At the 2014 Game Developers Conference, Microsoft officially announced Direct X12, the latest version of the graphics API. Microsoft is targeting it to launch for developers in holiday 2015.
The advantage of DirectX 12 is that it will significantly improve multithread scaling, CPU optimisation, and reduced graphics card overheads. For the gamer this means higher resolutions, better graphical wizardry and a more stable frame rate.
Direct X12 also introduces a new set of rendering pipeline features that Microsoft claims will "dramatically improvde the efficiency of algorithms" like order-independent transparency, collision detection, and geometry culling.
The primary beneficiary of DirectX 12 for now will be the Xbox One, which has struggled to keep pace with Playstation 4’s performance, often running games at a sub par 720p resolution. “Xbox One games will see improved performance, and we’ll bring the same API to all Microsoft platforms,” said Gosalia.
Good news for PC gamers is that DirectX 12 will be compatible with all currently shipped DirectX 11 GPUs, encompassing Maxwell, Kepler and even Fermi architectures. Directx 12 support will also be coming the same AMD Graphics Core Next (GCN) hardware supported by Mantle. Unfortunately no words came on its windows 7 support.
During the event, Microsoft showed off a tech demo of Xbox One racing game Forza Motorsport 5 running on a PC rig powered by a NVIDIA GeForce Titan Black graphics card.
Microsoft has also ported benchmarking tool 3DMark over to DirectX 12, and were reporting 50% greater CPU utilisation, increasing the efficiency of each thread.
For full feature list of Direct X12's advancements read this post on Microsoft's developer website.
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