We were assured that not only would our existing graphics cards, many of which are probably less than a year old, be compatible with DirectX 12, but that in many cases, the new API might even increase performance yields from them. And so far, it appears that this was not a hollow promise.
Well known technology website AnandTech has been running some preliminary tests with DirectX 12 using Oxide’s Swarm Demo, and so far, the early results seem to be impressive- we are seeing performance increases of as much as 150% for Nvidia cards, and a staggering 400% for AMD’s cards.
Of course, AnandTech is quick to point out that this is the absolute best case scenario, and that real world performance increase yields are likely to be a fair bit lower; but with that said, even if they only achieve a quarter of the performance increase that they achieved with this demo, DirectX 12 will have been worth it. Now let’s hope developers actually jump on board with it.