Home Gaming AMD details DirectX 12 Multiadapter and Shared Memory

AMD details DirectX 12 Multiadapter and Shared Memory

2 min read
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DX12

Computex is next week, and we’ve pretty much heard all we need to before the official unveilings of new cards from both AMD and Nvidia. AMD in particular is going to be extremely interesting – with a brand new range of cards boasting the first ever High-Bandwidth Memory support. They’re also going to be DirectX 12 compliant, which is going to be the other deadly edge to the sword.

Both Multiadapter and Shared Memory features of DirectX 12 have already been revealed (somewhat), but AMD has detailed both features in a lot more depth recently. Multiapdater, if you remember, is a new technology that will essentially allow your GPU to work in tandem with the integrated GPU that comes stock with most CPUs nowadays. It’s able to give you a noticeable bump in performance – without any real work on your side. Even better is that it’s supported natively – meaning your card won’t have to appear on AMD’s driver list to actually support it.

And if you’re into more traditional CrossFire setups, then Split-Frame Rendering is going to be your new best friend. Previously DX11 cards were only able to render single frames at a time – leaving the rest in queue and waiting for their turn to make your eyeballs weep with joy. It worked like this for a long time, but Split-Frame Rendering streamlines things a lot more. Instead of a full, single frame, each GPU will now render half a frame – while the rest of the processing power is used to prepare subsequent frames for display much quicker. This translates into a higher framerate – again at no expense to your pocket.

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But by far the most exciting feature of DirectX 12 is Shared Memory. In the past, combined graphics cards were only able to use their own RAM – with games forcing them to copy the same data onto both cards. DX12 cracks that wide open, letting both cards feed from a shared pool of memory that is an addition of the VRAM on both cards. So a CrossFire (or SLI) setup consisting of two 4GB cards will now in fact equate to 8GB of VRAM – which is important for the increasingly taxing memory requirements of modern games.

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Stardock’s Brad Wardell expressed his excitement for the new features, saying that games coming in the future would never have been possible on outdated DirectX architecture.

If we were running DirectX 11, you are not going to run [Ashes of the Singularity] at 4K. It’s not even a possibility.

It’s certainly going to be a revolution for visual fidelity in the PC gaming sphere, and AMD’s new cards are positioned to take advantage of it at exactly the right time. A few cards have already been launched with explicit DirectX 12 support, but we’re yet to see any games take advantage of it yet. That’s probably going to change very soon though.

Last Updated: May 28, 2015

23 Comments

  1. Cool, go red team!

    Reply

    • RustedFaith

      May 28, 2015 at 20:51

      Yup exciting things happening at amd. Think I might just go with a AMD cpu next with some serious overclocking and a R9 390x

      Reply

      • Admiral Chief's Adventure

        May 29, 2015 at 08:00

        I got a 8320 in December, and I’m VERY happy with the service it is giving me (and my 7870 oc is still performing very well!)

        Reply

        • RustedFaith

          May 29, 2015 at 12:15

          Those are really nice CPU’s , my friend has one and it is on par with my i7-2600k in gaming. I almost got the Intel 5960x recently but will wait untill the start of next year for the new amd cpu rather.

          Reply

  2. Hammersteyn

    May 28, 2015 at 15:38

    Next gen consoles better have two graphics cards….

    Reply

    • Cigi

      May 29, 2015 at 10:37

      One all ready has a 50 MCU offloading capabilities – not going to say who – but it is not SONY 🙂 ! ….

      Reply

      • Hammersteyn

        May 29, 2015 at 10:40

        O_o

        Reply

  3. Krabby Paddy

    May 28, 2015 at 15:38

    So even though in truth I can’t afford these nice high end cards, I will not be nasty due to envy. To the Red team followers who can afford this. Good for you. I hope the card brings you great joy when you get it … mutters other not so nice things under breath.

    Reply

    • Kromas,powered by windows 10.

