A Decade of DirectX 12
In 2014 Microsoft announced that Windows 10 would arrive with a brand new graphics API: DirectX 12. Windows 10 is now heading into end of life support, but DirectX 12 has done the opposite. It has grown into the most feature packed graphics API Microsoft has ever released and it continues to sit at the heart of modern PC gaming.
Think back to 2015. Intel’s Core i7 6700K with four cores was considered the ultimate gaming CPU. On the GPU side the dream cards were the Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X or AMD’s dual chip Radeon R9 295X2. Since then we have seen many generations of CPUs and GPUs, core counts have exploded, ray tracing is mainstream, and prices have soared. Through all that change DirectX 12 has remained the core software layer that connects games to your hardware.
At a glance the name DirectX 12 makes it seem like nothing has changed in ten years. The reality is very different. Under the hood this API has been rebuilt and expanded so much that it is more like a constantly evolving platform than a single static version.
How DirectX 12 Changed PC Graphics
DirectX 12 and specifically its graphics component Direct3D 12 was originally designed to give developers lower level access to hardware. Previous versions of DirectX handled a lot of work behind the scenes. That made things easier but it also meant extra overhead and less control. Direct3D 12 flipped that approach and focused on three big ideas:
- Greater control for developers over the GPU and CPU
- More efficient use of system resources for better performance
- Flexibility to support new rendering techniques as hardware evolves
Over time Microsoft has layered a series of major features on top of this foundation.
In 2018 DirectX Raytracing or DXR arrived. This separate API brought real time ray tracing to PC games, allowing more accurate lighting, reflections and shadows. Nvidia’s RTX series helped push this forward and DXR became the common standard that all vendors could target.
Next came DirectX 12 Ultimate which bundled together several important technologies for next generation graphics:
- Variable Rate Shading which lets the GPU spend more power on the parts of the image that matter most while shading less important areas at a lower rate
- Mesh Shaders that replace some of the older geometry stages with a more flexible and scalable approach ideal for complex scenes
- Sampler Feedback, which helps games stream and manage textures more efficiently to reduce memory waste
In 2021 Microsoft added AutoHDR and DirectStorage to the wider Windows gaming stack. AutoHDR aims to boost the look of older games on HDR displays with minimal effort from developers though its impact has been modest so far. DirectStorage is more interesting for PC enthusiasts. It is designed to take advantage of fast NVMe SSDs by letting games stream assets directly from storage to the GPU with less CPU overhead. In practice only a handful of titles notably Nixxes PC ports like The Last of Us Part 2 have made strong use of it, but the potential is there for faster loading and smoother world streaming as adoption grows.
As GPU architectures have shifted towards heavier use of compute shaders instead of only classic vertex and pixel shaders Microsoft has kept evolving DirectX 12. Recent and upcoming features include:
- Work Graphs which reorganize how GPU tasks are scheduled and chained together
- Shader Execution Reordering which improves the efficiency of ray tracing workloads by grouping similar shader work
- Cooperative Vectors which aim to unlock new performance and flexibility for 3D graphics and compute
All of this makes DirectX 12 a huge and powerful toolbox. The flip side is that it is also more complex to use. Building a renderer that runs optimally across many different PC hardware configurations is harder than ever.
Why There Is No DirectX 13 Yet
With so many changes over ten years it is easy to wonder why Microsoft has not announced DirectX 13. When asked about this Shawn Hargreaves, principal engineering manager for Direct3D, kept things vague. DirectX will keep evolving, he said, but there is nothing to share about a new version name.
The deeper reason is that modern graphics are moving along two overlapping paths. On one side there is compute heavy rendering, powering advanced techniques like ray tracing, complex lighting and cutting edge upscalers. On the other side there is traditional rasterization which still dominates most games.
Hargreaves notes that compute is growing in importance and many recent DirectX features are focused there. But completely abandoning classic triangle rasterization is unlikely any time soon. For many games fixed function raster hardware is still the most efficient way to draw a scene. The more realistic future is a gradual breakdown of the old graphics pipeline into flexible pieces. Developers will mix and match these for different workloads rather than flipping from one single approach to another.
We can see this balance in real games. For example Baldur’s Gate 3 uses DirectX 11 or Vulkan for its graphics and gains little in performance or visuals when switching APIs. DirectX 12 is not always required to make a beautiful and smooth game. Older APIs are still very capable for certain genres and rendering styles.
That is why DirectX 11 is still relevant 16 years after its launch and why DirectX 12 might easily be celebrating its 20th birthday in 2035 without ever getting a formal successor called DirectX 13. Instead of big version jumps Microsoft is steadily upgrading the same API, quietly replacing and extending its internal parts while keeping the overall name and model.
For PC gamers the takeaway is simple. Whether you are eyeing a new GPU, testing ray tracing, or just trying to squeeze more frames out of your current rig, DirectX 12 is the invisible backbone that lets modern hardware shine. It has grown alongside the rise of multi core CPUs, massive GPUs and ultra fast SSDs and it will likely keep evolving in step with whatever the next decade of PC gaming brings.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/microsoft-celebrates-10-years-of-directx-12-a-decade-of-updates-to-the-low-level-graphics-api-but-its-still-not-the-master-of-all-things-rendering/
