Microsoft introduces DirectX 12 feature level 12_2

[HEXUS]

Asserts that "the jump from 12_1 to 12_2 is huge." It is supported by RTX and RDNA 2 GPUs.

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[Primey0]

DX12 has been very disappointing so far. I don't know how it is on the developer side of things but for the consumer nothing good has came from DX12

[maverick77_uk]

OK, I'm a nerd. I take an interest in these things, but I'm confused. Back in the day, you bought a DirectX 9 compatible card, and it ran DirectX 9 games (OK, slightly fudged by DX9b and DX9C being shader 2 and 3, but hey!). Same went for DX10 and DX11 cards and software.

With DirectX12, are the feaure levels purely "nice to have, but it will run"? For instance (actual performance and FPS aside for a sec), I have a geforce 450 Fermi card. Originally released for DX11, but then given driver support for DX12 (with feature set 11_0). It is therefore theoretically DX12 compatible (albeit 12_0). Does this mean that a game released for DX12, using the new 12_2 feature set will be backwards compatible with all DX12 devices, just with some of the fancy stuff turned off? Or is 12_0, 12_1 and 12_2 actual different implementations of DX, which back in the day would have had a new number, but these days MS doesn't change the numbers anymore (ie like Windows 10 probably going on for the foreseeable future with version updates)?

[kalniel]

I think 9C is a good equivalent, as you point out 9C was huge and there wasn't a fallback if you didn't have shader model 3, developers had to code fallbacks specifically.

12_2 is a similar leap and there are fallbacks for most of the features - VRS and Sampler feedback will be optional performance gains, Mesh shaders can fall back to geometry/vertex shading (with a performance hit) and RT can be done in existing shaders, but it's too slow to be workable. But then again it's hardly fast even with acceleration so developers will have non-RT options for some time yet.

[cokker]

"DirectX 12 feature level 12_2, which Microsoft calls "huge""

Uses DX11 on flight simulator 2020...

[DavDarkelf]

With more of these features being included in DirectX we should see more games supporting them. The real question is how long do we need to wait before these are really being used. Remember that a lot of PC gamers still have old hardware that won't support this.

[albert89]

Most games have a band aid version of DX12 instead
of being re-engineered from the ground up. Which is
the best way to take advantage of all/some of the
features. Many games arnt fully compatible with AMD
hardware/software or taking advantage of multi cores
or threads, not taking advantage of the full speed
of the CPU, the list goes on.

[ultrasbm]

"directx 12 feature level 12_2, which microsoft calls "huge""

uses dx11 on flight simulator 2020...

lmao ikr!!!