DirectX 12 Ultimate: Microsoft seeks to align Xbox, PC graphics

[HEXUS]

Adds support for four key technologies; ray tracing, VRS, mesh shaders, and sampler feedback.

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[Irien]

Because calling it DirectX 13 would be bad luck?

Instead we have major feature additions (ray tracing 1.1, mesh shaders, texture sampling) all packed into DX12 "ultimate". Is you gfx card DX12 compliant, 12.1, 12 Ultimate? I suppose ultimately only devs care, but consumers could really use a new branding to understand clearly that a new product supports everything they'd expect.

[philehidiot]

Names aside, I do wonder if this stuff will favour AMD in any way. Microsoft use AMD GPUs in Xbox and so it makes sense they'll optimise for their hardware where possible.

Back to naming - yeh this is silly. If it's a serious new feature set which will not be able to be ported back to older DX12 cards, it should have a new number. Maybe from the dev POV it's just DX12 with new features tagged on rather than a rework but still, I'm looking at it from the buyer's perspective and I want to know what I'm getting and know the marketers aren't screwing me.

[lumireleon]

after numerous complaints Nvidia still wants to sell their Turing cards so Microsoft has no option but to keep with the Direct X 12 naming scheme while adding the Ultimate tag at the end.

[3dcandy]

Didn't go to V13 because every card that supports V12 will support Ultimate, just not all of the features... which is of course the point!