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AMD Graphics Microsoft Upgrades

AMD Says There Will Be No DirectX 12 — Ever 305

mikejuk writes "This is a strange story. AMD Vice President of Global Channel Sales Roy Taylor has said there will be no DirectX12 at any time in the future. In an interview with German magazine Heise.de, Taylor discussed the new trend for graphics card manufacturers to release top quality game bundles registered to the serial number of the card. One of the reasons for this, he said, is that the DirectX update cycle is no longer driving the market. 'There will be no DirectX 12. That's it.' (Google translation of German original.) Last January there was another hint that things weren't fine with DirectX when Microsoft sent an email to its MVPs saying, 'DirectX is no longer evolving as a technology.' That statement was quickly corrected, but without mentioning any prospect of DirectX 12. So, is this just another error or rumor? Can we dismiss something AMD is basing its future strategy on?"
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AMD Says There Will Be No DirectX 12 — Ever

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  • by BigMike ( 122378 ) on Friday April 12, 2013 @02:55PM (#43435095)

    ... it only goes to 11

  • We did it! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 12, 2013 @02:55PM (#43435101)

    We did it everyone! OpenGL won, good job everybody. Highest of fives all 'round.

    • Re:We did it! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ArcadeMan ( 2766669 ) on Friday April 12, 2013 @02:59PM (#43435137)

      Only Microsoft uses DirectX, everyone else on the planet uses OpenGL.

      • Re:We did it! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MacGyver2210 ( 1053110 ) on Friday April 12, 2013 @03:24PM (#43435383)

        Only Microsoft uses DirectX, everyone else on the planet uses OpenGL.

        Except, you know, most top-selling games and other 3D applications on the market which all use DirectX - even if some also use OpenGL.

        Even if the numbers don't keep ticking up, as long as it is the preferred graphics/multimedia API for Windows and XBox, it will stay relevant. Discounting it and saying the other common option 'won' is only demonstrating your lack of understanding and versatility as a developer.

        When it comes down to it, OGL and DX are about the same thing, just with different platform-specific options. At some point, both will inevitably cease to progress. Given MS's propensity to push toward tablet-style computing and discontinue functional, widely-loved software, I am not surprised they cut out of the race first.

        • Re:We did it! (Score:4, Insightful)

          by AaronLS ( 1804210 ) on Friday April 12, 2013 @03:41PM (#43435577)

          I agree, most top games are primarily DirectX. Even if a game supports both, usually it will opt for DirectX if available.

          DirectX was kind of an after thought addition to Windows anyhow, when they shut out the low level access that was being used previously for game graphics. I suppose that is where the name "Direct" came from, to emphasize it was the replacement that gave them similar direct access.

          Hopefully this will shift things towards OpenGL and we can see more+better frameworks in more languages available for OpenGL.

          On the other hand, you hit on potentially another reason for the decline of DirectX, and possibly OpenGL: the "demise of the PC". I do NOT believe the PC will die off anytime soon, but I can't deny that there are alot of casual users that no longer have any desire to put themselves through dealing with a PC, especially if they sit in front of one all day at work. A declining user base will mean commercial efforts shifted elsewhere, which won't be a good thing for the rest of us PC users.

          • Re:We did it! (Score:4, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 12, 2013 @04:02PM (#43435807)
            OpenGL developers said OpenGL is not meant for games, but professional rendering and there is no plan to add multi-threaded rendering to OpenGL as it is mostly useful just for increasing FPS in games.

            A few CPU bound DirectX games had about 98.6% scaling with multi-threading. The reason for the CPU bound performance is mostly the number of objects being rendered. Any time you have lots of objects, you need lots of system calls and general computation.

            OpenGL is pretty much a dead-end for video-games, unless they add threading.

            Before someone says "but OpenGL supports mutil-threading". No it doesn't. It supports multi-threaded worker threads for the drivers, but it does not support multiple threads communicating to the same context. DX11 does and it makes a huge difference.

            I know AMD announced a while back that they were working on a cross-platform driver interface that used command-buffers like DX11 to drastically reduce context switching, while scaling nearly linearly with cores. They were going to have this for Linux first, but I'm not holding my breath for AMD to finish anything for Linux as they keep cutting employees and scrapping projects.

            I am sick of being thread bound for games. 25% cpu load, sub-60fps, and my GPU at 5% load. Really.. wtf? Use the other 75% of my cpu.
            • Re:We did it! (Score:4, Informative)

              by TheRealMindChild ( 743925 ) on Friday April 12, 2013 @04:17PM (#43435915) Homepage Journal
              No it doesn't. It supports multi-threaded worker threads for the drivers, but it does not support multiple threads communicating to the same context

              Nonsense. Unless you change the context of the process in some other thread via wglMakeCurrent/aglSetCurrentContext/glXMakeCurrent, the context is the same in every thread.
              • Re:We did it! (Score:5, Informative)

                by Bengie ( 1121981 ) on Friday April 12, 2013 @05:49PM (#43436681)
                But only one thread may use the context at a time. Multiple threads may use the same context, but not at the same time. DX11 gets around this by having separate command queues for each additional thread, but only one primary context.

