AMD Demos GPU Work Graphs On Radeon RX 7900 XTX, Much Faster Rendering With Mesh Nodes Coming Later This Year

AMD has published the first demo of its Radeon RX 7900 XTX "RDNA 3" GPU handling Work Graphs, providing much faster and more efficient rendering.

DirectX 12 Work Graphs Pave The Way For Future of Graphics Rendering, AMD Demo Shows Huge Improvement In Rendering Times Using Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPU

In a previous post, we explained how DirectX 12 API's latest feature known as Work Graphs will enable full GPU autonomy, reducing the amount of work that is typically done on the CPU and moving it straight to the GPU for faster rendering and overall faster performance in games and applications.

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At GDC 2024, AMD showcased a super early demo of Work Graphs running synchronously with Mesh Nodes which expands the DirectX 12 feature. What Mesh Nodes will do is that they process draw calls while the rest of the graph is executing. The demo showcases the whole scene (minus the UI and Skybox) being rendered on a single work graph dispatch.

The demo was run on an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX "RDNA 3" GPU which fully supports DirectX 12 Work Graphs and Mesh Shaders, allowing it to run much faster ExectureIndirect, the traditional way of graph execution and rendering a scene. The technique was 1.64x slower than Work Graphs which shows the advantage of the new feature. AMD also shared some interesting statistics about its new demo which features:

• 6600 draw calls/frame (after coalescing)
• 13 million triangles/frame
• 200.000 work items passing through the graph
• 37 nodes and 9 draw nodes
• < 200 MiB of work graph backing store memory

Work Graphs is going to be the next major extension to the DirectX 12 API and is expected to be available with Mesh Nodes later this year. NVIDIA and Intel are also onboard the Work Graphs bandwagon so expect developments from them too on the technology as it gains more traction.