With the release of the DX12 API, we decided to take a look at some old games. Given the fact that we’ve now equipped our PC gaming system with an NVIDIA GTX980Ti, we pretty much managed to avoid any possible GPU limitations. And our findings in a couple of games our quite interesting to say the least.
Let’s start with Batman: Arkham City. Batman: Arkham City is one of the few games that use DX11 and take advantage of NVIDIA’s PhysX. And as we can see, due to the increased draw calls, the API is unable to feed the GPU, resulting in underwhelming performance. As you can see, none of our CPU cores are maxed out, basically indicating an API limitation and nothing more.
The same behaviour can be witnessed even in some DX10 game that use NVIDIA’s PhysX, like CRYOSTASIS. As we can see, both our CPU and GPU are underused when PhysX is enabled. Do note that this happens only with GPU PhysX effects, and not with normal CPU PhysX effects that other games use.
As some developers have already claimed, DX11 is already limiting their games. And this is indeed true. This, however, happens and in all previous DX APIs. Both DX10 and DX9 limit performance when being pushed to their limits. Below you can see Capcom’s Resident Evil 6 being limited by the DX9 API when there are a lot of characters on screen.
The same thing happens and in Hitman: Absolution. As we can see, both our CPU and GPU were not used to their fullest, which basically explains why IO Interactive decided to be among the first to implement DX12 in its titles.
The latest HITMAN game also features scenes in which the DX11 API limits performance. Below you can find a scene from the benchmark, showing the performance difference between DX11 and DX12.
All in all, and while the first DX12 games are not that impressive, DX12 is a step towards the right direction as some games were already limited by DX11. And that’s a fact.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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But Resident Evil 6 is a DX9 game…
By the way, it’s a pity that its benckmark tool looks better than the game itself. Capcom should have put more effort and made this game in DX11, just like Lost Planet 2.
Yeap, title fixed to indicate that all previous DX APIs limited games.
I wish they used DX11 for Dragon’s Dogma.
batman is limited by a crap made engine, ue3
The Engine was not crap, the game developers were crap, we just did not know it yet.
They are many good performing UE3 games.
Almost all ue3 modern games have stutter problems and textures issues. Devs of their games managed to fix some of the problems, not all though. So every ue3 game had/has problems.
Website is offline
Stardock also admitted the same thing that having to support both DX11 and DX12 makes the DX12 version run slower.
Hum, I don’t think that’s what he/they meant by that: if they went full DX12 there wouldn’t be much of a problem (me thinks) but the game would be locked to Win 10. In order to include guys from Win 7 and 8/8.1 they had to include DX11 support that’s apparently making them hit some performance block. Bottom line, is not DX12’s fault per se (I still can’t see why is so big deal to update to Win10… it’s freaking free!… but anyway, to each their own). They are, AFAIK, looking to implement Vulkan but couldn’t do that before because it just recently released… and it’s actually a long way to be finished, considering performance in The Talos Principle is lower than in DX11. Same thing with Hitman and other upcoming DX12 titles, they are just too far into development to do such an important change. Perhaps in the future, but I doubt it for games releasing this year.
Well, yeah, you’re right about Vulkan, my mistake. And probably about DX11 and Nvidia (never been happier to have chosen AMD haha). But my point is that Vulkan came just too late to have games releasing with it. Perhaps with patches but nothing this year.
It’s not free, you’re paying with all your data.
Well, if you don’t pay attention to the installation screen in how to deactivate everything you consider is invasive (that is par for the course in OSX and mobile OS, for example)…
Everything appears in the installation screens. What (possibly) remains, is not different from what already exists in previous Windows versions and less than what you have on your phone. Seriously, not to excuse Microsoft (the forced updates are pretty much a d*ck move) but I don’t know why everyone calls them out for this when Google and Apple have been doing this fot years and nobody says anything.
Ok, I’m kinda getting lost. How does data mining and tracking (which you are able to turn off, believe me, I installed Win10 twice on two machines so far) close a platform? I can get it regarding the UWPs although I think it’s too early to tell but how about the other stuff? Doesn’t make any sense to me. That being said, that Apple and Google are “better at it” than Microsoft is not really an excuse, honestly.
Also, so far, Microsoft is not really competing with Steam. Not only because of numbers but because they mostly offer different products. Steam offers a huge amount of PC games and the Store is offering mobile apps ported to PC and some first party titles (which they have the right to do). Until Microsoft doesn’t start to make publishing deals with third parties (which they are entitled to do, again) they are not really competing with Steam. Even less with the current state of the Store. Now, in my opinion, I’d really like for them to compete with (read: not overtaking) Steam (once the fix the Store, obviously) because monopolies are not a good thing and the more game stores we have, the better.
Besides RotTR, every PC game that is on sale on the Store is not for sale on Steam. Does that really makes them competitors? I don’t really think so. But fine, let’s accept for a second that they are competing. In what way is that a bad thing? Do you really understand the risk that could come from Steam totally dominating the market? Because that’s my point. Not having where else to sell/buy a game will give Valve full control of the ecosystem which is as bad as what people is criticizing Microsoft of, supposedly, doing now with the UWPs!
