Microsoft recently unveiled the latest version of their multimedia API, DirectX 12, which includes the the latest version of the Direct3D API.

The good news is that most PC gamers won’t need to upgrade their GPU to enjoy the new features.

AMD said that it will support DirectX 12 on all AMD Radeon GPUs that feature the Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture.

Nvidia said it will support DirectX 12 on all the DirectX 11-class GPUs it has shipped; these belong to the Fermi, Kepler and Maxwell architectural families.

Games using DirectX 12 should start appearing in 2015, Microsoft said.

Direct3D will be implementable across a range of devices, from phones and tablets to desktop gaming PCs and the Xbox One.

Microsoft claims Direct3D will improve multithreaded scaling and CPU performance, and introduce various new algorithms for 3D processing.

Microsoft provided the benchmark results below to show the performance gains. This shows a comparison of DirectX 11 (top) to DirectX 12 (bottom).

DirectX 11 vs DirectX 12 – Microsoft 3D Mark port

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