                Each thread can write to its own queue without blocking, which OpenGL can not do.
            • by tibman ( 623933 )

              If you want two separate threads to draw to the same window then you are doing it wrong. I think you do not understand what is going on in your game. If your 25% cpu load is because you have four cores and only one is being used that means there are zero dedicated rendering threads. The ai, game logic, content loading, physics, networking, user input, and rendering are all taking place within the same thread. That is not an openGL problem. They likely designed the game to render frames synchronized wit

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by suutar ( 1860506 )
          true, but now that there's a solid OpenGL to DirectX adapter (there was something on /. about that in the past week or two) it seems like OpenGL would become preferable, as the "write once, run more places" factor comes in. (Substitute "wishful thinking" for "factor" if you wish :)
        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          You should qualify that. PC games. If you bin a little bit and say the XBox uses Direct3D while the Playstation and Wii use OpenGL, most of the modern best selling games use OpenGL. Note that all the smartphone and tablet games are also OpenGL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games [wikipedia.org].

          Since Microsoft is trying to focus on the table/smartphone market, which is pretty much exclusively OpenGL, you're right, it's not that surprising they're bailing on DirectX.

          • Re:We did it! (Score:5, Informative)

            by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Friday April 12, 2013 @04:40PM (#43436119)

            > while the Playstation and Wii use OpenGL

            FULL STOP. Why do people keep perpetrating these lies??

            I _wrote_ an OpenGL implementation for the Wii on TOP of the Wii's GX library a few years back. The Wii's GX graphics library was definitely _inspired_ by OpenGL, but it is NOT OpenGL.

            We also had a PS2 version of our in-house mini OpenGL which was a WRAPPER for setting the GS registers. (The "GPU" on the PS2 was called "GS" aka Graphics Synthesizer.)

            While the PS3 provides _2_ graphics libraries, LibGCM and PSGL, I am not aware of any _shipped_ games using PSGL.

            Facts. Try checking them.

            --
            The truth worth of a community is not only what you receive from it, but you can also give to it.

            • by dsyu ( 203328 )

              Thank you good sir. I don't understand why people keep thinking GCN/PS2/etc used OpenGL.

        • Re:We did it! (Score:5, Interesting)

          by VirtualVirtuality ( 2895477 ) on Friday April 12, 2013 @04:33PM (#43436063)
          When it comes to games, certainly, but not so when it comes to 3d applications, atleast not 3d content creation applications where OpenGL is king and directx is seldom used. Maya, XSI, Modo, Houdini, Lightwave, Mudbox, Blender, and more only support OpenGL, the only ones I can think of which supports DirectX are Autocad (directx only), 3ds Max (directx, opengl) and 3d Coat (directx, opengl).
    • Hell yeah!

      Seriously, this could be what it means. DirectX was the awful glue sticking gaming to Windows!

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Dunge ( 922521 )
      You guys just follow a circlejerk and don't know what you are talking about. DirectX development is much easier and well done than OpenGL.
      • by geekoid ( 135745 )

        No, it isn't. I have no clue why you would think it is in any practical manner.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        OpenGL was multithreading capable from the get go. DirectX until 11.2 was single threaded only.
        DirectX uses a very different object graph proposition that puts the scene as the major component and for most indoor FPS, that is an easier concept, but those choices mean taking it outside where the scene (in a 3D construction context) is not the primary container for the "world" realised, you've got a much worse system to program. OGL was much better at the open world 3D and a little worse at the enclosed box-r

  • by Minwee ( 522556 ) <dcr@neverwhen.org> on Friday April 12, 2013 @02:57PM (#43435121) Homepage

    July, 2013: AMD Says 'Okay, There Will Be A DirectX 12, But We're Not Supporting It'

    September, 2013: AMD Says DirectX 12 Support By Next Year

    March, 2014: New AMD Cards' Poor DirectX 12 Performance Disappointing

    May, 2014: AMD Boss Complains About Being 'Left Out' Of DirectX 12 Development

    August, 2014: Struggling AMD Says 'Just Wait For DirectX 13!'

    • You've stumbled onto some something here...

      AMD doesn't make Directx, never has never will.

      It also sounds like TFA is trying to pimp TressFX.

