20 replies to this topic

[jeffsw6]

While not a balance question, what does DirectX 11 implementation (testing/coming soon) mean to me? Is this going to improve FPS on video cards that have DX11? Is there any way to project how much it will improve?

Just curious.

[jakucha]

jeffsw6, on 14 July 2013 - 03:18 PM, said:

While not a balance question, what does DirectX 11 implementation (testing/coming soon) mean to me? Is this going to improve FPS on video cards that have DX11? Is there any way to project how much it will improve?

Just curious.

DX11 usually runs better with DX11 capable cards, so it'll look prettier and most likely give a slight fps boosts. Have no idea how much of an improvement though.

[Training Instructor]

It would mean a modern game written on a good software engine. That means it has nothing to do with MWO. No worries folks, move along.

[ApolloKaras]

jeffsw6, on 14 July 2013 - 03:18 PM, said:

While not a balance question, what does DirectX 11 implementation (testing/coming soon) mean to me? Is this going to improve FPS on video cards that have DX11? Is there any way to project how much it will improve?

Just curious.

Direct Compute, Tessellation (probably wouldn't help frame rate much), Multi-threaded rendering (should help frame rates)

[jakucha]

Training Instructor, on 14 July 2013 - 03:20 PM, said:

It would mean a modern game written on a good software engine. That means it has nothing to do with MWO. No worries folks, move along.

Star Citizen uses the same engine as MWO and people are pretty psyched about that. I don't think it's a bad engine, there's just a few reasons no one makes mech games where you're running around with multiple hitboxes and such.

[Corvus Antaka]

Tesselation.

Eye Candy.

Better FPS on newer video cards.

New tweaks to make the game look even sexier

[Deathlike]

As long as performance improves and I get the see prettier mechs, I'm all good.

[IceSerpent]

jeffsw6, on 14 July 2013 - 03:18 PM, said:

While not a balance question, what does DirectX 11 implementation (testing/coming soon) mean to me? Is this going to improve FPS on video cards that have DX11? Is there any way to project how much it will improve?

Just curious.

There's no way to tell - DX11 gives extra capabilities which may or may not get utilized by PGI. All by itself the switch to DX11 probably won't be noticeable unless other changes are implemented.

[Arcturious]

I'm really hoping for things like working Ant-Aliasing, ambient occlusion, soft shadows, better reflection / refraction on surfaces (water already looks good, should look much better!), volumetric fog and a pile of others.

My worst fear is they will do the same thing we've seen since Beta. Enable the pretties, then when people with PC's from the 90's and laptops complain, turn them off again leaving us pining for all that could have been but never was.

Edited by Arcturious, 14 July 2013 - 04:44 PM.

[jeffsw6]

Arcturious, on 14 July 2013 - 04:43 PM, said:

My worst fear is they will do the same thing we've seen since Beta. Enable the pretties, then when people with PC's from the 90's and laptops complain, turn them off again leaving us pining for all that could have been but never was.

My worst fear is it won't significantly improve the game performance on common PCs.

I have a GTX460 and MW:O performs badly on it even with conservative settings. I don't have this issue with any other game. Granted, a GTX460 is not a current-generation card; but I haven't upgraded because only one game appears to perform poorly on my PC.

[Dreamslave]

Saxie, on 14 July 2013 - 03:24 PM, said:

Direct Compute, Tessellation (probably wouldn't help frame rate much), Multi-threaded rendering (should help frame rates)

Woah, those are cool words.

[XANi]

DX11 is (AFAIK, I'm no expert) better tuned for muti-cores (so basically any new processor) and that should help a bit, even on low-end machines (better to have 2 cores loaded in 90% and 70% than one overloaded because of handling GFX and other on 30% and bored)

[Braggart]

PGI have already stated that the only difference with DX11 will be performance related. They will not be adding anything to make it look prettier or special features.

A sad waste of time if you ask me.

[Ralgas]

Braggart, on 15 July 2013 - 12:43 PM, said:

PGI have already stated that the only difference with DX11 will be performance related. They will not be adding anything to make it look prettier or special features.

A sad waste of time if you ask me.

missed opportunity but not a waste, anyone with a nivida 4xx series or radeon 5xxx series or brtter should see a decent boost to framerate

Edited by Ralgas, 15 July 2013 - 12:53 PM.

[Zyllos]

Mostly, the difference between DX11 and DX9 for newer systems is off loading certain calculations from the CPU to the GPU.

Total FPS is based on the factor of how many instructions the CPU can send to the GPU to draw and how quickly the GPU can complete each instruction to draw is your total FPS. Look at these two situations:

• many instructions for the CPU to calculate before sending the draw call for the GPU
  
• many draw calls from the CPU to the GPU

In the first situation, the computer is CPU bound because the CPU can not process fast enough to send a lot of draw calls to the GPU, thus the GPU is idling a lot. In the case of DX11, it could off load some of the CPU calculations to be done directly on the GPU, thus allowing the CPU to instruct the GPU to perform more draws, thus more FPS.


The second situation was pretty common in many older games. There was not many calculations needing to be performed before drawing a screen, so the CPU sent many draw calls but the GPU could not process them all. This is a GPU bound situation. Switching from DX9 to DX11 might not help you in this situation because the GPU couldn't already handle the output in the first place, thus off loading CPU instructions to the CPU would make it worse.

But if you have any DX11 compatable GPU and with a good dual/quad core CPU, most likely you will see a bit of performance gain from swapping over to DX11.

Forgot to add in the mutli-threaded support, also. That helps the CPU do parallel processing to perform the draw call, which could help the second situation depending on the hardware.

Edited by Zyllos, 15 July 2013 - 12:57 PM.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

jeffsw6, on 14 July 2013 - 05:21 PM, said:

My worst fear is it won't significantly improve the game performance on common PCs.

I have a GTX460 and MW:O performs badly on it even with conservative settings. I don't have this issue with any other game. Granted, a GTX460 is not a current-generation card; but I haven't upgraded because only one game appears to perform poorly on my PC.

MWO currently is more dependent on CPU rather than GPU.

Once on DX 11, that should change as various calculations will be done by the GPU instead.

[Squiggy McPew]

I have the exact same gtx560 from my old c2d e6750 rig that is installed in my new i5-4670k rig.

Before with pretty much all effects turned down to low or medium I would maybe get 30ish fps and tank at about 15 or lower when in close combat.

Now with everything on max I get a rock solid 60fps with vsync in all situations.

Yep, game is definitely cpu bound.

[Kaldor]

Xfire and SLI?

maybe

[Oppresor]

Essentially more effect types, better looking terrain and unit detail when used with a Direct X 11 compliant graphics card. The cheapest AMD card that I have found that works with MWO and is DX11 is the HD 6570 Ultimate (Its passive so would need a well ventilated case of a big case fan like I had).

One thing to remember about DX11 is that the code needs to be adapted or written to support the new features, having worked in Applications development with VBA, I can confirm that this will take time and we will probably end up being extended as Beta testers to feedback on the changes.

[Zakie Chan]

The cake is a lie