Mass Effect: Andromeda - DX12 Eyecandy Ho-Hum

Wait, what? Capped at 30 FPS? Seriously?

I'm not sure what HARDOCP expected when they did their testing. As far as I'm aware, DirectX 12 does not introduce new graphics features, so any visual improvement would have been a surprise. Its main feature is a reduction of driver overhead through asynchronous shaders and use of CPU multithreading, meaning that the main benefit of DirectX 12 is making the CPU less of a bottleneck. However, DirectX 11 has been around for much longer, so most graphics engines are very fine tuned for 11 but are just taking their first steps with 12. I expect it to be quite a while until optimization for DX 12 has caught up with DX 11.

Gonna need a source that isn't your usual "speculation is fact" on that 30 fps cap for MEA on PC, the only platform where DX12 is even remotely a thing (and even then, not much of one as every time someone does a DX12 comparison, it's super underwhelming.)

I'm not really seeing a point here. Of course DX12 isn't providing instantly revolutionary graphical improvements, it takes time for engineers to actually harness the power of new software API. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is the same way: it actually runs worse in DX12 mode.

I don't know where you're getting this 30fps cap thing, unless you're talking about consoles. In that case I don't know where DX12 is coming into the picture. It's also been pretty obvious that the PS4 Pro can't run most modern games at native 4k. High end PCs can't do that reliably, so yeah, the whole PS4K was a marketing ploy from the very start. Doesn't mean PCs won't have the chance to run 4k.

We should also probably expect worse graphical quality than BF1, because BioWare isn't DICE. I doubt they can eek out the same performance and quality as the guys who made the engine, especially when BioWare probably have bigger technical hurdles just getting Frostbite to support an RPG framework.

Yeah, 30fps on consoles. Between "it can hit a higher framerate" and "look at those BEAUTIFULTM 4KTM visuals!" which is easier to market? I think BioWare even explicitly said they were aiming for 30fps when they released the 4k teaser.


Again, DX12 was never supposed to be magic. Outside a very small part of core gamers, there wasn't even much hype for it. It's a nice marketing scheme though: "Hey look it's a technical sounding thing with a bigger number! It's gonna be great!" There's no way a single software update would double the current processing power of consoles. That would be ludicrous.

Was DX12 even a significant part of BF1's marketing push? I don't really think so. Like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, I think they just said "yeah, we'll support it," but didn't make any big promises regarding performance.

You'd be surprised at the kind of work that would probably be needed to get a Mass Effect game running on a different engine. Even different shooters can require completely unique handling mechanics for their weapons. That's not to say that this is the case for ME:A or that ME:A will definitely look worse than BF1, but it shouldn't be surprising if it isn't

The only people I've seen make a big deal out of DX12 are its developers and the occasional gamer who hyped it up without much understanding of what the platform would actually do (and how long it would take to do them). I agree that no one should invent higher expectations than what is warranted, but I honestly don't think that many people are doing that for DX12. BioWare games were never held up as icons of graphical prowess. The closest was probably DA:I being marketed as looking better than DA:II, but not "the greatest looking RPG of all time." I highly doubt BioWare will be pushing too much graphical stuff in their marketing other than "it looks better than the older games" and "yeah, we have a deal with Sony, so here's some obligatory fake 4k."

If you are (like me) Team Green, you can merrily ignore DX12 and everything around it. As RoboticWater wrote, DX:MD performs worse in DX12 on all Nvidia cards and only recently it actually improved performance on Radeons. Or so people say. Also, I very much doubt that PS4 uses any DX, it being Windows API and all.

This doesn't surprise me either. nVidia is more than happy to go on with its single thread performance issues. If you've already won a one legged race, are you gonna complain because somebody else is using two legs?