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DX12 Can Handle 600K Draw Calls, Increasing AMD GPU Performance by 600%

DirectX 12, due to ship with the forthcoming Microsoft operating system Windows 10, is able to handle 600K draw calls and boost AMD card performance by 600%, according to Stardock CEO Brad Wardell.

The claims come courtesy of The Inner Circle, a group of Xbox One gamers who cover related news, interviews, and rumours associated with their console of choice. The Inner Circle interviewed Wardell on their latest podcast.

Wardell revealed that DX12 can manage 600K draw calls – essentially, the amount of objects that can feature on-screen at one time – comparing it to the meagre 6K draw calls that DX9 could render.

The AMD GPU claim of 600% improved performance is based on an Anandtech benchmark, running Oxide’s Swarm Tech demo on both DX11 and DX12 on an AMD Radeon R9 290X. DX11 ran at 7fps, whereas DX12 ran at 43fps, beating out AMD’s own API, Mantle, which managed 41fps.

Here’s a summary of everything discussed with Wardell, provided by NeoGAF member Livelife (verbatim):

-Anandtech AMD cards 7fps to 43fps running Nitrous engine DX12 engine.
-600% performance increase on AMD cards running full DX12 game engine.
-CPU cores n their performance more important in the future games .
-Directx 12 on Xbox Nov.
-Directx 12 runs better than Mantle on AMD cards.
-Dx9 uses max 6000 draw calls vs 600,000 on dx12.
-Naysayers are eating crow!
-“Marketing chose 40% increase slogan as real gains were too unbelievable for the masses to digest”
-limitless light sources in games.
-1000+ characters AI characters on screen.
-toy story/ lord of the rings graphics no deffered rendering.
-future Xbox cpu bound exclusives DX12 games to have these gains however dx12 games initially 30% gains as they transition from Dx11 to full new dx12 game engines using esram etc
-Not so much games for cross platform games.
-Fable Legends Dx12 game
-AMD/MS has mega DX12 news at GDC.
-Stardock developed Starswarm dx12 demo in 2 months. Starswarm would have similar performance gains on Xbox one i.e 600%. They have something major at GDC in the Microsoft booth.
-Stardock are developing DX12 game engine “Nitrous”. Star Control game will make sense console. They will license it to 3rd parties in future after they release 2 games on Nitrous engine.
-Phil Spencer managing expectations, as in November with DX12 on Xbox….. the games released then won’t look much different then until the new DX 12 game engines.