If you missed it, the next version of Windows was announced. It’s Windows 10 because Windows 9 wasn’t cool enough. Anyway, part of the reveal was that people could sign up for a “technical preview” to check it out.
The full version of Windows 10 will come with DirectX 12.
Game developers who are part of our DirectX 12 Early Access program have even more incentive to join the Windows Insider program. These game developers will receive everything they need to kickstart their DX12 development, including: updated runtime, API headers, drivers, documentation, and samples, all of which will work with the Windows 10 Technical Preview.
We’ve worked with Epic to create a DX12 branch on the UE4 GitHub repository. This branch supports UE 4.4, the latest publically released version of the Unreal 4 Engine! Come join our open development project and help make DX12 great!
It’s giving a lot more low-level access to the graphics card; basically what Mantle does. The best part is that it will work on all existing DX 11.1 hardware, so you don’t need a new graphics card.
Hopefully, there’s some truth to the rumor that MS allows free ugprades to Ten and just relies on OEM revenue. I can’t imagine the upgrade sales were a big percentage of their revenue, anyway.
For Nvidia, all Fermi, Kepler, and Maxwell cards.
For AMD, all GCN cards
Woolen Horde - Yea, but even “free”, a significant % of people won’t upgrade. It will take a year+ for me to move my primary PC, I guarantee, because I won’t get support for a couple of niche-but-important-to-me software packages until then. (They don’t officially support new OS’s before their 12-15 month major release cycles)
After Nvidia updated their drivers now a game like Battlefield 4 runs exactly the same on comparable ATI hardware (on Mantle).
With the difference that running on Mantle, looking at the forums, leads to lot of other problems like: significant memory leaks, higher GPU temperatures, overall more unstable than DX11 and drawing more power.
So in the end Mantle is a boost that in practice brings more problems than it brings an advantage. And even when it works flawlessly you’re looking at a 5% better FPS.
Most games that come out these days are still DX9, so it really means nothing.
And current problematic game ports have high CPU usage not because of graphic overhead, but because code is just not being adapted to work well on PC, see for example all the problems of Watch Dogs.
Even the fact you get better “low-level” access is a silly thing when you consider game ports are already rushed, especially when PC is 5% of the sales. No one spends time writing decent PC code, no one at all is going to spend EVEN MORE time optimizing stuff at the low-level. Unless it’s so trivial that it’s just about flipping a switch.
My idea is that the graphic-overhead a year from now is basically a non-existent problem, for gaming.
Honestly I’m very excited for Windows 10. MS has learned a ton from the many, many mistakes they made with Win8.
Also to those who wonder why MS skipped “Windows 9” - it’s because there’s a lot of code out there that looks for Windows 9(x). Thus if software detected Windows 9 as Windows 95 or Windows 98 due to wildcard value it may not run when it should. Also, 10 sounds better than 9 from a marketing perspective and MS needs that to say they’ve moving away from the mistakes of last season.
Mantle is a hole in the water… because at this point they should have released a public SDK to start the adoption but they still haven’t made it so, and they didn’t get Mantle in any of the big engines like UE4 or Unity.
TurinTur - They’re distributing it to devs and it’s in the Cryengine. EA and Eidos have signed on.
It’s basically a way to ensure that GCN cards can get DX12-class performance even if they’re not on Win 10 (which is not out yet!)
And let’s be honest here, your average indy dev doesn’t need the performance or to do the additional hardware management required.
Only to very select devs. There are a few ones that, asked by their users if they would implement Mantle in their game, said it would have to wait until they have it on their hands.
You’re out of date, they started shipping it more widely months ago. I know several devs who looked at it and concluded it wasn’t worth the extra work as indies.
I’m not saying it’s universal, but they’ve moved on from their initial “40 devs” distribution.
Where did you read that? There’s a bunch of engineers at my company wishing this were true…
TurinTur isn’t “out of date”. Mantle is still not public and is only available to a select set of people. It doesn’t matter if that’s only 40 or 100. It’s still an insignificant and tiny amount if it’s not feely available. It also still isn’t in UE4 or Unity.
