Following Microsoft's official DirectX 12 announcement at GDC, NVIDIA issued a statement endorsing the new API and calling it "A Major Stride for Gaming."
"Our work with Microsoft on DirectX 12 began more than four years ago with discussions about reducing resource overhead," said NVIDIA. "For the past year, NVIDIA has been working closely with the DirectX team to deliver a working design and implementation of DX12 at GDC."
"Developers have been asking for a thinner, more efficient API that allows them to control hardware resources more directly. Despite significant efficiency improvements delivered by continuous advancement of existing API implementations, next-generation applications want to extract all possible performance from multi-core systems. Developers also want to take direct advantage of advanced GPU hardware features, from which developers are currently insulated to provide fool-proof usage," continued the statement . "DirectX 12 was designed from scratch to provide the infrastructure for these advanced applications."
DirectX 12 will be supported on PCs, Xbox One, tablets and smart phones. Additionally, NVIDIA has committed to provide DirectX 12 drivers for all its existing DirectX 11 graphics cards.
"NVIDIA will match Microsoft OS support for DX12," the company promised. "Over 70% of gaming PCs are now DX11 based. NVIDIA will support the DX12 API on all the DX11-class GPUs it has shipped; these belong to the Fermi, Kepler and Maxwell architectural families. With more than 50% market share (65% for discrete graphics) among DX11-based gaming systems, NVIDIA alone will provide game developers the majority of the potential installed base."
