# NVIDIA Adds DirectX 12 Support to GeForce "Fermi" Architecture



## btarunr (Jul 3, 2017)

With its latest GeForce 384 series graphics drivers, NVIDIA quietly added DirectX 12 API support for GPUs based on its "Fermi" architecture, as discovered by keen-eyed users on the Guru3D Forums. These include the GeForce 400-series and 500-series graphics cards. The support appears to be sufficient to run today's Direct3D feature-level 12_0 games or applications, and completes WDDM 2.2 compliance for GeForce "Fermi" graphics cards on Windows 10 Creators Update (version 1703), which could be NVIDIA's motivation for extending DirectX 12 support to these 5+ year old chips. Whether they meet your games' minimum system requirements is an entirely different matter.





*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## Chaitanya (Jul 3, 2017)

Still funny when I read Dx12 and nVidia together.


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## T4C Fantasy (Jul 3, 2017)

all fermi gpus in database should be updated.

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/?...swidth=&slots=&powerplugs=&sort=generation&q=


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## plåtburken (Jul 3, 2017)

Which version exactly of the drivers are we talking about?
Also does this apply to laptop cards or is it desktop only?


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## GoldenX (Jul 3, 2017)

https://www.techpowerup.com/download/nvidia-geforce-graphics-drivers/ As long as the notebook GPU is Fermi.

Freaking finally, would be great to have Vulkan too, but they already failed on that promise.


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## Xzibit (Jul 3, 2017)

GoldenX said:


> https://www.techpowerup.com/download/nvidia-geforce-graphics-drivers/ As long as the notebook GPU is Fermi.
> 
> Freaking finally, would be great to have Vulkan too, but they already failed on that promise.



Patience, Give it 6 years or so.


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## Liviu Cojocaru (Jul 3, 2017)

This is really strange but a nice thing I would say even after so long


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## KainXS (Jul 3, 2017)

I thought they gave up trying this years ago


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## qubit (Jul 3, 2017)

So Fermi gets DX12 support only two years after W10 came out? Impressive. /s


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## bug (Jul 3, 2017)

GoldenX said:


> https://www.techpowerup.com/download/nvidia-geforce-graphics-drivers/ As long as the notebook GPU is Fermi.
> 
> Freaking finally, would be great to have Vulkan too, but they already failed on that promise.



What do you mean "finally"? Afaik, both Fermi and GCN 1.0 were left without support initially. Was GCN 1.0 support added a long time ago and I missed it?

Also, when it comes to Vulkan, it seems to me support is pretty much on par between AMD and Nvidia, so I'm not sure what's the failure here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulkan_(API)#Compatibility


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## RejZoR (Jul 3, 2017)

All GCN cards (HD7000 and above) had D3D_12_0 support from day 1 basically.


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## Kaotik (Jul 3, 2017)

It's not 12_0 capable, it's 11_0 capable. The only thing that changed really is the fact that now it can run the API itself.
(for reference, even Kepler and Maxwell gen 1. are 11_0, not even 11_1 like GCN1 & Haswell/Broadwell, let alone 12_0 like GCN2-4 or 12_1 like GCN5 and Maxwell gen 2. & Pascal and Skylake/Kaby Lake)

edit:


RejZoR said:


> All GCN cards (HD7000 and above) had D3D_12_0 support from day 1 basically.


No they didn't. GCN1 is 11_1, 2-4 are 12_0, 5 is 12_1.
D3D12 supports feature levels 11_0, 11_1, 12_0, 12_1


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## jabbadap (Jul 3, 2017)

RejZoR said:


> All GCN cards (HD7000 and above) had D3D_12_0 support from day 1 basically.



That is true and nice but Fermi is from hd5870 era.

Just wonder is those fermi cards any good for dx12? At least timespy score for gtx570 looks very low.


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## Kaotik (Jul 3, 2017)

jabbadap said:


> That is true and nice but Fermi is from hd5870 era.
> 
> Just wonder is those fermi cards any good for dx12? At least timespy score for gtx570 looks very low.


See above.

