14 DAY TRIAL // Processor and graphics card manufacturer AMD has recently stood up against Microsoft's DirectX software, saying that it is preventing PC game developers from exploiting all of a computer's resources, which is at least ten times more powerful than a PlayStation 3 or an Xbox 360 console.
In case you didn't know how PC games actually "talk" to the components in your computer, specifically the graphics card, they use a special API (Application Programming Interface) called DirectX, released by Microsoft.
The software allows developers to program for specific hardware configurations and have it work on almost all of the specifications out there.
This software is preventing developers from being able to use all of the computer's power, at least according to AMD's worldwide developer relations manager of its GPU division, Richard Huddy.
"It's funny, we often have at least ten times as much horsepower as an Xbox 360 or a PS3 in a high-end graphics card, yet it's very clear that the games don't look ten times as good. To a significant extent, that's because, one way or another, for good reasons and bad - mostly good, DirectX is getting in the way," he said during an extensive interview with Bit-tech.
The AMD executive goes on to say that the DirectX software is basically preventing developers from having total control on a machine and creating their unique experiences.
Huddy does admit that there are merits to the use of DirectX in PC gaming, but they are becoming less and less important each day.
“Wrapping it up in a software layer gives you safety and security,” explained Huddy. “But it unfortunately tends to rob you of quite a lot of the performance, and most importantly it robs you of the opportunity to innovate.”
He compares the use of DirectX with the introduction of shaders back in 2002, which was supposed to give birth to more variety in graphics, but ended up making all current games look pretty much the same.
“That means that they've used shaders to converge visually, and lots of games have the same kind of look and feel to them these days on the PC. If we drop the API, then people really can render everything they can imagine, not what they can see - and we'll probably see more visual innovation in that kind of situation.”
DirectX may become obsolete in the future, as both AMD and Intel, the leading CPU manufacturers are launching hybrid models that combine the CPU and the GPU, thus resulting in a single specification for which game developers need to program.