Benchmarks

3DMark feature tests are special tests designed to highlight specific techniques, functions or capabilities. 

The 3DMark Sampler Feedback feature test shows how games can use sampler feedback to improve performance.

The test also offers an interactive mode that illustrates the small visual difference between sampler feedback and our software reference implementation, showing the performance benefits of using sampler feedback.

What is Sampler Feedback?

Sampler feedback is a new feature in DirectX 12 Ultimate. Sampler feedback enables more efficient ways of handling textures and shading by recording data on texture sampling and locations.

In 3D graphics, texture space shading is a technique that allows for shading to be applied in texture space, producing a shading map similar to material textures, rather than in screen space on the visible pixels. This allows for performance optimizations such as reusing shading from the previous frames or performing some of the shading at a lower detail level. Texture space shading can also reduce the impact of artifacts such as flickering specular highlights through improved texture filtering.

Sampler feedback can be used to optimize texture space shading. Regions and details in the texture space that won’t be visible on-screen can be skipped when shading through the use of sampler feedback, resulting in an increase in shading performance. 

Using sampler feedback in this process is faster than generating the same information through custom shaders.

Further reading

For more details, please read the Microsoft DirectX Developer Blog and the DirectX Functional Spec.