D3D12 has 4 feature levels, 11_0, 11_1, 12_0 and 12_1.
Fermi, Kepler and Maxwell gen 1 are 11_0
GCN1 and Haswell/Broadwell are 11_1
GCN2-4 are 12_0
GCN5, Maxwell gen 2, Pascal and Skylake/Kaby Lake are 12_1

In addition to the feature level support, they can support variety of different Tiers on specific features.
As it stands today, GCN5 and Skylake/Kaby Lake have the most comprehensive support for D3D12 and it's FL12_1. (it is possible that GCN5 could actually surpass the Intels, but it all comes down to minimum precision - if it's FP16, they're the same, if it's FP10, it's the widest possible support you can have)


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## bug (Jul 3, 2017)

jabbadap said:


> That is true and nice but Fermi is from hd5870 era.
> 
> Just wonder is those fermi cards any good for dx12? At least timespy score for gtx570 looks very low.


I don't think it's about actually using DX12 features as much as running DX12 code that can (natively) degrade gracefully.


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## nemesis.ie (Jul 3, 2017)

I think this needs to be called "fine beer".


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## rtwjunkie (Jul 3, 2017)

Kaotik said:


> See above.
> 
> D3D12 has 4 feature levels, 11_0, 11_1, 12_0 and 12_1.
> Fermi, Kepler and Maxwell gen 1 are 11_0
> ...


What are you calling Maxwell gen 1? Just the 750 and 750Ti?

On topic, this quiet Fermi rollout mystifies me.  Why would Nvidia not tell Fermi owners? It makes no sense to release the capability and not publicize it.


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## bug (Jul 3, 2017)

rtwjunkie said:


> What are you calling Maxwell gen 1? Just the 750 and 750Ti?


Everybody calls them that. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell_(microarchitecture)


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## EntropyZ (Jul 3, 2017)

I'm just running a GTX 460 1GB (I can OC it to GTX 470 territory, but who cares amirite?) and I really don't care, since most DX12 titles won't even be able to run at 30fps on low, unless you drop the resolution to stupid levels.

Why bother? Just so you can say you delivered on a promise that the majority of people forgot about? (Edit: So this was just put in without boasting about it, weird.)

Kudos to them but I'd just prefer better Volta drivers instead, thanks. It's nice but, whyyyyyyyy lol.


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## rtwjunkie (Jul 3, 2017)

bug said:


> Everybody calls them that. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell_(microarchitecture)


I'm just trying to ensure we are all talking the same, not double checking him.


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## Sempron Guy (Jul 3, 2017)

nemesis.ie said:


> I think this needs to be called "fine beer".



fine furnace would be more appropriate


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## bug (Jul 3, 2017)

EntropyZ said:


> I'm just running a GTX 460 1GB (I can OC it to GTX 470 territory, but who cares amirite?) and I really don't care, since most DX12 titles won't even be able to run at 30fps on low, unless you drop the resolution to stupid levels.
> 
> Why bother? Just so you can say you delivered on a promise that the majority of people forgot about? (Edit: So this was just put in without boasting about it, weird.)
> 
> Kudos to them but I'd just prefer better Volta drivers instead, thanks. It's nice but, whyyyyyyyy lol.


As I posted above, DX12 code can and will degrade gracefully based on the feature level that is actually supported.
With this change, your card (I had one of those, too) will be able to run DX12 code, even if it will only use DX11 features. It's not a game changer, but a nice to have feature imho.


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## Kaotik (Jul 3, 2017)

rtwjunkie said:


> I'm just trying to ensure we are all talking the same, not double checking him.


Yes, Maxwell gen 1. refers to GM107 aka 750/750 Ti


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## jabbadap (Jul 3, 2017)

Kaotik said:


> Yes, Maxwell gen 1. refers to GM107 aka 750/750 Ti



Well mobile gm108 is maxwell gen 1 too, but for desktop graphics only gm107 derivations were made.


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## lZKoce (Jul 3, 2017)

Chaitanya said:


> Still funny when I read Dx12 and nVidia together.



First thing that came to my mind, but Intel's one beats it by FAAR  :


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## Kaotik (Jul 3, 2017)

jabbadap said:


> Well mobile gm108 is maxwell gen 1 too, but for desktop graphics only gm107 derivations were made.


