DirectX 12 : Microsoft's key to salvation

Among all other things, taking the negative publicity of Windows 8 into account, Microsoft's status in PC gaming isn't that commendable. DirectX12 might change that. Now let's not get our hopes up, because I said “might”. Might means a 60 percent surety at most, we can do with an 80 if not 100.

All the previous iterations of the API up to this point have concentrated on improving visual fidelity by bringing a lot of new features to the table. DirectX 12, on the other hand, focuses on something else entirely; boosting performance on a hardware level. Good news is, DX12 will be supported by a wide range of GPUs. Most of Nvidia's DX11 lineup (GTX400 and above) and AMD's GCN, Graphics Core Next lineup (HD7000 series and above) are said to be compatible.

By far MS only unveiled the graphics component of DirectX 12 also known as Direct3D API. While Microsoft has promised performance for its upcoming API, the company would like to present you with reduced power consumption as well.

A demonstration of this was given at this month's SIGGRAPH show in Los Angeles, where Intel and MS showed a custom run-through powered by a low power version of Intel's latest “Haswell” processor. Having switched the graphics renderer from DX11 to DX12, the power consumption of the system dropped by no less than 50 percent. That's a pretty big number, given how power hungry a big portion of the GPUs are becoming.

DirectX12 will also prove to be a good news for future games. PC gamers often suffer from disease called “Console Ports”. More often than not, these ports are dumbed down and are light years behind compared to other PC exclusives. Needless to say, porting from Xbox One to a High End PC is easier than vice versa. Since cross platform development tools are growing in popularity, DirectX12 coupled with its smarter control of resources can allow most PC games to be ported to the Xbox One with little to no issue. This way, no more dumbed down ports and everyone wins.