It appears we are getting some new hardware based upgrades as well.
These are not the power or CPU based upgrades shown so far.
These are not the power or CPU based upgrades shown so far.
Source: http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/22/7874793/directx-12-wont-require-a-new-graphics-card-after-all"To get the full support of DX12 will users need to get a new graphics card?"
To get the "full benefits of DX12," Ybarra replied, "the answer is yes."
"There will be DX 11.1 cards that take advantage of a lot of the driver and software tech that we're bringing in Windows 10, but if you want the full benefits of DX12, you're going to need a DX12 card."
The confusion seems to lie in the difference between full support of DX12 features and support of some DX12 features.
When I went back to Microsoft to get a better sense of that difference a company spokesperson told me that there are a handful of rendering pipeline features that are new in DX12 that we will be outlined at GDC. They added: "The power and frame rate wins we demonstrated come from improvements in CPU usage in the OS runtime and device drivers. And this was on DX11 devices."