True, forgot about the GM108


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## P4-630 (Jul 3, 2017)

Could this be this the reason I had so many problems installing/running windows 10 on an older (2008) Asus laptop with GT425M before?
It would simply freeze up all the time, either during installation or the short moments I was in windows it would freeze up as well...


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## bug (Jul 3, 2017)

P4-630 said:


> Could this be this the reason I had so many problems installing/running windows 10 on an older (2008) Asus laptop with GT425M before?
> It would simply freeze up all the time, either during installation or the short moments I was in windows it would freeze up as well...


I doubt it. Win10 _supports_ DX12, it does not _require_ it. It was probably Asus and their "famous" ACPIs.


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## TheOne (Jul 3, 2017)

rtwjunkie said:


> On topic, this quiet Fermi rollout mystifies me.  Why would Nvidia not tell Fermi owners? It makes no sense to release the capability and not publicize it.



There was someone harassing the GeForce forum for most of the last 2 years, I don't remember who, but he would always ask about Fermi getting DX12 support in driver threads.

Also 3DMark says my GTX470 doesn't have enough memory and may not complete TimeSpy.


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## GoldenX (Jul 3, 2017)

Kaotik said:


> It's not 12_0 capable, it's 11_0 capable. The only thing that changed really is the fact that now it can run the API itself.
> (for reference, even Kepler and Maxwell gen 1. are 11_0, not even 11_1 like GCN1 & Haswell/Broadwell, let alone 12_0 like GCN2-4 or 12_1 like GCN5 and Maxwell gen 2. & Pascal and Skylake/Kaby Lake)
> 
> edit:
> ...



So? That makes it totally capable of running DX12 code. The problem here is that Nvidia took a couple of years to fulfill the promise of bringing DX12 to Fermi. They promised Vulkan too and later decided it was "not worth it".
AMD was very clear from the beginning saying only GCN will have it, and the best of all is Intel, giving support to Ivy Bridge and up.


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## KainXS (Jul 3, 2017)

Tried it on an old Fermi card I had laying around.


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## bug (Jul 3, 2017)

GoldenX said:


> So? That makes it totally capable of running DX12 code. The problem here is that Nvidia took a couple of years to fulfill the promise of bringing DX12 to Fermi. They promised Vulkan too and later decided it was "not worth it".
> AMD was very clear from the beginning saying only GCN will have it, and the best of all is Intel, giving support to Ivy Bridge and up.


I have to repeat my question: AMD left GCN 1.0 out initially. When did they add DX12 support for GCN 1.0?


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## P4-630 (Jul 3, 2017)

_AMD Confirms GCN Cards Don’t Feature Full DirectX 12 Support – Feature Level 11_1 on GCN 1.0, Feature Level 12_0 on GCN 1.1/1.2_
http://wccftech.com/amd-confirms-gc...-level-111-gcn-10-feature-level-120-gcn-1112/


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## Red_Machine (Jul 3, 2017)

This is like back in the old days, when companies would regularly add support for newer versions of DirectX in software.  My old GeForce2 MX was a DX7 card, but the latest drivers made it report DX9 in dxdiag.


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## bug (Jul 3, 2017)

P4-630 said:


> _AMD Confirms GCN Cards Don’t Feature Full DirectX 12 Support – Feature Level 11_1 on GCN 1.0, Feature Level 12_0 on GCN 1.1/1.2_
> http://wccftech.com/amd-confirms-gc...-level-111-gcn-10-feature-level-120-gcn-1112/


That article only says what the hardware can do, it does not confirm support (notice how Fermi is listed in there, despite it receiving support only now). I honestly can't find any info about _when_ GCN 1.0 received support.


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## agent_x007 (Jul 3, 2017)

Last time I checked, I couldn't even lauch API test 
Also, I'm sorry W1zzard.... ("fix" needs to be fixed) : LINK.

Scores for my GTX 580 Lighting (1,5GB) :
Time Spy : LINK (Score : 962)
API Overhead test 2.0 : LINK
Gears of War 4* :




*have a problem with resolution scaling lock... (trying to fix).


