The impossible has happened: Testing Radeon and GeForce together in DirectX 12

PCWorld: The weather forecast for hell is snow. And, yes, those are pigs taking flight. Indeed, one of the most unthinkable events in PC gaming is underway thanks to DirectX 12: GeForce and Radeon cards can run side-by-side in a single PC.

The long-touted, but not quite public feature in DX12 that makes this possible is Explicit Multi-GPU. It lets games parcel out graphics chores to any GPU that supports a multi-GPU mode.

[Errorist76]

This is huge!

[Eonjay]

Its unbelievable really. AMD has played this perfectly.

[darthv72]

And here I thought my old days of running a TNT2 as a primary D3D, 2 voodoo2 (in SLI) for Glide and a PowerVR card for odds and ends was a big deal.

This is much bigger as DX12 lets the current cards work together unlike when (in my situation) I had to specify which API to use for a game and it activated that particular GPU.

[donthate]

AMD played this perfectly, or MS just gave AMD a freaken gift?

[AndrewLB]

AMD had nothing to do with it. This was Microsoft adding a feature that made AMD relevant again. I had read in the past this will also allow the use of pairing your dGPU (graphics card) with the iGPU (integrated Intel GPU which is on most Intel CPUs) so it's not just sitting idle like it is in most of our computers. Even if its just a tiny boost, its welcome.

[Bdub2000]

Thats what she said...

This feature does sound awesome.

[DarkOcelet]

A 980Ti with a Fury X.

It would be sick! Hopefully all developers support this feature in their games.

[zodiac909]

Thats what she said.

[hiredhelp]

WHATTT You mean the war is over RED and GREEN shake hands..?
The war has been raging longer than well xbox ps2 days thats a long time.
That said this means physics is back on table for AMD users and Nvidia can grab that extra boost for less money. VR Can now be possible!!

[AndrewLB]

Yea. I bought the original Geforce 256 back in 1999. Talk about a game changer! The first 3d graphics card with full hardware transform and lighting, which was first shown off in a groundbreaking game, Giants: Citizen Kabuto (if you haven't played it, you weren't a gamer back then).

Just a peak of a hilarious scene from the game: https://youtu.be/4Sh_VuxYqB...

"Tiiiiimmmmmmmaaaayyyy!& quot;

[Eonjay]

Oh my goodness. Look at these results. There is no incentive to purchase nVidia at the moment, even if you have an nVidia card as the AMD card and the nVidia card without SLI outpreforms two nVidia cards with SLI.

What in the hell has nVidia done? AMD is destroying them with the new Apis. Why didn't nVidia not prepare?

[Pandamobile]

Nvidia was busy fine-tuning the Kepler architecture, while AMD, desperate to regain marketshare, built Mantle.

Mantle subsequently became the blueprint for DX12.

[Eonjay]

Correct. its also the core of Vulkan. A flawless victory for sure.

[Eonjay]

@ArmchairAnalyst

Yes.

[joeorc]

Eonjay + 16h ago
"Correct. its also the core of Vulkan. A flawless victory for sure"

Exactly..example is they all were root centric for the same thing.

Example.

The Vulkan SDK includes an installable client driver-type mechanism that will allow your code to access multiple GPUs on a system. Even if those GPUs are from different vendors. So if you have an Intel CPU with an embedded GPU as well as a discrete AMD GPU, you can access them individually as separate devices or with the update as a single GPU.

[donthate]

Actually MS started on this prior to Mantle and was kind of annoyed when ATi/AMD announced theirs.

That said, nvidia will catch up when they need to. The industry was going one way, and nvidia followed, whereas AMD thought it would go differently, and it didn't so they changed the rules.

[AndrewLB]

Where did you get this nonsense? Mantle is a software abstraction layer designed to work in conjunction with a high level api like OpenGL (later vulcan). If AMD was so instrumental in the creation of DX12, how come nVidia had DX12 cards AND drivers out well before AMD did?

AMD even admits DirectX 12 was Microsofts own creation.

"Robert Hallock: DirectX 12 is Microsoft’s own creation, though they have welcomed input on its development from many different technology partners including AMD (and nVidia)."
http://www.redgamingtech.co...

edit\

Now that i think about it, you seem to be parroting the lie that was spread via Semiaccurate.com's resident Intel/nVidia hater Charlie Dmerjian who loves to make up stuff like this. He still is butt-hurt from losing a bet with Intel executives and was forced to wear a pink bunny suit to the same event the following year.

