

The games you run on your PC modify this state via draw calls to the API, after which it’s submitted to the GPU for execution. With DirectX 9 and 11, there’s a global state (or context).

Like every application, graphics APIs like DirectX also feature a primary thread that keeps track of the internal API state (resources, their allocation, and availability). How DirectX 12 Improves Performance by Optimizing Hardware UtilizationĪgain, there are a few main API advances that facilitate this gain: Per-Call API Context Luckily, third-party engines like Unreal, CryEngine, and Unity do this for them and they only have to focus on designing.


This is a double-edged sword as there are multiple GPU architectures out in the wild and for indie devs, it’s impossible to optimize their game for all of them. They have closer to metal access, meaning that most of the rendering responsibilities and resource allocation are handled by the game engines with some help from the graphics drivers. That’s the reason why PS4 games don’t run on the Xbox One and vise versa. In general, an API is designed for a specific OS. However, unlike paint, the output program of a graphics API is only readable by the API used to design it. Think of it as MS Paint where the game is the painting and the paint application is the API. A graphics API is a platform where the actual game designing and mechanics are figured out. Now, what does a graphics API like DirectX do? It acts as an intermediate between the game engine and the graphics drivers, which in turn interact with the OS Kernel. OpenGL and Vulkan, on the other hand, run on Mac as well as Linux. However, unlike its counterparts, DX is a Microsoft proprietary platform and only runs on Windows natively. Like Vulkan and OpenGL, DirectX is an API that allows you to run video games on your computer. But what exactly is DirectX 12 and how is it different from DirectX 11. This includes better CPU utilization, closer to metal access as well as a host of new features most notably ray-tracing or DXR (DirectX Ray-tracing). DirectX 12 debuted two years back, promising significant performance and efficiency boosts across the board.
