Microsoft: DirectX 12 can save more than 50% of CPU power compared to DirectX 11

Back in March, Microsoft officially announced DirectX 12 gaming platform at GDC. DirectX 12 will feature the next version of Direct3D, that is faster and more efficient than ever before. Direct3D 12 works across all the Microsoft devices, from phones and tablets, to laptops and desktops, and, Xbox One. Microsoft worked closely with all the leading GPU vendors like AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm and Intel. One of the main design decisions on Dx12 is to make it more power efficient. To demonstrate it, Intel created a SIGGRAPH 2014 demo to demonstrate the performance and power benefits of DirectX 12 on the Surface Pro 3 with Intel HD4400 graphics. In the demo, an asteroid field with 50,000 unique asteroids are rendered, which equates to 50,000 draws per frame.

To demonstrate the power gains of DirectX 12, Intel locked the framerate of the demo, rendered with DirectX 11 for a period of time and then toggled to DirectX 12 rendering the exact same content for an equal period of time.  The graph below clearly indicates that DirectX 12 CPU power consumption was reduced more than 50% when compared to DirectX 11 rendering the exact same content at the same framerate.  These power savings mean that your device can run longer and cooler.

How was it achieved? These improvements come with using the DirectX 12 API that gives lower level access to the hardware than ever before allows applications to significantly improve their CPU utilization, enabling them to draw extremely complex scenes at a significantly reduced energy cost.

Read more about it in detail here.