      You know what though, I'm going to say I HOPE there's no directx12 because directx 9 -11 aren't worth upgrading hardware for:

      http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?s=0b835fb5dd2f2d73098918d134f47441&t=2312514 [anandtech.com]

      • I've had read TFA when it was new and I also thought that's a silly thing to say.

        But we are propably very close at the end of the line for what the API DirectX can do for 3D graphics. We can do more polys, more lighting, higher res textures and that's it. Trouble is this is very expensive to create for games and AAA games have a lot of trouble recouping production costs.

        In the other corner we have Intel beavering away on real-time rendering.

        And the bugbear around the corner is that we are approaching
      • I HOPE there's no directx12 because directx 9 -11 aren't worth upgrading hardware for

        This is so true it hurts. Even though my graphics card is DX11-ready, I still only use at most DX9.0c as I am loving my XP experience until they unfuck newer editions of Windows.

    • My prediction.

      Microsoft just re-names it; and everyone'll be using DirectY-2014 or Vista Display API or Direct-ME.

      • by jcoy42 ( 412359 )

        And we already know the name.

        Direct Wayland.

      • by Zaphod The 42nd ( 1205578 ) on Friday April 12, 2013 @04:27PM (#43436007)
        Agreed. They're going to pull a Dx10 - Vista. Windows 8 was a COLOSSAL failure, so just like Vista, now they have to force the market to give them money.

        So Windows 9 is going to have Dx12 baked in, and it'll be called "GraphicsNew" instead of "DirectX" so we can't say "Hey, why teh fuck won't you release Dx12 for Windows7?" like we did with XP and Dx9/10. "Oh, sorry, but GraphicsNew is too fancy for poor Windows7, its completely different from DirectX!"

        Yeah fucking right.
        • by rsmith-mac ( 639075 ) on Friday April 12, 2013 @06:21PM (#43436881)

          Agreed. They're going to pull a Dx10 - Vista. Windows 8 was a COLOSSAL failure, so just like Vista, now they have to force the market to give them money.

          Dammit. It's been 6 years now and I'm getting tired of this stupid falsehood. Direct3D 10 wasn't limited to Vista for superficial business reasons. There are some extremely important technical factors that required overhauling parts of Windows alongside D3D10.

          The graphics stack below the API was almost entirely overhauled, as per the Windows Display Driver Model [wikipedia.org]. Context switching, multithreading, virtual memory, splitting up the driver into user-mode and kernel-mode components, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. People forget just how broken Direct3D 9 was (and is); it was created at a time when the term "GPU" didn't exist yet and a video card was little more than a texturing unit and a raster op pipeline, and then brutally extended over the years to incorporate functionality like T&L and shaders. The whole thing predicated on a driver model that basically treated the video card as nothing more than a special class of peripheral, whereas with WDDM the GPU was finally promoted to a special class of processor within Windows.

          Direct3D 10 in turn takes advantage of these low-level changes, particularly the changes to memory management. As a result, you can't have D3D10 without WDDM and the modern graphics stack it brings.

          So the only way to bring D3D10 to XP would have been to create a cutthroat version of it that had little in common with Vista's version, or to backport the entire Vista graphics stack to XP, At which point you would have Vista whether you liked it or not, since you just brought over one of the biggest changes in the OS, and all of the bugs, growing pains, and incompatibility that brings.

    • Looks like Microsoft bought one of those Iranian 'future-looking' boxes.

  • It has to be said (Score:5, Informative)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Friday April 12, 2013 @03:00PM (#43435145) Journal
    Use OpenGL. It's the platform of every rising device. Furthermore you can get the benefits of open source.
    • DirectX means your program cant be open source?

      *confused*

  • Skipping it? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by djdanlib ( 732853 ) on Friday April 12, 2013 @03:07PM (#43435213) Homepage

    So what, are they going to skip 12 and go to 13? They've done it before, with DirectX 4, so it's not a new idea. Maybe 12 turned out to be a huge mess.

    I don't see DirectX being discontinued in favor of OpenGL/OpenAL/etc, since the GUIs in their latest products and frameworks all seem to use DirectX to some extent.

    (asbestos underpants on) Or maybe they switched to FOSS-style versioning, and just don't see anything new that would demand a major version number. We're going to see abominations like DirectX 11.1.25.4-r6.3 for the rest of time.

    • by nzac ( 1822298 ) on Friday April 12, 2013 @03:18PM (#43435325)

      Maybe it is the name. X got stuck on 11 as well.

      • Mac OS X is stuck on 10. And for a long time Street Fighter was stuck on 3.

        The Count: Today on Sesame Street, we have two new friends Tim Cook and Ryu. Ryu can you start counting.
        Ryu: one, two, three, three-second impact, three-new generation, three...
        The Count: How about you Tim, can you count to eleven?
        Tim Cook: 10.cheetah, 10.puma, 10...
        The Count: Screw both of you, where's my gun? I'm going shoot both of them.

