Xbox One October SDK Reduced CPU Cost of Rendering, Updated Graphics Driver To Improve Memory Usage

The recent Xbox One SDK and its respective documentation leaks have revealed new information about the different updates that Microsoft has applied to its Xbox One video game console. A few moments ago we reported on how the November SDK update unlocked more CPU power, but Microsoft actually implemented a few important upgrades in the October update as well.

This piece of information was revealed by a user on Union Video Game Forum who pasted screenshots from what looks like the Xbox One SDK documentation. Although most of the information in those screenshots are technical jargon, two pieces of information caught our eye. The October update has reduced the amount of memory utilized during runtime. Microsoft achieved this by updating the graphics driver so that memory overhead of vertex and pixel shader objects is reduced. According to tests, this saw a reduction of 45% in memory usage.

The other feature that the October update bought in was the inclusion of Descriptor Tables support. A descriptor table defines the characteristics of the various memory areas used during program execution, according to Wikipedia. Due to this, the shaders can  load resource descriptors from memory tables which can help reduce the CPU cost of rendering. What’s more? It’s ready for DirectX 12 as it can support the new API’s descriptor tables.

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