Microsoft's unreleased API, the DirectX 12, will bring about significant performance and energy efficiency improvements that will easily separate it from its predecessor, the DirectX 11. Extremetech reported that during the Siggraph 2014 booth, leading processor manufacturer for desktops Intel showcased the prowess of DirectX 12 in the first public demos.
After the demo was commenced running Microsoft's upcoming API, power consumption was 50 percent less compared to what the components were utilizing with DirectX 11 enabled. Not only this, but in purely performance terms, the frame rate was reported to be 60 percent higher on the DirectX 12 API, indicating that the upcoming programming interface will not only transform machines in to efficient ones, but gamers, and several other individuals who require significant amounts of graphics processing power will be able to take advantage of it.
The test bench was the Microsoft's Surface Pro 3 tablet, which was running the i5 processor and its iGPU named the Intel HD4400 graphics. The custom benchmarking program consisted of 50,000 asteroids being rendered on the screen of the tablet and each asteroid was unique in aspects ranging from vertices, textures, and constants. With DirectX 11 enabled, the Surface Pro 3 was only able to garner a frame rate of 19 FPS but with DirectX 12, the slate saw its performance spike up to 33 FPS, revealing the performance barrier being crossed by the next generation API.
The performance gain will be helpful to those machine owners who cannot afford to shell out money on ludicrously priced GPUs and can only settle for the internal graphics chip embedded in processors. According to DSO Gaming, Stardock's CEO Brad Wardell was tweeting from his official Twitter account concerning the performance that DirectX 12 is able to bring to the table. In his tweet, he stated that there was over a 100 FPS difference between DX11 and DX12. Unfortunately, while DirectX 12 features will be available to PC gamers and video editors alike, some features will only be available to them in Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system.
The upcoming API will also be able to get utilized in mobile gaming applications, allowing for much more graphical detail to be added while boosting battery life, preventing performance dips and the occasional stuttering. Microsoft's Windows 10 is expected to be officially released during Q3 2015.