Back then he worked for theinquirer.net

http://www.theinquirer.net/...

[Xb1ps4]

And just as I think I'm starting to learn enough about pc since I'm in the very earl stage of building one you guys start talking like this and now I'm completely lost on wtf you're talking about..😥😤

This is what has kept me away from pc gaming....

[escott013]

It should draw you in, not keep you away, my friend. This is a beautiful breakthrough in PC gaming. Absolutely beautiful.

[ABizzel1]

There are 2 primary GPU manufacturers.

NVIDIA / AMD:
NVIDIA (currently has the most marketshare, and generally have slightly better cards, significantly lower TDP, but higher price).

and

AMD (the same company powering all 3 consoles right now, and generally have cards that are about as good as the NVIDIA offerings, although much higher TDP, but generally lower pricing).

NVIDIA = Best
AMD = Almost as good as NVIDIA, but much more consumer friendly pricing

SLI / Crossfire:
PC's are capable of SLI (NVIDIA) and Crossfire (AMD). These techniques are basically adding another card to get more power. Simple math 1 GPU + 1 GPU = 2x the single GPU power (although it was usually more around 1.5x).

Why Multi-GPU is important:
There use to be a time, where you could only SLI NVIDIA cards with other NVIDIA cards generally of the same kind (could be a different manufacturer though), and the same with AMD to AMD cards.

Well thanks to DX12 we will now be able to mix NVIDIA cards with AMD cards, so you can buy a high-end NVIDIA GPU as your primary and enjoy the benefits of their great standalone performance, as well as their low TDP. And now you can buy a second GPU that's made by AMD for less, that has just as good performance as the NVIDIA card, and get that same SLI/Crossfire boost. It's like when the good guy and his rival join forces to take down an evil boss. AMD and NVIDIA can now work together to make PC more powerful in graphics processing.

Also Multi-GPU shows that cross brand GPU AMD+NVIDIA offers the same tradition 50% boost in performance we've come to expect from tradition SLI/Xfire, but when the same GPU brands are used it scales up by an extra 20% (more performance is alway great).

Why this is huge for AMD:
AMD is far behind NVIDIA in GPU market share, and what has helped them the most is their lower prices. Last checked it was pretty much 75% NVIDIA vs 25% AMD in marketshare. This could bring it to a much more reasonable 65% NVIDIA vs 35% AMD in the span of a couple of years.

Also AMD has been preparing for this switch for the last 3 years, while NVIDIA has been focusing on optimizing their current GPU architecture until the next fabrication node was ready (pretty much everyone was waiting for GPU cores to get smaller so they can add more cores on the die...that's not 100% right, but it's the easiest way to explain it that makes sense). So when the next line-up of GPUs launches sometime later in 2016, AMD might have the advantage for once in a LOOOOONG time against NVIDIA.

*Multi-GPU = big win for PC gamers
*Multi-GPU = big potential win for AMD
*Multi-GPU = a POTENTIAL shift in a more balance market share = more competitive prices for GPUs = a HUGE win for PC gamer

[XbladeTeddy]

"This is what has kept me away from pc gaming!"

Why, are you incapable of learning?

[RegorL]

@ABizzel1 do not forget the biggest (in number of GPUs installed) manufacturer - Intel.

In every recent Intel CPU there is a Vulkan capable GPU sitting idle... (those running serious 3D apps have a plugin GPU, those who don't probably only use 2D)

With DX12(?) and Vulkan(!) you can harvest this unused performance.

[TacticAce]

I think we can count on one hand how many DX12 games are out there...

[Errorist76]

Are there any at all, yet?!

[cmgs]

Except 980 and fury x are not the same class of cards. There is also 980 ti.

[FlyingFoxy]

Well they don't have a 980Ti in the benchmarks so it's kinda unfair to pit the Fury x against a regular 980. They could have at least compared with a Ti.

[Errorist76]

Still I would never buy an AMD card atm. Got burned in the he past, constant driver struggles and problems with new games. Had a trouble free life with my NVidia cards since then.

Let's see if AMD puts some effort into their games support.

[RegorL]

That is also the reason for DX12 / Vulkan

MUCH simpler drivers, just exposing the hardware.
Application(Game) is responsible for optimizations...