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## GoldenX (Jul 3, 2017)

bug said:


> I have to repeat my question: AMD left GCN 1.0 out initially. When did they add DX12 support for GCN 1.0?



From day one, same with Vulkan.


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## efikkan (Jul 3, 2017)

Two pages of posts, and most of them negative. How can Direct3D 12 support for Fermi be a bad thing? If the shoe were on the other foot, the tone would be completely different if this was the competitor. Nvidia is offering great driver support for >10 years for their hardware, and even backporting some features to their legacy drivers, which beats the driver support of their competitor by far, which has been known to drop support for 2-3 year old hardware.

Many still use Fermi hardware, even I have one in daily use. But it seems that all of you have missed the most important part of this news; accelerating the adoption of new APIs. Even those who don't own a Fermi card should be really happy about this, since it removes the last reason for developers to spend resources on pre-Direct3D 12 APIs. Accelerating the adaptation of new APIs serves everyone, even if the new APIs don't show their full potential on old hardware. This is something worth celebrating.


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## bug (Jul 3, 2017)

GoldenX said:


> From day one, same with Vulkan.


Thanks for the source. I know for a fact that at least on Linux Vulkan was only supported on GCN 2.0 at launch. It has trickled down since, but it still requires the closed source driver.


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## GoldenX (Jul 3, 2017)

On Linux is different, AMD is implementing a new open driver in parallel with a closed one, AMDGPU (based on the current open mesa radeonsi) and AMDGPU-PRO (using the Windows OpenGL and Vulkan components, the idea being to use the profile optimizations that professional programs need), the open one has alpha support for GCN1.0 and beta for GCN1.1, the AMDGPU-PRO has full support, but is a worse driver than the open AMDGPU. Support for Vulkan on AMDGPU-RPO is a given as it is the same one in use on Windows, but for AMDGPU you have to use the open RADV driver, that is not made by AMD (they did say they will open their Vulkan driver and fuse it with RADV, along with OpenCL). As GCN1.0 is no compatible by default with AMDGPU, you don't get a Vulkan driver unless you use AMDGPU-PRO.


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## GoldenX (Jul 3, 2017)

efikkan said:


> Two pages of posts, and most of them negative. How can Direct3D 12 support for Fermi be a bad thing? If the shoe were on the other foot, the tone would be completely different if this was the competitor. Nvidia is offering great driver support for >10 years for their hardware, and even backporting some features to their legacy drivers, which beats the driver support of their competitor by far, which has been known to drop support for 2-3 year old hardware.
> 
> Many still use Fermi hardware, even I have one in daily use. But it seems that all of you have missed the most important part of this news; accelerating the adoption of new APIs. Even those who don't own a Fermi card should be really happy about this, since it removes the last reason for developers to spend resources on pre-Direct3D 12 APIs. Accelerating the adaptation of new APIs serves everyone, even if the new APIs don't show their full potential on old hardware. This is something worth celebrating.



It IS great news, but it's too late and on an API that is not as good as the one they already say they are not implementing (Vulkan).
Don't forget how Nvidia drops performance optimizations on older generations of "supported" cards, you get a new driver with Fermi or Kepler, but don't expect those 50% improvements in the notes to apply to your card. Personal experience with a, at the moment, "supported" 7600GT.


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## MrGenius (Jul 3, 2017)

bug said:


> I have to repeat my question: AMD left GCN 1.0 out initially. When did they add DX12 support for GCN 1.0?


I guess at least since Windows 10 was released. Or even before then actually. I've been able to run DX12 programs on my 280X since I first installed one of the earliest pre-release Insider Preview builds. One of the first things I tried to run was Star Swarm in D3D12 mode to see how it compared to  D3D11 and Mantle modes. Long story short it worked. And I found out D3D12 was ~2x as fast D3D11, but still ~50% slower than Mantle on my card.


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## Red_Machine (Jul 3, 2017)

Did the GeForce 200 series ever get DX11, or they still stuck on DX10/10.1?


