AMD: DirectX Holding Back Game Performance
AMD claims that game developers actually want the API to go away.
With all the hype surrounding DirectX 11 and how it's changing the face of PC gaming in regards to mind-blowing eye candy, AMD's worldwide developer relations manager of its GPU division, Richard Huddy, claims that developers actually want the API to go away, that it's getting in the way of creating some truly amazing graphics.
"I certainly hear this in my conversations with games developers," he told Bit-Tech in an interview. "And I guess it was actually the primary appeal of Larrabee to developers – not the hardware, which was hot and slow and unimpressive, but the software – being able to have total control over the machine, which is what the very best games developers want. By giving you access to the hardware at the very low level, you give games developers a chance to innovate, and that's going to put pressure on Microsoft – no doubt at all."
Outside a few current developers who have announced that PC game development will take priority over console versions, a good chunk of the gaming industry is developing titles for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 first and then porting them over to the PC thereafter. The result is that PC versions are only slightly superior to their console counterparts on a visual sense even though a high-end graphics card has at least ten times the horsepower of the Xbox 360's Xenos GPU and the PlayStation 3's GeForce 7-series architecture.
What this means is that-- although PC graphics are better than the console version-- developers can't tap into the PC's true potential because they can't program hardware directly at a low-level, forced to work through DirectX instead. But there are benefits to working with APIs including the ability to develop a game that will run on a wide range of hardware. Developers also get access to the latest shader technologies without having to work with low-level code.
But according to Huddy, the performance overhead of DirectX is a frustrating concern for developers. "Wrapping it up in a software layer gives you safety and security," he said. "But it unfortunately tends to rob you of quite a lot of the performance, and most importantly, it robs you of the opportunity to innovate."
He added that shaders, which were introduced back in 2002, were designed to allow developers to be more innovative, to create a more visual variety in games. But now many PC games have the same kind of look and feel because developers are using shaders "to converge visually."
"If we drop the API, then people really can render everything they can imagine, not what they can see – and we'll probably see more visual innovation in that kind of situation."
The interview goes on to define the performance overhead of DirectX, explaining that the actual amount depends on the type of game in development. Huddy also talks about the possible problems of developing for a multiple GPU architecture on a low-level if the API is ignored.
"The problem with the PC is that you ideally want a PC that doesn't crash too much, and if a games developer is over-enthusiastic about the way they program direct to the metal, they can produce all sorts of difficulties for us as a hardware company trying to keep the PC stable," he said.
The interview is definitely an awesome read, so head here to get the full scoop.
- API ,
- DirectX-11 ,
- Shader ,
- Richard-Huddy ,
- PC-gaming
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The simple answer is quit bitching about microsofts directX API and it's limitations. Get together and work with microsoft and nvidia too work on a new stable graphics platform without crying wolf or sueing each other. Three heads are better than one.
This is where openGL comes in.
Get everyone together with OpenGL, Build on at so everyone can add what ever they want. Would be amazing!
What? Is he serious? He actually wants to revert back to 90s?
That idea is so horrible and flawed that it should be shot down. There is no longer anyway direct access to hw.(you have to write driver - or use vendor specific api exported from driver and marshalled through kernel/userspace division)
And OpenGL is no asnwer. OpenGl is bad. Vendor extensions are evil (but they apparently are good until MS does them) and since they didn't solve properly backward compatibility they are slow.(Unlike DirectX where it is class versioned,interface independent of implementation)
Hopefully nobody will fall for this idiocy.
(Consoles are red herring - PC will never be homogenous and standardised on concrete hardware)
This is where openGL comes in.
Are you an idiot or what? The guy is basically saying that graphics APIs are stopping the innovation and not DX. What he means is that developers want C++ compiler for GPUs
If they can come up with something like that instead of DX 12 or OpenGL 5 that would be great!
I agree wholeheartedly.
DirectX is the only reason a lot of people still use Windows - after all, Linux and even Mac OS X are so much better in many ways, but don't run games properly.
OpenGL isn't the solution - it has the same drawbacks that DirectX has and is even more poorly written.
A universal compiler, similar to CUDA but made by the entire industry, would enable better looking, more resource efficient games that run well on pretty much every OS out there. What more could we ask for?
I agree wholeheartedly. DirectX is the only reason a lot of people still use Windows - after all, Linux and even Mac OS X are so much better in many ways, but don't run games properly.OpenGL isn't the solution - it has the same drawbacks that DirectX has and is even more poorly written. A universal compiler, similar to CUDA but made by the entire industry, would enable better looking, more resource efficient games that run well on pretty much every OS out there. What more could we ask for?
I don't think it would help Linux. It generally is not better (nor MacOS) and ensuring backward compatibility is difficult enough that so far MS is the only one doing. (Like Win7 allows me to play Total Annihilation or any other games. So far the only games broken are using uncommon techniques discontinued by Graphic cards manufactures - Runaway. Altough one of updates by nVidia fixed I-war2 and few others...)
And good luck getting new updates. Ask Microsoft how difficult it is. Be it games or line-of-bussines apps. And web won't fix it.
seems that some have missed the point. opengl is an api as is directx there are there for comparability reasons. so you either have to standardize the hardware or the software. if you standardize the software you cant innovate games. if you standardize the hardware you stagnate hardware development...
as an old school programmer (8-16bit) we used to be able to hit the hardware addresses directly for many thing like page flipping and double buffering to, and you could do it if every 1 had the same configuration as you. but in the 16 bit era things became more modular and you could add things like more ram, ppc gfx and so on. each time you did hardware addresses would change. causing any program that hit the hardware directly to stop working. so they introduced standardized software interfaces called api's which made programs more stable but less likely to have any new ideas...
so really the guy can bitch and moan as much as he wants but it really would hurt sales of his companies hardware as every game would have to be configured to every config and as we know you cant do that without a standardized set of instructions that would enable such things.
opengl is a way forward in some respects but its still an api sitting between the programmer and the hardware, but it does have faster turn around than directx as it doesn't have to be built in to the o.s.
basicaly they guy is bitching for no good reason. it has to be 1 or the other and when it comes down to it, its unlikely amd will want there bottom line or R'n'D budgets affected by standardised hardware.
Hey I'm just saying.. The title says 'DX' so I thought I'd come up with my pointless smart comment and see if I get flamed
OpenGL is good stuff, it truly crossed platformed, not like DX locked to Microsoft if OpenGl can shine, then Linux will spring to life along with macs.