    • by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      they should have just stuck at making 10.x releases.

      so they could call it DIRECTX X2 etc.

      the shit does amd know about microsofts naming schemes though. they can't know. MS themselves don't fucking know what they will name their next point maintenance releases or whatever they will call their 3d apis in metro later.

    • I think the comparison is quite interesting. DirectX has DirectSound, DirectInput, and other OS-tied and platform-specific functions within it. OpenGL has....graphics.

      As DX handles everything from keyboard and joystick input to sound management, it seems like this comparison and article should be focusing on Direct3D instead of DX as a whole.

      • Spot on. DX is the whole kit and parts of it come and go. DirectMusic, remember that?

        I keep wondering, what about the Direct2D and DirectWrite components? It's still fairly new technology, being used for more and more GUIs as time goes by, and could be a huge deal for graphics performance during normal non-gaming computer use. IE and FireFox use them... You never hear about them, though.

  • by Lashat ( 1041424 ) on Friday April 12, 2013 @03:10PM (#43435241)

    If memory serves this was also linked in the related article above. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee663275.aspx [microsoft.com]
    DirectX is just becoming part of the Windows 8 SDK. Then presumably the Windows 9, etc, SDKs as well. On until death.

  • I am sure 10 years ago someone could have easily said there would never be an OS 11.

  • I've never written to the API, but from a user persepective the only thing I found annoying about DirectX was every game on the planet wanted to distribute its own copy/version of it. Which I never did understand, as far as I can tell its the one API that M$ took great pains to keep backward compatible, so why couldn't all these games simply use the version that was installed (unless it was too old.) Other than that, I never had a problem with it, it worked fine, and in some cases appeared to be superior to
    • by Nemyst ( 1383049 )
      The distributing their own copy thing was just the simplest solution to the versioning issue: yes, DirectX is technically backwards compatible, but if the computer only has older versions than what you're using, you need to install the new version. Therefore, all games just decided to bundle DirectX and install it regardless.
    • This is also true. I can't count how many copies of DirectX 9.0c I had to install...for reasons I have never really ascertained. I started to say 'no' when it asked if I wanted to install DX, and the games ran fine. Guess it was just precautionary? Limit of the older Windows Installer systems?

  • question (Score:5, Interesting)

    by asmkm22 ( 1902712 ) on Friday April 12, 2013 @03:25PM (#43435387)

    What exactly does "top quality game bundles registered to the serial number of the card" mean? Have I missed something else in this conversation?

    • by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      dunno. probably that you would get the game if you buy the card. or alternatively that you'll purchase will be tied to that card if you buy the game(they're asshats).

    • It refers to AMDs "Never-Settle-Bundles [tomshardware.com] ". You buy an AMD card and you get a bunch of free games.

    • The OP and article are taking an offhand comment way out of proportion. The quote in the article from the AMD exec is basically saying that they need to bundle top quality games with their graphics cards in order to showcase what their cards are capable of because there is no new graphics card/api features in development currently. ie. they can't say "hey buy our new cards because they support X, Y, and Z new features" so instead they are bundling games and saying "hey buy our cards and you get these games

      • I forgot to mention that sometimes when they do these bundles then the game is locked so that it only plays if your graphics card is the one that it was bundle with by checking the serial of the card. Other times the game isn't locked and then you can just sell it on ebay if you don't want it.

  • Taylor discussed the new trend for graphics card manufacturers to release top quality game bundles registered to the serial number of the card.

    Are they already doing this with their current bundles? I just recently bought a Radeon 7770, but wasn't particularly interested in the Far Cry 3 game that came with it, was was planning to sell the coupon to someone who could make better use of it.

  • Does anything besides Direct3D change with new versions anymore? It's not as if there are groundbreaking developments in XInput or DirectSound, and things like DirectShow have been depreciated for other Windows methods.
  • I know this news comes in the context of gaming, but DirectX has other uses, including audio & video editing. I've recently been thinking of upgrading to a new version of Sony Vegas (video editing) and notice that since the last time I bought it (~5 y.a.) they have stopped shipping it with DirectX effects (though they still support them) and are bundling OpenFX plugins instead.
  • by flimflammer ( 956759 ) on Friday April 12, 2013 @08:34PM (#43437767)

    But there will surely be a Direct3D 12 inside the Windows Platform SDK.

    Microsoft is basically removing the individual "DirectX" brand and absorbing it into the platform SDK. Now Direct3D is just another Windows component like GDI. The idea that there will never be an update beyond what we have now is positively absurd and I feel he was either misunderstood or the translation is inaccurate.

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