And what games is Microsoft restricting from selling on Steam? Those are THEIR properties, they have their right to sell wherever they want! They can’t restrict games from selling on Steam because it’s their choice, period. The game they partially owned (RotTR) sells in both the Store AND Steam. Bottom line: publishers/IP owners decide where to sell them as they see fit, whether we like it or not, and we can’t force them to sell where WE want them to do it because that’s not the way the world works. It’s a business decision, period.
Finally, me disagreeing (or not finding its logic, like the thing with data mining and the closed ecosystem) with your statement is twisting things you said? WTF? Grow up, man.
Well said.
Microsoft has a right to restrict their own titles to their own service; does Valve allow their titles to run on other services?
Easy solution. Tell Mr. Wardell AKA DX 12 mouthpiece, to make all our games Vulkan API. Problem solved.
MS is the ones harming PC Gaming by keeping DX 12 off Win 7,8. Not the players hurting themselves.
Can’t wait to see what games take advantage of Vulkan.
Isn’t Doom 4 gonna use it ?
I would hope so
Talos Principle already got the beta Vulkan treatment, but it’s a simple wrapper, so obviously it performs worse than DX11, yet, already better than OpenGL.
Well, they wouldn’t be so limited if the devs use DX11.3 features more, Ordered rasterizer View is used in The Division on Maxwell cards do the advanced HFTS. PCSS, HFTS, HBAO+ are far more advanced than anything the consoles have done in 2 years, in fact they can’t even run these features because they are too advanced for the consoles.
The division and ROTTR has some bad shadow quality, The Division has quite a few pre-baked shadows in a lot of places, both held back by consoles as usual. I mean what’s the point of using DX12 went you shadows, volumetric are poor quality and you have to pre-bake shadows anyway because the consoles have limited hardware.
HFTS only works in perfectly sunny weather. Switches to PCSS only in all other conditions.
Some of those features are limited to nVidia cards alone, because some of them were created by them. Not only that, but consoles are using a more specialized ‘to the metal’ API that doesn’t quite compare to the average personal computer. Using those ‘technologies’ as an example of what consoles can’t do, isn’t a fair comparison, even while still in the realm of PC gaming.
The point is that the tech is far more advanced because of the GPU power available on the PC, multiplatform games rarely give PC users more advanced tech than consoles, it’s just multiplatform tech and if it deosn’t work across all platforms they won’t use it. NVIDIA develop their own tech because PC is way more advanced, there is no reason to limit PC users all because devs want all 3 versions to look they same just with PC having higher settings. PC users want advanced tech and the option to use that tech for superior fidelity on their superior hardware, sorry but a few higher settings and calling it ultra is just not good enough.
You’re only half right. The consoles are using GCN 1.0 spec and 8 Puma cores, it is literally using PC hardware that has been specialized to fit the size of a console. It’s running on x86 CPUs and using a GCN GPU, it doesn’t take much to port over. The only requirements for porting over, is to make sure that it meets the API calls that the PC uses. Saying that the PC is more advanced at this point is moot.
Edit: To clarify, the PC isn’t more advanced, but it certainly is much stronger.
As for nVidia’s GameWorks library, it’s nice, I guess. Too bad they can’t optimize it for AMD’s tech, which by the way, the consoles use too. So it’s not that they can’t use the code on the consoles, it’s more like nVidia won’t let them do it. Since it’s likely that they have to view the source code to implement or that the library just doesn’t work on the console’s API. From my view of it, nVidia is the limiting factor, since they won’t move their tech in order to openly enhance the fidelity of games.
Consoles can use NVIDIA gameworks tech and have done for years like with PhysX, all the console vendor need to do is licence it. I wish you people would get a clue instead of reading wrong information.
PhysX SDK, destruction, clothing and wave works are all available for XB1/PS4, other features are planned like Hairworks.
PhysX was limited to consoles with nVidia GPUs such as the PS3 and Xbox 360.
No, PhysX can be used for CPU based physics in any game engine, has nothing to do with the GPU(CUDA PhysX is different). It’s no different to Havok, a third party solution if you don’t want to make your own physics engine, you just licence it
The Xbox 360 had an ATI (now AMD) GPU.
“PhysX SDK based games indeed do exist on consoles, including Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii. Usually, such titles are multi-platform, but some are exclusives.
Moreover, console games are using special, highly optimized versions of PhysX SDK engine, running purely on CPUs – for example, on PS3 the PhysX engine can utilize SPU co-processors to improve performance of physics caclulations.”
I think you meant to respond to Lotte.
He’s right. Consider this: Hairworks is not being used in ANY game for consoles as of today, yet TressFX-based Pure Hair appears in the console versions of RotTR and, possibly, Deus Ex. PhysX can be unloaded to the CPU but I don’t see any Arkham game using it on consoles… and on PC it causes a goddamn stutter. And yet, Havok works well as do other (rather basic) physics engines because PhysX is, mostly, eye candy.
You have no case to make, you pick one developer who has used TressFX on their crossplatform games. The “PhysX can be unloaded to the CPU” has nothing to do with anything.
