DirectX 12 Ultimate is an API (Application programming interface) which is a further development of DirectX 12, and this API will be targeted for PC platforms (Windows 10), and also the Xbox Series X as well. Simultaneous PC and Console support on DirectX 12 Ultimate will make it easier for game developers to bring next-gen games to gamers.
In short, GPUs that support the DirectX 12 Ultimate standard will have support for 4 (four) key features:
DirectX Ray Tracing (DXR), Tier 1.1
Mesh Shading
Variable Rate Shading (VRS)
Sampler Feedback
These four new features will help game developers to present more beautiful visualizations, with better performance, and all GeForce RTX with ‘Turing’ architectures that have been presented since 2018 and already support all of these features.
'Turing' GeForce RTX comes with a dedicated unit (called 'RT Core') for acceleration of real-time ray tracing calculations, and this makes the GPU support one thing that is the main highlight in DirectX 12 Ultimate: DirectX Ray Tracing (DXR) . Next, the GPU Turing architecture was also one of the first to come with support for a more efficient rendering feature called ‘Variable Rate Shading (VRS) Mesh and Mesh Shading.
VRS has the potential to provide extra performance with minimal degradation of image quality, while Mesh Shading will help game developers present extra geometric details on various objects, without causing bottlenecks on certain components (such as CPUs that are forced to process multiple draw calls in high-detail scenarios).
The new DirectX 12 Ultimate will be completely presented in Windows 10 '20H1' update (DXR and VRS are available now, mesh shading and sampler feedback will be present later), of course this also means there will be a GPU driver update to enable this later.
Keep in mind, that the game will not automatically take advantage of all these features, because DirectX 12 Ultimate is a set of features and tools. Game developers need to intervene to be able to bring all these features to the next-gen game.
At the time of this article's release, GeForce RTX on PCs and Laptops is the only graphics solution on the market with full DX12 Ultimate support. This means GeForce RTX users can expect to experience all GeForce RTX capabilities even further, when games and applications based on DX12 Ultimate are released.