      May 28, 2015 at 16:23

      Speculated price for the r9390x is R11k. Not really breaking the bank if their rebrands will have HBM stuck on them.

      Reply

      • Krabby Paddy

        May 28, 2015 at 18:26

        I don’t doubt that the new AMD cards will be good value for money. Still R11k not breaking the bank is all relative. Saying that I CAN’T afford these high end cards is maybe not so true but I find it hard to justify that kind of expense at this stage of my life. Just got married, so therefore have chocolate supplying responsibilities, looking to buy a house, also start having kids which are not cheap. Gaming is one of my main hobbies so I’ll keep my pc specs at mid range respectability so I can still play new games. Some will think that skimping on their gaming rig is out of the question, which is fine. Each to their own.

        Reply

        • NotHappyAboutInternetZa

          May 28, 2015 at 18:40

          lets not forget that you won’t need for example 2x HD 7970 ….you could theoredically get a GTX 660 and a HD 7970 or mix and choose between the different cards/brands.

          They announced that we’ll be able to mix brands and use different cards together with Dx12.

          Reply

          • RustedFaith

            May 28, 2015 at 20:53

            Nope you cant because Nvidia will block it just like they blocked the hybrid physx setups.

            Trust me I tried but with the new gameworks games its totally broken on purpose by nvidia.

          • NotHappyAboutInternetZa

            May 30, 2015 at 18:36

            Each card no longer renders frames one after another (GPU 1 renders even numbers and GPU 2 renders odd)

            SO technically if they fit they will work together with Dx12 since each GPU now instead of using the above method will now render blocks of the screen IE 2 GPUs = 2 blocks left and right renders each separately by the two cards.

          • RustedFaith

            June 1, 2015 at 13:02

            I know how it works ….

            Yes “techically” that is how it will work until team Green does something with their drivers to disable the function. Just like they did with Physx ……

            History is a good indicator what Nvidia will do in the instance.

        • Deceased

          May 29, 2015 at 11:10

          Skimping on your gaming rig is out of the question… you should know this dude 😐

          Reply

          • Krabby Paddy

            May 29, 2015 at 15:31

            Ja I know, saying something like that on this site is just sacrilege.

      • RustedFaith

        May 28, 2015 at 20:52

        IT will be about R9000 from the importers excluding vat.

        Reply

    • Maxiviper117

      May 28, 2015 at 18:07

      Microsoft – “While we are not yet ready to detail everything related to DirectX12,
      we can share that we are working closely with all of our hardware
      partners to help ensure that most modern PC gaming hardware will work
      well with DirectX12, including; NVIDIA’s Maxwell, Kepler and Fermi-based
      GPUs, Intel’s 4th generation (and newer) Core processors and AMD’s
      Graphics Core Next (GCN) based GPUs. We’ll have more to share about
      DirectX12 at GDC in March.”

      Older cards will work with directX 12 but all new cards today are coming with it anyway.

      Reply

      • Krabby Paddy

        May 28, 2015 at 18:32

        I’m one of those that will say, wait and see when DirectX 12 has been out for a bit and how each card performs then. Then all the cards will be on the table and everyone will know. No more bullshitting. Thankfully I’m not looking to get a new card until early next year.

        Reply

  4. ElimiNathan

    May 28, 2015 at 16:42

    I’m about to upgrade. I’m running an R9 290 at the moment. Really dont know which way to go yet but was swinging towards green team with all the stuff that’s been happening as of late

    Reply

  5. Maxiviper117

    May 28, 2015 at 18:04

    Don’t get confused readers, Both Nvidia and AMD will benefit from these features, it is a DirectX 12 feature not a GPU vendor specific feature.

    Reply

    • disqus_GB8lUuziuG

      May 28, 2015 at 20:31

      yes this is true, eventually green team will get asynchronous shaders.

      Reply

    • RustedFaith

      May 28, 2015 at 20:54

      Until green team blocks it like physx hybrid

      Reply

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