Microsoft gave respected industry publication Anandtech an exclusive preview of DirectX 12. In testing with the rigorous CPU-overhead benchmark, Star Swarm, Anandtech found DX12 shows significant performance gains on both 2- and 4-core CPUs.

“With single-threaded performance struggling to increase while GPUs continue to improve by leaps and bounds with each generation, something must be done to allow games to better spread out their rendering & submission workloads over multiple cores,”

Anandtech’s Ryan Smith wrote.

“The solution to that problem is to eliminate the abstraction and let the developers do it themselves through APIs like DirectX 12.”

Over 100fps difference between DirectX 11 and DirectX 12

Brad Wardell, Stardock’s CEO has been tweeting some very interesting details about DirectX 12. Wardell mentioned that he saw a difference of over 100fps in a recent test, which was conducted using an unreleased GPU on a system that was, as he called it "way beyond console stuff".

Wardell's tweet was as follows:

Did a test of DirectX 11 vs. DirectX 12 on an unreleased GPU with an 8core CPU. DX11: 13fps, DX12: 120fps. Lighting and lens effects. — Brad Wardell (@draginol) February 16, 2015

He then went on to answer questions regarding the test and the hardware he used. He specified that he was using a Crossfire system and an Intel Core i7 CPU. He continued to mention that while he was conducting the test, he was,

“moving around the camera and the unit AI was doing the rest.”

@Spitfire_Spud No. This is way beyond console stuff. — Brad Wardell (@draginol) February 16, 2015

DirectX 12 will make it easy to treat multiple GPUs as a single entity

A fan then asked him whether his setup was close to Xbox One hardware to which he replied that it was way beyond console stuff. We have no information regarding the specific GPUs used in the crossfire setup, but we are aware that DirectX 12 will further improve performance on multi - GPU setups.

When Wardell was asked what other improvements will DirectX 12 bring, he stated:

@Brad_D80 One thing it does is make it easy to treat multiple GPUs as a single entity. — Brad Wardell (@draginol) February 16, 2015

This is indeed quite exciting and we can only hope that developers take advantage of this feature, and subsequently alleviate the limitations that have plagued multi - GPU setups in the past. This could also lead to better support from the get go for multi - GPU configurations.

Many developers including Microsoft and Stardock, will be present at this year's GDC taking place early next month, where further details of DirectX 12 will be discussed and demonstrated. Nvidia is also hosting a press event on March 3rd About What Will “Redefine Future of Gaming” where DirectX 12 will likely be discussed as well. AMD will also be present at GDC, discussing and demonstrating their new TressFX technology along with other "new and exciting" information.

We will bring you coverage of the event as well as new information regarding DirectX 12 as soon as it becomes available.