It’s one developer but it proves that AMD’s tech can be used on consoles because they are open. So far, no Nvidia effect has been used on consoles because they can’t run on AMD hardware which powers all consoles. One is better than none.
Of course it can run on AMD hardware, NVIDIa have an SDK for Gameworks for the PS4/XB1. The problem is you read too much misinformation about NVIDIA, AMD on the PC platform.
Misinformation on PC? Right. As an AMD user I see every day the problems Gameworks causes on my games, thank you very much.
I don’t care for your opinion it’s about facts.
Who said it was an opinion?
Well it’s yours, I mean you can thank AMD for fixing their drivers and using their biased console GCN optimisations. Funny how AMD GPus perform well in Gameworks titles lately, actually beating NVIDIA in some tests. And don’t say the 300 series is more powerful, they’re just overclocked 200 series GPUs.
But I still can’t use Gameworks, can I (ignoring HBAO+ that runs inconsistently depending on the game)? Hairworks is usable in The Witcher 3 thanks to CDPR messing with it but it was still limited. The rest is downright unusable. Compare that with Gaming Evolved/GPUOpen stuff and you’ll see my point (I reckon that “problems” was not the word I should have used).
“you can thank AMD for fixing their drivers and using their biased console GCN optimisations” Easy to put the blame on AMD’s drivers isn’t it? Although maybe I’m losing a bit of the big picture: most of the games that were messed up in AMD didn’t fare much better in Nvidia. Still, what do you mean with “biased console GCN optimisations”?
Hairworks in geometry based tessellation, something AMD GPUs are not good at, they’re great at shader based stuff which is why TressFX is shader based. CDPR didn’t optimise Hairworks well for sure, the patches later made it work a lot better plus we had options for MSAA and detail level. Yes it is easy to put the blame on AMD drivers, because when I had a R9 280 they were bad but it seems since Omega they have vastly improved. ACU ran like complete sh*t on my R9 280, then AMD fixed it with the Omega driver update, coincidence hey? After that even Gameworks titles started to perform better on AMD GPUs.
AMD have the console locked out with their hardware, they can have have used GCN optimizations without needed driver updates, all they need is patched for the GCN. AMD pretty much perform just as good if not better in The Division and Farcry Primal, Hitman without driver updates at all.
The problem is CDPR couldn’t optimise Hairworks because it was proprietary (but managing Tessellation from Radeon software fixes things a bit). Unlike TressFX. And that’s my point as to why Nvidia is not on consoles. It’s funny that you mention drivers in ACU because the one before Omega actually let me run it pretty good (as much as possible, of course). But the thing is, while drivers have improved on AMD, I think that developers are paying much more attention now because, as I said, Nvidia drivers didn’t actually made things much more smoothere than AMD’s besides the obvious Gameworks optimizations. That’s why new games are performing as good as they are now. Not really sure about GCN because optimising for consoles and for PC is quite different.
What “bad lighting” are you talking about?
Congratulations on your new Graphics card, it will serve you well. 🙂
I prefer to lose some fps in order not to install the most invasive satanic OS ever created. The limitations of DX11 are the key selling point of Win10, which is wrong.
Hurray for overstatements!
Same. i prefer to lose fps and some games too which by the way we didn’t lost a single FPS till now and not even a single good game.
I prefer to enjoy a more around better OS and not wear a tinfoil hat outside.
Of course it’s better, It has 10 in its title.
no its definitely worse because that one guy in that one video didnt like it so i dont like it either.
I don’t like it because it is a privacy nighmare, and doesn’t look much better than 7 or 8 to be worth the upgrade.
I thought Snowden reveal proved that tinfoil hats were right all along, but now we have individuals like you who believe that all spying tools can be disabled via options, and even if they can’t… it’s harmless, right?
I dont think any of those games are limited by dx11, everything released in 2014-2015 however.
Nice upgrade to a GTX 980 Ti. I must resist and wait a few more months to upgrade to Pascal.
new hitman still run like a joke
see the poligonal load and npcs in absolution and new hitman, new hitman looks like a PS2 game with ambient light in every corner.
limited by DX11 and still runs better than DX12 games. hey M$, make DX12 multiplatform and stop paying website/youtubers for promotions about DX12 and how good it is, because it isn’t.
nice
I’m fascinated by your mention of RE6, because I’m a huge fan of the game and I always thought it suffered from DX9 draw call bottlenecking. Dragon’s Dogma for PC is also MT Framework 2, also DX9, and also suffers bottlenecking in huge areas.
I wonder whether RE6/DD stuck with DX9 for any particular reason. I have heard that MT Framework has no real non-Japanese documentation, so maybe QLOC’s hand was forced somehow.
It’s the same thing with the Original Crysis and WarHead. You will not get the amazing Frames you will expect on a 980 TI.
Lets be straight: in DX11 the CPU is the King,especially in older titles.In new ones the GPU is almost 99% used.The Physx is a mess,I prefer Havoc.
The new Hitman is ugly and not fully Dx12 game,is still a DX11 game.
DX12 will change that,hopefully in DeusEx MD.
rocksteady, they should of just said, “Hey! Dont blame our game for running like crap! its all this POS DX11’s fault!”
john u upgrade to 980ti?