AMD Says Long-in-the-Tooth DirectX is Holding Back PC Gaming

[DanDeFool]

Well that answers my question.

I was wondering why computers didn't have graphics that were (in general) any better than the PS3 when a high-end gaming PC costs twice as much.

I guess it's an optimization issue. You introduce an API layer between your hardware and software to ensure compatibility, and it becomes a huge bottleneck.

This, I think, lends credence to Bob Chipman's opinion as to why PC gaming is going out the door. It's probably better from a performance perspective to develop programs and games for a specific platform that always uses the same hardware. I mean, if you just stuck a mouse and keyboard into your X360 and allowed people to start installing 3rd party programs on it, it'd be no different than a PC.

But, as we've seen with Sony and Apple, having a dedicated platform gives the hardware manufacturer the ability to restrict what kinds of programs can run on their systems and which can't. Compatibility isn't an issue when they can enforce these things by simple fiat. So if we do go towards dedicated platforms, we might get better performance, but (as consumers) we'll lose a lot of control over our hardware and how we use it.

 

[Baresark]

His comparison is very poor. PC's push crisper cleaner graphics than any console, at twice the frame rates, at twice the screen resolution, sometimes across multiple displays. It's impressive what the current generation of consoles has done, do doubt about that. But to compare them simply isn't appropriate really.

Are PC's paying for the low tech levels of Consoles? Sometimes they are. I like to look at this comparison. Let's look at a multi-platform game that was built from the ground up for the PC, and then the consoles separately. Now, take a look at a port from consoles to the PC. They run like crap, look horrible, and the entire PC gaming community hates them.

 

[theriddlen]

Hehe, of course, but it's a goddamn idiocy when it comes to something like game. It's just like writing programs in assembler, direct instructions for your CPU, but that's hell of work - it's used only when it's completely necessary.

DirectX is a great step forward in standardization of PC industry - most of you don't know how did it look before DX, but believe me, it was BAD. It's necessary evil, the lesser evil.

 

[RA92]

I still have my Rage 3D version of Mechwarrior 2.

I don't know that doesn't contribute much to the conversation, but it's all I got.

Just so you know, Mechwarrior 4 has gone <url=http://www.mektek.net/projects/mw4/download.html>freeware. You can download it from their MTX servers. &nbsp

 

[masticina]

Jesus, the 360 only has 48 stream processors? And here I thought consoles were only a generation or so behind PCs at current. Turns out it's more like three generations.

Kinda throws a wrench in Moviebob's suggestion that PC gaming is dying. It's just not going anywhere right now because we're so far ahead of consoles that we just have to sit and wait.

Ah Xzi now as you just might have noticed it isn't how much power you have but what you do with it. If it is true that the DirectX api is to sluggish then it might indeed be quite in the way of offering the possible performance.

And yes as Moviebob noticed games are moving into other platforms to ..

In the basic point it is true that PC's are more powerful, capable and yes games can look better on it have better AI etc.

But why would you? For the same reason that console wars are stupid now since most games come out on as many platforms as possible..hence few games really are optimized for any platform. I remember that before I moved fully over to console gaming [and moved from windows to linux for my work laptop] I only miss a very few games. But before I moved over well .. games we're changing. Console games simply attracted me more.

Oh how I would love to see some real Dx11 done very well. But I am more about the story, soundstrack, characters, acting then the graphics.

Really I have very few reasons to return to windows and directx. If one is to accept the limitations of the consoles and other platforms. One can truly love what they do best...offer entertainment.

 

[Wolfram23]

Interesting points. But totally makes sense to me. I think the problem of if they were to make a "thinner" API (as Crytek said) would be that while devs could tap more specifically into the hardware, Nvidia and ATI put out very different architectures. Nvidia has their CUDA cores while ATI has Stream processors, so the 580 has 512 CUDA cores but the 6970 (a slightly slower card) as 1536 Stream processors. And the 6990 (the behemoth in the article's picture) has a whopping 3072 Stream processors.

So what this means is devs would have to create their own dual API to access and tweak hardware level features on either brand of card. DirectX kind of makes that automatic.

 

[jamesworkshop]

Forget Direct X, we are still using the same Bios from the 70's

http://www.ubergizmo.com/2010/10/new-bios-replacement-could-offer-superior-start-up-times/

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface

 

[deleted_by_strongbad]

Hehe, of course, but it's a goddamn idiocy when it comes to something like game. It's just like writing programs in assembler, direct instructions for your CPU, but that's hell of work - it's used only when it's completely necessary.

DirectX is a great step forward in standardization of PC industry - most of you don't know how did it look before DX, but believe me, it was BAD. It's necessary evil, the lesser evil.

