Microsoft Store and DX12 seems bad news for PC-gamers

blackroseMD1 said:

Hmm, that's interesting. That could absolutely be the issue.

I haven't run into the issue in a while, but if/when I do, I'll make sure to mark down what game I was playing and see if I can zero in on specific games that may cause it.

Thanks for the info.

The fact that you haven't run into the issue in a while is interesting as well. Would that be related to the fact you switched from 970's in SLI to a single 980TI ie have you experienced the issue at all after moving away from SLI? If you do, please let me know. If you don't possibly another criteria for this happening is yet again the troublesome multi GPU setups with gaming in Windows 10. Whatever is causing it (specific game related memory management issues and maybe specific to multi GPU) Microsoft needs to stop it from happening. A game dev or even Nvidia shouldn't be allowed to affect something as important as the start menu, no matter how bad the game or driver coding may be, assuming that's the issue.

specialkone said:

The fact that you haven't run into the issue in a while is interesting as well. Would that be related to the fact you switched from 970's in SLI to a single 980TI ie have you experienced the issue at all after moving away from SLI? If you do, please let me know. If you don't possibly another criteria for this happening is yet again the troublesome multi GPU setups with gaming in Windows 10. Whatever is causing it (specific game related memory management issues and maybe specific to multi GPU) Microsoft needs to stop it from happening. A game dev or even Nvidia shouldn't be allowed to affect something as important as the start menu, no matter how bad the game or driver coding may be, assuming that's the issue.

You know what, that's exactly when it stopped happening to me. Once I moved from SLI 970s to my 980Ti, I haven't had it happen at all, even across multiple Windows builds. It could be deeper than just multi-GPU setups, but I feel pretty certain that that is at least partly the cause.

I'm not surprised the blank start screen stopped for you when you went to one GPU. Likely, yet another Windows 10 multi GPU issue, and for me the issue on GOW went away with the Dev patch.

It seems that Microsoft has put so much about Windows 10/DX 12 gaming in the hands of the game Devs. When it comes to multi GPU support, what is it exactly that convinces the Devs to do it? Has DX 12 been designed to make it simple and cheap? If not, why would a game dev support it after making most of their money on the two console sales, and with a typical attitude "those PC gamers will buy it anyway, they are used to buying poor console ports". Well I don't, I return them.

The pre release hype about Windows 10 and Direct X 12 gaming included everywhere boasts about how great multi GPU gaming would be. We even have the Tomb Raider game Dev still boasting about it with their Direct X 12 implementation but "forgetting" to mention their implementation with the patch doesn't support it. LOL.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. After the Direct X 12 release of GOW, Tomb Raider and Hitman, every multi GPU gamer I know is now recommending to avoid multi GPU purchases going forward. I guess the next major release on the list to take a look at is Quantum Break. Quantum Break went gold some time ago. Ya think they made the effort to support multi GPU's? What a release splash that would be.

I've been a long time multi GPU user and support over the years "comes and goes". Currently and for the foreseeable future it's definitely in the "goes" department.

Games that have the best multi GPU support must always have it implemented early in the development cycle. Not many do any more. The majority tack it on later through patches, if at all, and then it's up to some questionable driver support how well it works.

MGPU is not a focus of devs for 'older' API based engines currently being worked on nor is devoting extra resources to learning MGPU implementation in the new API's (DX12/Vulkan etc). Studios are flat out releasing working day one games as it is. Potentially the biggest driving force behind needing MGPU power will come from the as yet unknown success of VR. Either way, single card gaming will be the smoothest way to go this time around.

As for the Microsoft Store - good idea in theory, but the attempted transition period of turning PC's into "Consoles" is going to be filled with a lot of pain for a lot of people.

There are many PC gamers (like myself with two 2 G cards) who need multi GPU support to run full HD (1080P). So having one GPU asleep doesn't simply mean we don't have the luxury of 4K, it means our PC visual game experience is poor, worse than console if we have to run DX12 games at medium settings or lower.

Indeed my PC is being turned into a console performance wise, but it's mainly because of zero to date multi GPU support under DX12. I'll be looking at a one card solution when Polaris/Pascal come out. Sadly, that permanent fix may be available before any PC game supports multi GPU's under DX12. Below is today's third patch notes on GOW. That FPS counter works and is welcome, but silence on their previous "we are working on multi GPU support" comment, not even a timeline for it.



Additionally, look at the Nvidia Inspector data (below) for Quantum Break with their latest driver. Interesting to see a separate line now for DX12, but sadly all zeros in the line code. I guess all those game dev/Microsoft celebrations I read about with Quantum Break going gold didn't have any multi GPU gamers invited, as they wouldn't be popping open the champagne if those zeros in the SLI driver code means what I think it means.

Oh, look at this posted by the GOW game devs



[WIN10] Title Update 3 available for Ultimate Edition on Win10 3/29/2016 | Technical Support and Help | Forums | Gears of War - Official Site

I guess "we will have an update on that in the near future" is some sort of timeline. They spent zero it seems on pre release Marketing as this game's release was surprising to many. If they do become the first to implement Direct X12 multi GPU support, they will get all kinds of free advertising as all the PC game sites will be talking about it and benchmarking the multi GPU data like crazy.

I'm thinking about going back to multi-GPU once Pascal comes out and the prices of the 980Ti cards start to drop. Probably some time next year. Hopefully DX12 will have been out long enough by then that it's actually having mGPU implemented consistently.

Hopefully for you Maxwell will be supported in Nvidia drivers longer than my Keplers are/were. Look at the benchmarks for 770's on The Division, 27FPS at 1080P, what a shame, lower than a Maxwell 960.

I'll be looking for a single high end Direct X12 card (Pascal or Polaris) that has a reasonable price/performance ratio. We will see if there will be Asynchronous Compute issues with Pascal. Possibly Volta will be the game changer for Nvidia, not Pascal and Volta should be released sometime in 2017, 2018 for "consumers". So Pascal may not have a long life as Nvidia's top cards. If the Pascal Titan X80 is the only Nvidia card with HBM2 memory looks like I won't have that memory if I go with Pascal as I can just imagine what the price will be for a Titan X80. No Thanks.

For those interested, here are some PC benchmarks on Quantum Break, courtesy of:
gamegpu.com



So for me, my GTX 770 (one card of two) performance would be somewhere around the GTX 960/AMD 7950, but only assuming DX12 would recognize and use the 4G vram in the two cards. So at 1080P that's 30 FPS on average with minimums in the 20's at 1080P. Ya, that's not playable, not a game for me. Note of course the SLI/Crossfire numbers are the same or worse than single card performance.