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## efikkan (Jul 3, 2017)

GoldenX said:


> It IS great news, but it's too late and on an API that is not as good as the one they already say they are not implementing (Vulkan).
> Don't forget how Nvidia drops performance optimizations on older generations of "supported" cards, you get a new driver with Fermi or Kepler, but don't expect those 50% improvements in the notes to apply to your card. Personal experience with a, at the moment, "supported" 7600GT.


Nobody is expecting major architecture specific optimizations on >5 year old architectures, but the fact that you still get support and some new features and optimizations is far better than the competition.



Red_Machine said:


> Did the GeForce 200 series ever get DX11, or they still stuck on DX10/10.1?


No, pre-Fermi never got Direct3D 11 and OpenGL 4.x, since there are major hardware features lacking. Nvidia does still supports all the parts of OpenGL 4.x they can on GeForce 8000->300 though.

The reason why Nvidia are able to implement Direct3D 12 on Fermi, even though it's very different from Kepler, is the fact that there are very few new hardware requirements from Direct3D 11 to 12 (base requirements). Since Fermi is using different modules internally in the driver, most of the support had to be rewritten from scratch, and since it's a low-priority issue it has taken some time. But Direct3D 12 will never work as well on Fermi as compared to newer architectures.


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## GoldenX (Jul 4, 2017)

Red_Machine said:


> Did the GeForce 200 series ever get DX11, or they still stuck on DX10/10.1?



If the GPU is designed for DX10/OGL3, there is no changing that. You can ask the Linux Mesa team to emulate OpenGL 4.0, good luck with tesselation.
DX12 is DX11 with a low overhead design, that is why it can be implemented on old DX11 hardware, same as with Vulkan, can be implemented on anything that can run OpenGL 4.2 (we are at 4.5+). On the other hand, DX11 is a bunch of extensions on top of DX10, if you want to run DX11 apps on a card designed for DX10, you have to CPU emulate them, with the corresponding performance penalty, that is why it's not possible to make a 8800GT or an HD3850 run DX11.



efikkan said:


> Nobody is expecting major architecture specific optimizations on >5 year old architectures, but the fact that you still get support and some new features and optimizations is far better than the competition.



Old architectures don't even get game optimizations, practically a zombie in the drivers. It's not different from having a fixed old driver. DX12 is not a "new feature", it was promised years ago, and is very late compared to the rest of the supported archs.


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## efikkan (Jul 4, 2017)

GoldenX said:


> Old architectures don't even get game optimizations, practically a zombie in the drivers.


The usefulness of game optimizations are exaggerated, it usually only helps edge cases. In fact, I would prefer vendors to stop doing them all together.
Nevertheless, they add support for new versions of operating systems, both for Windows, Linux and BSD.



GoldenX said:


> It's not different from having a fixed old driver. DX12 is not a "new feature", it was promised years ago, and is very late compared to the rest of the supported archs.


Fermi is using a different code path from Kepler and newer, so it is a new feature for the Fermi driver. There is a reason why Nvidia's Direct3D 12 performance has improved a lot since its first introduction, it's due to tweaking their API implementation in the specific driver code paths. Creating optimal code paths for Vulkan, Direct3D and OpenGL for each architecture are the optimizations that matter, this benefits all software, unlike random (stupid) tweaks to a shader program of a specific game which might help them 7% in that edge case.


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## GoldenX (Jul 4, 2017)

Yeah the thing with Linux or BSD is that the closed drivers are always playing catch-up with the kernel changes. But yeah, you want proper support outside of Windows? Go Nvidia, there is no other way.


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## 0x4452 (Jul 4, 2017)

agent_x007 said:


> Last time I checked, I couldn't even lauch API test
> Also, I'm sorry W1zzard.... ("fix" needs to be fixed) : LINK.
> 
> Scores for my GTX 580 Lighting (1,5GB) :
> ...



I have one of those somewhere in the basement too. I got it second hand 

To everyone saying AMD 7xxx supported DX12 from the start unlike Fermi. Fermi was released about the same time as AMD 5xxx series of GPUs, which still do not support DX12, fwiw.


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## SaltyFish (Jul 4, 2017)

TheOne said:


> There was someone harassing the GeForce forum for most of the last 2 years, I don't remember who, but he would always ask about Fermi getting DX12 support in driver threads.


