HardwareAMD, Microsoft, and Nvidia are getting cosy at GDC 2024 to tell us all about the new DirectSR upscalerWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
HardwareAMD, Microsoft, and Nvidia are getting cosy at GDC 2024 to tell us all about the new DirectSR upscalerWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Future)
PC gaming’s (un)holy trinity of hardware and software vendors will be taking the stage at this year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC) to provide more details on what’s new in the world of graphics. Work graphics, a DirectX 12 feature that first appeared in beta form last year, will take the lion’s share of the presentation but alongside it will be a preview of DirectSR: Microsoft’s new system for implementing upscaling on devices running Windows.
To me, that strongly suggests it will be a new API for handling upscaling, similar to that used to access AMD’s FSR or Nvidia’s DLSS, but it will be far more hardware-agnostic.
News thatMicrosoft is bringing an ‘Auto upscaler’ to Windowscropped up just a couple of weeks ago, and while both systems are about upscaling, DirectSR seems to be something that game developers can use as a common ground implementation. Sounds cool but we already have something like that and it’s AMD’s FSR.
That runs on pretty much any GPU or at the very least, any graphics card that’s needed to run the latest games. But if it turns out to be better than AMD’s shader-based system and it has even broader hardware compatibility, then DirectSR could well be hot news for PC gamers.
The last GDC event I physically attended was alongtime ago (17 years, to be precise) but the premise hasn’t changed at all: A week of seminars, presentations, and demonstrations of every aspect behind the creation of games. Sometimes you get tolearn some interesting stuffand one of my favourites of all time is the detailed look behind the scenes ofAssassin Creed III’s graphics.
Your next upgrade(Image credit: Future)Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD.Best gaming motherboard: The right boards.Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits.Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest.
Your next upgrade
(Image credit: Future)Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD.Best gaming motherboard: The right boards.Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits.Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest.
(Image credit: Future)
Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD.Best gaming motherboard: The right boards.Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits.Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest.
So I’m especially interested in the other topic being discussed:Work graphs, a feature of the Direct3D 12 (the graphics part of DirectX) that was launched as a preview in 2023. Work graphs will never be something you can just switch on in a game, but to the right developer making the right game, they could be super useful.
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Here’s the basic premise of them. What if you have a shader running on a GPU and its final output determines whether a whole bunch of new shaders needs to be run? Normally, this info would have to be cycled back to the CPU, for it to issue the call for the shaders in a new command list. Work graphs keep all of this on the GPU itself, letting the game engine’s code running on the graphics processor handle all of the various shader paths.
AMD has produced somesample codefor you to peruse if you have a penchant for D3D12 coding, but it will only work on Radeon RX 7000-series GPUs. If you’ve got an Intel or Nvidia graphics card, you’ll need to have a wee chat with them about getting access to a beta driver that supports work graphs.
It’s all still early days, but the benefits are greater GPU efficiency and less CPU and memory overheads; the long-term goal is to shift as much of the rendering pipeline to work graphs as possible. We’ll just have to wait another month until the GDC session to find out more, though. Dammit, I want to knownow.
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