Indeed on both counts. I'd say from a performance vs. hindrance standpoint we are at the point of directX that java was in in the late 90's. More and more websites/services were starting to use it, you had to make sure the JVM was actually running before trying to click on something, and then it still took minutes to load an applet. Like dX it was a high level service that sacrificed performance (at the time fairly severely), for the ability for a unified instruction set for theoretically any hardware. Look at it now, half the time you don't know you are using java, the power in our machines has grown so much that even something as simple as a disc player uses java and doesn't stutter. I think it may take a few years, maybe less, but the full benefits of a standardized API/instruction buffer will be seen as hardware progresses to the point of making the hindrance negligible.

Sure waiting a couple years to see that come to pass may suck a bit, but the alternative Therridlen pointed out would be to have dev teams write a version of their software for each type of GPU, all in low level coding. The results COULD be glorious, will at least double or triple coding times, not to mention that coding direct to your machine is a can of worms in and of itself, one that is finally almost closed.

 

[Jormala]

Forget Direct X, we are still using the same Bios from the 70's

http://www.ubergizmo.com/2010/10/new-bios-replacement-could-offer-superior-start-up-times/

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface

That's like complaining about how we still have wheels on cars.

 

[Korzack]

Well, that's annoying...
If DirectX is really holding the hardware back That much, surely Microsoft should do something about this, help developers and gamers get the most from the hardware so PC gaming improves as a proxy - sadly, I have a sneaky feeling MS won't do anything that might harm their Xbox market shares (cynical swine hat on for a moment there, I know)

 

[nagi]

I just want a piece of software that lets me play anything from Wolfenstein 3D to Crysis. An all purpose piece of tech.

That is called Windows. Occasionally extended with a good old DosBOX.

And on the OGL mention: even Carmac said that OGL is worse to handle than DX, so....

 

[Javelk]

For those of you wanting an explanation on why none of the more rational ideas haven't been implemented yet. There's just no money in it, yet. Whenever a major dev (software or hardware)sees they can make a profit in creating something that they KNOW will solve this problem, then yea, it'll happen. Till then, try to write some code or engineer a chip that solves the problem. That's what I'm doing.

 

[deleted_by_strongbad]

Forget Direct X, we are still using the same Bios from the 70's

http://www.ubergizmo.com/2010/10/new-bios-replacement-could-offer-superior-start-up-times/

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface

That's like complaining about how we still have wheels on cars.

UEFI is coming, I'll give you that it should've been here, but more and more mobo manufacturers are making the switch. I'm doubting it is going to be all that significant, how long do most computers take to post? If you really want to make the switch go grab yourself one of the efi-x usb dongles. Though once BIOS is completely dead I'm wondering how Apple is going to analyze to see if you are using a mac for macOS, right now using a UEFI mobo or an efix dongle pretty much does the trick.

 

[Auxiliary]

Despite what delusional forum chimps might tell you, we all know that the graphics hardware inside today's consoles looks like a meek albino gerbil compared with the healthy tiger you can get in a PC...

Wow, I'm an elitist, and even I don't flame that hard...

I am part of the elitist club as well and I find this comment not flaming at all. But hey, what do you expect of Richart Huddy, a man known to have survived Charlie Sheen. And then I mean both the man and drug!

If that doesn't call for healthy tigersblood I don't know anymore.

 

[Bad Cluster]

You don't have to be a rocket surgeon to figure out that 512 stream thingies is a lot better than 48 so the obvious question is, why isn't the PC pounding its console counterparts into the ground on the graphics front? PC visuals are generally accepted as being at least potentially better but side-by-side, the differences are usually slight and sometimes, in terms of overall performance, the PC actually finds itself outpaced.

Outpaced? What?

Properly built PC, not even high end, would never get "outpaced" by current gen consoles. Unless, you are trying to run a badly optimized console port or some poorly coded game. In which case, the blame should go on developers.

Even when I had only one GTX 480 in my PC (I'm not counting SLI, since that's an overkill), I could run anything on maximum settings (usually tweaked through Nvidia Inspector tool, to enable features like SSAO, AA or Multisampling/Supersampling, which are not fully supported by some poorly ported games) at 1920x1200 and my framerate would rarely go under 60 FPS.

I got used to this so much that sometimes when I get my hands on some console time at work or at my friend's place, I find them unbearably choppy, not to mention blurry textures and such. Only games I can remember which had really smooth framerates were GRID, GT5 and Vanquish.

In short, only thing consoles outpace gaming PC with would be their game library and stronger quality control.

 

[Calcium]

The 10 times extra power is mostly visible as statistics and numbers on a spreadsheet I'm guessing. If only consoles had such power! We could have developers spending all their money on graphics instead of gameplay again!

 

[Snax]

So...basically Richard is saying that we should make more Tech-demo games, instead of relying to DrectX