At that rate, Vulkan support for XP isn't far behind!

On a more serious note, it's nice to see hardware that's been out of production for more than five years get a feature boost. It understandably doesn't happen often (poor return on investment). Now to find a decent DX12 game that can run on a 560 Ti... oh wait, I'm not on Win10. So much for that I guess. Still nice to see this though.


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## eidairaman1 (Jul 4, 2017)

Who uses those hot bricks still?

Imho they rate with the 5800 and 2900.


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## agent_x007 (Jul 4, 2017)

0x4452 said:


> Fermi was released about the same time as AMD 5xxx series of GPUs, which still do not support DX12, fwiw.


Fermi was LATE to the party.
AMDs 5870/5850 were on market for half a year, before first Fermi was released (September 2009 vs. March 2010).
So, a fair comparison would be between it and Radeons of HD 6000 series.
Still, Radeons can't have DX12 support because doing it for VLIW5/4 based architectures is too expensive and not necessary at this point from AMD point of view.

I'm really glad NV added DirectX 12 to Fermi, because it means you don't need a PCI-e 3.0 GPU to have it


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## GoldenX (Jul 4, 2017)

0x4452 said:


> I have one of those somewhere in the basement too. I got it second hand
> 
> To everyone saying AMD 7xxx supported DX12 from the start unlike Fermi. Fermi was released about the same time as AMD 5xxx series of GPUs, which still do not support DX12, fwiw.



They inmediately reported that only GCN would have support.



eidairaman1 said:


> Who uses those hot bricks still?
> 
> Imho they rate with the 5800 and 2900.



Almost all of the low end Geforce cards are Fermi or Kepler rebrands, and with the Windows Store only supporting DX12, maybe Nvidia finally realized they should support what they most sell.


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## Cataclysm_ZA (Jul 4, 2017)

@W1zzard will you possibly run a retro roundup of GPUs from the Fermi architecture to see how they stack up to today's cards? Would be super fun to read.


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## agent_x007 (Jul 4, 2017)

Cataclysm_ZA said:


> @W1zzard will you possibly run a retro roundup of GPUs from the Fermi architecture to see how they stack up to today's cards? Would be super fun to read.


Like this ?


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## Cataclysm_ZA (Jul 4, 2017)

Like that, but done by someone with a much broader range of games and testing scenarios, only focusing on Fermi, and without DirectX 9 games.


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## PGHammer21A (Jul 10, 2017)

Cataclysm_ZA said:


> Like that, but done by someone with a much broader range of games and testing scenarios, only focusing on Fermi, and without DirectX 9 games.



DX9 was relevant to GTX4xx - but nothing after that.  Yes - that means that DX9 was not relevant to the meat of Fermi (GTX5xx and later) or even GT (not GTX) 5xx, either.  What WAS relevant?  DX11 - and especially in the case of GTX5xx and the later GT 5xx.  Windows 7 was still relevant - but just barely; however, Windows Vista was not.  (How many of you that bought Fermi-based GPUs bought them and ran Vista on those targeted PCs?  I would bet that you largely didn't.  DX10 was largely irrelevant to Windows 7 (DX10 was a one-OS trick - Vista; DX11 is, in fact, STILL relevant today, in an era of Windows 10 PCs).  To be rather blunt, a lot of the resistance to DX12 is due to the Windows Store - it's like said Store has a designed-in aversion field.  However, the REAL reason that the Store is hated is because it's not Steam (Origin and uPlay are hated for mostly the same reason) - how DARE something come along that is not Steam!  There is the reality that the Store is actually pushing the technology envelope - which, to put it bluntly, Steam is NOT doing - however, how much good is it to do so when the userbase wants the equivalent of "comfort food"?  That is what Steam is, to be honest - the gaming-service equivalent of comfort food.  I use multiple gaming services - for me, it is NOT all about Steam; in fact, my last major game was not on sale ON Steam for what I was willing to pay; instead, it was on sale on uPlay.  (Notice that the game was, in fact, available on Steam - it still is.  However, uPlay was cheaper - price seals the deal - which is usually the case when I purchase a game.  DX11 is still relevant - nowadays, it is largely because Steam itself is still relevant.


