Microsoft DirectX Raytracing 1.2 and Neural Rendering Brings up to 10x Speedup for AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA GPUs

[igormp]

That's the gpu vendors job, not microsoft.

Vulkan drivers from all companies are as fast as their other drivers from what I've seen, so I don't think this is a GPU vendor issue.
Not a MS issue either, they're not responsible for Vulkan.

I guess it's more of a matter of engines not making proper use/exploiting Vulkan as much as they do with Directx. I don't deal with development in either of those APIs, but I can imagine it to be something really simple, like either due to DX being easier to use, be it on actual code or how to use extensions (VK is known to require tons of boilerplate), or engines just focusing more on DX because that's the standard for games on Windows and that's it.

 

[R-T-B]

Not a MS issue either, they're not responsible for Vulkan.

This was my only point.

 

[LastDudeALive]

For support, here's more clarity from the TomsHardware article: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-com...-2-will-deliver-up-to-2-3x-performance-uplift

For Nvidia, Turing and up already support Opacity Micromaps (OMM), and Ada added support for Shader Execution Reordering (SER).

Intel says that Celestial will add support for OMM, and presumably it will support SER as well, but it wasn't clear on whether Alchemist and Battlemage will (or can) have SER.

AMD doesn't seem to support any of these on RDNA 2, 3, or 4, but may have their own scheduling tools that sort of mimic SER, but would require RDNA specific optimization (and why bother doing that when AMD is a tiny portion of the GPU market?)

Qualcomm will add OMM and SER support in their next generation.

For how much people LOVE to complain about "Ngreedia," it's once again obvious why they're essentially a gaming GPU monopoly.

 

[Punkenjoy]

The thing with the Vulkan/DX12 debate is always a bit flawed.

DirectX do way more that graphics. It include DirectSound, DirectInput. It's a full blown gaming API where Vulkan is just graphics

In reality, the subcomponents of DirectX, Direct3D is the equivalent of Vulkan.

 

[Jtuck9]

AMD doesn't seem to support any of these on RDNA 2, 3, or 4, but may have their own scheduling tools that sort of mimic SER, but would require RDNA specific optimization (and why bother doing that when AMD is a tiny portion of the GPU market?)

"though Microsoft said that the red company is working with it on the widespread adoption of these technologies."

?!

 

[Contra]

Looks like a fake. Especially the part about SER - probably the author confused it with the broadcast from NV. SER is a function of the NV driver, which the game must call and do this a huge number of times. Also, for this, a fast and large L2 (Nx10 MB) is required to reload all shader registers. It looks terrible and more like a dlss-style crutch/overhead.
OMM is also a proprietary feature of the NV driver.
Also, both of these features are used in about one single NV demonstrator - CP2077. No one else bothered to use them, and it's not because of their dx support...

 

[LastDudeALive]

"though Microsoft said that the red company is working with it on the widespread adoption of these technologies."

?!

It's likely that this just means including these features in UDNA. Unlike Nvidia, AMD has not mentioned any of these features in their architecture white papers, so they probably just cannot support them on RDNA based GPUs, although maybe they can rework their scheduling tool to support SER. And given how AMD has consistently been 2-5 years late in feature support, I'm not confident they'll magically reveal that RDNA 2 supported the latest ray tracing features all along.

 

[Vya Domus]

"though Microsoft said that the red company is working with it on the widespread adoption of these technologies."

I don't think they are talking about the exact same thing nor is it clear what SER actually entails, I am assuming it doesn't actually require anything special in the hardware. Nvidia's previous SER was something done through Nvidia's own extensions, it didn't have anything to do with DXR.

 

[Jtuck9]

It's likely that this just means including these features in UDNA. Unlike Nvidia, AMD has not mentioned any of these features in their architecture white papers, so they probably just cannot support them on RDNA based GPUs, although maybe they can rework their scheduling tool to support SER. And given how AMD has consistently been 2-5 years late in feature support, I'm not confident they'll magically reveal that RDNA 2 supported the latest ray tracing features all along.

I could probably be more charitable regarding their silence and assume they've been aware of these things during development of RDNA 4 (they've been pretty tight lipped about path tracing, no? Aside from that tech demo). Will be interesting to hear about any implementations anywho.

I don't think they are talking about the exact same thing nor is it clear what SER actually entails, I am assuming it doesn't actually require anything special in the hardware. Nvidia's previous SER was something done through Nvidia's own extensions, it didn't have anything to do with DXR.

Yea, it will be interesting to see how much performance improvement they can eek out of RDNA 4.

 

[remekra]

Agreed.
DirectX 12 is getting too old, and it's still a complete unoptimized mess, compared to DX11.
Ridiculous how in 2025 DX12 is still way slower and buggier than DX11.

+1 on what are the issues with DX12?

SER and OMM were talked about when Ada launched, so it seems like nvidia beat AMD and Intel to the race and already have them, didn't hear anything about those from either AMD or Intel.

All Nvidia GPUs dating back to Turing (GeForce RTX 20-series) support Opacity Micromaps (OMM), so these graphics cards can potentially experience a performance boost once game developers implement them into their titles. Intel said its next-generation Celestial (Xe3) GPUs will also support OMM.

