Sniper Elite 4 will get DirectX 12 support

It's all great that DX12 will be supported at launch but will it do anything? Most games that have DX12 right now either run worse or exactly the same. There a few titles that improve performance a bit on AMD cards, but do nothing on Nvidia cards. As it stands, DX12 is not the revolutionary tech we all expected it to be, and publishers/devs announcing DX12 support is more of for marketing hype than anything else. On the other hand, Vulkan is much more exciting, if they announced Vulkan support I'd be on board with it, but at the moment, DX12, meh.

 

Good thing they included dx11 as well so we can compare.

 

Maybe not more fps, but better cpu usage? So the card type doesn't matter, I thought the main benefit of 12 is more consistent cpu support. Of course it would be nice if 12 always resulted in higher fps, instead of sometimes worse, though.

 

One of the weird things I noticed is increased CPU usage with DX12, but no actual performance improvement despite that increased usage. Which begs the question, why should I stress my CPU harder if I don't gain anything from it? Increased power consumption and heat generation but no performance improvement doesn't really put DX12 in a good light.

 

Higher lowest/lower fps, overall smoother experience, that is what dx12 does at my end.

 

You know one time I would have been excited at the announcement of a game getting DirectX 12 support but that was before its release when it was hyped as the Second Coming for games. Here and now the reality is that it is, IMO, a disappointing API offering little or no improvement over DirectX 11 (and in some cases worst performance or fewer graphics options as is the case with Rise of the Tomb Raider which loses VXAO support) and certainly no enhanced visual effects. It's hard not to feel underwhelmed by it to be honest.

Mind you, I feel exactly the same way about Vulkan which in DOOM actually runs worst on my PC than OpenGL at maxed out 4K settings and certainly feels, for want of a better word, laggier in play.

I guess the truth is that NVIDIA enhanced the hell out of DirectX 11, certainly compared with AMD who are generally considered to have a higher overhead in their drivers, such that it makes DirectX 12 look a lot less impressive, particularly on high end systems with good CPUs and fast GPUs.

Anyway, not excited at all about Sniper Elite 4 having DirectX 12 support. I suspect initially that DirectX 11 will prove to be more stable and offer better framerates on my PC. We'll see. Might even buy the game for my PS4 Pro actually rather than PC.

 

I agree 100%. I feel like we've all been duped and it's an elephant in the room that no one (as in hardware reviewers as well as users) is really talking about. The promise alluded to by MS and hardware sites was for reduced draw calls leading to improved performance, but so far this has been negligible and even reduced in some cases, whether the user has an AMD or Nvidia card.

So, is it the developers fault as they are unable to program games to utilise the benefits of DX12 effectively, or is it that the gains are not all they're cracked up to be? It would be great if sites like Hilbert's could provide further analysis. In saying this I'm sure some others here probably have a better understanding than I do.

 

12 gave me better minimum fps on my i7 920 in tomb raider. Depends on the studio I guess.

There's forza horizon 3 as well but the idiots chose to protect the game by realtime decryption so there goes all the performance benefits.

 

As an API, DX12 is surely better. I'm not sure that any NVIDIA GPU before Volta is really suited for it though. The draw calls performance is definitely real, and the API is much faster in any use case that involves heavy reliance on the CPU (like emulation, try Dolphin with and without DX12 and you'll know what I mean). It was also completely necessary to develop it in a lower level, due to the massive cruft accrued to the tradition DX11 drivers, which had reached such a level that it was impossible for developers to know what was the "fast path" through the driver for certain operations.

Read this post, it's quite enlightening on the reasons why the DX11 situation cannot go for long.

Spoiler

 

Well HOT DAMN PrMinisterGR........

Whoa! Never knew that much about it all....., but kind of figured it was similar. No one ever wants to admit how F'd up things truly are. When all we want to do is just enjoy them luscious graphics, non scripted blood splatters all the while at a blisteringly fast 100+fps!.!

 

Let's face it, it boils down to shooting Hitler's balls off, so what new offers DX12 in that regard?

 

Great insight you posted there, much appreciated.

Sadly, if the problems have been of such a huge impact with broken game code that violates APIs and crappy shaders coming from game devs, I still don't think making them program dx12 now (and even mGPU) will improve things for anybody but m$ who doesn't have to hire programmer teams that much anymore. Bad dev programming, then handing them more and more important work, it's like asking for a second kick to the crown jewels.

 

My gallery of 4K Screenshots @ maxed settings (Missions 1-6. There are 10 total).

http://www.pcmrace.com/2017/02/13/epic-shots-sniper-elite-4/

For those who want to know, the game is EXACTLY the same as Sniper Elite 3, just anothing setting.

 

Figures, then again that's how it looked like from the first screenshots and videos so not too surprising though the X-Ray "kill" camera has been tweaked a bit further. (Probably for both vehicles and human targets.)

Hell the pre-order-for-Hitler mission bonus is still pretty much the same only with a different map and that's been there since V.2

Heh probably going to have a assortment of weapon DLC too with little to no difference to the default selection besides some camo differences and I guess for some reason or another the guns you'd expect to see in this setting might end up there too.
(The Kar98k was one of them for V.3 if I remember correctly.)


EDIT: There's probably some enhancements to the game itself too of course, V.3 added those longer-distance targets even if the main ones were set up specifically for such shots.

No idea about visuals or engine changes, DX12 is probably going to be mainly for performance although the upcoming RS2 / Creator update for Win10 should enable Shader Model 6.0 though as for what that will allow for and when games will actually use it that's still a unknown I guess.
(DirectX 11.x is still active too, 11.4 now with RS1 though I'm not sure if any games are using that or even 11.3 or 11.2 though Frostbite and a few other engines do support 11.1 at least.)

GPU driver differences between AMD and Nvidia also makes comparisons a bit more problematic, AMD far as I'm aware still has a bit of a CPU overhead issue with D3D11 and their OGL implementation is also a bit behind so it looks like they're seeing major gains in both Vulkan and D3D12 as a result though they have also focused more on these API's and their own earlier Mantle variant. (Compared to D3D11 and OGL4.x)

Probably going to be a while still before we see the full advantage of these low-level API's.

Unsure but I suppose Rebellion is still teaming up with AMD and that probably means AMD wants to have DX12 support for showcasing their GPU's whereas with Nvidia they might want to have Gameworks features implemented.
(Though there's probably more to it than just requests to add this or that feature.)

 

Well, I have to eat my own words here, early reviews show that DX12 actually works (and by works I mean tangible performance gains, and not just and option that you enable but doesn't do anyhting), and it works for both AMD and Nvidia. Color me impressed, and in cases like these I dont mind being proven wrong. Kudos.