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## PGHammer21A (Jul 10, 2017)

It's not that Fermi isn't still out there - even with Windows 10.  In fact, I still HAVE a Fermi-based GTX550Ti (easily the most popular of those Fermi GPUs still in battery out there) - and I didn't even purchase it new.  EVGA *alone* sold several thousand refurbished/reconditioned Fermi GPUs just via MicroCenter and Fry's.  Why?  At the time, DX12 didn't exist except on drawing boards - the big push was, in fact, DX11 on the extremely cheap.  (At the time Bush the Younger was President, Crysis 2 was the hot shooter, and Barack Obama was in the community-organizer track.  Windows 8.1 was, in fact, in the Insider Preview stage, and I was still running a Celeron E1200 - the "Tabasco" E3400 was, in fact, a year away.  I had, in fact, just bought an HD5450 to tag-team with said Celeron six months previous.)  Fermi is STILL usable - especially in terms of e-sports - name ONE e-sports game that requires DX12 other than Quake Champions.  (That's right - NONE of the current e-sport game crop - including Overwatch - that precedes Quake Champions - which is in CLOSED beta - requires DX12.)  Before Ashes of the Singularity dropped DirectX altogether for Vulkan, you could run it on Fermi as well. Strategy titles (and especially RTSes and city-builders) don't require DX12, either.  There are OTHER features in newer GPUs (mostly larger amounts of GPU RAM) that are driving upgrades - not necessarily DX12; look at the GTX1050 Ti - it has 4GB of GPU memory in standard trim, uses LESS system power than Fermi, can be as little as half Fermi's size, etc.  It's also been problematical to purchase at a decent price - in a mere three calendar day period, I've seen prices on Amazon vacillate twenty-five percent - all because the two largest-volume resellers - one being Amazon itself - ran out of frigging STOCK.  Yes - demand for Pascal is up; however, neither DirectX 12 or even Vulkan is a driver, for rather sensible reasons.


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## agent_x007 (Jul 10, 2017)

PGHammer21A said:


> DX9 was relevant to GTX4xx - but nothing after that.  Yes - that means that DX9 was not relevant to the meat of Fermi (GTX5xx and later) or even GT (not GTX) 5xx, either.  What WAS relevant?  DX11 - and especially in the case of GTX5xx and the later GT 5xx.  Windows 7 was still relevant - but just barely; however, Windows Vista was not.  (How many of you that bought Fermi-based GPUs bought them and ran Vista on those targeted PCs?  I would bet that you largely didn't.  DX10 was largely irrelevant to Windows 7 (DX10 was a one-OS trick - Vista; DX11 is, in fact, STILL relevant today, in an era of Windows 10 PCs).


GTX 4xx = Fermi (duh ?).
DX9 runs fine on Fermi, but Radeons HD 5xx0/6xx0 have better perf/wat ratio for DX9 games.
You didn't ran DX10 games in Vista because games were not there (most supported DX9 and had DX10 patch on top), and when native DX10 finally showed up, we already had Windows 7 with DX11 support. Here's a list of DX10 games : LINK.
You don't need Windows Store to get DirectX 12 support (see 3DMark Time Spy).
Fetature Level 12_x of DirectX 12 will get utilised... someday, in few years.
But right now, you don't need it to run DX12 only titles.


PGHammer21A said:


> Fermi is STILL usable - especially in terms of e-sports - name ONE e-sports game that requires DX12 other than Quake Champions.  (That's right - NONE of the current e-sport game crop - including Overwatch - that precedes Quake Champions - which is in CLOSED beta - requires DX12.)  Before Ashes of the Singularity dropped DirectX altogether for Vulkan, you could run it on Fermi as well. Strategy titles (and especially RTSes and city-builders) don't require DX12, either.


Fermi has DirectX 12 FL_11.0 support now, and it runs DX12 titles (like Gears of War 4), so... what's your problem ?


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## Deleted member 67555 (Dec 22, 2017)

Did  they ever get DX12 support on the the 770???


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