Microsoft introduced DirectX 12 at the annual Game Developers Conference

Microsoft introduced DirectX 12 at the annual Game Developers Conference
http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/03/20/directx-12/

more info on the api
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/03/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-directx-12/

 

Interesting. Sounds like it's more focused on performance and providing features for developers than on any new rendering capabilities. It says all of NVIDIA's DirectX 11 cards should support 12, which is pretty cool. I still find it a little strange that after all of Microsoft's collaboration with NVIDIA, they decided to go with an AMD card for the Xbox One. Same thing with the PS4. It's one of the main reasons why the newer consoles don't interest me much.

 

When i saw the video of what directx 11.2 could do it really impressed me, but when i saw directx 12 it completely took me by surprise but it's very welcome.

For people reading this that may not know much about what the direct x 11.2 api does go to 17:30 of this video for an easy explanation

 

that's a bit of a ridiculous statement

 

How so? I was really hoping for an NVIDIA card in one of the next-gen consoles, and neither has one. That matters to me, even if that seems "ridiculous". How dare I care about the hardware inside a videogame console?! Though I guess the greater issue is the lack of games that interest me.

 

I think he meant that there's not enough difference between NVidea and AMD cards to warrant anti-console feeling just because the consoles use AMD GFX hardware.

Though I could be wrong, especially since I know so little about GFX hardware. Why is it so bad that the consoles use AMD cards?

 

Both brands tend to have their benefits, I'm just going on a bit of research and what people are saying. Nvidia tends to have better 3d support and also easier for consumer use but i think as of right now no nvidia cards supports direct x 11.2 while amd 7700 and up and the high ends do, i think amd might also better for multi display but don't quote me on that. i do know that alot of MAME heads swear by AMD.

 

That's because ArcadeVGA is based on AMD cards, so there's a lot of utilities allowing 15KHz operation. But yeah, I also find it weird to chose a console based on it's GFX manufacturer.

 

i have an arcadevga it's awesome i want the new one though.

 

That's pretty much what I meant.

It's a console and set specific hardware for it's lifetime, also a good thing for cross platform games.

that being said i really couldn't care less about the ps4 and xbox one, it's just all "meh" to me. I simply found your statement absurd, or at least the way it's worded.
However, it's a different story for PC builds though.

 

I think there's a difference. I think generally NVIDIA cards perform better, at least in recent history. It depends on the setup and how much you're willing to spend, but I think in general NVIDA has a better ratio of performance to price. Then again, I haven't been paying much attention to the GPU market for the past several months, so perhaps things have changed somewhat.

Their choice of video cards is not what's ultimately preventing me from buying a next-gen console, but it's an important factor. Another, somewhat related factor is that the next-gen consoles can't really compete with high-end PCs in terms of graphical power. That's understandable; very few consoles have ever been aimed at the high-end market, apart from the Neo Geo AES. There are advantages to having a fixed hardware setup for developers. However, I feel it's a little different with this generation since the consoles are essentially PCs. If one already has a powerful PC, what advantage is there to buying a less powerful PC-based console - apart from exclusives? If there were a lot of good games that were only available for the consoles, things would be different. So far there aren't any that interest me, but it's still early and that could change.

I also think it's likely that in this generation, we'll see more console games ported to the PC. It should be relatively easy since the hardware is essentially the same, so you would think developers would be more inclined to port games to the PC. That remains to be seen, though.

 

For PC gamers there's not much reason, true, but there are lots of people who prefer console gaming to PC gaming, so for them a console is their favoured choice. But both sides (PC or console) have their advantages and disadvantages (PC = *many* more games (a huge 30+ years library), games generally cheaper (and even lots of free games), some games have great fan made mods, potentially much better graphics and frame-rate, plus with emulation you can play almost any console game up to the PS2/Gamecube/Wii, etc, whereas with a console you don't need to perform system maintenance, you know every game will run OK (though since bugged releases are getting more common the consoles now that online patching is possible, this advantage is becoming less and less), you don't have to upgrade your hardware, etc*) .

And since commercial games are becoming rarer (since the cost of making them is increasing massively, largely due to bad decisions such as spending too much on voice actors, huge teams of sometimes superfluous members, not re-using resources from other games, etc, though that's a topic for a different thread) then there are less platform exclusive games being released (aside from Nintendo, who always go their own way). No gamer who'd been gaming since the 1980s would have ever thought that there'd come a time when the latest hit film wasn't guaranteed to have a game based on it, but now most big films don't have a game accompanying them.

 

Also I wouldn't have believed you if you said to me 20 years ago that the video game business would outperform the movie business, which happened a few years ago iirc.

 

Haha maybe this is a good thing to be honest, most movie licensed games were terrible.

Subjective, untrue and all Irrelevant in a console.

Price vs Performance point still lies with AMD to date, the mid to low end nvidia cards just do not offer the better experience and again cost more. at the top end the outperforming nvidia carts are still more expensive for little real gain over the AMD high end counterparts.

 

I'm not so sure about that. Just from a little research I did last night, it seems the GTX 780 Ti is very close to the Radeon 7990 in terms of performance, but costs about $300 less. It does vary a lot between different benchmarks, though. Those are high-end cards, of course. Perhaps AMD does better in the mid- to low-end market.

 

probably better to compare the R9 290X with the 780ti a lot of places dont even sell the HD 7990 anymore, i think it's a discontinued card, popular for bitcoin mining hence the high price.

from what i can see the Nvidia cards are still more expensive, but maybe it's different where you are?

 

I was referring to this particular benchmark: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU14/815

Which shows the 7990 and the GTX 780 Ti to be very close in performance for this particular game (Crysis 3), although like I said, performance varies a lot between different benchmarks. Other benchmarks, like this one: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html show NVIDIA cards pretty consistently outperforming AMD cards. And according to that benchmark, the GTX Titan Black (which as far as I know hasn't been released yet) outperforms everything. On Newegg, the R9 290X and the 780 Ti are about the same price.

EDIT: Apparently the Titan Black has been released, but nobody seems to have it in stock currently.

 

yup, the Titan black is like £800-1000 here which i personal wouldn't pay for a GPU even i i had stupid money to spend on one,

The 290X strengths over the 780 TI are at higher resolutions with AA etc( http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU14/895 ), trueaudio and mantle, whereas the nvidia card has it's strengths also as you point out.

when i do get round to building a new rig it will be centred around what i think is the best way to go.

with regards to the consoles i'm not sure which consumer cards they compare best to i honestly have not looked into that.

 

In case you were wondering, my GPU is a GTX 780 (not Ti).