More details about AMD’s RDNA 2 GPUs have recently come to light. A video from Martin Fuller from the DirectX Developer Day has shed some light on the improvements that Mesh Shaders will make in the GPU rendering process.
While this video is intended for fellow developers rather than gamers, it does provide a few interesting points that give us an insight into what to expect from the Xbox Series X.
What Are Mesh Shaders And Why Are They Important?
Mesh shaders allow you to cull unseen objects earlier than when using traditional methods to cut rendering time.
If there’s an object in a game that is obscured, you won’t need to use resources to shade it because mesh shaders will allow the developer to remove the part of the image that doesn’t need to be shown much sooner.
This can cut down the time it takes to render an object from 102 microseconds down to 53 microseconds with mesh shading.
Xbox Series X Improvements When Compared To A PC
In the video that Martin Fuller used to discuss mesh shaders, he compared the mesh shader on the Xbox Series X to a high-spec PC using an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti GPU. It clearly shows that the PC with the Nvidia card is rendering the same scene at a much lower resolution in 72 microseconds initially, then dropping to 32 microseconds when using a top culling algorithm.
However, comparing this PC with the Xbox Series X probably wasn’t a totally fair comparison for several reasons. First of all, the PC was using a 1440p monitor and the Xbox Series X was using a 4k display. The Xbox Series X is also using 256 SIMD whereas the PC was using just 32 SIMD waves.
Either way, it looks like the Xbox Series X has got some impressive technology behind it. If we hear any more updates or information about the Xbox Series X, we will be sure to keep you updated in the runup to its release later on this year.