There will be no need to find the fastest compatible interpretation of every DX11 major game...

Driver teams will still work on optimizing DX11/OpenGL for year to come...

[kfk]

AMD's new Crimson drivers are a lot better than Catalyst was.

[kevnb]

almost every game is still dx11 or less, let's see what happens.

[crazychris4124]

Hopefully devs support this. No longer have worry about games and features that are favored towards one brand. Now you can run it all.

[Pandamobile]

I may be wrong on this, but I think cross-vendor GPU support is a native feature of multi-GPU enabled DX12 games.

[Eonjay]

You are correct. I would challenge the definition of native. But you are correct.

[Kenshin_BATT0USAI]

Wasn't this already a thing. A recall for a long time now people had nividia cards specifically for physics while using an Amd card as their main.

[OMGitzThatGuy]

I use to do that but required work arounds and old drivers to work so newer games would suffer and it could only be used for PHYSX.

[meche334]

Now you can use both cards like SLI and not just one for physx

[jonivtec]

I wonder if its gonna be possible to pair the intel integrated gpu with a discrete one???

[kstuffs]

It's possible although you may be thermally limited on a laptop that has this combination.

[joeorc]

Yes, Vulkan already does that & since DirectX12 & Mantle & Vulkan are all pretty much the same thing..the answer is Yes.

[jonivtec]

Cool...now the question is when lolol

[FlyingFoxy]

I'll only have interest in multi gpu when they have proven to get rid of micro stutter and is guaranteed to work with any game. That looks to be a long way off since either company rarely (if ever) mention the issues.

As of now 1 high end card is still better because it can be fully utilized and is smoother.

[Pandamobile]

Stuff like VR is super prone to micro stuttering, so I'm assuming both Nvidia and AMD are working towards solving that once and for all.

[Pl4sm4]

i think that is the key ... its one thing to get this to work ( which is a pretty awesome breakthrough) buuuuut... its another thing to have them running everything smooth, no micro stutter and good frame timings

[jonivtec]

Yes and no....personnaly i have run sli in two of my system and i really enjoy it since a year or two after you buy the first gpu the second one cost half less.For micro suttering it is sometime present yes but it happen on single gpu to so...personally im waiting a couple of month and i will sli my gtx 970 to.

[s45gr32]

I did not expected this to happen. Jaw dropped

[Skate-AK]

I wonder if this would affect Gameworks features?

[GrimDragon]

Radeon and amd ftw.

[Zarock]

"If you’re jumping for joy at not being shackled to the old model of buying the same make/model for a CrossFire or SLI setup, you should temper your excitement. While DirectX 12 enables Explicit Multi-GPU support, it’s entirely up to developers to support it. Yes, Stardock’s Ashes of the Singularity will support it when released next month but that doesn’t mean everyone else will right away, or even at all."

In before It's forgotten by developers the same way SLI/CFX are these days.

[Eonjay]

Yeah, it would be better if the API automatically did this for them automatically.

[Perjoss]

Don't cross the streams!

[343_Guilty_Spark]

Thanks Microsoft.

[Miacosa]

This is great I wonder how many Devs will code their software to take advantage of this new feature or if at some point DX12 will just do the heavy lifting behind the scenes without the need for Devs to specifically code for it.

[ironmonkey]

this is great news!

[Orionsangel]

They had two kids together named Gedeon and RaForce

[SlyGuy]

I wonder how this will work for G-sync/Freesync?

Will a PC with both cards be able to support both G-sync and Freesync?

[SquidBuck]

cool ig

[TABSF]

I can't see how people think AMD is winning?
"What in the hell has nVidia done? AMD is destroying them with the new Apis"

Nvidia cards are still faster! they just are!
Nvidia drivers are more frequent and actually fix any issues faster

As much of a big step Fury X was, bottom line Maxwell is just faster, Pascal will be out by April/May and will have HMB 2.0
AMD will have an even bigger struggle.

Also people keep referring to Mantle, DX12 and Vulkan. Show me the games? A few Mantle, non DX12 and non Vulkan yet. Nvidia has done a lot of work with streamlining drivers so DX11 performance has seen big gains.

Bottom line is AMD needed NEEDED to improve, and they have. Still terrible with power consumption but they've made a step.
Nvidia has focused elsewhere and now Pascal will give a mammoth step to realising 4K/VR gaming as a standard.