Nvidia's GPUs have supported Shader Execution Reordering (SER), starting with the GeForce RTX 40-series Ada Lovelace family. Intel said it looks forward to supporting SER "when it is available in a future Agility SDK.' However, whether it will be supported on Intel's Arc 'Alchemist' or Arc 'Battlemage' GPUs (or both) is unclear.

AMD does not seem to support OMM or SER on its RDNA 2/3/4 GPUs, though Microsoft said that the red company is working with it on the widespread adoption of these technologies. Also, AMD has certain scheduling optimizations that may mimic how SER works, so if game developers take time to optimize for Radeon GPUs, the latter may get some speed improvements.

So they will not optimize, maybe when AMD will claim more market share.

 

[LastDudeALive]

So they will not optimize, maybe when AMD will claim more market share.

What do you mean? Nvidia won't optimize? They already have, they included support for these features years before they've officially been added to DirectX.

Do you mean developers won't optimize? With Nvidia having ~85-90% of the GPU market and already supporting these features on their most popular GPUs, there's a strong incentive to include these features for better performance, just like devs are finally getting comfortable requiring DX Ultimate features like ray tracing and mesh shaders now that most GPUs support it.

 

[Vayra86]

Oh nice timing here!

So we just got a new gen and it obviously hasn't got the hardware bits needed to do this with all the announced improvements.

Forever in beta. How are you guys enjoying the ride so far? I've got a few ICOs here and a bridge to sell, interested?

 

[LastDudeALive]

Oh nice timing here!

So we just got a new gen and it obviously hasn't got the hardware bits needed to do this with all the announced improvements.

Forever in beta. How are you guys enjoying the ride so far? I've got a few ICOs here and a bridge to sell, interested?

For Nvidia, Turing added support for OMM, and Ada added support for SER. So Nvidia has all the hardware necessary. Intel and AMD don't, which is why Nvidia is practically a monopoly at this point.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Reminds me of this:

View attachment 390869

where is that from, which movie?

 

[remekra]

What do you mean? Nvidia won't optimize? They already have, they included support for these features years before they've officially been added to DirectX.

Do you mean developers won't optimize? With Nvidia having ~85-90% of the GPU market and already supporting these features on their most popular GPUs, there's a strong incentive to include these features for better performance, just like devs are finally getting comfortable requiring DX Ultimate features like ray tracing and mesh shaders now that most GPUs support it.

From the quote:

AMD has certain scheduling optimizations that may mimic how SER works, so if game developers take time to optimize for Radeon GPUs, the latter may get some speed improvements.

That's what I meant.

 

[Jtuck9]

where is that from, which movie?

The Thing

 

[LastDudeALive]

From the quote:

AMD has certain scheduling optimizations that may mimic how SER works, so if game developers take time to optimize for Radeon GPUs, the latter may get some speed improvements.

That's what I meant.

Ahh, yes. Hopefully AMD can hook their scheduling into SER so devs only need to use one tool.. Otherwise there's really no incentive to optimize for Radeon GPUs. Although, everything except RX 9000 is too weak to do meaningful ray tracing anyway, so AMD doesn't have an incentive to add this either, especially when they're about to revamp their entire architecture with UDNA.

 

[the54thvoid]

where is that from, which movie?

The Thing. No CGI, all special FX from the eighties - still disturbing as fuck.

 

[mechtech]

Agreed.
DirectX 12 is getting too old, and it's still a complete unoptimized mess, compared to DX11.
Ridiculous how in 2025 DX12 is still way slower and buggier than DX11.

How long was DX9 used, a decade or more?

 

[Visible Noise]

AMD users need not apply. Maybe in 2027 AMD will release compatible hardware.

 

[Vya Domus]

How long was DX9 used, a decade or more?

DX11 as well and it will probably outlive it seeing as it's the last "conventional" graphics API.

 

[Jtuck9]

Ahh, yes. Hopefully AMD can hook their scheduling into SER so devs only need to use one tool.. Otherwise there's really no incentive to optimize for Radeon GPUs. Although, everything except RX 9000 is too weak to do meaningful ray tracing anyway, so AMD doesn't have an incentive to add this either, especially when they're about to revamp their entire architecture with UDNA.

The timing should be interesting. Seems odd to release something and then have it superseded so soon, but maybe prices have distorted perceptions. Or maybe thems just the "rules"...and I'm destined to be the owner of numerous bridges

The Thing. No CGI, all special FX from the eighties - still disturbing as fuck.

I can't believe it was in the cinema at the same time as E.T.

 

[arbiter]

new features that give free improved performance is a W for customer.

 

[Jtuck9]

new features that give free improved performance is a W for customer.

It will be interesting to see what AMD mean by "these technologies." considering the adoption of something like the UCIe

 

[Legacy-ZA]

The features look very promising, I am really looking forward to what will be offered.

I am just worried about the quality of Windows 11 and I am sure something is going to go wrong in some way.

That being said, can't we just transition away to Vulkan?