New Xbox Series X GPU Features- Full DX12_2 Support Confirmed
A few days ago, Microsoft announced an update to their DirectX 12 API. DX12_2 offers support for extra GPU hardware features and updates to previously announced features. These features include Variable Rate Shading, Mash Shading, Ray Tracing, etc.
“There are some big-ticket graphics features worth exposing in Direct3D 12, and important enough to be represented in a feature level. There’s a desire to streamline applications who wish to use them, and to make it easier to reason about support for those features on everyone’s gaming environments. Those big-ticket items are
- DirectX raytracing
- Mesh shaders
- Variable rate shading
- Sampler feedback
In addition, feature level 12_2 includes a grab-bag of other capabilities, listed out below. As time moves on and newer-feature-level graphics cards become more widely available, application developers’ lives are made easier since a cumbersome capability check can be removed in favor of simple reliance on presence of the new feature level.”
So far it was not clear if Xbox Series X will support this DX12_2 update as the new Xbox console was not listed as supported on the MS dev blog. Luckily, Director of Program Management at Team Xbox, Jason Ronald, confirmed that it already supports it.
Xbox Series X supports all of DX12_2 features on a hardware level. That means better compatibility with the latest PC API and more features that the general public was not aware of. The full list of DirectX 12_2 new features can be found on Microsoft’s dev blog.
SOURCE: MS Developers Blog , Microsoft
But not series s, the weaker console, that will still be holding back devs in 2026.
So..
..releasing this update this late in the game, means the x series x has been supporting it…for probably only a couple of months…
…which perfectly explains why this and that…
The big (most) studios who have been developing their new gameS, since 2018 or earlier, probably only got access to these core features, like raytracing, recently, and they could only play with stuff like raytracing.. the last 2 or 3.. or 4 months..
..which 100% explains why Halo infinite looks so ugly, and it is only going to receive some raytracing magic..LATER ON.
Sounds strange and unlikely, because, after all, both consoles are using an AMD chip, and if Sony 1st and 3rd party devs have been using raytracing since they started making the new game, the X series X devs should also have had access to all the AMD features..like ray tracing..for several years..
But if the series X only got these dx12 2 features recently, like Jan 2020, maybe ALL launch titles might be impacted..?
Who knows.
At least, when we see ratchet and clank running, it is clear the studio has been utilizing the ray tracing features since the beginning.
Technically since it’s a console a dev can use dx12 but they don’t need to. They have full access “to the metal” and using dx12 would actually lower performance over using bespoke code. Although having access to dx12 gives devs a huge advantage because they are very familiar with it. It’s definitely going to mean multi platform games are going to look quite a bit better on series x, especially when you combine ease of development with raw power.