like for example “GPU XXX Suports DX12”. which is touted as a feature on the retail box as well.
from what I understand the API is standardized for a certain graphical pipeline to draw various stuff on screen (polygon pipeline, brightness of a pixel pipeline…etc.) and it’s hardware agonistic, and it’s up to GPU manufacturers to “optimise” the workflow of said pipeline.
You can go into some detail, ELI10 if you will lol
In: Technology
Graphics APIs like DX12 are hardware agnostic to a degree, but the hardware needs to be capable of providing the features which are part of the API.
Take ray tracing for example. Say that the next version of DX includes an API for ray tracing (the existing API for it isn’t a core part of DX12). For a GPU to be compatible with that API it has to have the hardware to support ray tracing.
In theory that could be supported by implementing it in software in the driver, but that would be so slow it would be useless for most purposes. So it needs to have hardware support for it to be deemed fully compatible.
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