do before because of DX12, so it would have to be programmed into the game. We may aside from that see some fps improvement for games from slicker system performance ('closer to the metal'), I don't know.
Anyhow, the 900 series purport to be set to make as much use of DX12 as any GPUs can. It's not like we have a better alternative in this regard.
I don't think anyone, outside perhaps of a Microsoft cabal, knows exactly what to expect. That's the tantaliser.
But I'm not an inside expert, maybe someone can tell us.

 

[Wozza63]

On the first games that support it, I'd expect a slight bump in performance, maybe 5-10% extra. With more experience of DX12 they will be capable of bringing better performance a year after and at that point expect at most 20% performance improvement in most scenarios if even that.

 

[TheGSL]

As others suggest, I would a) wait until dx12 arrives and see what real world benefits it actually brings and
b) expect a very modest increase really. M$ are talking it up, as does everyone about their products. I have
a 970 gtx myself, they are a decent card, especially for 1080p, overclockable and if dx12 gets a bit more out
of them then fair enough, but it will only be a bit. 5 to 10 percent sounds about right, maybe a bit generous.
We'll see.

 

[Wozza63]

It sounds like it also depends on the type of game. I think games like Total War and Arma which require heavily on the CPU more than the GPU could really benefit from it because the main goal of DX12 was to reduce CPU overheads.