Microsoft upgrades DirectX 12 ahead of this fall's graphics news

With this spring’s introduction of DirectX 12 Ultimate, Microsoft made the biggest upgrade in many years. Features such as variable image quality with VRS, flexible 3D complexity with Mesh Shaders and streamlined use of textures with Sampler Feedback were introduced, all of which form the basis of the hardware in the upcoming Xbox Series X game console.

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1 Requirements for DirectX 12 feature level two (DirectX Feature Level 12_2):

2 Read more about DirectX 12:

3 Related posts:

Developers who take advantage of the news get the opportunity to create technically and visually more advanced games on a new generation of hardware, while using available resources more efficiently. However, the first feature level, called DirectX 12_1, allows developers to choose whether to use the full capabilities of the new version or to rely on previous features, such as previous versions of the Direct3D interface. Now Microsoft is unveiling the next level that makes a large part of the features a requirement.

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Requirements for DirectX 12 feature level two (DirectX Feature Level 12_2):

function	Minimum level for DirectX 12_2
Driver model	WDDM 2.0
Shader Model	6,5
Ray tracing	Tier 1,1
Variable rate shading	Tier 2
Mesh shader	Tier 1
Sampler feedback	Tier 0,9
Resource Binding	Tier 3
Tiled Resources	Tier 3
Conservative Rasterization	Tier 3
Root Signature	Tier 1,1

With function level two, called DirectX 12_2, four optional functions from Ultimate are highlighted as basic requirements in the basic specification. In connection with this, Direct3D 12 becomes a basic requirement, and developers can thus not choose to use previous versions of Direct 3D, which functional level one allows. This means that the new feature level is not compatible with several previous generations of graphics architectures, as these do not support DirectX 12 Ultimate features such as VRS Tier 2, DirectX Raytracing 1.1 (DXR 1.1) and Mesh Shader Tier 1.

► Read also: Flexible image quality with Variable Rate Shading

Microsoft announces that all graphics cards in Nvidia’s Geforce RTX and Quadro RTX families are compatible with DirectX 12_2. None of AMD’s current graphics architectures support the full feature set of DirectX 12_1, and are therefore not compatible with the new version. However, Microsoft announces that upcoming products based on AMD’s new graphics architecture RDNA 2 are fully compatible with feature level two. The same applies to Intel’s upcoming products based on the Xe architecture. Some flagships in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon family system are also supported.

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The purpose of making parts of DirectX 12 Ultimate a basic requirement for the new level of functionality is that Microsoft wants to make life easier for developers who will build game engines for a new generation of hardware. If a game engine registers support for DirectX 12_2, it guarantees support for DirectX Raytracing 1.1, Mesh Shaders, Variable Rate Shading and Sampler Feedback and the other news that will be added in function set two.

DirectX 12_2 is available as part of a developer version of Windows 10 with version number 20170, which can be downloaded by a Windows Insider member. However, the individual features can be used with Windows 10 version 2004 already now, provided that the necessary driver and graphics card from Nvidia are used.